Coven

Copying Abilities

New 20 Apr 2024 Asked by zombsidian 21 Comments

"Red can temporarily copy things, and green (with certain restrictions) can copy its own creatures."Doesn't White also make copies, with effects like populate or effects like Preston the Vanisher? Also, Black likes to make copies of dead/exiled creatures, usually making them different creature types (ie Sauron, the Necromancer/Kinzu of the Bleak Coven/Activated Sleeper)


White can, in certain circumstances, copy token creatures, and black sometimes uses copy technology in reanimation. Both are very limited though in their use of copying.

Coven Mechanic Feedback

New 16 Apr 2023 Asked by jirachibinsfw 43 Comments

How was the player reaction to Coven? :)


Not great.

Knights and Warlocks

New 18 Aug 2022 Asked by skagerrakgodofdarkness 47 Comments

Might I suggest that knights would be black/red and warlocks black/green? Knights have a stronger presence in red than green and warlocks are heavily featured in green thanks to the Dawnhart coven :))


That would be a possibility.

Coven-Kicker Mechanic Query

New 21 Jul 2022 Asked by mmonkeyfeet 26 Comments

Can you elaborate on the Coven-Kicker and or why it didn't make it to print? I loved the flavor of the Coven cards but mechanically it was disinteresting.


It boils down to it didn’t play well.

Insight into the Dawnhart Coven

New 20 Jul 2022 Asked by valvadis 34 Comments

Hello Mark, yesterday was my birthday, can i ask for some insight into the Dawnhart Coven, the group of WG Warlocks and Druids in the Midnight Hunt?MID was the first set i watched the preview season and the aesthetic of this WG group of humans was something i loved.


Whenever we revisit a world, we like to find new pieces to explore. The Dawnhart Coven felt like a cool space that fit with what we wanted to do with the story. For a while their mechanic was kicker where you tapped three creatures. Happy Belated Birthday!

Shift in Templating Cards Targeting

New 17 Apr 2022 Asked by gocreepingtarpit 26 Comments

What prompted the shift from templating cards to only target one player's permanents in most cases instead of either player? I don't mean examples where it's a power level thing (I.E. brazen borrower would be strictly better if you could target your own permanents.) I'm talking about things like +2/+2 combat trick type spells that will be cast on one side of the board's permanents 99% of the time. Those 1% would be corner cases have come up with coven for me lately and it made me curious.


The popularity of digital play. If there’s a choice, it forces the game to ask which you prefer. When it’s a 99+% percentage choice, we’ve decided it’s not worth the extra click. EDIT: Sorry, there is also the issue of misclicks.

Rationale Behind Card Reprints

New 17 Nov 2021 Asked by kiptograph 184 Comments

This question is a bit late but I just wanna say what's with the bramble armor reprint. It's an obviously awful card and I understand why awful cards are in set but a reprint of an awful card the set after it came out just seems lazy to me. And the card doesn't even feel very necessary flavor wise. Any explanation?


Both Midnight Hunt and Crimson Vow wanted non-spell ways in green to use mana (for Werewolves) and ways to alter power of your creatures (for coven and training). Both Bramble Armor and Snarling Wolf did this very effectively. We could have done slight tweaks in Crimson Vow, but that would would have led to complaints that the cards aren’t different enough, so we chose to just reuse them. (Us being on the same world helped.) R&D has long learned that the game is better when we reuse cards that fit a purpose rather than make a tweaked card to just make a tweaked version.One other thing. Let’s try to not use the word “lazy” on this blog (and I would argue whenever you communicate with creative folk of things you enjoy). It’s fine for you to disagree with choices we’ve made, but please give me and my coworkers the benefit of the doubt that we thought long and hard about those decisions. I guarantee you that we spend way more time and energy on every decisions we make on Magic than most of you would guess we do.

Coven Counters Experience

New 03 Oct 2021 Asked by concerned-about-crows 34 Comments

I got both MID commander decks to just have fun with and I'm blown away with coven counters. I know people didn't expect much from Leinore but gracious I'm having so much fun with her. High fives all around I really love coven in this and the set.


High fives shall be applied.

Thoughts on Green-White Pairing

New 27 Sep 2021 Asked by armeizh 50 Comments

In draft, green-white's often my least favourite pairing. In one word, I find it bland: little interaction, amongst the least unusual/build-around cards, and overall it's mostly creatures... just heaps and heaps of them. Coven does a really good job of making the individual creatures matter, even vanilla ones, and be more than just two additional bodies to attack with. I didn't appreciate it until playing games with it, and it's been nice!


Glad you’re enjoying it.

Appreciation for Coven Mechanic

New 21 Sep 2021 Asked by thewhaterver 54 Comments

Mark, I love Coven! I love the gameplay, I love the flavor, and I love the way it makes you think multiple turns ahead. As a huge fan of drafting green/white, can you deliver some high fives to the design teams top to bottom who made the color pair feel so interesting in Midnight Hunt, but also so true to the GW identity?


Will do!

Mechanic and Type Relation in MID

New 16 Sep 2021 Asked by armeizh 26 Comments

Hi Mark! Creature types are only referenced by a few cards in MID, and it seems like "tribes" are unified around a common mechanical theme instead of caring about the creature type in particular. eg. all creatures with Coven are humans, only vampires have Bloodthurst-like abilities, etc. unlike Kaldheim where giants' stats and payoff were varied and only cared about the type line. From a set design point of view, is MID still considered a tribal set?


I would say tribal is more a component of the set than the main focus. This was also true of original Innistrad.

Mechanics of Crimson Vow

New 14 Sep 2021 Asked by livingaether 42 Comments

Midnight Hunt looks great and I am super excited for Crimson Vow. Will Crimson Vow have the same mechanics as Midnight Hunt?Daybound/nightbound, coven, flashback, disturbed, decayed, etc?


It’s mostly new mechanics.

Sungold Sentinel Protection Query

New 09 Sep 2021 Asked by petruscaex 35 Comments

Hey Mark, I can't help but notice Sungold Sentinel kinda wanted to have "Coven - 1W: Sungold Sentinel gains protection from a color of your choice" but the design team opted for something slightly less powerful. Is Magic moving away from Protection again or this was some kind of test/balancing issue?


We didn’t want the card to have protection.

Midnight Hunt Mechanics Quantity

New 07 Sep 2021 Asked by infrasonic42 58 Comments

With transform, daybound/nightbound, flashback, investigate, coven, decayed, and disturb (7 mechanics total), is Midnight Hunt hitting the upper limit of non-evergreen mechanics for a premiere set?


It is.

Vampire Synergies

New 17 Oct 2017 Asked by codenamejd 24 Comments

In your odds and ends article you point out that you planned for Mardu vampires in commander 2017 to be followed by Orzhov vampires in Ixalan, knowing people would want to mix Ixalan and Innistrad vampires. Did you not think the same for Amonkjet and Innistrad Zombies? With cards like Necromancer's Covenant?


We knew that players would play Amonkhet Zombies with Innistrad ones.

Covenant of Blood Nature

New 24 Feb 2017 Asked by lili-the-last-hope 25 Comments

Is Covenant of Blood a color break, a color bend or neither of them?


Draining players is about as black as effects come. Black’s been doing it since Alpha.


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