Some Magic-inspired stories, all about bonding with my son, who is now 7-and-a-half: I don’t remember what I did first to get him interested in Magic, but it was probably playing with my friend Max, who taught me and my now-wife how to play - but I know Duels of the Planeswalkers on Xbox 360 helped get my son into the game with the effects and music but especially archenemy variant and a Nicol Bolas final match.In the years since then, he and I occasionally get to talking about his favorite creature types and characters, and after quite some time, we have slowly narrowed down his choices to 4: Spiders, Zombies with Liliana, Nicol Bolas, and Niv-Mizzet. Not surprisingly, two of Magic’s most common dragons in that list. I don’t know what it is with dragons but I’m glad WotC had realized their appeal so they’re prominently there for my son to enjoy, and with quite a few options so he may get a Nicol Bols dragon deck that’s much different than any dragon deck I have tried to make myselfThanks to War of the Spark, I finally created a Horde Magic deck and he loved hearing about the storyline of Amonkhet and Hour of Devastation leading up to the actual WAR set, as I explained those stories using key cards before we started the game, to establish the setting. Coincidentally, it was my son with his Gideon that ultimately dealt the final blow - no need to sacrifice himself the way it played out in our match! My son will still reference this game and it’s nearly been a year.Also since that time I learned that the classic Planeswalker webcomics had been bundled as graphic novels, so I got those and our nighttime routine for a bit was to read about Garruk’s corruption by Liliana and that build up to Rise of the Eldrazi and Mirrodin Besieged; coincidentally we finished as March of the Machine previews were going on, and my villain-loving son is now waiting for me to build a Phyrexian horde so he can battle Elesh Norn. We look forward to many more years with the game, and especially learning what comes next for some of our favorite still-active villains: Ashiok, Oko, and Tezzeret!

Thanks for sharing.

Hey Mark,I just read your Rabiah Scale article, very interesting read. I do have a remark about your blurb on Ikoria’s creative identity, and I feel like it would be notable to mention the initial perception of how the we thought the monsters of the set would be vs. how they turned out, what I mean by that is we thought there would be a lot of huge creatures like Rise of the Eldrazi, but it turned out it was much more of an emphasis on mutate which while does have fans we do wish there still were more bigger creatures, and I think that affected how people thought of the plane. Do you think that’s relevant to this Rabiah scale grade, and will it affect a future return to Ikoria?

We have the data we have. Understanding factors that led to the data is good to have, but doesn’t inherently change the data.

Amateur set designer here: Thoughts on the design of Raid Bombardment? It hasn't been reprinted in a premier set since Rise of the Eldrazi, despite being reprinted in a bonus sheet. I infer that the play pattern isn't toxic but there might be some other part of the card that is, but I'd prefer to hear it from someone more experienced than I. Is there any element of the design that makes it hard to include, or is it just a case of "there's only so many slots"?

It’s the latter. Reprints really have to serve the set, and that design sits in an odd place for synergy.

“Magic sets stop feeling like Magic sets if you push too many different things at once”3 questions:-What’s the (released) set that feels less like a Magic set?-Was there a set in vision design that made you come up with that quote?-Did you have to reverse course on a set in vision design because of this reason?

Rise of the Eldrazi is probably the best example. The enfranchised drafters adored it because it pushed boundaries so much, but the less enfranchised players and the less frequent drafters strongly disliked it as it was too confusing.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but while Tribal was also deciduous, appearing only in Future Sight, Lorwyn, Morningtide, and Rise of the Eldrazi before being retired (it eventually showed up again on Altar of the Goyf in MH2).

The Tribal card type was deciduous when it first appeared.

Hi Mark, the mention of Lorehold in STX being "disorienting" surprises me a bit. In the arguably pretty dedicated/enfranchised spaces I frequent, people were overall excited about a new approach and the poor reception came from the low power level of the cards, especially how much work was asked for worse payoffs than other colleges/themes. eg. "I wanted it to be good but drafting classic RW aggro works better". Was confusion frequently quoted by the less involved sections of limited players?

Enfranchised frequent drafters usually love when we do something different from the norm. The more casual/average drafters tend to reject formats they find disorienting. The classic example is Rise of the Eldrazi. The hard core drafters adored it, but it got very low marks overall.

Is a set like Rise of the Eldrazi possible to do in the same vain as a Modern Horizons or Remastered style product? It seemed really popular within a subset but generally to much for casual players to relearn. 

It’s more a question of if a supplemental product could make use of that kind of draft structure.

In retrospect, do you think Rise of the Eldrazi or the Battle for Zendikar block was better? BFZ doesn't seem very popular on the internet, but you personally don't seem to be a big fan of RoE.

Battle for Zendikar did better in most metrics. Rise of the Eldrazi is mostly beloved by advanced drafters.

Was there ever a small set planned to follow Rise of the Eldrazi, to be the summer set in the off-year between 10th edition and a hypothetical 11th edition? How about for Avacyn Restored, which would have also hit an off-year if you hadn’t gone to annual core sets?I just find it really interesting that the first two large/small/large blocks were in what would have been years where you wouldn’t have had a core set to publish in the summer, and wonder if they were ever planned as Lorentz/Shadowmoor style 2+2 blocks.

Neither of those was planned to have a following small set.

From the spoilers, BRO feels like Rise of the Eldrazi in that it’s got a lot of very high casting cost creatures and artifacts. Powerstones are there to help things get cast faster. Is this set supposed to be battlecruiser magic 2.0?

It has a battlecruiser component, I guess, but unlike Rise of the Eldrazi, the set isn’t warped to make it the dominant strategy.