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.

Happy birthday, Mark! I got into Magic with New Phyrexia's Intro deck, but Dark Ascension was the first new set I was around for. I remember for our first few games my brother thought Llanowar Elves searched the deck for a forest each turn. You can imagine I lost more often than not. Dimir is still my favourite color combo from that. Now I'm lucky enough to play magic with my partner of 9 years (today's our anniversary) and two of my dnd friends, and it's been a constant in my life

: )

Why is the card “llanowar elves” named that? Shouldn’t it be “llanowar elf” science it’s one creature?

Early Magic did a lot of things we later realized we shouldn’t do. Some of it is grandfathered in because the cards are popular.

Given that Chandra has two cards now that add mana (Torch of Defiance and now Hope's Beacon): is red allowed to get more cards like this? Can red get a Llanowar Elves type card, maybe at a higher MV?

Red gets more one shot mana that repeatable. We’ve allowed Chandra to dip her toe in this, but I don’t expect a red Llanowar Elves.

A wall that is a functional reprint of llanowar elves, its possible? when?

All our Walls have defender, so a functional reprint isn’t possible.

In the past you’ve created cards that make tokens with the same name as actual cards (i.e. Llanowar Elves from Llanowar Mentor). Why do Awaken the Woods and Staff of Titania not make Dryad Arbors?

We tend to do that when we’re purposefully playing flavorfully into the nostalgia of the older card.

If Green goes tall rather than wide now, where does that leave Elves?

Green still needs cheaper creatures that enable going tall. Llanowar Elves is a perfect example of this.

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.

Llanowar Elves were relatively recently in Standard, and are generally stronger than (say) Wild Growth. Strong artifacts are now usually coloured. Could a green 1 mana mana rock be possible?

Artifacts are less vulnerable than creatures, so my gut is it’s unlikely.