which do you think is more likely: a more nautical-focused set taking place on ixalan, or on an entirely new world?

Another world, but Ixalan is known for its Pirates.

As someone who primarily plays commander I really dislike how it's been stapled on to Freerunning. Cards don't need to work in every deck. In fact, it feels much more rewarding when you stumble across cards that only work in the deck you're trying to build. Freerunning as an assassin's only thing would've been great. Cool mechanic, cool flavor, fits the IP. Including commander makes it feel forced and too direct. I get commander is the most popular format and you want to cater to it, but this is the absolute worst way to do that in my opinion. Just make cool cards with niche abilities and have them be legendary from time to time.

Assassin typal is pretty narrow. Note how Outlaws of Thunder Junction had to also attach Rogue and Mercenary and Pirates and Warlock to make it mechanically relevant. (There were only 87 Assassins in the game - not counting Changelings - before Assassin’s Creed released.)It just isn’t good game design to make a mechanic (the only new one, no less) one that can only be played in under .1% of decks. But it’s Assassin’s Creed, Assassin’s in the title. It’s the core role of the game. So Corey (the lead design of the set) decided to find additional mechanical space to broaden it. Commander traditionally has trouble with aggression (aka not a lot of Commanders attack regularly) so Corey found a way to make the mechanic relevant in Commander.Even though every Commander deck has a Commander, free running doesn’t push in a way that makes every deck want or need it. I hear the message that some people don’t want us to design cards for Commander, but it’s a 800-pound gorilla that dominates tabletop play. If you go to many game stores, it’s the only pick-up game you can find. So to make our new mechanic (again, the only new mechanic in the whole set) something unplayable in our most popular format isn’t very viable. There is a truism in game design. “You design for the game being played.” You have to understand how your cards will be used by the players and lean into it. There are so many formats you can play that we (mostly) don’t design for, if that’s important to you. Magic is great in that you the player have so much agency in how you play. But we’re going to design for the format that dominates tabletop play.

Please send high fives to whoever designed the card for Edward Kenway. It's everything I wanted from a grixis pirate commander!

Will do.

If/when maximizing the number of creature types on a creature as a draft theme. Perhaps with cards like Captain's Hook (makes a creature a Pirate) or Angelic Destiny (makes a creature an Angel).

If. It’s hard to do for limited and changelings make it too easy for constructed.

Hi Mark!I noticed that when listing things in your podcast, you often put "and" in between each item of the list, instead of just between the last two. For instance you'll say outlaws are "Assassins AND rogues AND pirates AND warlocks AND mercenaries".Is that a regionalism, or a MaRo special thing?

No, idea. Probably me being dramatic. : )

Can I get one of your patented Maybes on Spider Lava Pirates in Bloomburrow?

Maybe. : )

What makes a Pirate blue? (Not having enough have enough Treasure.)

They’re seafaring thieves.

Wouldn't "Partner with Pirate" only be able to partner with Legendary Pirates that have a form of Partner that applies to the first creature? I don't think it could partner with a pirate without partner.

It’s not defined yet as to what exactly it means as we haven’t done it. The question asking about it implied that it partnered with any legendary Pirate.

Preface to say I don't know how combinatorics work, but can you explain why they impact partner-commander power level? The most recent partner commander, Francisco, is a mono-black pirate typal card, and I don't understand how his mere existence could affect the power of a deck that has, as a random example, Yoshimaru and Slurrk as its commanders.

Let me explain. Combinatorics is the math of how things combine. Let’s say I have two cards with partner. There’s only one combination: 1+2. Now imagine I have three cards with partner. Now there are three combinations: 1+2, 1+3, & 2+3. Let’s keep going.Four cards: six combinations Five cards: ten combinations Six cards: fifteen combinations Seven cards: twenty-one combinationsEight cards: twenty-eight combinationsNine cards: thirty-six combinationsTen cards: forty-five combinations Each time you add another card it adds whatever that number card is (call it N) by N-1. What this means is the numbers get larger and larger with each new card you add. The third card added just two new combinations, but the fiftieth adds forty-nine more. Power level follows this progression. To make the math simple, let’s say 10% of the combinations are strong enough to be competitive. As you get more and more cards, the number of competitive card combinations goes up faster. That’s was the crux of my point. The more partner cards we make, the more combinations increase and the greater likelihood of things breaking. And it gets worse the more cards you have. We don’t look at it as any one card in a vacuum. We examine the mathematical probability of problem combinations getting created.

Hi Mark, once you decide to use Mercenary in creature cards in OTJ, was it too late to add some Mercenaries to other sets in standard?

There were enough Rogues, Warlocks, Assassins, and Pirates that it wasn’t an issue. Future sets can make use of the Mercenary creature type.