Hey Mark, it’s my birthday! Can I please get a birthday trivia factoid on either Sliver Overlord or Sliver Gravemother!!?

Sliver Queen had been pretty popular. Legions brought back Slivers, so we thought it would be cool to do another five-color legendary Sliver in Scourge. We picked two abilities we thought would be useful. The tutor ability so you could go get the Sliver you needed in the moment, and the steal ability to help in Sliver on Sliver matches.Happy Birthday!

This is kinda a complicated question, but do you think any color has more exclusive effects than others? Like white is really good at exiling things, but for 7 mana colorless can exile anything like scour from existence or 5 mana introduction to annihilation. More so, I was looking at weird counterspells and I don’t think colorless can just full counter a spell for any mana value, all of them have riders.So is blue any more “exclusive” in its effect? Or does any other color have more things that other colors just can’t replicate

There are small number of effects, like counterspells, that we mostly keep out of colorless effects. It’s based on the effect though and isn’t a larger color issue.

Somehow the mtg prerelease t-shirts are ridicilously high quality. I own ones from Scourge and Betrayers and they have been in the washing machine hundreds of times. They still look nice, especially the Betrayers one.

I have a *lot* of them and I agree they are nice.

Is there a reason why the cost of colorless' removal spells is usually 7? (All is dust, scour from existence, spine of ish say, etc.)

That’s the line we drew to not step on colored space.

I was more specifically asking why it is specifically 7. Was it just arbitrarily chosen? Was it picked because the urzatron lands make 7 mana? Something else I don't know about?

It was based on setting the right power level due colorless removal, one that didn’t undercut the weakness of any of the five colors.

Is there a reason why the cost of colorless' removal spells is usually 7? (All is dust, scour from existence, spine of ish say, etc.)

That’s the line we drew to not step on colored space.

Lend us some insight into why Gadrak, the Crown-Scourge is red and not black. It looks sinister, it has a clear drawback that is very counter-intuitive in red, its greedy, and it benefits from death. What about this card speaks red to you personally that perhaps I am overlooking?

The drawback is top-down flavor and red has artifact synergy. The card could have been black mechanically, but nothing about it keeps it from being red. It could have been black/red hybrid if the set wanted to use hybrid mana like that.

You've said a color pie break is when it undermines a weakness in a color. What of Scour from Existence and Universal Solvent, which let any color remove any type of permanent? Or in general, there's a whole lineage of artifacts that let e.g. green deal damage to creatures or give them flying. If the justification is it's less efficient than what other colors have access to, that could also justify Desert Twister? (Which sounds right to me: that weaknesses are relative rather than absolute.)

Most players do not understand power level. The difference between a color doing something, in the color, and not, can’t be differentiated solely by mana cost because the majority of players won’t get where the line is and will just read it as something the color does. Generic cost artifacts can hit the line because it’s not communicating that a specific color can do something, and we can set the mana cost to keep from causing practical issues. For example, destroying any permanent in generic mana always costs at least 7.

Expectations due to the initial name of "Innistrad Werewolves" aside, a lot of disappointment is also due to MTG's werewolf history. Of Innistrad's 5 tribes WWs are the ONLY one absent from other planes, absent from Avacyn Restored, & not getting a commander deck. Their mechanic was abandoned as they became Eldrazi in Eldritch Moon, & day/nightbound is a soft reset, etc... Given all this I was hoping MID would go above and beyond w/WWs. Not just be a normal Innistrad set w/minor theming.

Obviously, we could always do more than we did, but I do want to stress that we did more with Werewolves than we ever have in any set before. • The set has more Werewolves than any other set. Yes, I get it’s only 7 more, but when the previous record was 12, that’s a big jump up. • We did Werewolves as a vertical cycle in a third color. • We did Werewolves as one-of’s in a fourth and fifth color.• We brought back our Werewolf planeswalker• We designed what we think will be the definitive Werewolf Commander, something players have been begging for years.• The set’s main mechanic is a tweak on the “Werewolf mechanic”. • The set’s story revolves around the Werewolves. I think calling Midnight Hunt “a normal Innistrad set w/ minor theming” is unfair characterization of the set. It’s clearly a Werewolf-focused Innistrad set. I get maybe not Werewolf enough for some players, but it’s not like Scourge where we sold it as “a dragon set” and it had four Dragons (and a bunch of Dragon-themed cards) in it.

Hi Mark, BFZ had the common "Scour from Existence", which exiled a permanent for 7 mana. Is it a part of "colourless can do anything the colours could (including multicoloured) at a higher cost", or was it a bend/break for Eldrazi flavour? Universal Solvent from KLD seems to imply the former.

We’ve drawn the line that colorless sources can destroy any permanent for seven mana.

How widespread are the mill erratas going to be? Is it only going to be cards that mill a set number like Thought Scour, or are cards like Trepanation Blade going to receive errata to mill?

It will only be used on cards whose Oracle update matches the mill template.