Hey quick question but is Bloodthirst still a 3 on the storm scale? It just feels odd that it has such a low score despite the last time it was used was back in Magic 2012. I remember really liking it back in the day and I wish it got used more.

Being low on the Storm Scale means there are few obstacles to it getting reused in a premier set, but someone still has to choose to do it.

Why are nearly all lifegain payoffs in white or black, and never green? Isn't green the color of life? Why should the color of death get things like Bloodthirsty Aerialist and not green?

Maybe we’re just saving something cool for green to do in the future.

Was there any point where Riot was considered for Rackdos and Spectacle was considered for Gruel? That combination would have felt reminiscent of their previous mechanics Bloodthirst and Unleash.

The precursor to Spectacle started as a Gruul mechanic. I’ll tell the whole tale in my preview columns.

"You can’t do Mechanic X because X has to be defined. You have to do Mechanic [number]." Well, Fumiko, the Lowblood has an effect that grants Bushido X, Petrified Wood-Kin has Bloodthirst X, and Thromok the Insatiable has Devour X.

My answer was talking about keywords nameable by Unstable’s Modular Monstrosity.

My favorite things about Core Sets 20XX were the returning mechanics and I'm super sad to see that they're not coming back. It was a great way to print cards that were out of theme on the first appearance of a mechanic (like exalted outside of Bant, for example, or bloodthirst outside of Gruul).

The choice to lean towards new players in core sets made us decide we didn’t want extra vocabulary.

In your Storm Scale article, you said bloodthirst has large design space, while unleash only has medium design space, but both designs, you said, can go on any creature. Why the difference?

Bloodthirst is usable on more creatures. Unleash works best on small creatures because the delta of a +1/+1 counter matters more.

Can guild (or clan or shard) mechanics show up again in absence of the guild if it makes sense? Like Evolve (sub in a more appropriate one if you prefer) in mono green or even green/red if the creative made it work?

Bloodthirst is a guild mechanic that already came back as not a guild mechanic. It’s something that will happen more and more.

When the idea of eliminating the core set came up, did anyone bring up that Wizards was losing the only mechanical and flavor neutral product to reintroduce old mechanics? It seems unlikely that mechanics like Bloodthirst, Exalted or Convoke (all of which were faction specific on their first printing) would be brought back to standard in a block set on a particular plane, due to conflicting flavor or mechanics of that block

Each of your examples is something flavor neutral enough that I could easily see it come back in another block. There are more flavor-specific ones, like ninjutsu, but we could choose to rename it and bring it back.

Exhalted, bloodthirst, convoke?

Exalted.

Devour or bloodthirst?

Devour.