Hi Mark. I tried watching Doctor Who over a decade ago but couldn’t really get into it. Seeing how awesome the new set turned out from a flavor and mechanics perspectives has made me want to give the show a second chance. So I guess kudos to the team for potentially expanding my world outside of Magic.

: )

"Exploratory design and early vision design is all about trying things, many of which don't work." Do you ever try things that didn't work again? What needs to change for an idea to get a second chance?

It depends why it wasn’t working. We retry things all the time.

If you 'crit' your Sword of D&D damage trigger, do you get a second chance to roll 20 again for a 0.25% chance for three Dragon tokens?

If you keep rolling 20, you’ll keep making 4/4 dragons and rolling again. It is possible theoretically to make any number of dragons.

Mark, you ignored my wedding birthday, I'll give you a second chance. It is my birthday could you give me any trivia about karn, silver Golem?

Urza made Karn out of silver because it was the one substance that he could send through time. Happy Birthday!

Would you give a second chance to famous characters in supplemental products? Es. redoing Karona and the elder dragons.

I think it’s a possibility.

30/08/2012: I think I've given you enough of a break since my last question. Now, if you had to do Avacyn Restored again, do you think you'd make some common miracles? And, regardless, would you make any black miracles? I agree Soulbond is very not-black, but even black oriented people can have miracles. Like a destroy target creature (or a drain [3 damage, you gain 3 life] effect), demonic tutor, and creatures get -X/-X (Uncommon, Rare, and Mythic respectively)?

One of the hard lessons one learns when designing Magic cards (or doing any creative act really) is that you can’t put your good stuff everywhere. You have to make choices. Avacyn Restored was about a conflict between good and evil and as such it was important to mechanically make a distinction. Yes, black players would love to play soulbound and miracles but that flew against the entire structure of the set. The Mirrans would have loved to play infect and the Alara Shards would have loved access to the keywords of the other shards, but to do so would have hurt definition and so the clear line had to be drawn. If soulbond or miracles return, black will have a second chance to get in with the mechanic but looking back there is no way I would have allowed either mechanic in black for this set.