Is there a chance of a universes beyond mechanic making it into a regular set in the future.E.g. A future set is set in a futuristic world a la neon dynasty where one colour's/colours' mechanics focus on the usage of dangerous radioactive weapons and use rad counters to represent that. Thanks in advance! I love how interactive you are with the community, it's always a pleasure to read your insights

Any Universes Beyond mechanics are fair game for other sets. Some might need a name change.

Hi Mark! I just found your blog and can't seem to find any results with the search so sorry if this has been asked before. Could rad counters show up in a future (non UB) set? I LOVE the design of them and the Fallout set got me into the game so having more pieces for a radiation deck would be amazing.

The mechanical execution can. I’m not sure if they’d have the same name.

I really enjoy the play patterns of rad counters from the fallout decks ,, any plans to make more counters in this vein? How much design space is there?

Much like we only use one counter on creatures, we don’t want sets having more than one (main) counter on players. There is a bunch of design space in player counters.

I know it's early, but what do you think is the overall response to Rad Counters? I personally think it's a nice, flavorful way to give mill more of a presence on the board overall. Less I win out of nowhere/does nothing, more interaction with the rest of the board (proliferate, life drain, graveyards' ect)

Anecdotally, the mechanic has been liked.

"It varies mechanic to mechanic, but they don’t score any lower as a group against other mechanics. Some, like Monarch, are quite popular."People are criticizing the helper card mechanics because they are very complex, require specific varied tracking and they are virtually impossible to play with unless you constantly refer to helper card (compared to most cards that you can understand by simply reading its oracle text or reminder text).The Monarch doesn't have any of those issues. It's an elegant and masterfully designed mechanic.

The Monarch is very simple and straightforward, so much so that the oracle text from The Monarch token could fit as reminder text on several monarch cards. That can't be said about Day/Night, The Initiative, Venture in the Dungeon, Rad counters or Tempted by the Ring.

I've probably looked at the double sided Tempted by the Ring helper token over 100 times and I can't confidently tell someone exactly how the mechanic works if I don't have the helper token to read from. It's an extremely complex and multifaceted mechanic. I would say more complicated and wordy than 98% of other Magic mechanics. Can you please make more "outside of the game" helper card style mechanics that are easy to comprehend and intuitive?The Monarch and Ascend are examples of mechanics like this. More of that please!

The more complex mechanics that create outside of the game elements are intimidating (i.e. Venture into the Dungeon, Tempted by the Ring, The Initiative, Day/Night) and in my experience, they slow down the game because players can't understand them easily.Lastly, I'm offering this feedback as a major Magic enthusiast and long time veteran player who also plays with experienced players regularly. I can't even begin to imagine how daunting these types of mechanics must feel for novice players!

I talk a lot about how different players enjoy different aspects of the game. What I talk far less about is different players struggle with different aspects. Some can’t handle excessive processing; some have issues with sequencing; some don’t understand the nuances of the rules; some aren’t good with memory. My best guess with you is you internalize (aka work from memory) card abilities most of the time, so cards which exceed your ability to memorize cause you issues.Because players see the game through the lens of their own experience, the feedback they tend to give is “stop doing thing X” because thing X is the element that they personally struggle with. The challenge is there are players that don’t struggle with that element of the game and thus enjoy thing X. For example, my biggest note on this blog about dungeons isn’t they’re too hard to process, but there aren’t enough of them. So, it’s a balance. We need to understand the ways in which people struggle and help accordingly where we can. I agree that we need to be cautious how complex and wordy we are on elements off the card. And we have to be careful how often we use that tool. Now there is a threshold where enough players struggle, that we have to question if a particular aspect is worth it. I don’t think we’re there yet with external game pieces, but I do loudly hear the note that we have to be better with as-fan of the helper cards showing up. The note that we need to auto-include more helper cards in the prerelease kits is also a strong one.So yes, I’m aware that outside game pieces come at a real cost for a certain type of player, and it is something we have to keep in mind when designing them. I personally think we could have simplified Tempted by the Ring a bit, for example, but I do think it was right to include in the product. Thanks for your feedback.

I remember listening a little while ago that you had developed a mechanic for the orzhov called debt counters, that put debt counters on players. Was there any connection between debt counters and rad counters in design or did they evolve separately?

I think they evolved separately.

Would the new card “struggle for project purity” in pie for white? The brotherhood option is just the card “cut a deal” every upkeep, and although rad counters aren’t a very white mechanic, the enclave option is still a ghostly prison type effect, which white gets very frequently.

The brotherhood ability could probably be done in white. The enclave part is much more dubious. White taxing, with a few notable exceptions, usually create white outputs, and milling is fifth in white.

Do you think the first two Innistrads using +1/+1 counters makes it more likely that the next visit will as well or does the horror feel push more to -1/-1 and does no blocks push one over the other?

I think shifting what counters exist on what worlds in revisits is unlikely.