Can you do a set where they have to stop a spreading plague?

The was kind of Scars of Mirrodin block. It wasn’t stopped.

What was the most stressful point in your career?

The design for Scars of Mirrodin was my most stressful point in my career.

I understand that MH3 wants to reference famous cards (and that's great!) but I'm getting a bit tired of the "Old card/character but corrupted" trope (referring to the Eldrazi versions). Maybe it's because we just had DMU, ONE *and* MOM do it just last year, or maybe I've played Magic for too long and I still remember SOM and SOI blocks doing that as well. What's the general opinion on this kind of cards?

They’re very popular.

Hi Mark, Why is poison sticking around? I don't think it's a good idea and after the Phyrexian sets, I would have thought it would have ended. Can't we be done with it like we were after SOM block?

Poison is actually very popular. The poison Commander deck was one of the most popular Commander decks of 2023. Also, while the Phyrexians are associated with poison, they are not the only ones that can have poison. The concept goes well beyond the Phyrexians.

You've talked many times about the original Scars of Mirrodin plan ending with a reveal of "Surprise! This plane is actually Mirrodin!" If/when on a similar "Surprise! This plane is actually _____" reveal in a future set?

I don’t think Magic is set up to do that kind of reveal well.

Will we ever be able to put a -1/-1 counter on a creature in Standard (while you remain with WOTC)?

I think a set with punch out counters could consider using -1/-1 counters in moderation. By the way I’m not the force stopping -1/-1 counters. More the opposite actually. I’m the one who put them in Shadowmoor, Amonkhet, and Scars of Mirrodin blocks.

Hey Maro! I remember when you discussed development of infect that one of your major goals was to make poison feel different than life totals and one of the way to do that was to make sure creatures that killed you with poison didn't kill you with damage first. Your article talks about the corrupted mechanic caring about partial poison and making it so poison doesn't have to be an all-in deck, but I'm curious if it also represents a shift away from treating poison as a dedicated alt-win condition. I'd love to hear more about the big-picture thinking about poison. Maybe a podcast?As a fan who joins you in having loved poison since legends I'm very excited to care about it in new and different ways! This set looks great!

I talk it a bit in this week’s podcast on the design of Phyrexia: All Will Be One. Poison in Scars of Mirrodin block was just too silo-ed.

Is there a specific reason the watermark no longer automatically goes on phyrexian cards like it used to?

That was just for Scars of Mirrodin block to show the spread of Phyrexia over the course of the block.

what is a secret/nda in magic that was hard to keep for you that you can talk about now?

Poison coming back (in Scars of Mirrodin) after so many years (over a decade) was a hard one. I’d tried so many times to get poison back, that to finally do it was a huge thing, but then I had to sit on it for years.

When you say you were setting up this arc since Scars of Mirrodin do you mean beyond the fact that this was the block where current Phyrexians became a thing?

When we introduced the new Phyrexians (as opposed to the original Yawgmoth Phyrexians), we did intend to make use of them again, so we set some story elements into motion.