Hey Maro, I attended the first Hascon event in 2017. Stan Lee was signing autographs, there were MtG arena play testing (before it was released), chaos MtG drafts, Iconic Masters sealed (also before it was released), and FloRida performed, it was awesome. ..what are chances that Hasbro does another Hascon event?

I think chances are currently low. I too really enjoyed HasCon.

"yorgi-north asked: Could we get a set with no spoiler season?" Iconic Masters pretty much was this. At least in terms of the events at HASCON.

A preview event at one location is much easier to pull off.

'Don’t let the word “Modern” in the name throw you. The set was designed for all the different enfranchised fans of Magic including Commander players." So the set was named by the same person who did Iconic masters?

One of the set’s main elements is that the cards go directly to Modern, so the name does hit upon that. I’m just saying the audience for the product is much larger than just Modern players.

Have you considered changing Wizards' internal use of the word 'iconic', if not simply dropping the concept? As Iconic Masters showed, only highly enfranchised players understand Wizards' internal jargon and I doubt enough people pay enough attention to set-to-set patterns to recognise that each colour has a certain creature type regularly appear in the rare slot. That leaves me wondering what use the concept has, and whether it's worth the continued and non-intuitive use of the word 'Iconic'.

Other than the name Iconic Masters (which I believe was a mistake), “iconic” is R&D slang for people that like behind the scenes info. There’s always going to be word confusion on Blogatog as readers unfamiliar with vocabulary misunderstand things, but I’m pretty sure the majority of readers want to hear the behind the scenes info which requires some knowledge of the lingo. As for the concept behind having iconic creatures for each color, that has served us well for twenty-five years, So I don’t see that changing. (Obviously choices for iconics could shift over time as they have in the past.)

What are the odds of seeing Legendary creatures and cards at common or uncommon levels? Like we did in older sets and Kamigawa. I know if it's legendary it is supposedly a "good" card and deserves a higher rarity, but seeing some legends from Iconic Masters and the like being shifted down to uncommon had me thinking about it.

The only reason we did it in Kamigawa was because the set had a Legendary theme.

The printing of legendary creatures at uncommon, such as Jalira in Masters 25 and Rosheen Meanderer in Iconic Masters, is something we haven’t seen since the Champions of Kamigawa set. Is this something we may see more of in the future Masters sets, and is there the potential to see these in a Standard set sometime soon?

I wouldn’t expect legendary uncommons unless they’re thematically tied to the set in some organic way.

Would you ever do a "Planeswalker Masters" set, with a lot of cards that are either planeswalkers or cards that have to do with them? Like how Iconic Masters focused on the iconic creature types (or was supposed to, anyway) and things that interact with them.

There would be a number of things to solve first. Having things matter that only show up on a few mythic rares does not a strong theme make.

Given what you learned from Iconic Masters, does it mean you will scrap the planned "Characteristic Masters"?

: )

Um...Mr. Rosewater, I know the set's being called Iconic Masters ,and I was just wondering, Elves are Green's 'Iconic' Tribe and they are NOT represented in the set , where as Red's 2 Iconic tribes, Goblins and Dragons , are? What's up with that? #ConcernedElfMage

Elves are green’s characteristic race. Hydra are green’s iconic race.

I remember something along the lines of "Iconic masters isn't meant to represent the 25 years of Magic, but we liked the idea so much we're making 25th Anniversary Masters set". Does that mean the set was conceived faster than usually?

No. We’d been planning on a big 25th birthday celebration for a while.