Has there ever been any thought to combining the Ox and Minotaur creature types? Such as simplifying both to simply "Cow?" I'm a huge fan of bovines in all forms and it would be nice if all of the Ox in magic worked alongside their more anthropomorphic cousins the Minotaur. As it is now we're lucky to really get cards of *either* type printed. There's resonance to the name Minotaur, no doubt, but it also has its share of baggage. It has Greek connotations and that's probably a big reason Minotaurs are almost strictly in Theros (although some favorites, such as Neheb, are from other planes). I was happy that Outlaws had more Ox cards, but it also highlights my dissatisfaction: Holy Cow is an *ox* not a cow, despite the name. It feels like a retread of the Hound or Naga debacle all over again. Hound was simplified to Dog and all Snakes, from rattlesnakes to Naga, are simply the type Snake now. This allows snakes and dogs of all walks benefit from a shared unity. Cats had it right, we didn't need Leonin as a separate type.I just feel like there's unnecessary separation being created by dividing Ox and Minotaur and it has the same resonance failings as all dogs being labeled "hounds" had. If it's important for a particular creature to *be* a minotaur then they can just *have* minotaur in their name, like ~30% of minotaurs already do. There's also the simple fact that Minotaur is a longer average creature type, limiting design space for other types to be included. It's hard to justify why a Minotaur is on a random plane, but much less so if it's simply a "Cow Warrior" for example. As for why I think "Cow" should just be the combined type name, I simply think it fits. Cow is a resonant name. Almost everyone, East to west, knows *of* cows if only because their milk is such a widely used commodity. We don't call it "Ox's milk" after all. More than that, it's fun! Cow is *funny* in the same way *squirrel* is funny. It's amusing to see "Squirrels you control" in this game full of fighting. In that vein, "Cows you control" is an amusing line that can help break up the seriousness of a setting. I know this is making a mountain out of a molehill, but magic is a game of different perspectives coming together and creating something new. Cows are my favorite animal and it's simply dissatisfying, to me, that my Holy Cow can't benefit from a Kragma Warcaller. That Angrath, colloquially named "Cow Dad" in the community, would have the creature type "Minotaur." The only downside I can see is that "Cow" *does* specifically refer to females of a bovine species. But that is a distinction few, if any, seriously take into consideration. If one sees a field of cows, they're not saying "I see lots of cows and 3 bulls!" They're going to say "I see cows!"So to bring the thesis back, has there been any discussion internally to simplifying the Minotaur and Ox creature types under a single banner, such as "Cow?" I would also happily settle for "Cattle" as the new type. I just feel the current Ox vs Minotaur divide has to go, for both flavor and mechanical reasons, and the sooner the better.

I have been on Team Cow (as I was on Team Dog) for many years. I even made Cows in Un-sets. I still believe Minotaur should be its own creature type though.

Are there any domestic animals on Bloomburrow, i.e. dogs or cats?

There aren’t any in Bloomburrow.

Since people are requesting batches…I’d like to request PETS: dogs, cats…maybe mice, ferrets? I am sure it would be poplular.

Maybe one day.

Why are cats white? (Both cats and cat-people.) If you ask me... Dogs are obsequious, so they should be white, but cats are defiant and have their own agenda, so cats should be red! You see what I'm saying, right?

Most domesticated animals are in white.

Hi Mark! About creature types. You’ve said before R&D is skittish about errataing creature types, but there’s been a lot of doing that anyway lately. Apart from changing the types of animal-people like viashino and cephalid to better synergize with their non-anthropomorphic counterparts, sloth was added to a few cards with Fallout, and now dragons from Kaladesh received the cat type. Efreet was phased out in favor of djinn, but not retroactively like naga - all the efreet cards are still efreet, but there won’t be new ones anymore. And lastly, despite both types entering the game around the same time, sloth gets added, detective doesn’t. Arboreal Grazer went from beast to sloth beast, but Dogged Detective stays merely a human rogue.  I’m fully in favor of the general direction that’s taken with creature types, and I also understand the risk of doing a lot of this in a game with paper cards. But the way it’s currently being handled feels extremely inconsistent, and the categorizer in me feels upset!
So, my question is: could you, or someone who is in charge of this, elaborate on the seemingly complex reasonings as to which creature type gets added, added but not errata’d, replaced, or phased out (perhaps in an article)? You’ve said before it’s not, but it really does seem scattershot, and I want to understand.Thank you!

Here’s the problem. It’s mostly done piecemeal which creates the inconsistency you’re talking about. Let me bring it up with the relevant people.

Hey Mark, just want to say how incredibly disappointed I am that Wizards is errataing Cephalid to Octopus. As far as I can tell nobody was calling for it, and I think it’s a flavor loss. I never once think ‘octopus’ when I see Cephalids, it feels like a change made just for the sake of change, and with batching its just aggravating

A few years in, we stopped using made up creature names for creature types. Leonin were Cat and Aven were Bird. All we’re doing is applying how Magic has done flavor types for twenty-five years and applying it backwards.

I understand that there are things you can point to that are visible consequences of the Phyrexian invasion like story content and the deaths of Eldraine’s king and queen, but doesn’t it say something that you need to point those out as counter arguments to begin with?The problem with threatening a Phyrexian planar threat is that the damage was implied to be irreversible. Compleation often involved grotesque surgical mutilation, so it doesn’t make sense that compleated characters could return to normal so easily and without any significant scarring. Phyrexian oil is supposed to be so dangerous that a single drop could eventually infect and corrupt an entire plane, so it seems impossible to eradicate. Even ignoring the resilience of the Phyrexians themselves, a large scale military invasion aided by the most powerful beings on each plane should have left those planes in a post-apocalyptic state, yet all of that seems to be off-screen or completely disregarded. We went underground for Ixalan, so we didn’t see the devastation. We went into the wilds for Eldraine, so we didn’t see the courts in shambles. Ravnica seems to be the same as ever, just with more detective hats. And the last set of the year that immediately followed the invasion takes place on a plane nobody even lived on during the invasion, so there were no consequences to show off.I think the real issue isn’t necessarily that there weren’t consequences, but that you guys chose deliberately not to show them on cards, outside of the desparked planeswalkers and a few cards in Aftermath. As it is, it’s difficult to believe that the Phyrexian threat that was built up over decades could be so easily repelled AND completely defeated at the height of their power, but I would argue that the sets directly following the invasion should have all had a blatantly dark, somber, post-apocalyptic theme. Instead, we got a bunch of light hearted costume party sets that seemed chosen specifically to NOT show how much damage was done. I get that you want to have a tone shift after a darker year, but it just feels like instead of getting closure, we all just got whiplash instead. It would have been better to show a struggling multiverse slowly learning to rebuild before diving into the next big arc.

There’s a big difference between did big things happen and do we need to focus on them? For the Vorthoses who read the stories, the Phyrexian War had huge consequences for many worlds. From a game standpoint, it changed how we used a whole card type and allowed us to make sets we couldn’t make before. The impact of the events of March of the Machine on flavor and mechanics was major.The reason we didn’t focus on the outcomes on the cards and have a year of dreary sets is we strongly believed the majority of the players didn’t want that.

If/when have lion, tiger, Leonin, and cat as separate type but release a batch called "feline" that includes all of them.

If. Them all being Cat isn’t causing any problems.

People call lions and tigers “cats”. Hi Maro, how do you consider multiple languages when making this arguments internally? (I am pro a creature type unifer, be it feline or cat)

It’s mostly dictated by English.

"This card's name is Dragon's Approach in the graveyard" - There actually are two cards like this already from the Odyssey block, Diligent Farmhand counts as a Muscle Burst and Pardic Firecat counts as a Flame Burst for the purposes of those effects. I"f [card name] is in a graveyard, [other card]'s effect counts it as an [other card]"

FYI