since people are sharing Maro dreams, I figured I'd share the dream I had a few weeks back (recorded in a place of honour in my drema journal) where I baked you a delicious apple pie, gave it to you at a convention, and when you bit into it you were horrified to find it full of foil copies of doubling season. you banned me from playing magic forever and i was thrown in the secret WOTC dungeons for my crime.

My dream self didn’t like Doubling Season pie?

When/if: return of galaxy foil treatment?

I hope when. It’s pretty.

Wanted to mention that adding flavor text to the etched foil version of cards in the Assassins Creed set was a nice touch, i always like it when theres more flavor text.

Glad you liked it.

Has there been any discussion to make foil its own rarity and give it a different color set symbol. That would be idiotic. Rarity is how rare the CARD is, not that specific printing of it. And having some cards only available in foil would make the foil treatment completely meaningless.

I think what the person was asking was foil cards happen at a lower occurrence than nonfoil cards. Could the rarity symbol reflect that? The challenge is it would require a bunch of new rarity symbols as foils of different rarities occur at different rates.

Why does Lavinia, Foil to Conspiracy have a gold ‘97 frame instead of a hybrid ‘97 frame like Deathrite Shaman?

Hybrid didn’t exist at the time of the old frame, so there is debate of what old frame are we supposed to use. Lavinia, Foil to Conspiracy takes a old fashioned sensibility choosing a frame that existed at the time that would have been the most likely frame that would have been used if hybrid existed. Remember in ‘97, all multicolor cards had the same gold frame without any pinlines or hints at what the colors of the card were.Deathrite Shaman applies a modern sensibility choosing to make a new frame that mimics what a modern hybrid frame would look like as an old frame. It comes down to what is the purpose of the old style frames, to capture how it would have been done at the time or mimic what we do now, but with an older aesthetic. Different players want different things.

Mark, you slipped a foil Bonny Pall into my pool just like I asked and I went undefeated! This set is awesome! Deliver high fives to the whole team!

Happy to be of service. : )

I've noticed a trend with some sets, namely Doctor Who and Fallout, where the entire set of cards is contained in the Commander Precons and they are released alongside a collector booster for those who like foils.I want to say that, despite me not liking Commander one bit, I really like this model and would be in favor of this model being used for products that reprint cards, like Ultimate Masters and Double Masters.I would unironically buy precons like this if it was designed this way. Give a high five to whoever thought of this, because they did a good job.

Will do.

Any card that is printed foil only in a commander deck can and should be printed plain in collector boosters. Same goes for other alt treatments. Mmkay?

Two issues: 1) Not every product has a collector booster associated with it. 2) When we ask collector booster buyers if they want nonfoil collector cards in the collector boosters, the large majority say they do not.

Hey Mark I've been away from this Tumblr but I'm wondering why a card wasn't made to counter the effects of poison? Like a reprint of solemnity or even a card that would take a few turns to remove all poison in flavor of the story how they used a spark and melira to cleanse the spark of ajani and what they tried with Nissa. I think that was a flavor fail and playpoint fail. My hope is you guys at least print something that fixes this in the future for standard. I had so much fun with the prerelease this past weekend by the way. I love the enchanted tales addition. I had to run green as I pulled a doubling season and a foil defense of the heart lol.

One of the defining qualities of poison in the game is that it can’t be removed. It makes it play very differently than life and makes the mechanic feel more threatening. Note there are cards that can help you prevent getting future poison, just none that take away what you already have (okay except Leeches, but I pretend that card doesn’t exist).

"Masterpieces essentially morphed into booster fun and bonus sheets. Masterpieces just happened too infrequently."

Hi Mark,

You used to frequently champion the mantra of "if everything is special then nothing is special" but it feels like Magic has been moving away from that perspective in recent years. Is that fair to say? If so why?

The scarcity and rarity of the original Masterpieces were a big part of their luster and desirability. It meant that while it was very unlikely to happen, you could encounter a Masterpiece in Kaladesh Draft or just when cracking a pack for fun. Because it very rarely happened, when it did happen, it was extremely special.

Foils used to be scarce, but now because they are guaranteed in Set Boosters and Collector Boosters, are they really special anymore?

You used to say we don't do Full Art Basics all the time because us doing it on occassion generates much more enthusiasm and hype for them. I think this is true and I find players get way less excited when full art lands are previewed because they aren't special anymore.

Cards used to get special promo art on occasion, but now numerous cards have several different art printings so it doesn't feel special anymore. Every rare has a pre-release promo version (which wasn't always the case) is another example.

For years, rares and mythic rares were substantially more scarce than uncommons and commons because the overwhelming majority of cards were printed in draft boosters where the odds of encountering specific rarities were consistent for years but now rarity doesn't mean anything outside of Limited.

Foils used to feel "special" but now there are several different types of foiling so it feels like they none of them are particularly special.

Thoughts?

All of this is a response to us making more decisions based on data. Instead of us guessing what we think the players want, we both ask them and watch their behavior. We then analyze all the data to match player desire.Let me take full-art lands as an example. The data said players want more access to them, but they would feel less special if they were the default, so we’ve incorporated them into booster fun.I’ll note that we keep trying new things, which can result in new data that changes how we do something. It’s an ever-evolving process, much like the game of Magic itself.