Mark! Is birthday for me! I want to use my valuable birthday right to extend my extreme appreciation for whoever is responsible for Arcbound Condor. Such a wonderful card, definitely my favorite from the set and probably the year even. It fits in multiple decks I have and I'm just so happy it exists. So, for my birthday, cab you make sure the responsible party knows how appreciated they are? And if you want to share some arcbound/modular trivia that would be nice too.

The modular mechanic was inspired by the Chimeras from Visions. Happy Birthday!

What would Magic look like now if Ward was invented back in Visions and ETB creatures were as new as Ward is in our timeline?

It’s hard to imagine “enter the battlefield” effects not being created for 30 years. For example, Tempest did it unaware that Visions had already done it.

Mark, since you're talking about the number of questions answered -- I want to thank you for all your hard work in this area! I recently (july 2021) got back into magic after many years 'out' -- I think the previous set I played was Visions! I played pretty constantly from 1993 to 1997, attended tournaments and so on, but stopped when my card binders got sold in a family garage sale lol (It still stings when I think about the number of alpha and beta cards I had).Jumping back in to paper magic after that huge a gap in both story and the sheer number of mechanics and sets was interesting -- given that I had last played *seven years* before we even got Planeswalkers, and had almost entirely spent my play time on Dominaria! Part of it was like riding a bicycle, while part was a huge challenge -- I wasn't just learning a new game, I was unlearning old terminology or mechanics that were long obsolete. While I was googling some answers to some keywords I came across blogatog. Instant follow. Spending the last 6 months reading your answers to questions has helped a lot in so many ways in making me feel grounded as part of the game community and making up for lost time in understanding the history of changes and how they intersected with the community. Gatherer's rulings sections on various cards is also a godsend -- please pass on high fives there! -- but while that can help me from a mechanical play side, blogatog helped way more in just making me feel able to be involved in the Magic community.Just wanted to let you know it really makes a difference!

Thank you. That’s nice to hear. Welcome back.

Hi mark! I thrift and resell vintage clothes for a living. Yesterday, where I source, I found a 90s Magic t shirt with the full card image of Pillar Tombs of Aku from Visions on the back and it totally made my day :) I got the shirt for $1!

I remember that shirt. : )

I could swear that an article about complexity and rarity from a few years ago explained that anthem/lord effects don't get printed at common, apart from special cases like Slivers. However, in the last two sets we've seen Fortifying Provisions (a common enchantment with "creatures you control get +0/+1") followed by Nylea's Forerunner (a common creature with "other creatures you control have trample"). Has the rule about anthems at common been rethought or am I imagining that it ever existed?

They normally don’t. There are rare exceptions like I said in the article. Nothing has fundamentally changed.

Mark... I wanna take you back. What visions did you have for magiv while creating it. And how is that vision different now?

I didn’t create Magic. Richard Garfield did.

I would like to express my INTENSE LOVE for the psychedelic art on Seeing Visions.

I’ve gotten a lot of positive responses to it.

These days, we are seeing a lot less blue cantrips with a strength level like brainstorm, preordain serum visions, sleight of hand, and so forth printed into standard. Has design determined that these effects are too powerful for limited, or is there a chance we could see cards like these in standard again

I believe play design is wary about them.

Mark, there is an album called Black Sun Zenith by the band Jagged Visions. I hope it’s a magic reference 🤓

Let’s assume it is. : )

"No name is not a name. Things that care about names require a name to function." In silver border where you can care about the number of words in a name, is it not comparable to the CMC of Ancestral Visions = 0? In the case of CMC, none is treated as equivalent to zero which is even, why do names not follow this functionality?

All cards have a CMC, so it’s not an apt comparison.