I order some scrambled eggs knowing that the eggs came from a chicken. Sometimes a quail or a duck, but at least its a bird. I get concerned when the menu tells me they will be serving iguana eggs. I know it's an egg. I know how they'll cook it. I'm gonna be sitting nervously at my table regardless. When it gets served to me and it turns out to be nothing like what I know scrambled eggs to be like, I'm not going to be thrilled to see the seasonal menu next week list shark eggs.

There is a lot of consistency in Magic: the rules, the color pie, templating, etc. Creative is the place where we take, and have taken, the most liberty in pushing new boundaries.

I’m the guy who wants to build a Shark deck for his boss. Would Bloomburrow’s success pave the way for an equivalent with aquatic animals?

It wouldn’t hurt.

I've always been skeptical of bonus sheets, as I much prefer playing the new cards in the limited environment and not having them be overshadowed by reprints. Prior to this, the bonus sheets have at least had themes and some of them (WOE, for me) were net positives on their limited environment. The OTJ bonus sheet just appears to be a collection of cards that are good. I had already not cared much for them, but I imagine this will be a big "jump the shark" moment for many regarding bonus sheets.

It’s a collection of crimes in a set that mechanically cares about them.

Hey mark. There’s been some discourse the past few days about silliness in magic, brought on by OTJ spoilers, in particular the cards holy cow and loan shark. I would guess that most players like some amount of silliness in magic, even the ones who think they don’t. The issue is that it seems like a lot of people don’t like the baseline being too silly. If there was a card with the creature types ox angel, people would jokingly call it holy cow, without a doubt. Magic players like silly nicknames. Dr. Teeth, Young Peezy, Steve. All cards with normal names that players thought of nicknames for. There’s nothing wrong with some magic cards being jokes or self referential, but when the pun is THIS overt, it can feel like it’s gone too far for some people. Add onto that the fact that some people find the setting or abundance of legends to be somewhat tacky to begin with, and now you’ve made a set where some people feel like magic jumped the shark. Personally, I quite like the plane thunder junction flavorfully, and although it feels heavy on the legends, I can let that go to a degree because of the in universe reason. Holy Cow is definitely too silly for my taste though, and I would guess that’s the case for a lot of the people complaining.I just thought I’d give my perspective on it, and im curious to hear what you might have to say about it

Be aware, there’s an alternate universe where we didn’t name the card Holy Cow, and I have people mad at me that we missed the obvious name. Either choice makes some players unhappy, so we went with the choice that we thought would make the more players happy than unhappy. My poll (here and on Twitter) seems to poinyt towards that we did.

"If I was making a Shark and it wasn’t allowed to be blue, I guess I’d make it green. " CANDYGRAM.

Hmm.Creature Land - Shark: )

Sharks are my favorite animal in the whole world. So I need to ask, are we going to see more of them in my favorite game in the whole world?

I expect us to make more Sharks.

"Over time, we (as a company, I’ve been there all along - see the Un-sets) have come to realize that Magic sets want a certain amount of levity." I don't mind levity in Magic, and it's been there from the beginning of the game. I personally don't like when very silly cards hit a certain competitive power level and show up too much in "serious" play. Shark Typhoon and Minsc and Boo are examples of cards that bug me. Does R&D still try to avoid making silly cards too competitive?

There are competitive players who enjoy the silly cards. There is an overlap in the Venn Diagram, and they get to have cards they like too.

Can I please request that Shark be added to the sea creature batch? (Kraken, Leviathan, Octopus, Serpent, or Shark) I eventually want to build a shark deck for my boss - she loves sharks - but there is not a lot of intrinsic support for the tribe. I’m hoping there might be some in Bloomburrow.

The problem with “underwater” batching is there are a lot of things that could be on the list.

Just wanna say that as a big fan of Blue-Black, I am loving the design of Sharkey, Tyrant of the Shire. Can I request a high five for whoever came up with it? (And a maybe on more along that vein for blue-black in the future?)

High fives to be applied. And I’ll pass along the request for more.

Have you ever considered changing self-references on cards from "Gravelgill Axeshark" to "This"? I think most of us reading this blog is pretty blind to it, but Magic rules text is very hard to parse for new players - I'm currently teaching my 7-year old how to play and this seems like the lowest hanging fruit when it comes to making cards with a lot of text more understandable for him.

The problem with “this” is there are a number of templates where “this” becomes ambiguous.