Hi Mark! Long time reader, first time asker. Would an 'unexileable' card be more likely to read 'whenever this CARDTYPE is put into exile, return it to the battlefield tapped'?

I think we could essentially do “can’t be exiled”, but my gut us we’d probably want to keyword it as reminder text can use much friendlier language as it doesn’t have to be so technical. I don’t think we’d want to make it more complicated.

"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.

In response to another ask, there already are Auras that have different properties based on what kind of permanent they enchant, the Rune cycle from Kaldheim. Not exactly what the asker was talking about, but pretty close.

FYI

Well why not just determine if kindred should be used on a case by case basis? (To be clear to the other question marks I genuinely want to know the actual reason and am not complaining, as should be the default assumption for all questions anyone ever asks)

The problem is each time you label a Goblin flavored card with Kindred - Goblin, it makes players want every other card with a Goblin flavor to be Kindred - Goblin. That’s the slippery slope.

Hey mark, long time reader, also long time asker. I like a challenge when deckbuilding. When I first found out about your psychographics, I thought “woah! it even have the same name as me!” (John). Commander helps tickle that itch for me, because I can start off with a dumb premise and try to make that concept as best I can, and since it’s not a competitive format, I know that there will always be SOMEONE with a deck on a similar power level, however bad that terrible deck idea ends up being.This brings me to a qualm that I personally have, and have seen purely anecdotal evidence that other people have too.It feels kinda lame when you guys make a commander that’s just “this is the best commander for X”. More and more we’re getting legends where they’re just the *correct* choice. If I want to build a sultai graveyard deck, Muldrotha is the answer. Nothing tops it, and I doubt anything every will top it. And that’s just one archetype. 5 color sagas? Bombadil. Snow? Jorn and Isu. Flash tribal? Nymris. Sure there are other cards that can be the commander, but you can say that about anything. Sure, I COULD make a Rakdos exile deck with Pavel Maliki in the command zone, but that’s just objectively wrong. The commander is always gonna be prosper. My point is that it’s getting harder and harder to say “how do I make this work” when you’re just handing us the blueprints and all the parts with a step by step instruction booklet on what to do.To be fair, many archetypes have so much innate complexity to them and have reached a critical mass of options where it’s impossible to tell what the “best” option is, as there are so many different facets and roads to go down. Orzhov aristocrats and mono-green stompy are easy examples.But the fact that it isn’t always the case doesn’t change the fact that happens a lot. I’m sure I’m not the only one that feels this way, but I’m also sure that if it was a majority opinion in the community y’all wouldn’t be doing it this much. I just want to know if you have anything to say about this perception that I and many others hold. Thank you for all you do in magic, I hope you respond.

One of the most common requests I get here on the blog is “make this color combination Commander for this particular theme”. Eventually, for some of them, we find an opportunity to make it. We don’t know when that opportunity will arise again. We shouldn’t try to make the best Commander we can for that slot? If it’s too weak, players will just complain and ask we make another one. The reality is a lot of players want prescriptive answers, and there’s no way to make them for the players that want them and not for the players that don’t. The idea is that players who want to do something different have access to the history of Magic to find less obvious answers.

from what you said to a previous asker, if I recall, you and the team try to be cautious about discard, and also counterspell to some extent because of how both mecanic are "feel bad" overall.Why not making more card that, don't per say straight up negate, but at least react to those type of effect, like that one baloth that, if I'm not mistaken, come into the board if an enemy effect would make you discard it ? Are those considered too polarizing or difficult to balance or make interesting ?

The problem solving it with a response is that you then only solve the problem for a) the people that own the card (even at common, the majority of players will never own it), and b) the more advanced players who understand that this is an answer to a problem and use it accordingly.

To contrast the opinion that a previous asker had about magic making too many doppelgangers, I really like the effect and don't feel it to be over powered.
When I started playing magic, around M13, I was in college and didn't have much disposable income. It seemed like the "cheap" cards I could afford were all clone type cards and cards that could cast my opponents instants and sorceries. I ended up getting so many cards I made a Wrexial, the risen deep EDH deck. I would commonly get asked "How good is your deck?" My reply was always, "I don't know, how good is YOUR deck?" It carried me a good long time and provided lots of fun for myself as I was trying to figure out how to essentially win with their deck and a fun challenge for my friends as they had to play around their own cards.
TLDR: please don't change how many doppelganger/copy style cards you're creating.

How do others feel about cards that copy the opponent’s cards?

Hey Mark, another question for you. On my computer, your responses to Question Marks use text that is the same font, color and size as the questions themselves, so it is often difficult to tell where a question ends and your response begins. Is this just my computer?

I think so. I don’t have this issue on my computer. Do others?

About the menace question and re wording it, i think the asker was asking if you would do something LIKE that and just gave that as an example.

When we make mechanics, we do think about whether or not it wants a number embedded in it.

"I have you officially run my teaser by internal people, and right now they’re saying “no teaser”. How do others feel?" Can you please poll your question marks about this? I find it difficult to believe there would be a significant number of people who wouldn't want a teaser, even if someone looked at all of the leaks I don't know why they still would explicitly not want a teaser to be created.

One of the key functions of the teaser is to create online conversation. If every tease is just followed by “It’s blah”, it loses a lot of its impact.