Why can’t we just have a whole taxonomy of creature types, so chicken, penguin, and hawk are all unique types included in the “Bird” batch, and then we have which is itself included in the “reptile” batch together with dinosaur, Chameleon, and snake.

I don’t think we want that much batching.

I'd like to voice my dislike of the paring down of some of the creature types, because I feel like differing viewpoints are good in game design and I've not really seen that many statements voiced in opposition to these changes. My view of it is that it strips out a lot of uniqueness of Magic as a setting. Other settings have humanoid lizards, but they don't have Viashino. Other settings have undersea-dwelling peoples, but they don't have Cephalids. Naga becoming Snake was completely understandable, and I think the justifications for it were valid. I do not think Viashino becoming Lizard or Cephalid becoming Octopus were remotely justified. On top of that, it creates some weird points, where you can see clearly crocodilian humanoids (the Viashino from Alara) now labeled as Lizards, which not only are separate types in Magic, they're not even closely related in real life (crocodiles are more closely related to birds and dinosaurs than lizards). I've seen a number of very loud people advocate for trimming all the "unnecessary" types in Magic out, but their proposals usually end up as "there should be about 20 creature types total." This is not only unsatisfactory from a game design standpoint--as it would make tribal decks a bit *too* easy to accomplish--but absolutely catastrophic from a flavor perspective as well. At that point, why not just have typelines be "TYPE1", "TYPE2", and so forth? Flavor and function have to work together, and sacrificing too much of either is a bad thing. Too little function, and the game becomes unplayable. Too little flavor, and the game becomes cold and sterile. This is not to say that trimming on creature types is a bad thing--I think Magic wouldn't be hurt by trimming on a few more creature types if you asked me--but just that I think the choice of creature types being trimmed is odd, to say the least. Why does a regularly printed creature type with new cards that were printed just earlier this year get the boot, and not something like trilobite, which has all of 5 cards, with a 4 year gap between the printing of the most recent one and the one before that? If this is to help tribal decks, why are there still one-off or two-off creature types being printed, like Varmint and Coyote?

We’re not getting rid of Viashino. They will continue to creatively exist. We will still refer to them in titles and flavor text as Viashino. All we’re doing is consolidating the creature types so that we’re consistent in how we use them. Magic has been treating animal humanoids this way (aka using the animal as the creature type) for two plus decades. All we’re doing is going back and fixing the few that got done before we adopted this policy back in the early days of Magic.

ok Human Human was a hypothetical, let's say Allosaurus Shepherd + infinite mana to make something a Dinosaur an arbitrary amount of times. Do creature types stack?

You can’t be a Dinosaur more than once. You don’t stack the same creature type.

So to continue with Signature racesWhite - AngelsBlue - Wizards/Krakens/FaeriesBlack - DemonsRed - DragonsGreen - Hydras/Elementals/Dinosaurs?

The iconic creatures:White - AngelBlue - SphinxBlack - DemonRed - DragonGreen - Hydra

Has there ever been talk of errata-ing birds to also be dinosaurs?

There has not.

With the experience of Onslaught and Lorwyn, why didn’t Ixalan have “crossover” cards between the different factions? Even without changeling, I was surprised there weren’t a few cards like a Vampire Pirate creature or a Dinosaur that made some Merfolk tokens.

The creative team asked us not to do it. With 20/20 hindsight, the set needed more glue, so I do wish we’d either push back harder or found another solution.

I know you said that is was a conscious choice not to errata old cards to give them the detective subtype, but this feels like a mistake given how many times it has happened for other subtypes, such as phyrexian, warlock, and dinosaur. And given how it is often said to be a mistake to go against player's perception, now that detective is a subtype, it will likely surprise players when cards like Dogged Detective did not recieve the new type.

We introduce new creature types all the time. The vast majority of the time when we do it, we don’t errata old cards. Yes, people remember us making a change more than they remember us not making a change, but that’s just human nature, focusing more on change than continuity.

When you're planning a typal theme for a set, why do you sometimes choose types that are unlikely to see many future cards much less support (Citizens, Detectives) as opposed to more generic ones (Dinosaurs, Faeries)?

It’s a better fit for the set. We do plenty of generic ones.

Hi Mark! I'm invoking birthday trivia to ask if you have any fun facts about Gishath or dinosaurs in general? Thank you so much! I'm having a blast with the new Ixalan set!

Dinosaur actually premiered as a creature type in Ice Age. We then errataed it, only to change it back when Ixalan came out. Happy Birthday!

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.