I was reading a reddit thread where a new player was asking why X theme/mechanic in a recent set was not something he could build a competitive standard deck around. The responses in the thread was ENTIRELY set mechanics and themes are MEANT for limited not to build decks around. Is it a design problem that the player base feels set mechanics and themes are not meant for constructed 60 card formats? They did bring up how cards like Tenacious Underdog might have a set mechanic on them but them seeing play was because they were a strong card that happen to have it on them. Also it was brought up that Underdog could have the text just spelled out on the card and still function with out the "set mechanic" on it. Do set mechanics and themes matter outside of limited?

I’m not quite sure how to answer this. Clearly cards with mechanics are played in constructed formats, so yes, they matter. It’s harder to build solely around mechanics as you start getting into formats with larger deck sizes and singleton rules, but there are Standard decks where the main theme are based around using newer mechanics.Also, I should point out that high-level tournament constructed is a small portion of constructed play. Many Friday Night decks are built around mechanical themes. As you get more competitive, the very nature of it pushes you towards playing the strongest collection of cards which makes pure build-around theme decks lower in number.

Do your in-house player psychological profiles have a name for players that actively gravitate towards legitimately underpowered/underdog cards/playstyles/colors/themes? How often, if ever, does this group come up during the design process, and is it different depending on the product?

Any psychographic could do that, it’s a matter of why they want to. Are they trying to prove they can win even with bad cards? (Spike) Do they enjoy the thrill of playing bad cards? (Timmy/Tammy) Are they trying to find a clever way to win with bad cards? (Johnny/Jenny) The psychographics are about psychological motivations.

What was your favorite childhood cartoon growing up or that you watch on reruns today?

As a kid, I loved Underdog.

Which version of the Underdog theme; "When criminals in this world appear..." or "When in this world the headlines read..."?

Those both appear in the song just different verses.

To the guy that said he was old for knowing who underdog was: There was a movie in 2007 that reintroduced the new generation to Underdog. You don't have to be that old to know who Underdog is... ;)

I’ve chosen to pretend that movie didn’t exist. : )

Woo hoo! What do I win ? :p Besides being old enough to know what underdog is, that is.

You win the admiration of everyone playing. : )

"I believe winning the Dog fight gets harder every year that passes. And right now, I’m not optimistic of winning it." so you consider yourself the underdog? :)

: )

Looking back at a previous version questions notes I see that many people believe that in the pretend format of "creature duel" many people believe that blue would hold its own. This is what I was meaning by saying that the weakness of blue is not very pronounced. Even assuming there is a weakness, most people don't see it. What do you think R&D should do to fix this perception?

Okay, I talked with Development. In current Standard “Creature Duel”, blue would be the underdog. It’s only chance is a Masters of Wave deck which a) isn’t currently that strong and b) is based on a specific mechanic that is an outlier (aka not normally what blue, or any color really, does).  I think part of the problem is perception. People don’t see blue as the underdog in creatures even when it is. I think part of this is due to the fact that creatures make up the largest number of cards so blue always has a lot of creatures in volume. The fact that they are more reliant on its spells than the other colors is a hard thing to pick up on as the format I made up isn’t actually played. R&D is more focused on the coors actually being balanced than in the perception that the colors are balanced. We’d love to do both but the former is far more important and the latter might be impossible.

My question got buried in the wave of "No" questions yesterday, so I'll ask again: who's your favorite cartoon character? Like, non-superhero one.

The two cartoon characters that I own multiple tee-shirts with is Spongebob Squarepants and Underdog. EDIT: It has been properly pointed out that Underdog is a superhero.