I wonder if non-mammal animals (such as crab, fish, insect, octopus, or spider) were considered as a draft archetype for Bloomburrow.

Lizards are one of the ten two-color pair animals.

I'd like to voice my dislike of the paring down of some of the creature types, because I feel like differing viewpoints are good in game design and I've not really seen that many statements voiced in opposition to these changes. My view of it is that it strips out a lot of uniqueness of Magic as a setting. Other settings have humanoid lizards, but they don't have Viashino. Other settings have undersea-dwelling peoples, but they don't have Cephalids. Naga becoming Snake was completely understandable, and I think the justifications for it were valid. I do not think Viashino becoming Lizard or Cephalid becoming Octopus were remotely justified. On top of that, it creates some weird points, where you can see clearly crocodilian humanoids (the Viashino from Alara) now labeled as Lizards, which not only are separate types in Magic, they're not even closely related in real life (crocodiles are more closely related to birds and dinosaurs than lizards). I've seen a number of very loud people advocate for trimming all the "unnecessary" types in Magic out, but their proposals usually end up as "there should be about 20 creature types total." This is not only unsatisfactory from a game design standpoint--as it would make tribal decks a bit *too* easy to accomplish--but absolutely catastrophic from a flavor perspective as well. At that point, why not just have typelines be "TYPE1", "TYPE2", and so forth? Flavor and function have to work together, and sacrificing too much of either is a bad thing. Too little function, and the game becomes unplayable. Too little flavor, and the game becomes cold and sterile. This is not to say that trimming on creature types is a bad thing--I think Magic wouldn't be hurt by trimming on a few more creature types if you asked me--but just that I think the choice of creature types being trimmed is odd, to say the least. Why does a regularly printed creature type with new cards that were printed just earlier this year get the boot, and not something like trilobite, which has all of 5 cards, with a 4 year gap between the printing of the most recent one and the one before that? If this is to help tribal decks, why are there still one-off or two-off creature types being printed, like Varmint and Coyote?

We’re not getting rid of Viashino. They will continue to creatively exist. We will still refer to them in titles and flavor text as Viashino. All we’re doing is consolidating the creature types so that we’re consistent in how we use them. Magic has been treating animal humanoids this way (aka using the animal as the creature type) for two plus decades. All we’re doing is going back and fixing the few that got done before we adopted this policy back in the early days of Magic.

Hi Mark, I've seen a lot of suggestions for batching sea monsters. What about the following alternative: batch all cephalopods (octopus, squid, nautilus, kraken, cephalid), leaving out serpents and leviathans?

Less call for that. This post being the only one. : )

I understand why you changed Cephalids, but why don't they get the Human type as well as the Octopus type?
Other "part X, part Y" creatures get both types — Bubble Smuggler is both an Octopus and a Fish. And Cephalids are closer to Humans than Octopi — their bodies are a mix of both, but their minds (and therefore the role they play in stories) are clearly far closer to Humans.

Because Humans are so prevalent, we’d usually don’t put Human on things that are half Human, half something else.

as a long-time player i'd like to voice my support for the cephalid style creature type errata. cephalids are still cephalids flavorfully, but mechanically having them grouped with existing octopodes has upside. having the word octopus on the type line also helps new players understand what the word cephalid means (octopus person), which i think is a boon to their brand. zombies are very popular and encompassing mummies, ghouls, nim, and skaabs is a positive for those varied creative executions.

I agree having Cephalids and normal Octopuses working together will be long term positive for the game.

Hi Mark, Will we see more retroactively established creature type "groups" like we've seen with party and outlaws already? Looking at sea creature types that are commonly grouped, like "Leviathans, Krakens, Octopuses, Merfolk, Serpents". Can you add whale if you do? Thanks.

I assume we’ll do more creature type batching. If we did sea creatures, would people people like Whales added

The "parties" that have appeared in the past and now the "outlaws" are an interesting experiment!
Kiora asked when Kraken, Leviathan, Octopus, and Serpent would become "sea monsters."

Tell her it’s possible in the right set.

Has Design ever considered a batch in lieu of an individual iconic creature?

I.e., what if blue's iconic was "sea monsters" (kraken/leviathan/serpent/octopus)?

It kinda of fights the goal of an iconic creature.

Acorn Rules Question: Is folding token allowed if my opponent is playing with surprise party?

It has to be a Robot Clown token and the folding token is an Octopus.

is there a reason why Nezehal, Primal Tide isn't a leviathan? I mean, it's a giant sea monster. which makes me curious,how do you go about defining Leviathan from Kraken and Kraken from octopus?

It’s a feel thing. There’s definitely some subjectivity.