You could make an eternal Giant Fan variant that removes a counter from one thing and adds a counter to another *of a type that's already on it*, right? That's just Proliferate-adjacent technology which we've had for years. The issue only arises when you make the card able to care about arbitrary counters the card *might* be able to have?

Yes, you can create another of a counter already on a card. Understanding potential is much more difficult.

Someone suggested something like this earlier, but I think WotC having an Improv troupe called "You Make The Card" that puts on shows at Gencon would be fun.

: )

If there was some magical way in which you people could receive card ideas from the general public without any future legal issues, would you be interested? Would you be overwhelmed? Or would you rather simply not receive any new cards from the outside even in that scenario?

We have done “You Make the Card”, so I have had the choice to see designs from the players. The biggest problem is a minuscule percentage of it is usable (meaning it’s something we’d make that we haven’t already thought of).

While You Make The Card being difficult makes perfect sense, I am very curious *how* it's difficult.

There’s many ways (most of which are logistic), but I’ll focus on the biggest design one. Cards are designed to work in synergy with the rest of the cards, themes, and mechanics of the set. Making what’s essentially a random card fit organically is a huge ask.

Have you ever thought of letting the blogatog readers "design" a card? Like through a series of polls? First poll could be card type, second poll colors, etc? You would control the polls, and thus limit what the mob develops to something sane

We’ve done that exact thing, although through the main site, not my blog. It was called “You Make the Card”. We’ve done it four times. It’s much harder to do than one would assume, which is why we haven’t done it in a while.

Hey Mark! How likely is that wotc designs a set with themes/archetypes voted by the community?

We’ve done an event called “You Make the Card” where we let players vote on all the decisions of making a single card. The complexity of doing that makes me weary of doing something larger.

do you ever solicit designs?

We have done events like “The Great Designer Search” and “You Make the Card” where we have solicited design.

When or If: You Make the Card 5

If. They are a crazy amount of work on our end and the playerbase, as a whole, hasn’t been as excited about them as we’d hoped.

What's the challenge with you make the card that makes the clearly vary challenging Great Designer Searcher more likely?

I was asked which is more likely. The Great Designer Search has resulted in over ten designers being hired. You Make the Card has resulted in a handful of cards being made. The former is a bigger gain from a resource standpoint, so I thought it was more likely.

You’ve talked about the difficulty of making You Make the Card happen; does the demise of core sets add to this?

It doesn’t help.