Universes Beyond! I third Chrono Trigger. Castlevania. Megaman. Some sweet anime properties: Naruto, One Piece, Dragonball, maybe some of the newer stuff, or a massive triple-set premium Shonen Jump Anime Megaplex with a couple cards apiece for all of your cool stuff like Death Note, Berserk, Demon Slayer, One Punch Man and all those properties. Like Super Smash Bros, but for anime.

Thanks.

No doubt that designing is hard, but I'm sure there are standout both that are subpar and that are amazing. I've seen you talk about "bad" cards, but are there any cards you've designed that you were SURE were going to be smash hits that turned out to be duds? Or vice versa, surprising cards that performed way better then you expected?

Power level is not my thing, but I’ve had designs that I thought people would adore which they didn’t, and cards that I thought nothing of that became huge hits.

Not really a question, just sharing from the perspective of someone selling out and moving out of magic for a time, possibly forever.Magic feels like its “not the product for me” anymore. It’s not really one thing; it’s changes that have chipped away what i do like about MtG over time. The thing that I wanted to share is that there are… anthology, I guess? games? Like Fortnite, Smash Bros, Kingdom Hearts, etc. where a selling point is that you mash all of these characters from these other IPs together and tell a story or play a game. And thats popular, I get that - but it was never for me. Magic adding other IPs like this takes it from an IP that wasn’t about this in some sense and turns it into a way that (apparently, will be?) about this. That’s the biggest thing turning me off from Magic as a whole at this point.I get the concept that it’s a win for the (for example) Warhammer player who wants to play a card game, the Magic player who likes Warhammer, and saves the potential risk of creating a Warhammer Card Game that will inherently not reach a wide audience relative to magic. I just…. I just don’t enjoy the idea of playing Magic cards against Warhammer cards against Godzilla cards against Fortnite cards, or whatever is likely to end up happening. The flavor and power tuning mismatches bother me, and really the fundamental idea of trying to compare power levels of things from different IPs doesn’t appeal to me.I hope this is useful feedback; i’m not really mad, just processing letting go of a game that I’ve played a very long time.

I get asked a lot why Magic players stick with the game as long as they do. The average length of a Magic player (now well over ten years) is longer than the average game exists. Why is that?
I believe the number one reason is the game’s evolution. It isn’t a game that sits still. It’s constantly adapting. It’s not the game I initially fell in love with in 1993. But then, my wife is not the woman I fell in love with back in 1996. In both cases, they changed and got even better.
One of the most endearing qualities of a trading card game is that the constant creation of new content allows the game to push into areas it hadn’t before. It lets the game grow. It allows it to adapt to the needs of its playerbase.
There’s a common misconception that R&D decides how the game changes. That we’re the arbiters of what the game should be. The reality is we’re just responding to what we’re hearing from the audience. Not necessarily what’s being said about what the game should be in social media posts, but more in watching how the game is played and talked about when the players are just enjoying it.
When Aaron first suggested Universes Beyond, it came from him watching the audience connect Magic with other IPs of their own accord. For example, one of the most popular pastimes on Blogatog has been people getting me to identify what colors characters from other IPs should be. Aaron wasn’t trying to make the players change to accommodate Magic, he was trying to make Magic change to accommodate the players.
I understand that as Magic constantly evolves, that it might shift away from what you, as an individual, most enjoy about the game. Trust me, living in a world focused on eternal Magic causes me all kinds of headaches, but I get it’s where the gestalt of Magic players want it to be. And I’ve learned to embrace and enjoy what others love about the game.
Every major shift scares some portion of the playerbase, because change is scary, but history has shown that when players give new things a chance, most grow to enjoy it. But not everyone. People drift away from the game for all sorts of reasons, and that’s okay.
I just suggest that some time in the future you peek your head back in and see where Magic is at. We’ll keep adapting and growing it, and maybe when you check us out again, like the game, you might be in a different place, and you’ll find a connection as you did when you first found the game.
Thank you for all your years of playing. I hope one day to see you again, but even if I don’t, I’m glad Magic was able to be the game you loved for as long as it was. Hearing that means a lot to me.

Why is smashing success an instant? I thought land destruction was kept at sorcery speed.

The default is sorcery, but we, on rare occasions, put it on instants.

I got to do a couple of Rise of the Eldrazi drafts at PAX West when BFZ was announced, so I got to experience that battlecruiser limited environment and the missteps that existed. So far with Ikoria I've found it captures that "I have a big monster and he SMASH!" but not feeling quite so snowbally as Rise was. So kudos.

I’ll pass along the kind words.

Sung to the opening number of Hamilton[How does a bivalve, oyster, pun on a war/ Vet and Shellfish, shown in the middle of a clam-mander duel/ In possession of an aqueous armament standing,/ In a hard shell, show up to be an advisor and a rebel?] Alexander Clamilton is a shell-smashing success of a design! Please distribute high fives all around! I absolutely love the duel mechanic and it feels like it could absolutely be black border with only a couple of minor tweaks.

High fives to be delivered. Lines of rules text is a silver border only thing as reprints don’t always have the same number of lines of rules text.

For that previous asker--there WAS an artifact-or-enchantment Smash to Smithereens. Destructive Revelry, and it was red-green.

FYI

Why does Samut, Tyrant Smasher's activated ability grant haste if her static ability already does that?

So, if you use up her loyalty with the ability and she goes away, the creature still has haste,

Mark, the 16th was my birthday and I think my ask may have gotten lost in the shuffle. Can I get some trivia on Zurgo Helmsmasher? He's my favorite commander. Also, thanks for all you do!

In Alpha, Richard made Sengir Vampire. It had an ability, since dubbed by R&D as the “Sengir ability”, which made the creature bigger when it kills things. The ability has proven hard to use as players either avoid blocking it or make sure to block it with enough creatures to kill it, meaning that it doesn’t often get counters.
Zurgo was designed to try and make the “Sengir ability” actually relevant. It has to attack, it’s powerful enough that it’s hard to ignore and it has indestructible on attack so it lives through combat. It’s probably the most success “Sengir” creature to date.
Happy Belated Birthday! (You share your birthday with my twins, Adam and Sarah.)

With the smashing success of Unstable, when we can we expect squirrels in standard? (Obviously, it was a major component of the success!!)

I haven’t given up the fight.