Gotta admit some disappointment with part of the bloomburrow preview. It was really cool seeing the counters in set list until the set dropped and it became “two of these are evergreen, two are ability counters which are deciduous, one is flood which has appeared on and off for two decades…and the ones new to the set are actually all just flavorfully named charge or verse counters in how they work if it’s just one-off cards building on themselves for an effect to count.” Which is super disappointing as it feels like if new counters are named they should mean something

I list counters a lot of the time, and it’s mostly for flavor. The majority of Magic sets have existing evergreen counters (like +1/+1), sometimes deciduous ones (like flying), and usually a few new ones that are charge counters with added flavor. Usually, if there’s some new functionality, that’s it’s own bullet point.

Do you imagine it would ever be feasible for us to get single weeklong spoiler seasons for new sets?

I’m not sure what you’re asking for, as we do weeklong spoilers.

I really love animals and how many different species there are. When you started talking about Bloomburrow's mechanics not being directly typal, I was hoping that there'd be a lot of one-off animals. But almost all of the cards revealed so far are one of the main 10 animals, with the main exceptions being the calamity beasts.Was there ever a point in development where the focus was more on showcasing a lot of different animal species rather than selecting a smaller number that act as draft archetype groups?

I talked about this in my first Bloomburrow preview column. Here’s a snippet:“Once it was on the schedule, I did a little advance work on the genre to familiarize myself with it. I realized that there were two ways it’s traditionally done.Take #1 – Animals represent groups of people. These people are mice, those people are badgers, and these people are otters. Each animal type has qualities that are consistent among that group, usually things that feel resonant with the real-world animal. In this version, the setting is usually a biome, and all the animals in it are ones who would live in that biome. The animals are roughly proportional to what they would be in the real world.Take #2 – Animals represent individual people. This person’s jumpy, so she’s a frog. That person’s sneaky, so he’s a fox. This other person rushes into things, so they’re a rhino. Each animal is used to represent personality qualities. In this version, the setting is usually something more human in structure, often a city, and the variety of animals is much larger. The animal selection here is not limited by biome, so you can have animals living together that normally would never see each other in the real world. The animals are loosely related in size (a racoon is smaller than an elephant), but the scope of scale is compressed.Take number one is easier for worldbuilding. There are less unique types of animals, and they’re organized by creature type. Because animals are used to express groups of people, they tend to act more similarly to traditional species creature types, like Elves, Goblins, or Merfolk. This pushes us more toward a factioned typal theme.Take number two is easier for design because the designers have access to a lot more animals and can make more individually cool designs. The twelfth Mouse card, for instance, is a lot harder to make different than the first Giraffe. This approach pushes us more toward mechanics that tie into a larger animal theme. It’s more likely we’d create an environment that was about a lot of different animals working together, putting the focus more on individual top-down card design.Aaron was more interested in doing take number one, while I was more interested in doing take number two. So, we did a bunch of market research. It came back exactly even. Half the people we polled preferred take one, and half preferred take two. In a tie, Aaron’s original vision won out, so we did take one. (Also, I believe more people internally wanted to do take one.) I do want to stress that both takes would have allowed us to make a cool set. They just head down different paths and would have ended up in very different places, mechanically and creatively.”

In this year SDCC are we getting a similar preview of things to come as the one we got last year?

No. It’s the weekend of Bloomburrow prerelease, so my talk is Bloomburrow focused, but I will be talking about things you don’t know about.

Now that Bloomburrow is in preview season, feels like a great opportunity to ask a question about magic which has always bugged me. How come birds get to fly but moles and other similar creatures don't get an evasion mechanic called "burrow" (i.e. flying but underground)?

Because we have an evergreen mechanic called flying and not one called burrowing. : )The closest we have to burrowing is “target creature with power 2 or less is unblockable” first seen on Dwarven Warriors in Alpha.

Howdy Mark! I'm checking out Bloomburrow Spoilers, and I just want to say, I'm absolutely loving this set, I really enjoy Gift as a mechanic, please tell the Commander precon teams to use it as much as you use ward! Its such a great political mechanic! And I also really like Offspring! The meme of being a mid 30-something and all your friends are having kids is so real, even the Magic cards are having babies! LMAO Cheers,
Dave.

Glad you’re enjoying it.

Hi Mark! Unless there's more spoilers we're missing, what are the "two mechanics that came out in the same set return each part of a different two-color archetype" in the Bloomburrow teaser?

Flashback and threshold.

I really love the flavor and art of Bloomburrow. (I haven't read the story yet, since I'm still several sets behind on MTG story, but will definitely get to it at some point.) But I am worried that it will end up being a relatively weak set in terms of gameplay/card usefulness outside of limited, especially after today's previews,

We have a whole play design team who works to ensure every set has tournament relevant cards.

Both of the Kaldheim making magic design articles (Norsing Around part 1 and 2) don't seem to be available on the site. Hoping this gets fixed, thank you.

Norsing Around, Part 1 | MAGIC: THE GATHERING

Norsing Around, Part 2 | MAGIC: THE GATHERING

I have seen some previews today including the keyword offspring that are highlighted in the rules text. Is that how they will be printed or is this just for the preview? One of the cards was Warren Warleader, as an example.

It’s not highlighted on the actual cards. That’s just to put focus on it in the preview.