I really love animals and how many different species there are. When you started talking about Bloomburrow's mechanics not being directly typal, I was hoping that there'd be a lot of one-off animals. But almost all of the cards revealed so far are one of the main 10 animals, with the main exceptions being the calamity beasts.Was there ever a point in development where the focus was more on showcasing a lot of different animal species rather than selecting a smaller number that act as draft archetype groups?

I talked about this in my first Bloomburrow preview column. Here’s a snippet:“Once it was on the schedule, I did a little advance work on the genre to familiarize myself with it. I realized that there were two ways it’s traditionally done.Take #1 – Animals represent groups of people. These people are mice, those people are badgers, and these people are otters. Each animal type has qualities that are consistent among that group, usually things that feel resonant with the real-world animal. In this version, the setting is usually a biome, and all the animals in it are ones who would live in that biome. The animals are roughly proportional to what they would be in the real world.Take #2 – Animals represent individual people. This person’s jumpy, so she’s a frog. That person’s sneaky, so he’s a fox. This other person rushes into things, so they’re a rhino. Each animal is used to represent personality qualities. In this version, the setting is usually something more human in structure, often a city, and the variety of animals is much larger. The animal selection here is not limited by biome, so you can have animals living together that normally would never see each other in the real world. The animals are loosely related in size (a racoon is smaller than an elephant), but the scope of scale is compressed.Take number one is easier for worldbuilding. There are less unique types of animals, and they’re organized by creature type. Because animals are used to express groups of people, they tend to act more similarly to traditional species creature types, like Elves, Goblins, or Merfolk. This pushes us more toward a factioned typal theme.Take number two is easier for design because the designers have access to a lot more animals and can make more individually cool designs. The twelfth Mouse card, for instance, is a lot harder to make different than the first Giraffe. This approach pushes us more toward mechanics that tie into a larger animal theme. It’s more likely we’d create an environment that was about a lot of different animals working together, putting the focus more on individual top-down card design.Aaron was more interested in doing take number one, while I was more interested in doing take number two. So, we did a bunch of market research. It came back exactly even. Half the people we polled preferred take one, and half preferred take two. In a tie, Aaron’s original vision won out, so we did take one. (Also, I believe more people internally wanted to do take one.) I do want to stress that both takes would have allowed us to make a cool set. They just head down different paths and would have ended up in very different places, mechanically and creatively.”

Hey Mark, on the topic of players being worried about creature types losing their distinctiveness by being added in with the broader type rather than a specific race (ex. Viashino(Lizard) or Naga(Snake)), I looked to see how many are already currently templated this way and there are ALOT more than I realized.Archaic (Avatar), Aven (Bird), Leonin (Cat), Malamet (Cat), Nishoba (Cat Beast), Daemogoth (Demon), Ainok (Dog), Flamekin (Elemental), Loxodon (Elephant), Mycoid (Fungus), Thallid (Fungus), Akki (Goblin), Boggart (Goblin), Mogg (Goblin), Redcaps (Goblin), Eumidian (Insect), Kraul (Insect), Nantuko (Insect), Khenra (Jackal), Kitsune (Fox), Merrow (Merfolk), Selkie (Merfolk), Triton (Merfolk), Onakke (Ogre), Caryatid (Plant), Nezume (Rat), Rhox (Rhino), Amphin (Salamander), Orochi (Snake), Kami (Spirit), Drogskol (Spirit), Eidolon (Spirit), Ent (LoTR) (Treefolk), Trow (Troll), Kappa (Turtle), Liche (Zombie), Eternal (Zombie), Draugr (Zombie), Nim (Zombie), Skaab (Zombie)

Yep. Most of the ones that didn’t do it entered the game before we made this the default.

Pedantic terminology question: Could you say that individual planes have their own characteristic creature types? e.g. that fox, moonfolk, rat, goblin, and snake are the characteristic creature types on Kamigawa, or that Kor is the white characteristic creature type on Zendikar?

You could say that.

Howdy Mark! I almost forgot about my Birthday Trivia Question for today: Do you have any trivia on Name Stickers from Unfinity?And here's some Trivia for you: Did you know that there are currently 40 foxes in Magic? Most come from Kamigawa, meaning that most foxes are White. Theros gave us 1 Green fox in Vulpine Goliath. Mu Yanling's deck (from the Global Series decks) gave us the 1 Blue fox in Nine-Tail White Fox. Red gets 1 and a half foxes, with Zirda, the Dawnwaker from Ikoria being Boros Hybrid, and Mila, Crafty Companion (White) from Strixhaven having the Red Lukka on her other side. Kaladesh, Ikoria, and Baldur's Gate each gave us a Colorless fox each. The first fox in Magic was Arctic Foxes from Ice Age, and the most recent was Clockwork Fox from Baldur's Gate.

I made a spreadsheet to monitor all the qualities I had to care about in names. I then chose the best words to shine for each quality. Happy Birthday!

Why are Canine creators separated into different creator types: Dog, Wolf, Fox, etc. Where as any feline get the cat creator type?

Blame language. We call lions cats but not wolves dogs.

Why does the game have Dog, Wolf, Jackal, and Fox as creature types, but all the felines (Except Hyenas, for some reason) are typed as Cat? Dog tribal really suffers for this. If lions, tigers, and felidar (Oh my!) can all be under the same type as house cats, then wolves, jackals, and foxes should be just fine grouped in with dogs as well.

Blame English. All jungle cats are called “cats” while all the things you list aren’t called “dogs”.

Could Dog be a added as a type to Wolf and Fox cards? My wife's Rin and Seri deck would appreciate the synergies :)

It’s interesting how I seldom got this request until we made a Dog tribal card. : )

Could traditional French fables such as Reynard the Fox (le Roman de Renart) or the Turtle and the Hare be a good fit for a return to Eldraine? Would they need to/could they be adapted (humanized?) to reflect the current minset of vision design about non-human centrix sets? High tens for the whole plane of Eldraine : for the first time since the Planar Chaos days, I actually want to get boosters out of love for all of the card designs, arts and flavor!

We purposely avoided fables and talking animals.

I have a very important questions about the card Wildborn Preserver, and Eldraine in general. Are the elves on Eldraine tiny or is that a very large fox?

I believe it’s a large fox.

Pop culture reference. The text "G: Target creature gets +3/+3 until end of turn targeting Devilthorn Fox" showed up on XKCD's April Fools emoji battle thingy in🦊 vs 🧙.

Thanks for letting me know.