abzanhouseguest asked about cards that trigger off things being exiled. We already have a few! The War Doctor being probably the strongest example. A couple Eldrazi too. It's a very rare thing but you've done it before.

Fine point.

Hi Mark! Long time reader, first time asker. Would an 'unexileable' card be more likely to read 'whenever this CARDTYPE is put into exile, return it to the battlefield tapped'?

I think we could essentially do “can’t be exiled”, but my gut us we’d probably want to keyword it as reminder text can use much friendlier language as it doesn’t have to be so technical. I don’t think we’d want to make it more complicated.

Does the rules support "Unexileable"? As in, A permanent just cannot be exiled, but still can be destroyed, targeted, bounced back to hand, etc.

There’s no clean way to template it, and it doesn’t happen enough that we need a whole keyword.

Hey Mark. I was just thinking, lots of players complain about the "once per turn effect", but at least I very rarely hear players complain about the very similar "tap as a cost to activate ability". Of course, there is a very teal functional difference; plenty of cards untap other permanents, yet nothing (that i know of) overrides the "once per turn" effect. Do you think untap effects were a mistake? In the same vein as reclaiming arbitrary cards from exile.

I do not consider that a mistake.

With the few "play from exile" cards we've seen and raccoon being associated with trash, were Junk tokens considered for bloomburrow?

Not that I know of. Green doesn’t do impulsive draw.

"Exile target permanent with a but-not-forever counter on it" / "Return an exiled card with a but-not-forever counter on it to..."

If we put a counter on the exiled card, the rules could reference it.

We need to be careful that a mechanic can't get back cards that were exiled by a card where the intent was it wasn't to return. That’s why B would only get back cards exiled specifically with A. And A would presumably only be used on cards that want the cards to be able to be returned later with B.

I don’t know how B knows what exiled A. A card can refer to an action it took, but I don’t think the game can tell how a card got exiled it if didn’t do it.

What do you think the design space is for effects that bring cards back from exile?

Zero, as we shouldn’t do it. As always, I’m fine with cards using exile as a holding zone to then bring them back.

Speaking of nikachu he is also the reason I asked about this whole awol stuff (except the into a subgame thing, that was genuine curiosity) See he has a “Show” where he tries to evaluate Silver border cards by how good they would be in compedetive. And when awol was up he was like “the absolutely removed from the freaking game forever zone isn’t that different from exile” and he usually doesn’t listen to explanations unless it’s official. So I needed to be able to show the difference officially.

The defining quality of the absolutely removed from the freaking game forever zone is that *nothing* (during the course of the game you are in) returns from it. Sadly, that has become less and less true of exile.

Hey mark, long time reader, also long time asker. I like a challenge when deckbuilding. When I first found out about your psychographics, I thought “woah! it even have the same name as me!” (John). Commander helps tickle that itch for me, because I can start off with a dumb premise and try to make that concept as best I can, and since it’s not a competitive format, I know that there will always be SOMEONE with a deck on a similar power level, however bad that terrible deck idea ends up being.This brings me to a qualm that I personally have, and have seen purely anecdotal evidence that other people have too.It feels kinda lame when you guys make a commander that’s just “this is the best commander for X”. More and more we’re getting legends where they’re just the *correct* choice. If I want to build a sultai graveyard deck, Muldrotha is the answer. Nothing tops it, and I doubt anything every will top it. And that’s just one archetype. 5 color sagas? Bombadil. Snow? Jorn and Isu. Flash tribal? Nymris. Sure there are other cards that can be the commander, but you can say that about anything. Sure, I COULD make a Rakdos exile deck with Pavel Maliki in the command zone, but that’s just objectively wrong. The commander is always gonna be prosper. My point is that it’s getting harder and harder to say “how do I make this work” when you’re just handing us the blueprints and all the parts with a step by step instruction booklet on what to do.To be fair, many archetypes have so much innate complexity to them and have reached a critical mass of options where it’s impossible to tell what the “best” option is, as there are so many different facets and roads to go down. Orzhov aristocrats and mono-green stompy are easy examples.But the fact that it isn’t always the case doesn’t change the fact that happens a lot. I’m sure I’m not the only one that feels this way, but I’m also sure that if it was a majority opinion in the community y’all wouldn’t be doing it this much. I just want to know if you have anything to say about this perception that I and many others hold. Thank you for all you do in magic, I hope you respond.

One of the most common requests I get here on the blog is “make this color combination Commander for this particular theme”. Eventually, for some of them, we find an opportunity to make it. We don’t know when that opportunity will arise again. We shouldn’t try to make the best Commander we can for that slot? If it’s too weak, players will just complain and ask we make another one. The reality is a lot of players want prescriptive answers, and there’s no way to make them for the players that want them and not for the players that don’t. The idea is that players who want to do something different have access to the history of Magic to find less obvious answers.