"I simply wouldn’t have made them. I think Magic would be better off overall if they were never part of the game. Same for the original dual lands. I think the game would be improved if there was more of a cost stretching into extra colors." Just responding to this, as in older formats, there is a very great cost for playing nonbasic lands - Wasteland. The very existence of a card like Wasteland changes games to be more fair and cautious on average, and generally increases diversity in gameplay.

The problem exists, so we’ve designed cards to help address it. That doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be better if the problem never happened in the first place.

Does your fondness for squirrels come from Boston University where they will literally climb up your leg and steal food out of your hand? (Happened to me twice.)

That never happened to me.

I would like to the rite of Birthday Trivia. You've spoken subtly about the Hourglass Pendant of Gerrard Capashen from time to time. Could you tell me what power this mystical artifact would have embodied?

In the original version of the Weatherlight Saga (aka as Michael and I envisioned it - not necessarily what’s true now) It let you eradicate one event from the past to change the world as though it never happened. Gerard knew it was destined to be important, but didn’t know what it actually did. Happy Birthday!

Why were the portal sets excluded from Masters 25? I understand that they weren't successful, but if even homelands got a card, why is Wizards trying to pretend Portal never happened?

I could be wrong, but I thought the Portsl sets were represented in Masters 25.,The only sets I know not represented was the Un-sets.

If the team were to have decided that gum is actually food, would you have included gum in the un-hinged booster packs? Or Vice versa, if the team had decided that gum was going to be in the packs, would it have pushed the team to decide that gum is food?

We looked into having gum in Unglued 2 (that Un-set that never happened) and it turns out the government thinks it’s food and it adds a whole bunch of new regulations that would have greatly complicated making it.

Allied lands almost always get printed before enemy in rare land cycles, and with so many going unfinished, there are waaaaaay more options for allied colors than enemy, even though they are supposedly "equal" now? Will we ever see a cycle that does enemies first, and allies later (somehow this has never happened)?

The problem is when it’s enemy land’s turn, we often print the completion of a cycle players have been clamoring for.

Could there ever be a meld card that involves more than 2 cards meld my together?

I experimented with that back in Unglued 2 and it proved too hard to make work. It just never happened in play.

If I didn't know better, I might think based on the questions you answer that WotC had produced multiple "Jace matters" blocks in a row, where every card in the set was about him. Except that's never happened. Whence comes this anti-Jace obsession, or at least this myth of Jace being everywhere?

The public seems to have a love/hate relationship with Jace. He keeps ranking as the most popular planeswalker while by far producing the most hate mail here.

"I think we are more likely to try a new approach on Asian-inspired setting than return to Kamigawa." This seems kind of a waste. Isn't it better to go back to a place and fix anything deemed as a "mistake" and make it the best it can be rather than sweep it under the rug and pretend it never happened?

Going back and changing things that need to be changed can often be more work than starting fresh.

Why did all the iconic big creatures like Shivan Dragon, Serra Angel, Sengir, and Mahamoti get taken out of 6th edition? Did R&D consider them too good back then?

There was a time that yes, believe it or not, we thought they were too good. In Unglued 2 (the one that never happened not Unhinged) I even made a card called Que Serra Serra that made fun of it. It was exactly a Serra Angel with an upkeep that made you say “This card is too goo to print.”