Hi Mark, are the sets for the upcoming year announced at GenCon? Will you be there?

I will not be at Gen Con. They have announced the events there, although I don’t know them off the top of my head.

Any sneak peek or hints you can offer about your panel at San Diego Comic Con?

I have a topic I’ve never done before, one that will give an interest look behind the scene.

"Absolute faith. The audience is *so* excited for Bloomburrow we didn’t feel a need to focus on it." I must admit that this was not my experience. I was extremely excited to tune into the preview panel to get a sense of the cards I'm next going to open, draft, and play with. The panel's virtual lack of Bloomburrow content dampened my enthusiasm and made it feel like the extremely fast sprint between magic sets is even faster than it currently is. We were getting AC spoilers a week ago.

The preview panel at Chicago Magic Con (which I was on) had the same effect. Yeah, we showed cards from Outlaws of Thunder Junction, the next set, but everyone wanted to talk about Bloomburrow. The unknown thing just pulls attention.

Weird question. I've been collecting the card "Nalathni Dragon" for years now, and I've got several hundred of them. My friend jokingly said I must have a majority by now, and that made me wonder, how many Nalathni Dragons _are_ there? They were meant as a con promo, so presumably they were a fairly limited print. Is that information you have access to and could share, even vaguely?

Remember that there was so much backlash to it being solely a convention promo and it got put into a copy of The Duelist.I have no idea of the print numbers, but The Duelist inclusion raised it a bit.

Hey Mark. Are you able to tell us if we will see more new or old villains in OTJ?

In the preview panel at Magic Con, we said the set had a villains theme and had new and old villains.

Did you wake up early because you're excited to get back to the Magic Con?

I am excited. : )MagicCons are very fun.

Hey Mark! I’m very excited to be going to Magic Con Chicago with a group of friends and looking forward to the panels. I’m sure you’ve said it before, but are there any best practices if we happen to see you around to say hi to be respectful of your time? As an aside, I’d love to have a copy of whatever you would consider to be your favorite red-white card you designed to get signed (whatever favorite card that might be when you read this).

You can just approach me if you see me, provided I’m not in the middle of doing something. I’m always happy to interact with players. My favorite red/white card is either Comet, Stellar Pup or Pietra, Crafter of Clowns, both from Unfinity.

It may be a weird question but Why weren't the iconic creatures of the colors never the main or subtheme of a commander pre con (except dragons maybe angels if counting secret lair)? Shouldn't there be at least one mono colored Iconic creature commander pre con in the mono color they are iconic for? It feels like Hydra, Sphinx and Demons get the short end of the stick.

I don’t think that is necessarily a thing iconic creatures need to do, but is it something you all want?

Hey Mark, if I can ask will there be magic con's in locations like Chicago? Would love to attend one but a lot of the magic cons are too far out for me to travel to.

Magic Con is coming to Chicago in February of 2024.

Do you happen to have any anecdotes about Sheldon Menery you could share?

I first met Sheldon when he and I were both judges on the Pro Tour. My memory of our first meeting is he was assigned to help me in the Feature Match area. He walks up and says, “I’m Sheldon. Tell me what you want me to do.”I last saw Sheldon at Magic Con Philadelphia. R&D (Aaron Forsythe, Dave Humpherys, Mike Turian) was doing a signing and Sheldon came to do a signing at the table next to us. I remember watching how much joy he got from interacting with the public. In between those two events, which were over twenty-five years apart, I interacted many, many times with Sheldon. He was a person of great passion, who cared a great deal about how what he did impacted those around him. Magic lost a giant ally today, and he will be greatly missed.