Why is the Shivan Dragon statue named Mitzi?

I don’t know who named her. She’s been called that as long as we’ve had the statue at the offices.

Long overdue feedback on flavor words in the text box: I'm a huge fan on 'show, dont tell' storytelling and world building so having the card literally tell me what its referencing feels hollow. If Shivan Dragon had the word firebreathing on it, it would feel less rewarding for the first time reader than it was for us. Thanks in advance.

We tend to lean into it more in Universes Beyond than Magic IP sets. The reason is there is language we want to reference to make fans of the property happy, and sometimes flavor words are the best place to do them. There are players on both sides of the issue, so it’s a balance.

Birthday ask. I cut my teeth on Revised..so anything related to Icy Manipator or Shivan Dragon would be great!

The “Shivan” of Shivan Dragon came from a reference to Shiva of Hindu mythology.Happy Birthday!

In Urza's Saga, each of the colors had a different main setting, and they spanned multiple planes - Serra's Realm for white, Phyrexia for black, and Dominaria for blue, red, and green (Tolaria, Shiv, and Argoth, respectively). With the addition of omenpaths, could we see something like this again? Would that mean a possibility for planes like Mercadia or Ulgrotha to be featured in a premier set once more?

The omenpaths do open up design opportunities including seeing some planes we haven’t seen for a while.

Tomorrow is my birthday and I was wondering if I could get some birthday trivia about my favorite card: Gaea’s Cradle?

Galea’s Cradle is part of a (loose) five card cycle, but many don’t realize what the black and red ones are. (Phyrexian Tower and Shivan Gorge.)Happy Birthday!

Zombie is used as a race most of the time, right? So why is Shivan Zombie ordered as "Phyrexian Barbarian Zombie" on gatherer?

Zombie is sometimes a race, sometimes a class. It depends what other creature types are on the card.

"Dragons have been a mainstay of Magic since the days of Shivan Dragon, and you can count on Adventures in the Forgotten Realms to show off plenty from their range of colors in Dungeons & Dragons." Please tell me Forgotten Realms is gonna have a decent dragon element to it? I know it's too early for you to really give info on the set, but it would make me very happy to hear that I can expect many scaly friends in the near future.

We showed off Tiamat today and it’s a five color legendary Dragon with a Dragon tribal component. : )

Mark, I was wondering why Wizards moved away from classic Firebreathing being something baked into a creature. Now I see creatures that have a cost of 1R for +2/+0 or something like that, but the old R for +1/+0 seems to have fallen by the wayside. I know Shivan Dragon gets put into Welcome Decks, but that seems like an exception more than anything else.

The 1R: +2/+0 is a stronger version that allows two-color decks to play with the cards.

Is colorless costs something R&D would feel comfortable doing in a small amount and using the Shivan Reef's of the set fill the colorless mana role, or are Wastes a necessity forcing the mechanical investment higher?

Colorless mana in costs requires more support than you might think at first blush. It’s also not particularly interesting design space.

Is Shivan Dragon too strong at uncommon?

It would be problematic in limited.