Hi Mark! It was my birthday recently :) do you have any fun trivia about the Devotion mechanic?

The devotion mechanic was the redoing of chroma, an ability that first appeared (unnamed) in Future Sight and then (named) in Eventide. Aaron Forsythe originally pitched chroma on a single card in Future Sight, but I held it back because I thought it was a whole mechanic. We had high hopes for chroma, but the audience wasn’t too excited by it. Then when we were making original Theros, we needed a mechanic showing a connection to the Gods, and design team member Zac Hill pitched bring back chroma. We cleaned it up (now only caring about the mana cost of permanents on the battlefield) and renamed it, and it went on to be a beloved mechanic. It goes to show how much execution of a mechanic matters. Happy Birthday!

Has there ever been any thought to combining the Ox and Minotaur creature types? Such as simplifying both to simply "Cow?" I'm a huge fan of bovines in all forms and it would be nice if all of the Ox in magic worked alongside their more anthropomorphic cousins the Minotaur. As it is now we're lucky to really get cards of *either* type printed. There's resonance to the name Minotaur, no doubt, but it also has its share of baggage. It has Greek connotations and that's probably a big reason Minotaurs are almost strictly in Theros (although some favorites, such as Neheb, are from other planes). I was happy that Outlaws had more Ox cards, but it also highlights my dissatisfaction: Holy Cow is an *ox* not a cow, despite the name. It feels like a retread of the Hound or Naga debacle all over again. Hound was simplified to Dog and all Snakes, from rattlesnakes to Naga, are simply the type Snake now. This allows snakes and dogs of all walks benefit from a shared unity. Cats had it right, we didn't need Leonin as a separate type.I just feel like there's unnecessary separation being created by dividing Ox and Minotaur and it has the same resonance failings as all dogs being labeled "hounds" had. If it's important for a particular creature to *be* a minotaur then they can just *have* minotaur in their name, like ~30% of minotaurs already do. There's also the simple fact that Minotaur is a longer average creature type, limiting design space for other types to be included. It's hard to justify why a Minotaur is on a random plane, but much less so if it's simply a "Cow Warrior" for example. As for why I think "Cow" should just be the combined type name, I simply think it fits. Cow is a resonant name. Almost everyone, East to west, knows *of* cows if only because their milk is such a widely used commodity. We don't call it "Ox's milk" after all. More than that, it's fun! Cow is *funny* in the same way *squirrel* is funny. It's amusing to see "Squirrels you control" in this game full of fighting. In that vein, "Cows you control" is an amusing line that can help break up the seriousness of a setting. I know this is making a mountain out of a molehill, but magic is a game of different perspectives coming together and creating something new. Cows are my favorite animal and it's simply dissatisfying, to me, that my Holy Cow can't benefit from a Kragma Warcaller. That Angrath, colloquially named "Cow Dad" in the community, would have the creature type "Minotaur." The only downside I can see is that "Cow" *does* specifically refer to females of a bovine species. But that is a distinction few, if any, seriously take into consideration. If one sees a field of cows, they're not saying "I see lots of cows and 3 bulls!" They're going to say "I see cows!"So to bring the thesis back, has there been any discussion internally to simplifying the Minotaur and Ox creature types under a single banner, such as "Cow?" I would also happily settle for "Cattle" as the new type. I just feel the current Ox vs Minotaur divide has to go, for both flavor and mechanical reasons, and the sooner the better.

I have been on Team Cow (as I was on Team Dog) for many years. I even made Cows in Un-sets. I still believe Minotaur should be its own creature type though.

Could a set be both a Showcase Set and a Backdrop Set? If characters from across the multiverse gather on Theros to do something not directly related to Theros's main mechanical identity, would it be both?

Theoretically.

Would future minotaurs be locked to that power and toughness? I hope not as humans seem.to be all sizes.

That was a specific Theros thing.

Theros Beyond Death is not being fairly evaluated. It was released weeks before the COVID pandemic, and a lot of players were upset that we never received a proper story for Elspeth and the gods. That does not mean the set was not well received or would have sold better under more ideal circumstances. Theros should be at minimum a 3 in my opinion.

We are more likely to return to a 4 than not return.

Hey Mark, I was wondering what the Rabiah scale for Theros would be?

It’s a 4.

"From a big picture, Magic excels at creating variety and does poorly at consistency."I would argue that historically, it's done well at both. Variety and consistency are not opposing concepts; you don't need to sacrifice one for the sake of the other. Ravnica, Theros, Zendikar and Bloomburrow are all very different places, but they're easy to see side by side. You could take a character from each of those planes and put them in a story together, and they would all be very distinctive, but none would feel out of place. Put someone from Duskmourn in that lineup, and they'd stick out like a Ghostbuster in Middle Earth. The complaints aren't from people who, as you seem to be implying, dislike variety. They just think that even in a very varied setting, you can still have cohesiveness, and Duskmourn's aesthetic breaks the cohesiveness that Magic has actually done very well at previously even with its great variety (there are other reasons people may dislike it as well of course, but that's most relevant to this point).

There are people who thought Ravnica *did* break the mold of what Magic was. A city? Core fantasy is not urban. There are people who thought Theros *did* break the mold of what Magic was. Theros borrowed too heavily from an existing mythology. Magic is about creating its own things, not being influenced by non-fantasy real world sources. There are people who thought Zendikar *did* break the mold of what Magic was. It leaned to heavily into adventure tropes and not enough on basic fantasy. There are people who thought Bloomburrow *did* break the mold. It was too cutesy and didn’t have the gravitas of a real Magic set. The idea that the thing you felt went too far is the actual thing that went too far is what everyone believes when we stretch to a place that they aren’t comfortable with. But that place varies from person to person. And more importantly, it changes as the game adapts. Innistrad was once the world that went a step too far, and now it’s the thing Duskmourn is being compared against as the sign that we went too far.Magic has since its beginning changed and adapted. And it’s always pushing into new territory because that’s what it means to change and adapt. That doesn’t mean every person is going to agree with everything we do. It’s fine to not like something, but please be aware that for each player who felt we went too far, there are many others excited by what we’re doing.My point when I say “we do poor at consistency” is that there’s no definitive dividing point. There’s not a clear line in the sand where this side “is Magic” and this side “isn’t Magic”. That line varies person to person. The reason we have 27,000+ cards is so that each person can focus on “what Magic is” for themselves.

Set B "obsoletes" set A is a strong word, but let's focus a moment on pioneer, not very old vintage cards. I have a database of "top playables" in pioneer, restarted after every banning. Cards get into list based on certain number of appearances in goldfish's tournament winners, but criteria is equal to all cards. 9 OG Theros cards are on the list, 5 KTK cards. 4 RTR cards (+ shocks) 21 MKM cards are. 20 LCI cards. 13 OTJ. New sets have vastly more cards in list, thus are stronger.

The switch for a Standard-focus to an Eternal-focus forced us to up the overall power level of premier sets in Throne of Eldraine, so yes, Throne of Eldraine and sets after do have an overall high power level. That wasn’t set by set creep though, but a conscious one-time adjustment.

I know on Theros that enchantment creatures represented Nyx-born or Nyx-touched or those favored by the gods, and I know in Kamigawa Neon Dynasty the enchantment creatures were meant to represent the traditional aspects of the plain in the tradition-modernism dichotomy of the set (something I just want to say I loved), but I have two questions for you. First, why did you decide to continue to use the Nyx frame on Kamigawa? Was it just that the frames had become synonymous with enchantment creatures? And second, what flavorfully is required for a creature to be an enchantment creature? Does it have to be something affected by a "spiritual" or "divine" other?

We decided we didn’t want a second enchantment creature frame. There is no inherent rule for can be an enchantment creature. It has to feel right.

If/when a Standard set with a strong Mono Color focus. Last one was OG Theros

Throne of Eldraine was after that. We don’t do them often.