What was the thinking behind making the full art basics have different rarities based on the season? There's a pretty big margin between 10% and 40% chance here?

Part of making things collectable is having variance between the versions. Some should be easy to find, while others require more work.

are the seasonal basics of Bloomborrow a reference to Extremely Slow Zombie? :)

I think Mishra’s Factory beat Extremely Slow Zombie by many years. : )

When/If an inverse Reflecting Pool? Ala can only make mana of basics you don't control

If. It supports splashing a little more than I think we want.

Re: Mass nonbasic hate in standard and pioneer pretty please with a cherry on topI have read the threads from my previous questions, and I now understand why most of the extreme nonbasic hate cards, stuff like blood moon, back to basics, or ruination, can feel oppressive against decks with 2 or even 1 color, which is obviously not the goal of such cards. I do want to ask now, as question of curiosity more than a specific request: what kinds of things make hate cards go too far? Whether it be blood moon or rest in peace or engineered plague; at what point does a hate piece cause too much collateral damage (like blood moon), or at what point is the punishment so severe that it can fully lock some decks out of the game (like Rest in Peace). Where is the sweet spot, how do you know you’ve found it, and what kinds of knobs do you turn to help get there? I know that’s way more than one question and might be better suited as an article, but I’d still be fascinated to hear about it.

It’s just yet another reason why play balance is so difficult. Not enough and it’s not effective. Too much and it has impacts you don’t want. Mostly it’s a lot of trial and error in playtesting, and then some finger crossing.

How did wastes avoid the troubles of snow basics? My understanding is that snow basics wouldn’t be nearly as problematic is they were nonbasic and limited to 4 per deck ,, does the issue have something to do with basic land types?

There is not much drawback to replacing your Forests with Snow-Covered Forests. Replacing your Forests (or any basic land) for Wastes is (mostly) a drawback.

"Basic" (for lands) means both that you can have any number in your deck and that you can add them from outside your limited pool. Those abilities should be separated for other card types, and they don't need to be a supertype.

That isn’t what the supertype basic means. It’s just a marker. The tournament rules dictate that specifically Plains, Island, Swamp, Mountain, and Forest have those qualities.

You've covered why Snow basics were a mistake and why you wouldn't do basic deserts for the same reason. Would deserts that are functionally basics (i.e. have one of the five basic land types and enter untapped) but are limited to four of in a deck still suffer from the problems of snow basics? Or is the issue mostly that they can fully replace regular basics?Thank you very much for sharing so much design wisdom and contributing to a game so many people love :)

The four-limitation is the key quality in question here.

Will there ever be "sand covered" basics that act as basic deserts?

Nope. We consider the snow-covered basics a mistake.

You've said that R+D thinks snow basics were a mistake. Is that because your deck can play any number of them? Or is it because they also lend themselves to the entirety of the basic land eco-system of stuff like being fetchable by prismatic vista, safe from wasteland/blood moon effects, etc.?

All of the above.

Regarding snow basics not causing any balance issues - Arcum's Astrolabe had to be banned in both Modern and Legacy, as it made it too easy to have a manabase that could play any color of spell while not being vulnerable to cards like Blood Moon or Wasteland that traditionally punish "greedy" manabases.

I’m aware.