Hi Mark! Hope your preparations for Independence Day are going swell!One of the things I'm worried about regarding MTG Foundations is that it may have too strong of an effect on the design of future sets (e.g. the strength of 3-mana Green creatures will be restricted due to Llanowar Elves) and that the power level of certain cards might be too large to the point where cards will overstay their welcome (e.g. the reason why 2WW board wipes without downsides have not been printed for a decade). There's also the worry that it might get tiresome to see the same cards for 5 years, as there's only some times you can see Omniscience cheated out that it becomes tiresome.With all these concerns in mind, how pushed is MTG Foundations in terms of power level i.e. is it intended to include staple cards that will define the meta for 5 years or just provide a baseline from which design to work off of?

A lot of time was spent on Foundation. And the knowledge that it was going to be in Standard for a while was well known.

Hi! This is sort of a random question about the reskins we've seen with universes beyond cards vs. functional reprints to change the flavor of an in-universe card to another in-universe card (like llanowar elves vs. fyndhorn elves). I could run Paths of the Dead (from LOTR commander) in a standard deck, since it *is* cavern of souls. I could not, however, run fyndhorn elves in place of llanowar elves in one of the formats where llanowar elves is legal but fyndhorn elves isn't. The tradeoff to this is that in commander, I can run one fyndhorn elves and one llanowar elves, since they're not the same card, but I can't run a Paths of the Dead and a Cavern of Souls from another printing (ex. LCI), since they're the same card. Would it be possible to print in-universe cards as reskins instead of functional reprints to change the flavor? For example, say you're designing a faction set with tri-color factions, and you want to use the triome lands with cycling, but you're not on Ikoria/New Capenna, so the names don't really fit. If you did a functional reprint to change the flavor, then players in eternal formats could double the number of triomes they run. Is reskinning the card an option you have at your disposal for this kind of situation?

Reskinning is an option, but a resource we want to be careful with.

Here is a story.For a while I was the only level 2 judge in central Connecticut and I would at a local store occasional run deck clinics that included how to play for newer players/ less experienced players usually one or two players would show up unless there was a qualifying tournament comming up. I remember having to explain to one person that Llanowar Elves do not tap to fetch Forests out of your deck or Dark Ritual gets three Swamps. They said its how they played at school. So long story short, I got them down on the rules, and helped with deck construction (it was an elf deck so I helped. The next weekend I had 11 people all from the school show up wanting help with their decks. As it turns out cutting a deck from 100 cards and 20 lands to 60 with 23 and giving a deck some focus made his deck unbeatable lol... and this continued for nearly a month. There were like locust abd bought out nearly every card from the stores binders all trying to one up eachother. A few years later I was judging side events at Protour Boston and one of those kids, was playing in the Protour and found me and thanked me it turned out he was really bad a math but when teaching him about his deck I helped him find the fun in it. A couple decades later I meet him again as he is now a doctor in the Emergency room (I was visiting my aunt who worked there). Its amazing how little things, like effort, spending some time, mentoring or even just listening can ripple out to be big things that help many other people. And Magic was a catalyst for it.

Thanks for sharing that story.

"The power level of creatures in Alpha was pretty weak. There is not, for example, a single Alpha creature we could reprint today for power level reasons." Llanowar Elves?

It was a typo. I meant “couldn’t”.

will a llanowar elves type mana dork ever re-enter standard?

It’s a possibility.

Given that we already have Llanowar Elves, Fyndhorn Elves, and Elvish Mystic, would you print a 4th 1-mana 1/1 green creature that taps for G, and if so would that be a good candidate for the "any number in your deck" mechanic?

Unlikely.

Have you done a history of Mana Dorks for DTW, starting with Llanowar Elves and BOP?

I have not. I’ll add it to the short list.

I have been searching to see if you have answered this question, because I am sure you have, but I can not find it. Why are identical cards printed with different names, like Terramorphic Expanse | Evolving Wilds, Mind Control | Persuasion, or Llanowar Elves | Fyndhorn Elves| Elvish Mystic?

If cards aren’t problematic in number, we will sometimes change the flavor to better match the creative of the set it’s in.

If/when: 1a) Wastes being added as a land type? 1b) adding the type to lands such as - Adarkar Wastes, Encroaching Wastes, Llanowar Wastes, and/or Wasteland?

If. I’m skeptical that will happen.

So my last question was intended to be lightly cheeky about the ongoing discussion of different types of evasion, less about wanting more actual Llanowar Elves. I think it is very appreciable that Magic hasn't devolved to the point of having thirty different kinds of evasion, whereby a player could focus all of their card selections into one "theater" of combat and play what essentially becomes a separate game. I think Flying, First Strike, Menace, Protection, and Deathtouch are a great mix that keeps combat interesting without encouraging degenerate play decisions.

We do like finding new forms of evasion, but creating the right mix is a bit more complex than I think a lot of players realize.