Hi mark! Do you think wizards would ever make a product with some cards that are not spoiled until players find them? I think magic is better when we know all the cards but it would be very exciting to discover cards too. What do you think ?

It’s very hard to do. We just live in the age of information, meaning it’s difficult to keep everyone from knowing something once anyone knows. And as leaks demonstrate, it can be hard even when we’re trying to keep something secret.

Hi Mark. I just finished listening to the alphabet podcast. I teach math and run an after school Magic club. I love using X spells to demonstrate the use of variables. I would love a new XY spell to show a “real world” reason why we might need two different variables to model a problem.

Every time we’ve tried XY cards, it has caused endless confusion. They do exist though if you want to pick one up to demonstrate having two variables.

Birthday ritual trivia question: Zhalfir and Kaervek returning have brought up some mirage nostalgia, and my favorite lost creature type: Nightstalkers. Are they high enough on the beeble scale that we could actually see them again?

I’d say not super high. Let me demonstrate:

Have you ever played with a Nightstalker?YesNoSee Results

Hi, I just wanted to say, as someone who’s always loved silver border, and was super excited for Unfinity, and even suggested on this blog that un-sets should be a mix of silver and black border, I’m currently very unenthused about unifinity. I’d like to explain why:While I personally think an un-set being a mix of black and silver border is great, putting the distinction as a small holo stamp, rather than the clearer borders has resulted in a continuous series of misconceptions. Each preview for unfinity has shown the same card with both the acorn and the regular stamp. The first preview had a silver border reprint with the regular stamp. Magar had both. To make it worse, some cards, like Far Out, have an acorn stamp yet feel like they should work in black border while stickers is apparently going to be eternal-playable. The errors and the lack of clarity of what effects can/can’t be acorn, means people are unable to trust the previews they’re seeing as being accurate. This results in the discussion only being about the eternal legality of cards instead of what’s fun and how things play.The reason for my lack of enthusiasm is not due to anything in the set, rather, the marketing, whoever was in charge of these previews, has so mismanaged the set that instead of exciting me - a silver border player - I am significantly less excited than I was. I have to actively remind myself that you’re excited for a reason and take it on faith in you and the rest of the design team, while the previews continue to put me off.I hope as the set gets closer to release, this will change, because I want to support un-sets. But the marketing has really lost me. I am genuinely surprised at how much it has affected my anticipation. So surprised I felt compelled to tell you in the hopes you can pass this on to the right people so they learn from their mistakes.Thank you.

There have only been two mistakes, and it’s the same mistake (showing the wrong security symbol). When we make files, we make a version we use to show online (we call them HRR’s, but I have no idea what that stands for). Unfinity is the first set where the security stamp is a field that needs to be proofed on the HRR, and the system just wasn’t set up to do that proofing, because it dwasn’t a thing we had to worry about. We’ve now changed our process, so it is. Again, Magar of the Magic Strings is eternal and Water Gun Balloon Game is acorn. Everything else was what it said it was.Things like Far Out just demonstrate how fuzzy the line is between acorn and eternal. It often relies on minute details that the average player isn’t aware of, but that doesn’t mean on our end there isn’t clarity. I do believe when you get to see the full set, you’ll be excited. I just had to proof collation, which meant I opened up actual boost packs and it just reminded me how excited I am for the set. Un-sets just let us do things we normally can’t and the design team really had fun tapping into cool spaces.

Hello Mark! Hope you are doing well today! Given the resounding success of the new Kamigawa set, does this change any of the conventional wisdom about returning to old worlds? I would really like to see a return to Lorwyn at this point but without the drastic redesign NEO gave to Kamigawa. I think when a set doesn't do well there's a lot of extraneous factors, the economy, power level, sets around it(kamigawa paid for the sins of Mirrodin). There's a lot going on and I don't think it's fair to punish the world setting for design mistakes or execution like was done to Kamigawa. Lorwyn is the same way. The player base is also very different now, so for people like me, it would be our first time there and we'd like to experience the flavor and visuals of that setting first hand. Not after the fact many years later. Planes themselves should be allowed second chances. Look at how well that went for Kamigawa, and I'd argue you didn't need to do the cyberpunk redress, but I don't think hurt either.

Neon’s Dynasty’s success (the data’s not officially in yet, but all signs are good) will make pitching old worlds that had a bad first outing a little easier, but it still needs a strong pitch to get a green light. Neon Dynasty didn’t succeed because it was a troublesome world/block, it succeeded despite it. We had a cool new take on it, mechanically and creatively. It’s like twisting your ankle and then winning a marathon. The twisting of your ankle was a factor you had to overcome, not a factor that resulting in you winning.That said, the big takeaway is the value of nostalgia and how we can use it to craft new sets. Neon Dynasty and Brothers’ War demonstrate we understand its potency, and successes like Neon Dynasty means we’ll be bolder in finding other ways to harness it.

Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems like people are complaining a lot more about stuff in these innistrad sets than usual. Plenty of sets have cards that do a keyworded action without saying the keyword, but consider seems to have gotten way more attention than others. Plenty of mechanics over the years are just kicker, but cleave seems to be getting attention for that more so than things like demonstrate or the mastery cycle. Why do you think this is?

I just think it’s been a long twenty months.

MDFC is the perfect mechanic to demonstrate the conflict in each school. Very cool interaction between flavor and mechanic! As always it looks like you hit it out of the park again!

Thank you for the kind words. I am very proud of this set.

I'm sure a million people and their grandparents have asked, and I'm sorry for joining the fray if that is the case, but how does one become a card designer for MTG?

Here’s the short answer:- Get us to notice you. The two easiest ways to do this is by doing well at high level tournaments or by writing articles that demonstrate that you get how Magic works as a game.- Get an internship in R&D (you need to be in college)- Do well in a Great Designer Search- Do good game design for another game and get us to notice you that way Those are the most likely ways.

After hearing your thoughts on hybrid in EDH, I'm curious how you feel about how you feel about how hybrid works with devotion. The symbols themselves count as both colors there, whether the card itself is still those colors or not. It's the same exact issue as with EDH. So why is devotion okay if EDH isn't? Or if devotion isn't okay, why did you design devotion that way?

Let’s assume you have Athreos on the battlefield. He cares about your devotion to white and black. So what happens if you have a hybrid white/black symbol on a card on the battlefield? If hybrid were “and” like it’s treated in Commander, you could count it once for white and once for black. But you can’t because hybrid is an “or” , so you get to count it either as a white symbol or as a black symbol, but you don’t get to count it as both, meaning each hybrid symbol only gets counted once.Thank you. This was a very good example to demonstrate the difference between treating hybrid as “and” or “or”.

Was the existence of extended art cards in Eldraine dependent on the successful printing of the contraptions in Unstable?

It helped demonstrate we could print it and players liked it.