Follow up to my recent question about upgrading mechanics: like I said, it's become more of a recent trend to either introduce new mechanics as upgrades of older ones (Disguise, Cascade, Blitz) or even just tweaking old mechanics to make them a bit more intuitive to use (Hideaway, Amass, Phasing).Is this a conscious and active effort on R&D's part? Or is it more a product of the game's long lifespan? I.e. you can only create so many new mechanics before you have to start reinventing the wheel, so to speak.

Design technology keeps improving and the game keeps adapting. Good mechanics can fall out of favor due to changes, so updating them is just good design practice.

Was there a reason why Decend couldn't have been Threshold? It feels like it could've fulfilled the same function as Descend with a similar rules change to what was done with Hideaway.

We want the two different functionalities.

Just saw a question about Morph, which reminded me of Megamorph. What is/was the thought process behind making it its own keyword?Would it ever return? Return with a variation (like with Hideaway X or Amass *Zombies* X)?

It was done because of the structure of the Khans of Tarkir block. With 20/20 hindsight, it needed to be a bit more different from normal Morph. My favorite was the variant where you paid 3 for a face down 2/2 with a +1/+1 counter.

Hey Mark,I'm a week late on my birthday question, but I would love to hear any trivia tidbits on the set that came out when I first started, Lorwyn!

Lorwyn was Aaron Forsythe’s first large set lead design. He tried for most of the design to get a treasure mechanic in the set. It ended up becoming hideaway.Happy Belated Birthday!

How often do you have to future proof an ability? Hideaway recently got a shift to add the number you see, but we have sets as recent as Modern Horizons that didn’t add the number. Seems like a difficult task, making wording flexible enough to shift but not so vague that players don’t understand.

It’s tricky. You don’t want extra words/numbers, but you want to let a mechanic adapt if it can.

Whenever you change something impacting other cards (oracle changes), such as the rules of Hideaway, why don't you release a secret lair with the cards affected, in the case of hideaway the few old hideaway cards to be printed with the new oracle text? I'd appreciate the hideaway lands with the new oracle text.

I’m not sure enough people would want it.

In theory, could the existing cards with Hideaway receive an errata to enter the battlefield tapped so that the Hideaway mechanic itself could receive an errata to not have entering the battlefield tapped baked into the rules of the mechanic?

That’s a lot of work to remove a minor thing from the Hideaway rules. We’d only consider such a thing if Hideaway came back in a big way.

Hi Mark! it's my birthday today, I was wondering if I could get some birthday trivia on my plane, Lorwyn!

The Hideaway mechanic started as a much bigger mechanic known as Treasure which showed up at all rarities including common.Happy Birthday!

Hi Mark! It is my birthday today; I just wanted to say that Lorwyn as a plane helped me a lot when I was a childhood to get through some families issue. Every morning I read the description of the plane and imagined myself living there. Do you have any fun-fact about Lorwyn development to tell? And where is Lorwyn today on the Rabiah Scale? Thank you!

The Hideaway mechanic (on a rare cycle) was original called Treasure and was a much bigger mechanic that stretched all the way down to common. Lorwyn is a 6 on the Rabiah Scale. Happy Birthday!

Hey Maro! My Birthday was the 14th, but I have been on vacation all week and thus haven't been on the internet very much (I just read a bunch of questions from the past week to catch up c:). So can I get some trivia on Lorwyn, my favorite block? Also a trademark 'Maybe :)' on a return to Lorwyn? (My Modern deck is Red-Blue Faeries, in case you're wondering c:)

For a longtime Lorwyn had a Treasure mechanic as a major component, but it ended up getting turn into the rare cycle of Hideaway lands.As for a return to Lorwyn - Maybe. : )Happy Birthday!