This might be my favorite Magic story ever; ten articles might not be enough space for a proper apocalypse but it's just right for a fun murder mystery. Major kudos to the story team!

Glad you enjoyed it.

Wasn't Zombie Apocalypse basically the resolution of Eldritch Moon's story? Haven't you done it already, just from the zombie master's POV?

Part of a traditional Zombie Apocalypse setting is the apocalypse part. Zombies have destroyed the society and only a small handful of non-Zombies remain.

"Zombie feels like a when," - I think Amonkhet was your Zombie set -> every color had access to zombies via Embalm and Eternalize; with most being White/Green/Blue (and black of course having normal zombies.)

Zombie Apocalypse seems such a staple of pop culture, that I assume one day we’ll do our spin on it.

Amonkhet has had it rough, there were just recovering from War of the Spark and Nicol Bolas, then boom second apocalypse with the phyrexian invasion. Literally just wanna go back there for this reason alone. If/When: Return to Amonkhet?

I hope when.

The reprint of Phyrexian Gargantua reminded me about vertical cycles. Why don't you do them as often any more? e.g. Apocalypse had the "Phyrexian" cycle, the Bloodfires, Penumbras, and Whirlpools. Every set had a few around the early 2000s, but the only ones in the past year (afaik) are the "Urza and Mishra through the ages".

We still do them, but it’s become a space issue as there are a lot more things that need to be addressed in sets today than there was twenty plus years ago.

Zombies are a big part of pop culture and i see two mainstream storylines that explain them: the dead people reanimated, and the people infected by some sort of virus.In mtg, the tribe is very well established both mechanically and flavorwise as the first type. Is there space to explore zombies in the second type? Or is this a fungus niche?

We’ve talked about a zombie apocalypse world, which would probably be the latter.

Just so you know, some people are really looking forward to opening a product produced entirely in old frame. While I understand that there are legibility issues, this actually does generate the sort of nostalgia I think Wizards was looking for that previous products with retro frame treatments has lacked - the actual feeling of opening a pack of Apocalypse or something from that era. I appreciate the opportunity to do that again.

The complaint isn’t that that product exists. The request is that when we make new cards that the ability exists to have them exist in the normal frame in addition to any bonus frame.

Can I ask why the Magic novels were discontinued and the format changed to short stories online? While I am excited and enjoying the Dominaria United storyline, I just recently re-read Invasion, Planeshift, and Apocalypse, and I felt the novel format far more satisfying.

Sadly, the novel fans were a tiny minority.

I'd like ooze-themed cards to be a broader category than characters, or creatures. For instance, the exciting new ooze-themed artifact, Apocalypse Slime. The powerful aura, Slime of Night. The instant that's sure to become a multi-format staple, Dig Through Slime. I'll be expecting these when you release an ooze-themed Un-set. Of course, I don't know how soon that will happen, but surely it's just a matter of slime.

: )

What would you say to someone who doesn't like the direction of the Magic brand? This person argues that Universes Beyond and Un-sets are contaminating or diluting Magic. They'd rather Magic stick to the genre and themes that it does well, and that the creative space within those themes are infinite. If a player wants otherwise, find a different game. They don't just dislike Un-sets, they dislike that Un-sets exist in the scope of Magic as a whole.

Magic, from its very beginning, has always been about pushing boundaries and expanding what it is. Alpha was a hodgepodge of various high fantasy tropes including a variety of sources like Greek mythology, Camelot, Dungeons & Dragons, and Tolkien. Arabian Nights, the very first expansion, was about Arabian/Persian mythology, literally a top-down design of another source material that had nothing to do with traditional Western fantasy. And it’s not as if the early years of Magic didn’t push in all sorts of creative directions. A war story of battling robots, an ice age apocalypse, an African saga, a flying ship traveling to a shadow realm, rebellion in a mercantile city. Even the Un-sets date back to 1998, just five years into the game’s life. If you don’t like the direction of the Magic brand, I would argue you don’t understand what the Magic brand has been since its creation. It was introduced as the game that breaks its own rules, and that’s been true from day one, both mechanically and creatively.True, we continue to push in new and different directions, so we’re always introducing aspects that you might not have seen before, but that’s what we do. It’s what we’ve always done. Magic is not a brand that lives in a tiny sliver of creative space. It’s a brand that’s constantly expanding and growing. It’s a brand about customization, so we provide a wide swath of choices to let each player maximize what they enjoy.