"Design blog -> designer language." - That's reasonable. What isn't reasonable is expecting every player to know your jargon. Try meeting us halfway. If someone asks about power creep, and you know they mean power churn, correct the term, but also answer the question that you know is being asked. (Same with "flip cards" when you know they mean DFCs, or other instances of jargon that players may use incorrectly.) Otherwise you come off as dismissive, or incapable of understanding our concerns.

I don’t always know what you mean. And often I’m answering questions in between living my life, so my attention is not always 100%. I tend to answer what is literally being asked. Sometimes I can catch when the asker means something different, but often I don’t. I’m not being dismissive or incapable of understanding your concerns. I’m just a busy guy multitasking. What this means is if you use other terminology sometimes I’ll catch it, but often I won’t. If you ask about flip cards, I’ll usually talk about flip cards. I’ve been doing this blog for over ten years (answering over 150,000 questions), and I’ve found this thing that makes people happiest is me getting to their question, so I try answer as many as I can. If I misunderstand you question, ask again and let me know what I misunderstood.

Power creep is when what cards are viable change BECAUSE CARDS THAT ARE STRICTLY BETTER THAN OTHERS RELEASE. Whereas car churn is when what cards are viable changes FOR ANY REASON. Thise are not the same thing.

When we make new cards, some will be better than existing cards. That is not power creep. That is the act of making new cards.

Hi Mark, I'm actually trying to build an uncube with Unstable as a base, but I'm running into an issue. I don't think there's enough contraption assemblers in the set for the size of cube I want to build. I've been thinking of possibly adjusting some of the overcosted assembling cards to be more in line with the power level, or editing some of the unfinity cards that open attractions to make contraptions instead. It seems a bit extreme to go and edit cards with stickers to suit a cube, but I want to avoid having to run multiple of a card or making the cube smaller. What do you think would be the most in-spirit solution for a cube centered on Unstable?

I would run duplicates, but if that is untenable to you, you could run clones, flickering effects, etc. which allow you to reuse the assemblers you have.

Concerning power creep, there may be a comparison and distinction to be made between distorting a format and adding relevant cards to a format. If a card is relevant, it shows up in decks, right? Maybe even a lot of decks. That's good for a format-relevant product. Otherwise, why even make the product?But then what is the delineating mark between format change (good) and format distortion (bad)?One could argue that Serra Angel is an example of format change. Arguably obsolete, nobody is really objecting to the card's irrelevance in eternal formats.So. What is that dividing line? Is formst chsnge just 'distortion over time'? I would argue that healthful change is oft misperceived as power creep, but it took a lot of cards in Commander before we figured out that '2 MV ramp and repeating value' were the prime culprits in accelerating the casual format beyond its 'battlecruiser Magic' roots.I'm not making a big argument one way or another, just trying to stimulate a brain or two..

For starters you’re not using “power creep” as I use it on this blog, but for the sake of saying the same thing for the tenth time, I understand you mean the increase of cards impacting older environments. You bring up the other thing we haven’t been talking about. Card influx talks in neutral terms. Add N relevant cards and impact the environment a particular amount. The faster you add N, the quicker it changes. The sets designed for older formats aren’t adding in cards neutrally though. They are adding in suites of cards built around particular mechanical themes. Adding in whole suites of cards changes environments more quickly as the threshold to make a deck theme relevant gets hit more quickly. That’s the other big impact of designing for a format. It causes you to impact it faster as you are designing whole swaths of mechanical pieces, not just cards. That’s very relevant to the topic at hand.

In a non-rotating format, given a continuous stream of new sets at a fixed power level, we should expect the rate of increase of the format's power level to decelerate, because new cards are competing against a larger and larger existing pool. What is the name for the situation in which the rate of increase of the format's power instead accelerates, because new sets are designed to keep pace with the increasing power level of the format?

That’s not true. You’re forgetting the modularity of a trading card game. The more cards that exist the higher the combinatorics of inter-card synergy. Many cards can be dormant until a new card comes along that makes them powerful in conjunction. It is this modularity that keeps the power level from deaccelerating.

If we can acknowledge that a number of players have complaints with the "card influx" from Modern Horizons sets causing the power level of formats to spike drastically, do you have any insights on how this issue is going to be tackled, or if it's even something that needs to be fixed at all?

It’s an issue being examined. The issue is many players enjoy the higher powered designs of the straight to modern sets.

Would you mind defining power creep? I thought I knew what it was, specifically in the context of Magic R&D, but some answers lately make me question that. Thanks.

Power creep is a continual raising of power level set to set. Let’s talk about Sets A through Z. The average power level of B is higher than A, B than C, C than D, etc. Power creep is the continual rise of power through a product line where each new set obsoletes the previous set. Let me try to put the current complaint in context. Magic used to have a unified target for products. Everything was aimed at Standard. That allowed us to have a single power level target. When we started making products for larger formats, we had to pick a new power target because the larger format, by the nature of it having more cards, was higher. The problem with Modern “rotating” is because we increased the card influx for the format. What happened would have happened with time. Let’s say the churn is the introduction of 50 relevant cards. That would have naturally happened with time, but much slower through products aimed at Standard. I hear that people that are frustrated by the impact of the increased flow of power-relevant Modern cards. That’s a valid complaint. I’m not trying to dismiss it or say it’s not a real thing that’s happening. I’m just quibbling over what actually is happening vocabulary wise. That’s all.

I understand that you can keep power level stable in standard - as sets rotate, the new ones keep the same power level. And any outlier cards will eventually rotated out. But how can you avoid power creep in eternal formats. More so, is it even desirable from q business point of view - I mean why would players be excited and buy cards if they keep their current ones the power of their decks would stay the same? I guess maybe supporting brew kinds of decks at the same power? It seems like an interesting problem. I’d appreciate any insights you have on this. Thanks.

Power level will rise as more cards enter the system. That’s not power creep though. All your sets can have an identical power level and formats that never rotate cards up will rise in power.It’s the nature of older formats. It’s why R&D pushed rotating formats for so long. Because we can keep those at roughly a similar power level.

Is Dragonstorm too strong for standard? I think I'll be a little disappointed if we get to the end of the Dragonstorm story arc and the card isn't printed into any of the sets within it. Is this something you (WotC, not you personally) took into consideration when naming the arc? I realize it's probably too early for you to answer this now, so I'll ask again after we return to Tarkir.

We’ve learned not to let old card names keep us from using words we need to use.

Regardless of individual power level of the cards involved, no card with a unique name and rules text should be considered part of a booster set unless it is actually available *inside* the booster. Please stop making buy-a-box promos that are otherwise unobtainable.

Market research shows the majority of players (that buy booster boxes) prefer the Buy-a-Box being unique.