Saw in Half is the coolest black creature trick since Rescue from the Underworld, so glad it's Commander legal. Cards that use death in unexpected ways are great. Excited for Unfinity!

I’m excited to show you more cards (although sadly, not until previews).

Why was Rescue from the Underworld one of the first cards you designed for Theros? I love the card and the flavour of Orpheus' journey to the underworld.. but I find it surprising that you chose this particular myth right off the bat.

It was an early card, but far from the first. We designed a lot of top-down Greek mythology cards.

Hey Mark, was there ever a plan for an Orpheus top-down card in Theros Beyond Death? He's one of my favorite mythological figures, and it feels weird for a set so tied to returning from the underworld to not feature one of the original inspirations for that story.

Origibal Theros has Rescue from the Underworld which was an Orpheus reference. It was so beloved, we didn’t try to top it.

Could Black get a blink-like effect where it destroys a creature then immediately returns it to the Battlefield? Or returns it at end of turn?

We did that with Rescue from the Underworld.

Could black/green ever get a flicker/blink-like effect, except it destroys the permanent and returns it from the graveyard?

Rescue from the Underworld did this, but it was a bend we did because it was a flavor home run. If the right design for the right set comes along it’s a possibility, but it’s not our goal to put flickering in more colors.

Me and friends have been brainstorming blue black overlap and it's very little (other than things the colors dont really do anymore). We are in disagreement could you help; would ninjitsu from the graveyard instead of the hand be pure black or a black blue ability? I think its black blue. But others say that rescue from the underworld is effectively the same so it's pure black?

Ninjitsu from the graveyard would be black and not blue.

The column on R&D slang led to me rereading the column on lenticular design which ended with Rescue From the Underworld. I just wanted to say that it went from one of my least favorite cards when I started to my favorite, so props to whoever made it!

The card was made in an Innistrad design meeting where we did top down designs.EDIT: Oops. I meant Theros.

You've posted recently about how you are fine with bending the color pie, but are adamantly against breaking it. Can you explain the difference between bending and breaking here? How do you draw that line?

Bending the color pie is where you let a color do something it normally doesn’t but it’s not deviating too far from what the color can normally do. Red doesn’t normally get Time Walk but we allowed it Final Fortune because it does get things like Relentless Assault and it is a nice red twist to the ability. The key to color bleeding is it still stays true to the general essence of what colors can do pushing in a place that doesn’t cause long term problems. Color breaking is when you let a color do something it’s not supposed to do. You are filling in a color’s weakness or defining it in such a way that it contradicts something key about the color. Every block does color bending because Magic is always changing its focus and we want all the colors to play in the area that the block is about. For instance, Rescue from the Underworld was key to capturing the feel of Theros. It isn’t exactly how black normally functions but the essence of what it was doing was elements black can do and the overall feel was very black. Hornet Sting, in contrast, gave an ability to green (direct damage to creatures) that green is supposed to be poor at. It didn’t add much to the set it came in and was mostly only flavorful unto itself. Even though it was low powered in contrast to other colors, it still ended up getting played in tournament sideboards because it filled in a weakness Green had and kept players from having to go to another color.

What is your favorite card from Theros that you know you designed?

I had a big hand in Rescue from the Underworld which is my favorite Theros card.

What was your favourite card you designed in Theros Block?

My favorite card that I had a hand in the design of is Rescue from the Underworld.