So you've said before that Neon Dynasty started, correct me if im wrong, without Ninjitsu or Samurai and more of a focus on Auras and Sagas vs Vehicles and Equipment, with Ninja and Samurai being the commander decks. How far along did those come? I've heard people say Isshin and Satoru were the precon face commanders and were put into the set instead? Is that true? :)

Ninjutsu wasn’t in the vision design handoff with plans of it being a focus of a Ninja Commander deck, but that’s the only thing you stated that I actually said.

Here's some constructive criticism on the stories: I think it's kinda dull that a lot of planeswalker cards can make tokens, but we never see that happening in the stories. It would have been cool to see the Wanderer conjuring Samurai to fight for her, for example, or Oko summoning an Elk in one of the many situations in the recent history in which that would have been useful. As is, the planeswalkers feel too much like normal characters. (Elspeth even had to fistfight back in New Capenna!)

We learned long ago that making the stories too exact to the cards leads to less good stories.

What was biggest reason to change samurai from Bushido to attacking alone from og kamigawa to new kamigawa?

It played better.

I know Class enchantments were a 4 on the storm scale last time someone asked. If you did them again, would they be based on the creature classes in the game that weren't used in the initial batch (i.e. Samurai, Ninja, Shaman)?

Maybe. : )

Will we get to see a Phyrexian samurai creature type in the near future?

Maybe. : )

Hi Mark, with all the talk of tribal recently, can I maybe voice a counterpoint/unpopular opinion? As someone who loves making individual tribal decks, I greatly dislike batching of lesser established creature types. Mixing Warrior/Samurai or Wizard/Giants takes away from the unique identity of each tribe. Can we get more lords for lesser types like Clerics did in Dominaria United? Cats/Pirates/Minotaurs/etc could all greatly benefit from a 2 cmc lord that gives +1/+1 to their respective types.

We only get so many slots to do creature type caring cards. Batching allows us to hit more of them and also does a better job of enabling certain themes to hit a large enough volume to work in Commander. We’ll stick make the single creature type cards, but batching is a useful tool to make more players happy.

What's the main driver behind giving a batch a name (i.e. historic) vs just saying "Samurai and Warrior" or "horrors and nightmares"? I prefer the former personally.

Usually, it has to have three or more items to batch (aka create a term).

Hi Mark! Mark here. You've said multiple times previously that wotc likes "batching" but afaik you've only used it once? (Historic). Other examples I can think of are the joining of rogues/ninjas and samurai/warriors in NEO but that was just a couple of cards, you didn't create a new term to unify them and its function was to help some creature types be more relevant for limited and eternal formats so why do you think there hasn't been any more " real " batching since Dominaria if you like it so much?

Modified in Neon Dynasty is another example of batching.

Hi Mark! One of the reasons I think Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty's draft set was so successful was because there was a major mechanical theme (artifacts vs enchantments) as well as various minor mechanical themes (Samurai, Ninjitsu, Channel, Vehicles, Modified, etc.), allowing for a lot of overlap and synergistic permutations in the draft environment, which appears to be an improvement on just 10 themes for each colour pair. Do you plan to implement this major-minor theme design in the future?

Almost all sets have themes beyond the ten two-color pairs.

I know it's been a minute, but I wanted to give the feedback that I loved the quasi-Exalted flavor of Neon Dynasty's samurais. I would love to see more similar effects from the tribe in the future!

I’ll pass along the note.