"It varies mechanic to mechanic, but they don’t score any lower as a group against other mechanics. Some, like Monarch, are quite popular."People are criticizing the helper card mechanics because they are very complex, require specific varied tracking and they are virtually impossible to play with unless you constantly refer to helper card (compared to most cards that you can understand by simply reading its oracle text or reminder text).The Monarch doesn't have any of those issues. It's an elegant and masterfully designed mechanic.

The Monarch is very simple and straightforward, so much so that the oracle text from The Monarch token could fit as reminder text on several monarch cards. That can't be said about Day/Night, The Initiative, Venture in the Dungeon, Rad counters or Tempted by the Ring.

I've probably looked at the double sided Tempted by the Ring helper token over 100 times and I can't confidently tell someone exactly how the mechanic works if I don't have the helper token to read from. It's an extremely complex and multifaceted mechanic. I would say more complicated and wordy than 98% of other Magic mechanics. Can you please make more "outside of the game" helper card style mechanics that are easy to comprehend and intuitive?The Monarch and Ascend are examples of mechanics like this. More of that please!

The more complex mechanics that create outside of the game elements are intimidating (i.e. Venture into the Dungeon, Tempted by the Ring, The Initiative, Day/Night) and in my experience, they slow down the game because players can't understand them easily.Lastly, I'm offering this feedback as a major Magic enthusiast and long time veteran player who also plays with experienced players regularly. I can't even begin to imagine how daunting these types of mechanics must feel for novice players!

I talk a lot about how different players enjoy different aspects of the game. What I talk far less about is different players struggle with different aspects. Some can’t handle excessive processing; some have issues with sequencing; some don’t understand the nuances of the rules; some aren’t good with memory. My best guess with you is you internalize (aka work from memory) card abilities most of the time, so cards which exceed your ability to memorize cause you issues.Because players see the game through the lens of their own experience, the feedback they tend to give is “stop doing thing X” because thing X is the element that they personally struggle with. The challenge is there are players that don’t struggle with that element of the game and thus enjoy thing X. For example, my biggest note on this blog about dungeons isn’t they’re too hard to process, but there aren’t enough of them. So, it’s a balance. We need to understand the ways in which people struggle and help accordingly where we can. I agree that we need to be cautious how complex and wordy we are on elements off the card. And we have to be careful how often we use that tool. Now there is a threshold where enough players struggle, that we have to question if a particular aspect is worth it. I don’t think we’re there yet with external game pieces, but I do loudly hear the note that we have to be better with as-fan of the helper cards showing up. The note that we need to auto-include more helper cards in the prerelease kits is also a strong one.So yes, I’m aware that outside game pieces come at a real cost for a certain type of player, and it is something we have to keep in mind when designing them. I personally think we could have simplified Tempted by the Ring a bit, for example, but I do think it was right to include in the product. Thanks for your feedback.

"Rats should hire the guys that represent Squirrels." But Maro, *you* represent Squirrels. Are you offering to do public relations for our rat friends?

We can talk.

“the biggest fans of draft tend to prefer two-player games” this hasn’t stopped WotC from making draft “Commander” products, why would it be relevant here but not there?

The question was where to put “draft affecting” mechanics, so I said in a set that most appeals to drafters. Draft Commander products are offering a draft product to Commander players, so a different audience.

How do you all keep managing to reinvent or recontextualize cards in a way that makes them feel like default effects while still offering something unique? As an example to better explain myself, I find it fascinating how cards like Immolation and Flowstone Infusion are basically "Shock" in Limited but just different enough to still be interesting. Cards like these are some of my favorite ones to look for every set...they manage to feel familiar and offer a shortcut to understanding them on a base level, but also still give me that giddiness of "new" and exciting cards to try.

That’s an important part of Magic design: do what we always do, but just a little bit differently.

Red can give away control of its permanents (Harmless Offering) and can do temporary stealing (Threaten etc). Would temporarily giving away its permanents like a reverse-Threaten be within colour pie for red too? It's probably mostly relevant for multiplayer ("Here, have a blocker") but I'm sure it would be an interesting Johnny/Jenny idea too.

It’s something that could be explored.

“Could donate ever be reprinted in a standard set?” Not too long ago we had harmless offering, which is just color shifted donate

That was my rationale for why it was okay.

I was looking up stuff about Food, Treasure, and Clues, and discovered that Clues were recently divorced from Investigate via Fae Offering from MH2. So it is possible to "Create a Clue token" independently from Investigate.

It is.

Is it reasonable to hope for more of the adorable cards? Harmless Offering, the otters in Ikoria, the dogs. I love the arts that make you go 'aww' <3

There is reason to hope.

"Don’t confuse the focus of one set/block with seeing the whole plane." When talking about returning to a popular plane, does the goal of offering players more of what they liked not reduce the chances of seeing new places, though? THB showed the underworld, but how likely are we to get an Innistrad set showing the lands beyong Nephalia's coast, for example?

Shadows over Innistrad showed off some new places I thought.

Re: Fast infections. Of course there are fast infections. A handful of contrary examples doesn't really change general audience expectations. I'm 100% positive that if you asked most people how poison damage would work in a fantasy game, they would answer that it deals damage slowly over time. Since infect is so polarizing, I'm just offering an alternative that would make it a bit more balanced, while also delivering more on theme and helping control decks end the game more quickly.

There are a lot of fast acting poisons in pop culture. Often someone is poisoned and instantly dies. It happens all the time. In fact, I think we see more instantly die to poison than slowly poisoned to death in pop culture.