Can’t block is barely shorter than can’t attack.

Defender was created as a way to disconnect the ability from the Wall creature type. In other words, it was due to other factors.

I was imagining how parkour might be implemented in Magic and thought this might be interesting: "Parkour - This creature cannot be blocked by creatures with defender or vigilance." Do you think there's some benefit to giving vigilance creatures a little conditional drawback?

Punishing an evergreen keyword is allowed. I don’t get the flavor.

Hi Mark, MH3 has one -kind of- defender creature in the set, raising the total defenders across three Modern Horizons sets to a low 3 (one being a reprint to modern -Wall of Blossoms). Is there a design philosophy or play reasoning regarding to the lack of defenders in these sets? Are defender and powerful two words that doesn't mix well?

The set is allowed to have defenders if the team found designs they wanted to use, but yes, having defender tends to less often create a playable Modern card.

If or When: A "classic" set that revisits some of the mechanics that were emphasized in Alpha but mostly ignored since (intense color matters, walls/defender, etc.)

I think we’ll do another “color matters” set one day, and defenders as a theme pops up now and then. I don’t think an Alpha theme would be resonant, nor necessarily lead to a compelling design, so I’m skeptical.

Would it be a severe bend if a blue/green hybrid card had the text "Creatures you control with Defender have Flying?"

It’s not a card I’d expect us to print.

' "Can't block" is pretty short, so we wouldn't save much space. '

It's pretty close with "Can't attack" though, which has defender.

There were defender matters cards which already existed, and we were trying to remove mechanical components from Wall.

Hi Mark, in a recent response to a question about Legendary creatures restrictions, you said not all restrictions are good. To that I would say, just because you don't like the restriction, doesn't mean its bad. Same goes for hybrid mana in commander.

I think a lot of people misunderstand my issue with hybrid in Commander. One of the important roles for a game designer is to make tools to enable the players to enjoy the game. Those tools are given certain functions to guide the players towards the optimal play patterns. That’s what we call “design intent”.Now, we design lots of Magic cards and players do all sorts of things with them, often in ways we hadn’t thought of. That’s great. Magic is a modular game and a lot of the fun of it is finding ways to do novel things.My issue with hybrid is it’s the one thing in the Commander format (and the only thing in any majorly played format) that goes against the design intent. Hybrid was specifically made so that any deck playing that color can play it. A monowhite deck is supposed to be able to run any white hybrid card. You want a card that has to go in both colors? We have that, it’s traditional multicolor cards.The problem with going against design intent is that the cards then don’t work in the way they’re intended which impacts play experience and can cause confusion as game pieces aren’t working consistently across formats. From a game design intent, it’s frustrating.For example, let’s say someone made a new format called Bubble. The way Bubble works is players can only play cards on their own turn. Yes, instants technically work as you can cast them on your turn, but something is lost from their design intent. There would be cards that we designed that wouldn’t get played as we designed them.That’s my issue. I’m the Head Designer of Magic. It’s my job to be the defender of “Can we please not change the design intent of the cards?” That doesn’t mean anything is changing. It’s just me venting. Yes, I don’t like the restriction, but for a very good reason.

I've loved the "The Lost Caverns of Ixalan" both main set and the commander decks, my thanks to everyone. However I found it unusual that both the Egg tokens of "Palani's Hatcher" and the card "Dinosaur Egg" are missing the defender keyword that are commonly seen on eggs. Any particular reasons why defender didn't appear for these Eggs?

We try not to put defender on cards where it isn’t needed.

Hey Mark, could defenders by default have higher power than 0? 0 power defenders make the keyword feel like trinket text, and make it hard to remember when cards like Arboreal Grazer randomly don't have defender.

0-power us an important tool for creatures with defender. Sometimes we want them blocking, but not destroying attackers.

Regarding your point about inclusion: that's all true in terms of things like card elements because there's no real world cost to choosing "wall" over "archer w/ defender". But some choices require real world resources such that "doing X means not doing Y." Arena is the best example: devs have stated that they have limited human resources, so they're always making choices about how to commit them. So advocating for X over Y is important for fans, as sometimes Y might mean losing X.

You are correct. The more resource-intensive a choice is, the more we have to decide which to use.