Hey Mark! I would like to invoke "Birthday Trivia" to ask if you had any interesting facts or stories about my favorite New Capenna family, the Cabaretti? Or better yet their inspiring leader Jetmir?Thanks in advance!

When Gottlieb first pitched the five crime factions for Streets of New Capenna, he listed a movie for each to give a sense of feel. For the Cabaretti, the film was The Godfather.Happy Birthday!

My thoughts on MKM: The set was well designed, and I love Ravnica, and being next to Ravnica Remastered helped a lot, but the set just doesn’t feel like it’s on Ravnica. Maybe it’s a name thing like we needed more guild names on cards or something but between the lack of guild names, gold cards, and the modern clothing, it just feels better if this was on New Capenna. I think New Capenna has murders and investigations. Just because it’s mob dominated doesn’t mean detectives don’t exist. So, good set, wrong plane (in my opinion). (And if it wasn’t clear, I wished this had been on New Capenna with mobsters interfering with the investigations)

New Capenna had two other problems:

1. It just didn’t have as large of list of characters for us to use. For example, it was important that the victims were people the audience knew and cared about.
2. A lot changed at the end of Streets of New Capenna. A return would have to spend time explaining the new status quo which we didn’t have space for.

Why was Murders of Karlov Manor set on Ravnica instead of Streets of New Capenna? It feels like a much better flavor fit, setting it in the 1920's Noir themed setting instead of Ravnica.

Both are appropriate settings for a murder mystery. Ravnica was closer to the neutral version which allowed us to hit more tropes.

In your preview article for Streets of New Capenna, you mention that two Vryn-based sets were originally planned to come out after Midnight Hunt. How far did those sets get in planning before they were cut? Did you do any exploratory design?

They got cut before exploratory design.

RE: Watermarks, what if you didn't mess with reprinted cards? Caring about the legend crown or the word "landfall" wouldn't work, but nearly every card printed under the a faction in SNC has the watermark in every printing. (The triomes had extra frames.) Moving forward with new cards, you could conceivably trust that the watermark or some other symbol would exist on every printing of the card.

We reprint cards too much to lock in watermarks, and from a rules sense because watermarks are a thing that potentially can change, the rules can’t care about them, even if for certain cards we made sure it didn’t change (and again, we don’t want to commit to that).

Now that sets like NEO and SNC are behind us, do you think the audience has been more accepting of depictions of modernity in Magic than expected?

Yes.

I just rewatched the panel now that I had more time, and heard raccoons in the Bloomburrow section. I went from somewhat possibly interested to really interested in the set. If we get a decent amount of raccoons or even some otters, I'm completely sold. Were raccoons originally in the set or were they added after their popularity in Capenna? Or were raccoonfolk added to Capenna retroactively knowing that you'd be making the type in a future set?

Their popularity in Streets of New Capenna definitely encouraged us to use them. There also might be otters. : )

Can there be reprint cards in un-sets?- Un-set card reprinted in other sets (e.g. "Saw in Half" reprinted in Innistrad or Ravnica(Rakdos) set)- a card reprinted into un-sets (e.g. a Streets of New Capenna card reprinted in a crime-themed new un-set)

Any eternal legal card from Unfinity could be reprinted in another set. Un-sets can reprint cards. (See Steamflogger Boss in Unstable), but we get Un-sets so infrequently, we’d usually rather make new cards.

Today’s my birthday! To make it short, I’d love to read some trivia about Phyrexia: All will be One or Streets of New Capenna. Those were my favorite Draft sets of the last year, even though I believe other players don’t feel the same way.

The first playtest of Phyrexia had -1/-1 counters. The second had +1/+1 counters. The third had oil counters.Happy Birthday!

What's the status of black enchantment removal? We haven't seen much of it in the last year (Extract the Truth was the last one, in Streets of New Capenna). Is it just a weird blip, or is it something you're re-evaluating?

It’s still in black’s slice of the pie, but black is a distant third at enchantment removal, so it doesn’t show up a lot.