Mr Mark, what is the lore / biology of the Clamfolk? I would really like to know, due to wanting to make a Clamfolk race in D&D 5e.

There isn’t much established lore save a few pieces of flavor text. Some Clamfolk live in Clamville. One Clamfolk village got shelled. There are Clamfolk musicians who play “Duke of Pearl”. There are Clamfolk rebels.

Hi Mark,It’s my birthday and me and my friends are going to play some OTJ sealed today. In honor of this, can I get some trivia on Outlaws, my favorite mechanic to come out of the set?

We made a list for Outlaw of any creature type that might make sense:

• Assassin
• Barbarian
• Berserker
• Minion
• Mercenary
• Ninja
• Pirate
• Rebel
• Rogue
• Warlock

Assassin and Rogue felt like automatic includes. We added Mercenary because we wanted the “henchperson” token to be a Mercenary. The creative team asked us to add Warlock because we needed to have an outlaw spellcaster to hit all the card concepts. That’s what we handed over to set design.When making a batch, we do between two and five, with three being optimal. Four seemed in a good spot and allowed set design to add something if they had to. They added Pirate because of all the Pirate cards in The Lost Caverns of Ixalan. We did talk through many of the others. We considered bringing Minion back instead of doing Mercenary (we stopped doing it a while ago). We talked a lot about Ninja. In the end though, we felt this collection best served the mechanic.Happy Birthday!

Lin Sivvi holds a special place in my heart from my Type II days in high school. If/when on Rebel support that isn't as token-focused as what we saw in ONE, so it plays better with Masques-era Rebels? I'm hanging on to that 30th anniversary printing of her in the hopes of building a Commander deck for her someday

We’ve talked numerous times of using Rebel again. With the right set, I think we will.

Loving things so far but a couple of questions, why weren't Ninjas considered outlaws and was clash considered for this set? The latter seems like it would fit flavor as a standoff with the higher cost being who drew and shot quicker.

Repeated batches, meaning things we use on multiple cards in the same set, are normally restricted between two and five items, with three being the sweet spot. We needed Rogues and Warlocks to hit all the creative executions we wanted. Mercenary was needed because that was our henchperson token. We also knew Assassin’s Creed with its Assassin typal theme was coming. We turned those four in when we handed off from vision, leaving one potential space open so set design could add something if needed. That something was Pirate due to all the ones added by The Lost Caverns of Ixalan. As I show in today’s article, we considered all the following:AssassinBarbarianBerserkerMinionMercenaryNinjaPirateRebelRogueWarlockThere just wasn’t room for all of them. Also, we prioritized what would be in the set. So some things, like Ninja, didn’t make the cut.As for clash, it’s just wasn’t popular enough when we first did it to bring it back.

White makes sense but what makes Santa red?

You need to watch the TV special “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”, the origin story of Santa. He’s a rule breaker and a rebel, doing things his way despite what the authority says.

The weakness of Masques block was always overstated, I think. Yes, it paled in comparison to Urza’s Block, but most blocks did, and after Invasion rotated in Standard was defined by cards like Rebels, Blastoderm, Saproling Burst, Troublesome Spirit, Chimeric Idol, and Nether Spirit more than any of the new cards.The problem with Masques block was that it was boring, not that it was especially weak for its time.

I won’t argue it wasn’t boring. I will argue that it wasn’t weak for its time.

If / When: Rebel Army

If. While I assume we’ll use amass again, I’m not sure we’ll make every creature type people are asking about.

Hey Mark, do you think a few Nomads could show up in a premier set like the Rebel creature type did?

It’s possible.

Keywording a "living weapon" mechanic seems to run into the issue that the token's size and type must be set by the keyword. Is that why For Mirrodin! was given a plane-specific name, since who knows if 2/2 rebels will be appropriate the next time you want to do a similar keyword?

Yes.

Now that all the cards are revealed, I’m confused about why you guys made a big deal about the Rebel creature type coming back. I’m still very excited about the set, but pretty disappointed by the gap between the implication that they’d be a big part of the set and the reality of only getting a handful of insular cards.

We weren’t trying to make a “big deal” out of it. It’s a small element of the set we knew some players would be happy to see.