Hi Mark,I just saw the mechanics of MH3 article. I wanted to ask if mutate was considered as one. I know it’s a mechanic that requires significant infrastructure and it can get really dense will rules interaction, but I figured that would have been a great place for a Modern Horizons set to expand upon the more weird interactions. If there is a future horizons set, can I request mutate be a big part of it, like how Eldrazi were a big part of MH3?

It is possible a future Modern Horizons set could lean into mutate. It is a mechanic that needs a decent amount of infrastructure, so it’s not something I think we’d just splash.

Hey Mark,I just read your Rabiah Scale article, very interesting read. I do have a remark about your blurb on Ikoria’s creative identity, and I feel like it would be notable to mention the initial perception of how the we thought the monsters of the set would be vs. how they turned out, what I mean by that is we thought there would be a lot of huge creatures like Rise of the Eldrazi, but it turned out it was much more of an emphasis on mutate which while does have fans we do wish there still were more bigger creatures, and I think that affected how people thought of the plane. Do you think that’s relevant to this Rabiah scale grade, and will it affect a future return to Ikoria?

We have the data we have. Understanding factors that led to the data is good to have, but doesn’t inherently change the data.

If/when ”creatures with changeling can mutate as through they where not human”

If. Changelings come with the pluses and the minuses of being every creature type.

I have to say I'd be very surprised if we return to Ikoria and don't get mutate back. For me it was one of the defining features of the set. At the very least, I'd expect a very similar mechanic.

Mutate has both a lot of structural baggage and a huge amount of player confusion that makes its return harder than most mechanics. That’s not to say it can’t come back, but it’s far from a sure thing.

Do you think Ikoria's coming back? What about mutate?

I’m optimistic we’ll see Ikoria again. I’m a little less optimistic mutate will return when we do so.

Hey Mark, in your first article on OTJ you say "We changed the rules last year about how copy effects work with permanent spells. Now, if you copy a permanent spell, you get a token that's a copy."I'd like to point out that this originally happened in ZNR in 2020, though some of the wording changed in CLB in 2022. (The relevant rules are 111.12, 608.3f and 707.10f; 608.3f is the only one that has been reworded)Also, I love this rule. I have an Ivy, Gleeful Spellthief commander deck about mutating over Ivy, copying her and getting more copies of mutate creatures.

Time flies. It seemed like only a year ago.

Was damage/destroy/discard every considered as the criteria for committing a crime?

The ability passed off from vision design was whenever you target, destroy or deal damage to an opponent or their “stuff”. (Discard almost always targets the player.) The reason we went down to just target was the other two got muddy in the rules.For example, let’s say I cast Mutilate (-X/-X to all creatures where X is the number of swamps I have) with a battlefield filled with creatures that have toughness less than X. . Did Mutate destroy the creatures? It did not. It merely lowered their toughness to 0. The game destroyed the creatures as a state based effect. There was enough non-intuitive answers like that, that we removed destroyed and damaged from committing crimes.

Echoing what that other guy said, I have felt a rise in complexity recently. With so many new cards that not only make you read and remember what they do, but what the tokens they make do, then what the tokens that that token makes does, it really adds to the mental load. Some examples would be Ring Tempts You, daybound/nightbound, initiative, Venture into the dungeon, stickers, attractions, and many more.
For instance, had a vindicate, and was debating between killing Frodo, sauron’s bane and Nahar, selfless paladin, I would have to read a total of 6 cards. Each of the original creatures, plus the 3 dungeons and the Ring card. And this problem gets worse the more effects you add on, many of which don’t go away as the game continues. If someone introduces the initiative, I now have to worry about nahar exploring the underdark. This scaling complexity as the game continues now means there’s an insane amount layers of the game, which while fun, is also very daunting, and somewhat of a headache.If nothing else, I’d really like if “reading the card explains the card” was true, not “reading the card, then the three different extra cards that it makes explains the card”I do appreciate your listening, and generally a lot of the new stuff has been cool. However, this push for many “outside the game” mechanics is not great for paper play, and I would prefer less of it.

Here’s the core problem. A huge part of Magic is that we keep making new cards. When we do that, the audience wants new mechanics. (Market research shows again and again that one of the biggest draws to new sets is new mechanics.) We’re thirty years in. We’ve made a *lot* of mechanics, so we have to go to new spaces to make new things. It’s not as if there’s lots of simple, elegant, non-complex design space that we’re actively choosing not to do.What this means is if you want to play constructed formats that don’t rotate, complexity will rise with time. There’s literally no way around this. Every new card we create, every new mechanic we make, every set we put out adds complexity to the system. So if you’re finding the mental load too much, there are ways to play Magic where this isn’t an issue. Limited formats and rotating constructed formats limit complexity. Or you can choose to build your decks such that you focus on less mechanics you have to track.That said, I don’t think there’s a way for me to do my job (aka keep designing new things) that isn’t going to raise complexity. We can look at how many things we add to any one set. Maybe slow down the rise in complexity a little. But can we do so in a way that the audience is getting what they want? I’m not sure.One of the mechanics I get asked most to bring back is mutate, and that’s confusing even without the rest of Magic, so there are many forces pulling in different directions.I do like hearing the specific things that cause you all problems, because it’s possible I can figure out the style of designs that cause people problems. But the idea that we just stop making mechanics that reference things not on the card is a tough one given where Magic design technology is currently at.I do appreciate all the input, and I hope the dialogue helps me better understand what specific things are causing problems.

when/If on Host/Augment in black border? Is it too similar to Mutate?

If. It isn’t too close. Its largest issue is how to do the art in a way a premier set would.

Re: Rise of the eldrazi being ‘too far away from normal Magic’.Is it possible it would have been received much differently if released today? Information is much more accessible than 13 years ago, and both Magic and the way people interact with it has changed.To me, RotE is much more tame and ‘core magic’ than, say, Ikoria, where Boros is a cycling combo-like deck, mutate is running around and companion creates new deck possibilities.This is one example, but in general, I think the game has and is moving away from what was once ‘core magic’.

One of the big issues with Rise of the Eldrazi wasn’t that there were odd things to do, but rather most of the normal things to do, didn’t work. They were traps. We want people to be able to lean into new themes, but we also want players to be able to ignore it and just draft a “normal” deck.