Mark, thanks for your commitment and iconic contributions to this fantastic game and community. I drew my first hand in '94 and never looked back. Long time Blogatog lurker, first time questioner.Can you elaborate on the tools and techniques you all use to gather play data and player feedback? Surely digital platforms like Arena tell you a lot about play patterns (at least the play patterns that prevail in the formats those platforms support). Blogatog and other social platforms like Reddit tune you in to enfranchised voices, but I assume you've got an echo chamber effect to balance there...What other play/player data collection methods (especially those that we don't know/hear about much) do you use and which do you think have been the most reliable/useful to you? I've seen and responded to a few of the web-based player surveys over the years, but those seem to appear quarterly(?) at best. I would love to know more about this crucial side of the design process. Thanks!

There are a number of sources for data. Here are the big ones: Play data: We get data on all sanctioned tabletop play and all digital play. Obviously, the digital play data is more in depth, but the tabletop data tends to tell us a lot about what formats/sets are popular. Sales data: We get data on how sets are selling. This can also clue us in to what players want out of a set. Market data: We do a lot of market research. It varies from opt in surveys which skew towards the enfranchised players to deep dives which let us see the more casual end of the spectrum. Market research lets us get more granular with what we can examine.Social media data: There are a lot of tools these days to analyze all sorts of qualities through how the audience talks about the game.Interactive (anecdotal) data: The public talks directly to us, so there is a lot to pick up. This is the least scientific from a data gathering standpoint. Digital data: There is a lot of data from digital beyond just play data. Public data: There are a lot of places where fans accumulate publicly visible data that we can see. Miscellaneous data: There are numerous other sources we can pull data from.

Hey Mark, would you consider boneyard lurker to be a bend or break in that it allows black to get back artifacts or enchantments from your graveyard?

It’s a bend. We let black do that on rare occasion with certain set themes.

Why do you put rules text on some cards that already have keywords, for example Affinity for Artifacts and Emry, Lurker of the Loch.

If a set doesn’t support a keyword (meaning it’s not used in enough volume to choose to use it as a keyword) we just write it out. We don’t want sets filled with lots of one-of keywords that players have to learn.

Hi, Mark! Long-time lurker of your wonderful blog! What would you say is your biggest takeaway so far from asking "How popular is the Gatewatch these days?"

It reinforced a belief I’ve had for a while which is most of the time we should just see one or two members in a set and have them all teaming up be something special. How the Avengers works in the comics where you don’t see the full team often.

Long time lurker here. Mark do you know any cards that were designed after political movements?

I do not.

long time player and blogatog lurker, finally made an account just so i can ask about one of my favorite cards; birds of paradise. i know you dont like green fliers but what is the likelihood that BoP will get another standard printing?

Birds of Paradise is so beloved and has such a place in history that it kind of gets a special exception to “no good green fliers” rule. I would be surprised if Birds of Paradise is never seen again.

The earliest use of Hexproof was on two green cards in P3K and after that, the mechanic wasn't used until Mirrodin. Can you tell us a little more about the history of the mechanic?

The earliest version was Anti-Magic Aura in Legends (1994, Portal Three Kingdoms wasn’t until 1999). Lurker in The Dark (1994) then put the ability on a creature. Autumn Willow in Homelands (1995) was the first creature to be fully untargetable by spells and abilities (then called “effects”). She did have an activation to allow you to target her.