'New cards or mechanics. Basically, new Magic mechanical design. Have fun doing it (Magic design is fun), but I can’t see it.' I wouldn't dare try it. It's just clarification for future requests like a Mardu-partner-with vampire pairing or a card called 'Mock Exam' for the upcoming Strixhaven set.

That stuff is fine.

Does the math on imbalanced factions change if it's just five two color factions with two of them being the same typal/theme. Something like Izzet Weirds, Simic Elementals, Golgari Squrrels, and Mardu (Boros and Orzhov) Vampires?

Five two-color factions isn’t “imbalanced”.

You've said you've been seeding the Bloomburrow creature types for a few sets now. Was the decision to make Aclazotz a Bat God, and thus introduce bats and bat themes to the white/black Ixalan vampires, at all influenced by the Bloomburrow bats? There are a lot of pretty obvious similarities (colors, animal type, religion) between the two archetypes across the sets.

If you see any relevant animals in the last Magic “year”, we were very aware of their Bloomburrow needs when we added them to files.

Can you give a high five to whoever suggested bats for the black white archetype. Vampire bats being altruistic really leans into whites philosophy

Will do.

Yesterday was my birthday... but every time I've tried my birthday trivia requests seem to get lost... I would like to request trivia about Sorin please.

Sorin came about because we were making original Innistrad, and we thought it would be cool to have a Vampire planeswalker, but it required a lot of work from the creative team to explain how exactly a vampire could be a planeswalker. It involved defining what vampires are like on Innistrad.Happy Birthday!

I am evoking the rite of birthday trivia and asking about Baron Sengir, the head vampire in charge

A lot of Homelands design was based on creative components that were popular in Alpha. The whole Sengir clan owes its existence to how popular Senior Vampire was in the early days of the game. Happy Birthday!

"if/when: batching for "undead" creatures (zombies, skeletons, vampires, ghouls etc.)?" "If, but I could see it working in the right set." What are the chances that the next Innistrad set has vampires, zombies and werewolves batched as "monsters" or a similar term? (See for example Victim of Night.)

The batch doesn’t want to be too high a percentage of the set.

Hey MaRo! I recently watched a really interesting video about Innistrad recently. The thesis is that there is a subtle “missing” creature type of UG wizards that were cut for some reason, probably for thematic reasons within Innistrad.I was wondering if you could give any insight if that was the case? Here’s the video, it’s 13 minutes long but it’s very solid and it convinced me soundly as a viewer.https://youtu.be/12X5wgYikqk?si=WW2i_Hr4cZrDHZ_SI also love the idea that the wizards were explorer/pirate wizards in the Hinterland harbor a lot

I haven’t watched the video, but as the guy who led the design, I know that the only five creature types we cared about were the four monster creature types (Spirits, Vampires, Werewolves, and Zombies) and Humans. No other typal themes were ever part of the design.

with various type of creature having common things, like goblin being red, spider having reach and other similar aspect either on the design or the flavor side, what would be the common ground ( if there's one ) for giant and vampire ?

Giants tend to be bigger, 3/3 and up. Vampires often have flying and/or lifelink, but we make too many for them all to have it.

I never realized that vampires were the race for black, zombies feel much more common and black to me personally- vampires feel very marry because of ixalan and orzhov vampires

Vampires *and* Zombies are the characteristic races of black.