Hi Mark! May I please request Davriel Cane in a premier set? He was originally planned for Strixhaven and Innistrad: Midnight Hunt, but has his chances of returning dwindled since then? (Yes, I know he doesn't want to be bothere, but so did Bilbo Baggins).

I can pass the request along.

Hi Mark,To throw my voice into the cacophony, I want to first say that all the authors have done an amazing job of the story lately. Getting Seanan McGuire to head the All Will Be One main shorts was a brilliant call.However, I agree that things have been feeling very rushed, especially in Dominaria United and Phyrexia: All Will Be One. Jumping from action scene to action scene with little setting, character, or plot development in between reduces the emotional stakes of the story.For standalone sets like Innistrad: Midnight Hunt, the five and five main story / side story model works great. For something as profound and important as the largest Phyrexian invasion in Magic's history, an event almost thirty years in the making, it's a little disappointing that the story is being treated as business as usual. I understand that the story team has budget constraints, and historically novels (and ebooks) don't sell well, so I don't know what the solution is. Maybe it's to save a few slots for extra stories when a huge event is in the works. I hope something a bit grander is announced for March of the Machine. Thanks, as always, for listening to the fans.

Thank you for the input. I’ll pass along the concerns.

"when Innistrad: Midnight Hunt took the decayed Zombie creature tokens from Innistrad: Crimson Vow, they traded them the Spirit mechanic." Did Spirit have a tribal mechanic besides Disturb at some point (or on cards we haven't seen yet)? This idea of trading mechanics seems odd if both sets were using Disturb, just in different ways.

The original version of the Spirit mechanic for Midnight Hunt was double-faced creature cards that died into auras that granted a similar ability, sort of a re-done haunt using double-faced card technology. Set design ended up turning that into disturb (meaning there was a cost to pay to “cast” the backside) and then realized they could do two versions and it made sense to do the creature/creature version first.

Are Innistrad: Midnight Hunt and Innistrad: Crimson Vow designed to be drafted together?

There are synergies between them purposefully built in.

Which recent sets are top-down and which are bottom-up?

Innistrad: Midnight Hunt - top downDungeons & Dragons: Adventures in the Forgotten Realm - top downStrixhaven - bottom upKaldheim - top downZendikar Rising - bottom up Ikoria - bottom upTheros Beyond Death - top downThrone of Eldraine - top downWar of the Spark - bottom upRavnica Allegiance - bottom upGuilds of Ravnica - bottom up

My frustration with Innistrad: Midnight Hunt is that it rubber-banded back to its roots after a significant world-changing event occurred. This happened with Zendikar as well, and it feels like retconning.

Zendikar - Adventure Trap world, but Eldrazi released
BFZ - Eldrazi destroy a significant portion of the world
ZNR - World is back to normal and nothing shown of the devastation

Innistrad - Cool gothic horror world
SOI - Eldrazi come to Innistrad but unclear how much devastation occurs, Emrakul decides to sleep in the moon
MID - Back to spooky world and no mention of what recently happened

Somewhere down the line when we return to Ravnica for another set, I would hope that we get to see the people rebuilding the damage from the war of the spark at least in the art if not in the cards themselves.

Those events happen and do impact the world. That’s just not what we’re focusing on. For example, there are giant swaths of wastelands in Zendikar. Us not showing them doesn’t make them go away. I do get the larger note that you would like some acknowledgment on cards that those things did have an impact.

Just to be sure, that little comment that next week you will begin previewing Innistrad: Midnight Hunt isn’t a quirk of this article being released on a different date than intended or vice versa for the Innistrad article right?

Previews start in two weeks. Next week I show off the design handoff document for original Innistrad. I’m getting the teaser changed.