About hiveminds. I get that naturally occuring hiveminds would be Green/White as it's a naturally occuring social structure, but wouldn't an artificial hivemind such as the borg be Blue/White since the hivemind is unnatural to the species it's being applied to, essentially usurping the natural order in search of perfection?

If the hive mind is technological or psionic in nature, we could consider blue.

Additional pieces and complexity have always been part of the game, in Alpha ,The Hive made tokens; Clockwork Beast, Cyclopean Tomb, Fungusaur, Gaea's Liege, Living Artifact, Rock Hydra and Scavaging Ghoul used counters of some kind. In the same set Aspect of Wolf, Fireball, Gaea's Liege and Personal Incarnation involve fractions with rounding up and down(many players still have some difficulty using these cards) and then just out right comp lexity, Camouflage, Illusionary Mask, Lich,Raging River and Word of Command. Not to mention Banding, Protection, interrupt batches, tapped artifacts turning off, tapped blockers dealing no damage, in addition to individual card interactions. This game has always been complex and drawn on other components outside of just the cards. All to the enrichment of its players. Do you think without the conceit of this complexity as many early board, minature, rpg, card game players would have been drawn to this azmazing game?

I think complexity is more feature than bug, but it’s still a dangerous force to be used carefully.

Could white get access to the hive mind mechanic?

Spell copying is quite afar from white philosophically. We let white copy tokens (flavored as recruiting), but that’s about it.

As long as they're a hive queen, being a sliver isn't a barrier to being sapient; nor, by extension, a planeswalker.

What exactly is the point of having a Sliver Planeswalker? Their whole identity is defined by their connection with the hive mind. So we can show how alone and isolated they feel?

Hi Mark, I've been reading the wording on some old Limited Edition cards for fun and was wondering why the name of the tokens The Hive makes got changed from "Giant Wasp" to "Wasp"? I think it was before your time at Wizards, but I was hoping you could shed some light on this for me.

Because they’re not Giants and we didn’t want Giant tribal affecting them.

Did you know hive mind by Richard Garfield is finally getting an official release? Long live Gimli and Maro telling that story. : )

The Hive Mind of the story was the playtest name for a game called What Were You Thinking that Richard designed which was released by Wizards.

The Sliver Queen was definitely intelligent, since she negotiated with Karn. The rest is the hive probably isn't, since they don't need to be.

The Sliver Queen is definitely proof that at least some of the slivers are sapient.

Drive to work trivia question: How many times have you told the Hive Mind/Gimli story on DTW? : )

I have no idea. Remember that I record a lot of podcasts that never get heard because I think I can do it better. Dies anyone know the actual number?

It's my Birthday and so it means I get to ask for some trivia I believe. What can you tell me about Slivers?

Slivers were created by Magic designer Mike Elliott. Before Mike came to Wizards he had built his own set. On his first design team, Tempest, Mike brought many elements from that design. One of his designs was a mechanic that reflected a powerful creature that had been broken apart into “slivers”. Each one was named after a body part of the original creature. When I put it into the set, Michael Ryan and I were doing the Weatherlight Saga so we changed them to fit the story. We turned them into hive mind creatures which had the ability to change their bodies. If one of them learned how to grow wings, all the hive in range learned as well. The back story was that Volrath found these creatures on another plane and brought some if them to Rath to study. As a fellow shapeshifter, he was fascinated by them. The metallic sliver was created by Volrath to spy on them. The slivers were an instant hit and have returned three different times in Onslaught block, Time Spiral block and the most recent core set. Happy birthday!

When you first started playing magic, was there a card you thought was great and later learned that it sucked? I know that I loved Island Fish Jasconius because it was the second biggest creature my dad owned (second to Colossus of Sardia. My first ever deck was blue and terrible).

When I first started playing I thought The Hive was the bee’s knees (okay, maybe the wasp’s knees). I was so excited to open one because I knew no one would ever trade it to me.