Hi Mark! About creature types. You’ve said before R&D is skittish about errataing creature types, but there’s been a lot of doing that anyway lately. Apart from changing the types of animal-people like viashino and cephalid to better synergize with their non-anthropomorphic counterparts, sloth was added to a few cards with Fallout, and now dragons from Kaladesh received the cat type. Efreet was phased out in favor of djinn, but not retroactively like naga - all the efreet cards are still efreet, but there won’t be new ones anymore. And lastly, despite both types entering the game around the same time, sloth gets added, detective doesn’t. Arboreal Grazer went from beast to sloth beast, but Dogged Detective stays merely a human rogue.  I’m fully in favor of the general direction that’s taken with creature types, and I also understand the risk of doing a lot of this in a game with paper cards. But the way it’s currently being handled feels extremely inconsistent, and the categorizer in me feels upset!
So, my question is: could you, or someone who is in charge of this, elaborate on the seemingly complex reasonings as to which creature type gets added, added but not errata’d, replaced, or phased out (perhaps in an article)? You’ve said before it’s not, but it really does seem scattershot, and I want to understand.Thank you!

Here’s the problem. It’s mostly done piecemeal which creates the inconsistency you’re talking about. Let me bring it up with the relevant people.

Good morning MaRo,What is your opinion on recently printed large creatures in Green with flying? For example, Destructor Dragon, Foe-Razer Regent, Herdchaser Dragon, Old Gnawbone, Green Dragon, and Kura, the Boundless Sky.

Green should get flyers infrequently. I prefer when the monogreen ones aren’t too strong.

Does the planar die trigger effects that look for die-rolls? (Like the Goblinsons or even Brazen Dwarf from AFR)

If it just says “die roll”, yes.

Mark, I played my dice rolling deck and activated my Wizard’s Spellbook rolling a 20 and casting two free spells, triggering Faridah for a card, Brazen Dwarf for damage, and Feywild Trickster for a dragon. All on a single roll of the dice! That being said, I would like to request more black boarder dice rolling for my commander deck to really get it rolling.

I’m game to try. : )

Fun rules time! I have a Gemrazer mutated on top of a Gingerbrute. In response to an exile spell, I use Gingerbrute’s ability of “2, T, sacrifice this artifact: You gain 3 life.” My friend argues that it no longer has this ability since it is not a Food. They say that the ability is granted by the subtype “Food”, like how the subtype “Forest” adds the ability “T: Add G.” If Blood Moon removes “Forest”, it removes “T: add G.” Are they right about Food, or can Gemgerbruterazer still sac itself?

The Food subtype doesn’t inherently have the sacrifice for life gain ability. We just lined up every Food to be able to do that. So yes, you can still sacrifice the Gingerbrute for life.

Greetings Mark, I am very passionate about designing magic cards and really enjoy your series Nuts & Bolts and all your articles involving Magic's game design. My question today is on Green creatures, which creature types can be mana dorks? I've noticed over the years most fall into the Human, Shaman, Druid category. But I have seen a few outliers ''Birds of paradise" which is an old card, and Arboreal Grazer which is a beast, but not a mana dork. Could Arboreal Grazer be a dork?

Flavor leans towards certain creature types, but color pie wise, any green creature can do it.

THE RAZE BOAAAR! HIGH FIVE TO EVERYONE!!!

Hands so sore…

Good afternoon, Mark! First off, wanted to say thank you for being so willing to communicate with the community. It's really cool to see someone so much being discussed. I started playing back in September, and one question about the guilds I had is that, is there ever a chance of us seeing Ilharg the Raze Boar as a card, ever? He seems like he'd be a pretty cool RG legendary.

He’s definitely a creature players have been asking for, so I’m sure we’ll make him/her (???) eventually.

Mark, with all the mentions of "Ilharog the Raze-Boar" in Gruul flavor texts, why does the new Domri make Beast tokens instead of Boar tokens? Was he changed to make beasts to give him compatibility with Beast Tribal decks?

My guess is synergy with Beast “matters cards”. Also, less Boar-ing. You can thank The Professor for that joke.

I was looking back at Aaron Forsythe's random Gatherer card comments and I find it interesting that on Crazed Skirge, he mentioned how you pushed Black being number 2 in haste and that many developers thought mechanically green should've been number 2 at haste and it fits with the big creature theme.

The issue is Black needed it in limited and Green needed it in constructed. So we made it secondary in Black and Tertiary in Green but the few cards Green gets it on tend to be constructed worthy cards.