Hi Mark! We know the two most recent Innistrad sets got to share the Disturb mechanic, and since cross-set support is a point from your state of design articles, have any other sets tried doing that? Just a "we have to share a mechanic" directive?

I tried to have flashback in Strixhaven and Midnight Hunt.

Is it possible to reprint a plane-specific mechanic like embalm under a more generic name in another plane, like innistrad? With day/night, disturb, and embalm, we now have 3 out of 4 mechanics that turns human into the major innistrad monsters (with only vampire missing). It'll be interesting to have an innistrad set where the theme is human fighting previous-human.

That’s the theme of every Innistrad set.

I agree that the 3-set block structure often made things feel stale, but I would like to see 2-set block structure be the norm. Seeing mechanics evolve (embalm/eternalize) or just exploring more design space than a single set could (energy/disturb) provides more ability to build around a mechanic we like.

We did try two-set blocks for a couple years, without great success.

Mark, why does the back side of disturb creatures say "[. . .] put into a graveyard from anywhere, [. . .]" instead of simply "[. . .] die, [. . .]" ? Isn't it true that the back side of DFCs only ever exists on the battlefield? So wouldn't it be the case that the only way they would ever go to a graveyard would be by being put there from the battlefield, that is, dying?

Auras don’t die, only creatures die.

Someone at my LGS is claiming that Midnight Hunt and Crimson Vow were originally one set, and that it's "obvious when you look at them". I'm pretty sure that's not the case. Design has just gotten way better at designing synergy between sets, right? I'm a little tired of the lack of faith that magic set design is intentional.

They were never one set. The aura version of disturb was originally designed for Midnight Hunt and decayed was originally designed for Crimson Vow, and they were swapped, but that’s the only connection between the two designs.

One thing I missed about the old block format is seeing mechanics evolve throughout the block. Usually with returning mechanics, it sort of resets to introducing the mechanic to new players with only a few new implementations. So, I like seeing how disturb evolved in this set.

I’d like to see more mechanic evolution.

"when Innistrad: Midnight Hunt took the decayed Zombie creature tokens from Innistrad: Crimson Vow, they traded them the Spirit mechanic." Did Spirit have a tribal mechanic besides Disturb at some point (or on cards we haven't seen yet)? This idea of trading mechanics seems odd if both sets were using Disturb, just in different ways.

The original version of the Spirit mechanic for Midnight Hunt was double-faced creature cards that died into auras that granted a similar ability, sort of a re-done haunt using double-faced card technology. Set design ended up turning that into disturb (meaning there was a cost to pay to “cast” the backside) and then realized they could do two versions and it made sense to do the creature/creature version first.

I'd just like to congratulate the creative team for the creative uses of DFC. You've got werewolves in WUB (typically non-WW colors), you've got Disturb as a fun new way of giving flashback to creatures and you even have other transforming creatures without being werewolves / disturbable spirits. Here, take some high fives.

High fives shall be applied.

Mark, could Disturb work with one of the sides as a non-permanent and the other as a permanent?

It could work mechanically. The flavor would be a bit off.

Just a random question about disturb cards. Since they're transforming, that means their Mana Value is the same as the front side, right? Because that's at least one mechanical thing that would be functionally different if they were MDCs that had a side you could only cast from the graveyard.

Yes, the backside has the same mana value as the front side.