"They are in the boosters, but it's a good note to have one of each of the major helper cards in the prerelease kits."I love that this topic has come up because it allows me to show that there is even more evidence that we need a token in every! Single! PACK! Helper cards occupy the token slot, and I consider them the same; they are both REQUIRED non-card game pieces.I am totally okay with mechanics like Disguise, the Dungeons, Monarch, and the Ring Tempts You. But you can't just say "they are in the packs" when they aren't in EVERY single pack. Most MKM limited decks play multiple Disguise creatures; it's kinda a big mechanic in the set. Having a guaranteed one in prerelease kits helps, but it would be even better if they showed up more often in packs. I personally believe we (as players) should have enough to the point where there is almost a surplus, not a durth.I've seen people on this blog with complaints about pre-defined tokens (clues, treasure, etc.), and now we have complaints about helper cards. And I think they are both valid! ESPECIALLY when you consider the idea of new players exploring the game without the assistance of current players. New players buy packs; I get wanting to show them ads for ways to explore the game further, but they need all the game pieces to play the game itself just as much, if not more! As I've suggested before, why not just provide both every single time they open a pack?I know you are not sole controller of everything thay happens with MtG, but this seems like such an easy fix. It baffles me this hasn't been done years ago.

We are working to up the as-fan of tokens/helper cards.

hey mark! recently people I know have been expressing issues with what I'm calling "vocabulary fatigue". Wizards has been recently utilizing a lot of very flavorful mechanic names and ability words, which is something i myself appreciate, as someone who plays a lot of limited and only needs to focus on a few of them at a time, but a lot of my friends are saying is making their experience with the recent sets worse, because they have to remember what cards do when it isn't super obvious from their actual text. In the past year or so we've had a lot of new "action batching" mechanics (by which i mean vocabulary that references a specific action or kind of action so that cards can more easily care about that action without spelling the action out every time) such as "the ring tempts you", "decend", "commit a crime", "collect evidence", "suspect", and "face a villainous choice" as opposed to older magic sets, which didn't deal with this design space as much. although other mechanics in the same vein exist, like Monsterous, their prolificness in the last year or so feels like complexity creep.Although the names are flavorful and saving on card space as allows for powerful and interesting cards, the volume of new vocabulary for older pretty routine actions (such as making your opponent choose things, permanents entering the graveyard from anywhere, interacting with your opponent or their cards, or exiling cards from your graveyard to pay a cost) can feel incomprehensible and overwhelming at times. There's a reason "whenever you cast a noncreature spell" has bever been erattaed to "whenever you exhibit your prowess"
Thanks for reading! Have a great day.

The reasons for the vocabulary increase in the type of effects you’re talking about is the result of solving a core problem. Commander has become the most played tabletop format. In order to hit a threshold that a theme is playable in Commander, it has to appear on more cards than can possibly fit in a single set. In fact, more that can fit in three sets (so even a return to blocks wouldn’t solve this problem.) The solution is to play into themes that are backwards compatible. At first, we just hit upon themes that Magic has been doing a long time (caring about card types, graveyard, typal, etc.). Eventually, though we start to both exhaust those and start to feel to repetitive. One of our solutions was discovered in Dominaria with historic. What we call batching. If we combo existing things, but in a flavorful combination, we create new backward compatible themes that haven’t yet been the core of decks. Yeah, you’ve made artifact decks and legendary decks, but none with those two effects, plus Sagas, combined. In order for batching to work, we need to give it a flavor to hold it together, and that requires vocabulary. The flavor also helps the mechanic feel organic to the set it’s in. In short, player preferences create new design challenges, and this trend is one of the things design is doing to meet those challenges.

I know for reprinting Universes Beyond cards you can rename them and rename creature types, but can you rename mechanics as well? Would you be able to reprint cards with "the ring tempts you" or that reference "ringbearers"?

We can rename mechanics (meaning it’s treated the same in the rules) if need be.

Was lord of the rings designed to be closer to core sets inc complexity level?

No, it was designed to match the complexity level of a premier set, although on the lower half. Most of the complexity points were spent on The Ring tempts you.

Did "The ring tempts you" making the ring bearer Legendary have a big impact on how much legends matter you can put in a set?

Absolutely, it significantly raised the as-fan of legendary creatures as they only appear at uncommon and higher rarities, while The Ring tempts you can be at common.

Was there any discussion about changing the name of "the ring tempts you" to be something more in line with the ringbearer flavor. I think the flavor of choosing your ringbearer and giving them bonuses works very well but I feel like "the ring tempts you" implies something very different than something like "choose a ringbearer".

The exact opposite happened. It was “choose a ringbearer” and we changed it to “the ring tempts you” to be more flavorful.

I have to register my objection, flavor-and-themes-wise, to "The Ring tempts you". When that text was revealed months ago with no clue of what it meant, I thought it was cool. And I instantly thought what anyone would think: That being tempted by the ring is bad, or at least very dangerous! But no, it's some all-upside thing. That goes against the very core premise of what the One Ring IS. I'm no Tolkien scholar, but even I can say, that's thematically wrong.

It tempts you with power, but that makes you a greater target for bad things to happen to you. That’s pretty on flavor.

Between "it becomes day", "you take the initiative" and now "the ring tempts you", it seems we're getting more mechanics that don't even attempt to explain anything about them in reminder text (not that they would fit) and instead require tokens or external cards. Is that something y'all are aware about?

As we’re making the sets, we are aware of it. Part of constantly searching for new design space is making use of different tools, and outside play pieces are part of that. It isn’t something we want to lean on too much, but it does allow us to do things we otherwise couldn’t.