Happy birthday, Mark. My story just happened a few weeks ago. I convinced some friends to play PleasantKenobi’s party-in-a-box. I’ve put the power9 in as proxies. So, we start and player 3 casts pearl mox on his first turn. No land drop yet. Player 1 says: I’ve got a response. P3: oh? P1: yeah. Mana tithe. Do you pay 1? Now, the disbelief on his face was hilarious. He looks at his board to tap his land, only to realize he hadn’t dropped his land yet. The rest of us start laughing. He starts negotiating. P3: come on, i’ve never played a mox before. Please, don’t. P1 just deadpanned : do you pay the one? Nothing but laughter and heckling the next 10 minutes before we let P3 proceed to his land drop and finish his turn. But he did win the game in the end.

: )

If red and green are meant to be the best at making treasure tokens, does that make smothering tithe a bend or break?

It’s a break.

Hey Mark,

Fairly recently, on one of your podcasts you were talking about when designing new sets how important it is to generate hype and excitement among the audience with new mechanics/cards/ideas. To me, it feels like in many of the recent sets with bonus sheets, reprints of 10+ year old cards that many enfranchised players have already played with or against are the aspects of the sets that are causing the most enthusiasm. Similarly, these cards often strongly influence Limited games to the point where games are won or lost because of old cards rather than new designs.To me it feels kind of underwhelming that the most powerful cards I can encounter in a draft or collector booster for a brand new Premier set aren't new cards but instead old staples (i.e. think Smothering Tithe and Rhystic Study in Wilds of Eldraine).

Reprints are important and players enjoy them, especially veteran players, but I do feel they take away the spotlight and attention when it comes to new premier sets.

Magic has tons of ways to reprint highly sought after cards (i.e. Secret Lairs, "The List", Reprint exclusive Masters sets, Commander pre-constructed decks) so why has there been an increased proliferation of lots of highly sought after reprints in new premier sets?

It has proven to be the means players enjoy the most. You get the reprints in the sets you’re already purchasing instead of having to buy other products specifically for the reprints.

is there a particular reason you chose to put things like Smothering Tithe and Doubling Season into a Masters set (especially at mythic just days before showing that they would be in a different set? I noticed that with Concordaant Crossroads as well, a major reprint right after a Secret Lair. It feels like there would have been lots of other cards for one slot or the other. A card gets reprinted for the first time in a long time, then another immediately after. Any special reason for the trend?

A lot of balls are getting juggled, and their release dates can often change mid-development.

You’ve said before that smothering tithe was a mistake and a pie break. If it didn’t trigger on the regular draw for turn, and only extra draws, would that be more in line with white’s ramp philosophy?

White’s taxing has to be a real choice that players can make, not something that gives the illusion of choice, but almost never gets paid.

If Smothering Tithe wasn't in white's part of the pie when it was printed, how did it get printed?

I was just one man! It’s why we started the Council of Colors, to stop things slipping through.

Is smothering tithe still in white’s colour pie?

It wasn’t in white’s color pie when it was printed. And it still isn’t today.White is allowed limited amount of treasure as a means of taxing, but only if the taxed player has a true expectation of being able to buy out of it. Smothering Tithe is both too much taxing and unreasonable that the player can choose to continually paying the tax.

I overall like treasures, but i feel like they are warping commander because three of the most overpowered cards of all time for the format (smothering tithe, Dockside Extortionist, and hullbreacher) all generate treasure, which leads to the mechanic being warping.

Ah, eternal formats, where mistakes live forever. : )

"It can with the following restriction. White should not be able to reliably generate effects that are not within its color pie. So, white taxing something that would happen infrequently and unpredictably, could play around with non-white effects, but one that is very exacting in its taxing, meaning it would happen often and predictably, could not."Given that idea, and that idea as a whole, would you consider Smothering Tithe a bend or a break?

I’ll call it a strong bend that we shouldn’t have made.

I'd like to request more white counterspells! I really enjoy playing with Mana Tithe and Lapse of Certainty

Here’s the current state of white taxing and delaying counterspells. They’re in color pie, but play design isn’t currently interested in making them.