How do you navigate the tension between uniqueness value (this beloved mechanic shows up once every ten years, so its appearance is an exciting event!) versus giving players what they like (cycling and kicker falling in popularity as they become mundane). With something like Mistform Ultimus --> Changelings, the answer is obvious: It ceases to be unique when a set comes along that needs it. With the decision to make landfall (and now convoke) deciduous, it seems a lot less clear. How do you weigh the demand for popular mechanics against them inevitably becoming less popular?

Mechanics have a splash value and a practical value. The splash value starts high and declines with time. The practical value grows as we better understand its uses from a design perspective. We try to milk the splash value as best we can, but once that is mostly used up, we focus on practical value.Long-term, the practical value is more important than the splash value as it’s what we be impactful for the larger portion of the mechanic’s life.

Hello Mark, after the recent MH3 reveals I was looking around and was surprised to learn that Convoke can't cover the colorless only costs on spells like Null Elemental Blast, as it's neither a generic cost nor colored mana by definition. It's admittedly a very niche interaction, but I feel like this is a bit unintuitive. Do you think there would be any value in updating Convoke so you could pay for colorless only mana with colorless creatures?

Assuming we don’t make cards that have both colorless mana costs and convoke, I just don’t think it’s something that will come up, except in hypotheticals. I agree it’s non-intuitive.

For a mechanic you feel is outdated, would you ever consider updating the rules for it? I.e. just adding ward 2 to morphs and manifests? R&D has changed rules for power level reasons in the past (cascade, companion) though always to make it weaker.
If old draft formats would be a problem there could always be a limited only rule to play it as first designed (similar to commander legends granting partner to mono colored legends in draft)

It depends what the change is. We have updated how some mechanics work, like convoke, as an example.

Do you think abilities like affinity or convoke could ever be reworked to also reduce the cost of activated abilities? It seems like abilities with cost reduction written out for them show up in most sets nowadays, and it might be nice to use existing terms and tech.

Mana costs and activation costs work differently enough under the hood of the rules that it’s tricky to use a single term to refer to both. I know it’s been looked at.

That card with convoke and madness from MAT reminded me of Modern Horizons design... but inside of a premier set! What exactly made something like that possible? Ps: madness is love.. please, please, please give us more!

We allowed March of the Machine: The Aftermath to have a bit more splashing of nonevergreen mechanics. We’re still figuring out what the rules for a product like it should be.

If or when; affinity and convoke appearing on the same card?

If. They overlap too much in function.

If there were a convoke spell with the colorless mana symbol in its cost, could a colorless creature convoke that part of the cost?

I don’t believe you can as the rules are currently written.

If/When a version of Improvise/Convoke but for lands?

Isn’t that all spells? : )

Could we ever have a creature that has convoke, evoke, and provoke?

Would it be broke? : )

Hi Mark! Are out of colour tokens a problem in a set with convoke? I notice that Ral's reinforcements and Preening Champion in MOM make tokens that are red and blue, which means that either mono-colour deck can cast convoke spells of the other colour. That's obviously not the end of the world as far as the colour pie is concerned, but was it considered a bug or a feature for limited?

It was considered a feature.