I feel undergrowth is a bit different from mechanics taken from individual cards and turned into a word (such as landfall, sunburst or kicker) because it's been widely-used and in particular is a big part of how green uses the graveyard. Innistrad alone had at least four 'undergrowth' cards: Spider Spawning, Gnaw to the Bone, Boneyard Wurm and Grim Flowering, as many cards as some named mechanics. It's been used with multiple other effects. In no sense is it a new or poorly-explored mechanic.

Being a focused mechanical theme is a different animal than having a few individual cards. The game is celebrating its 25th anniversary and we’ve printed over 18,000 unique cards. Finding mechanics that we’ve never done before on any cards should be seen as a cool thing that occasionally happens rather than something to be constantly expected.

You know with all the hate towards Ishkanah, I want to say it's actually one of my favorite Legendary creatures. Both as a commander and from a design point of view, it's top notch to me. The lack of lore is off-putting, yes, but that adds to the mystery. Why is it legendary? What demon/eldrazi/monstrosity did it have to kill to get Legendary status? The possibilities are endless! (And being G/B for Spider Spawning is great too)

Be careful not to let threads here mislead you. Ishkanah has been overwhelmingly liked by the players.

Which is more likely, a B/G legendary spider or a mono-green one? I ask because I want to build a spider deck, but there is only one black spider in all of Magic and I don't want to splash black just to play the one legend deck in the deck. It would make it pretty much useless for spider tribal unless you make a set with a *lot* of black spiders.

I think Spider fans really want to use Spider Spawning which requires Black/Green.

If Design leans toward Limited (vs Constructed for Development), does that mean that it was the design team that came up with the Burning Vengeance and Spider Spawning draft archetypes in Innistrad? As in, you and the design deliberately crafted cards that synergized greatly with the 2 engine cards?

One of the things Design tries hard to do and then Development follows up on is making sure there are uncommon cards that are fun to draft around.

In M12 draft, Black/White and Green/anything were nearly unplayable, and in DII draft, Green/White, Green/Red and Black/White were among the better archetypes. Similarly, Red/White and Blue/Green where usually bad in DII (except when the Spider Spawning stars aligned), but are both very strong in AVR. Is there a conscious effort made to make archetypes/color combinations good in a draft format following a format where they were bad?

We like to shake up the draft archetypes so yes we are conscious of making sure the same combinations aren’t all the best between two draft environments.