I really love animals and how many different species there are. When you started talking about Bloomburrow's mechanics not being directly typal, I was hoping that there'd be a lot of one-off animals. But almost all of the cards revealed so far are one of the main 10 animals, with the main exceptions being the calamity beasts.Was there ever a point in development where the focus was more on showcasing a lot of different animal species rather than selecting a smaller number that act as draft archetype groups?

I talked about this in my first Bloomburrow preview column. Here’s a snippet:“Once it was on the schedule, I did a little advance work on the genre to familiarize myself with it. I realized that there were two ways it’s traditionally done.Take #1 – Animals represent groups of people. These people are mice, those people are badgers, and these people are otters. Each animal type has qualities that are consistent among that group, usually things that feel resonant with the real-world animal. In this version, the setting is usually a biome, and all the animals in it are ones who would live in that biome. The animals are roughly proportional to what they would be in the real world.Take #2 – Animals represent individual people. This person’s jumpy, so she’s a frog. That person’s sneaky, so he’s a fox. This other person rushes into things, so they’re a rhino. Each animal is used to represent personality qualities. In this version, the setting is usually something more human in structure, often a city, and the variety of animals is much larger. The animal selection here is not limited by biome, so you can have animals living together that normally would never see each other in the real world. The animals are loosely related in size (a racoon is smaller than an elephant), but the scope of scale is compressed.Take number one is easier for worldbuilding. There are less unique types of animals, and they’re organized by creature type. Because animals are used to express groups of people, they tend to act more similarly to traditional species creature types, like Elves, Goblins, or Merfolk. This pushes us more toward a factioned typal theme.Take number two is easier for design because the designers have access to a lot more animals and can make more individually cool designs. The twelfth Mouse card, for instance, is a lot harder to make different than the first Giraffe. This approach pushes us more toward mechanics that tie into a larger animal theme. It’s more likely we’d create an environment that was about a lot of different animals working together, putting the focus more on individual top-down card design.Aaron was more interested in doing take number one, while I was more interested in doing take number two. So, we did a bunch of market research. It came back exactly even. Half the people we polled preferred take one, and half preferred take two. In a tie, Aaron’s original vision won out, so we did take one. (Also, I believe more people internally wanted to do take one.) I do want to stress that both takes would have allowed us to make a cool set. They just head down different paths and would have ended up in very different places, mechanically and creatively.”

Hi Mark, On the teaser list was 'Creature - Rhino Brawler' and today we saw a Rhino Warrior with 'Brawler' in the name. Was there a last minute change in typing?

It was me messing up when I was making my teaser.

Would Standard support an improved version of Siege Rhino?

Improved? Siege Rhino isn’t good enough? : )

Hi Mark. Happy Halloween. I miss Siege Rhino. May it see a reprint in Standard please?

I’m not a play designer, but I’m skeptical it’s returning to Standard.

A few times when people ask for more beast people I believe you've mentioned that Humans need to feature prominently since people relate to Humans. Has anything changed with Capenna? Even though Human is technically the most represented singular creature type, the animal people (Cats, Rhinos, Birds, Cephalids, Viashino, Raccoon) outnumber them by a landslide. (Also will we ever see Noggle again?)

Humans want to be on most worlds, but don’t need to be the majority.

If/When: A mechanic that lets one creature ride another? I'm mainly thinking along the lines of Knights or Rangers riding Horses or Rhinos or other mounts without needing the Horsemanship keyword. Maybe some sort of Mutate variant?

We call it the “mount” mechanic in R&D and I’m sure there will come a world where it makes sense to finally solve it.

High fives to everyone who brought back Rhinos back to viable, even as tokens :)

High fives to be delivered.

For Spike, is Seige Rhino allowed since it's technically banned in standard?

It is not technically banned in Standard. Not legal in a format is not the same as being banned.

It's my birthday! Thanks for another great year. Can I get some trivia on my favourite animal, rhinos, in Magic - maybe about one of my favourite commanders, Roon?

My friend Michael (the person who co-created the Weatherlight Saga with me) loves rhinos, so for his birthday one year, artist Amy Weber gave him the original painting for Ebony Rhino.Happy Birthday!

Elephant tribal or rhino tribal

Elephant tribal.