What was the first set you started to inject extra creature types into for bloomburrow?

Either Phyrexia: All Will Be One or March of the Machine. Not a lot of animals fit in Phyrexia though.

About the Phyrexian invasion thing, first, thanks for reading and responding to my novel of an ask. I appreciate that you go out of your way to address this kind of feedback.Second, I recognize that it’s not clear how best to handle things like this when you don’t know how the audience will react, and I respect that you all did what you thought was best with the given information. I sent that ask more to explain how I and (I believe) others feel about how it was handled after the fact, not to try and convince you that it was wrong.I also appreciate the narrative implications of Realmbreaker’s breeching the multiverse, creating the omenpaths, desparking most planeswalkers, and how that has shaped the upcoming arc. Actually I’m really interested in this arc because you’ve been able to do things that were never possible before. I also appreciate that there’s online story content for the vorthoses.In other words, nothing you said is wrong, obviously. I was trying to articulate that there seems to be some kind of disconnect between the expectation that the audience had about how a Phyrexian invasion would play out and what your plans were. There seems to be some missing thing that really sells the idea of “yeah, the invasion was every bit as bad as you thought it would be, and then some.” Maybe it’s because stories like this generally have a “the bad guys won” moment before the good guys win (like Infinity War and Endgame), and March of the Machine seemed to have breezed through both.Also, looking through the comments I see there are plenty of people who don’t want to dwell on the Phyrexians any longer than we have to.

Looking back, I do think we wanted to structure Phyrexia: All Will Be One and March of the Machine differently. I would have started the war in Phyrexia and had the bad guys are dominating moment be the stinger at the end of that set’s story. (Note: this is all my opinion.)

Hey Mark, I asked a couple times now about birthday trivia, now it's been a few days since my birthday. I'm asking to try to invoke birthday trivia again. Do you have any fun facts about Chiss-Goira, Forge Tyrant or Greasefang, Okiba Boss?

Original Mirrodin had two artifacts that referenced Chiss-Goria (Scale of Chiss-Goria and Tooth of Chiss-Goria). It wasn’t until Phyrexia: All Will Be One, twenty years later, that we finally decided to show Chiss-Goira as a creature card. We gave it affinity for artifacts and an artifact-related ability to tie it thematically to those early references.Happy Belated Birthday!

On the blocks vs single sets thing: I think individual sets are way better than blocks in almost every way. The one place that I think it did feel noticeably worse was March of the Machine. The invasion, which was obviously a huge event, felt really rushed because it was only one set. I think a set showing the start of the invasion (where the Phyrexians feel like they were winning) and a second set for the end (where the heroes save the day) it would have flowed better.I know there were a lot of outside factors surrounding MOM specifically (We only get four premier sets a year, it was the 30th anniversary so you wanted to spend a few sets on Dominaria to honor Magic's past, you wanted an actual return to New Phyrexia set before the climax, etc) so I don't think it was possible without some serious restructuring. And Aftermath was working in this space, but it focused on the end, where I think the pause needed to be in the middle (moving the immediate consequences out of the main set did help some though). WAR, our other recent event set, kind of avoided this by dividing the set into three acts. And the written story basically did this already, with ONE flowing immediately into MOM, it just felt off in the set proper.Not really a question, just some food for thought for future capstone event sets!

With 20/20 hindsight, I think we could have had the Phyrexian War start in Phyrexia: All Will Be One, and have the cliffhanger be the Phyrexians were looking like they were going to win.

I understand Phyrexian Mana causes a myriad of issues in a number of formats, but I'm a big fan. Not necessarily of the overly-powerful cards since I don't play competitive, but for the flexibility it provides and some of the interesting design space that seems available. Do you think we'll see a 'fixed' version, like with cascade/discover or infect/poison, that could be more broadly used and not specifically linked to phyrexians

Phyrexia: All Will Be One and March of the Machine did experiment with using Phyrexian mana in different ways, such as having loyalty as an additional cost and using it in activation costs.

Dominaria United, Unfinity, Brothers' War, Phyrexia: All Will Be One, March of the Machine, March of the Machine: Aftermath were the sets you covered in State of Design 2023. Are all six of those sets considered to be Tentpole Sets?

No. They were all randomized booster releases with new design content. Unfinity wasn’t a tentpole release, and March of the Machine: Aftermath was considered an extension of March of the Machine from a product standpoint.

Today’s my birthday! To make it short, I’d love to read some trivia about Phyrexia: All will be One or Streets of New Capenna. Those were my favorite Draft sets of the last year, even though I believe other players don’t feel the same way.

The first playtest of Phyrexia had -1/-1 counters. The second had +1/+1 counters. The third had oil counters.Happy Birthday!

Hi Mark,
Just read through MoM Vision design handoff 1/2, thanks for keeping us in the loop with behind the scenes as always.
Was it thought that it would be thematically dissonant to have a set called March of the Machine where the Machine are already outnumbered cards-wise? This makes me think that between DMU, ONE, MOM and MAT, the full invasion itself should have started earlier, rather than being resolved all within one set.

The Phyrexians weren’t outnumbered in the actual fight. Only a third of the cards were Phyrexian in March of the Machine because we just had a whole Phyrexian set (Phyrexia: All Will Be One) and there was more on the denizens of the planes side that was interesting to show on cards.

Haywire Mite has insect subtype, but no mite subtype. Skrelv, Defector Mite has mite subtype, but no insect subtype. Is there a reason for such a thing? Both mites in the name… but so different subtypes.

Different sets will handle creature types a little differently, as how the words are used can vary. Mite means a very specific thing in Phyrexia: All Will Be One which isn’t an insect.

Was there any thought to putting more poison support in MOM other than just Etali?

No. We were trying to make the Phyrexians in March of the Machine not just be a redo of what we did in Phyrexia: All Will Be One.