Related to the last ask (at time of writing): would you do the mirroring thing again splitting packs between two factions? Did that go well enough that you'd do it again? Is there more design space for that kind of thing?

It’s a lot of extra work for little payoff, so I’m skeptical.

Hi Mark! Hopefully third time is a charm :) While reading the preview columns for Planar Chaos, I saw you wrote this: "Every choice we make has a firm grounding in the philosophical underpinnings of the colors". However, some cards clearly don't have that "firm grounding". Do you remember what made you think that Harmonize was green or Melancholy was black? It surprises me because it's so obviously not the case. Did you maybe get too carried away by the conceptual side of your idea? Thanks!

Sometimes when you mess in space you’ve never messed in before, you can have problems in understanding the scope of what you’re doing. Every effect we shifted colors in, we thought a lot about, and it was based on precedent, but sometimes we missed the forest for the trees, as the expression goes.Take Harmonize. It’s not as if green didn’t have access to card draw. What we missed is how shifting it away from being creature dependent fundamentally shifted how it got used, and allowed green to fill in a weakness in a way that was subtler than we understood at the time.Look, there’s a reason “hindsight is 20/20” in an expression. There are a lot of decisions that seem glaringly wrong looking back, but it often comes with knowledge you simply didn’t have at the time. Planar Chaos taught us the danger of playing with fundamentals. They’re a lot harder to work with than it seems at first blush.

Hey Mark, I hope you’re doing OK. May your father rest in peace. I have a question regarding life. For most of my life, I have believed that the key to living a fulfilling life is to do what makes you feel happy. And for a long time, Magic has been that key for me. However, as I get older, I am beginning to feel less fulfilled by the sheer pursuit of happiness, as if something else is missing. (Not to say that I’m enjoying Magic any less… I’m a player for life!) My question is… what do you believe makes for a fulfilling life?

I think besides being happy, having a sense of purpose is important. Here’s a thought exercise (that I mentioned doing when my Dad died) that I call the It’s a Wonderful Life reflection. What would the world be like if you were never born? What things did you influence? And this includes your impact on other people. Part of having a sense of purpose is doing something that positively affects others in a way that makes your life have meaning.

I liked Mercadian Masques but perhaps its downfall is not the set itself, but the fact it came after the infamous Urza block. This meant 1.) the players compared power level 2.) the designers were especially cautious to limit power levelSo the set was good, but had external forces leading to poor sales. I would like to revisit Mercadia, now with new technology/design tools without the external forces. Pretty please?

I would argue the set had some additional design missteps. When we ask players worlds they want to return to, Mercadia scores pretty low.

Alright Mark, here’s the ultimate question:What’s YOUR color identity?

First color - redSecond color - blue Third color - whiteFourth color - black Fifth color - green

I just finished your twenty favorite mechanics video and was curious about how adventure stacks up? Or is it something that is considered a sequel mechanic to something else (the way Discover is for Cascade, I could see an argument for Adventure as a descendent of Flashback).

Adventure was a contender. I think I removed as it requires an altered frame, and then forgot that meld did that as well and included it.

Character death isn't something that is taken lightly, but have there been any examples where you or the Creative Team looked at a character death with hindsight and said, "we may have dropped the ball on that one"?

I think there are deaths that I believe in retrospect were a mistake, but I should stress not my area of expertise.

You ever think about how you just gradually became one of the "elder statesmen" of geek culture, with things you've made creatively having touched millions of lives?

I do not. : )

in the past we had "aura weapons", vehicles that weren't vehicles, and sieges that were not battles (Tarkir). is there ever a concern with R&D that innovation will cancel out earlier designs?

With the pool of existing cards (over 25,000), that’s just going to happen to some degree. I like to think of it as stepping stones to get to where we are now.

After listening to your why not podcast it seems you have learned the lessons of Jurassic Park...from Odyssey, the gimick sets and other challenging sets."you were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should"- Ian Malcolm Would you agree?

: )