I know you’ve said before you had a big hand in the design of the Walking Dead legends. I have a Glenn deck that I adore, filled with combat tricks that I use to beat in and refill my hand with spells I otherwise couldn’t justify. Could I get any trivia on Glenn’s design or how he came to be?

For each character, I picked a moment from the comic/show that highlighted their character. Glenn’s is from pretty early in the story where he figures out that if you cover yourself in zombie guys that the zombies don’t sense you’re human. It played into Glenn’s cleverness which is a key trait.

I had a feeling that the Walking Dead Universes Within cards would be Innistrad themed, and I’m happy to see it so. I’m disappointed that we got Greymond, a newly invented character, instead of Grete, Odric’s second in command, finally represented on a card. I’d love to see more pre-existing characters yet to have their own cards used for Universes Within reprints. Still, I love that we’re getting these, and am super excited for the coming years!

I can pass along the comment. I’m glad you like them.

Different user, but on the topic of top down design in UB cards, one thing that stands out to me is how unique the card feels and how well its abiilites both establish it as a homage to an existing character and a unique, exciting game piece in Magic the Gathering
The Street Fighter Secret Lair cards are some of the best examples of this with the untap symbol on Ryu mirroring the quarter-circle input and the way the card working essentially letting you pull off a special cancel in card form. It took fairly simple abilities and stretched them into a way that was mechanically unique and filled a space that isn't filled by other cards.
Whereas I look at a card like Michonne from TWD Secret Lair and while there are clear allusions to Michonne's character, it's nothing that feels especially Michonne, let alone exciting as a card. She's equipment matters (in a color combo that really doesn't have much for that) and even the equipment she was printed alongside belongs to a different character (whose card has no benefit from being equipped with it at all), she doesn't do much that's exciting besides be a decent body in combat, it doesn't feel like you get anything special from playing Michonne mechanically, leaving her somewhat lackluster when compared to even other cards from her same Secret Lair, let alone some of the high points of UB design. You can tell Michone is a top down design, but nothing feels all that exciting about her or novel and while her abilities do harken back to her lore and character, they don't do much to excite the player.

At least that's my perspective on it, it definitely is a very subjective topic.

I designed Michonne (and all the Walking Dead cards) so I can get into the specifics. At the time, we were restricted to evergreen abilities, so I had a lot less paint metaphorically to work with. (Glenn having his ability listed as skulk happened in development.)The card represents very early Michonne, so she comes with her two zombies, which were a key part of her early appearance. Michonne starts as a loner and she has two Zombies on leashes that she uses as protection. Those two Zombies play heavily into her backstory. I made her an equipment matters creature because her defining character, especially in her early appearance, was her mastery of her sword. She’s black/green because I was trying to capture the wild nature, out for herself, early version of Michonne. I like pushing themes to colors that don’t traditionally do it as it forces players to have to make a new deck rather than just plug into a premade deck. There are plenty of available equipment for a black/green deck. Lucille was never meant to go with Michonne. It was just a cool object from the show that we liked as the secret card.Her cost and power/toughness were up to play design to figure out. I took a stab, but that type of balance happens later. I do appreciate that we later dropped the evergreen restriction as that allows for a lot more nuance of design, but I’m proud of Michonne’s design given the constraints I had to work of. I read the Walking Dead comic, long before the TV show, and I spent a lot of time getting the essence of the characters.

While I completely understand the people who don't prefer Universes Beyond content, particularly those from universes set in the modern day "real world" such as The Walking Dead, I personally think it was really only a matter of time until this started happening. Magic is already a multiversal property by nature of its planar structure; these kinds of crossover events were kind of inevitable, and I quite enjoy them within reason.That said, I do think that there have been a lot of missed opportunities when it comes to actually making use of Magic's multiversal scale alongside Universes Beyond. It makes sense that other IPs can't reasonably be canon planes in Magic's universe, but it would be nice for them to feel a little less tacked on, even if it's non-canon - give us Teferi and the Doctor swapping war stories, or Vivian and Legolas bonding over archery. That kind of interaction between Magic and the IPs it crosses over with feels sorely missing, in my opinion, and would tie things together in a very nice way rather than everything to do with UB feeling so disconnected.

That requires a different kind of licensing agreement.

Between the mtg version of the Street Fighter cards and the Walking Dead cards, can you tell us which will come first? (I remembered you've said both are "in the near future")

I don’t know exactly when each releases.

A mistake folks in the hyper-enfranchised, intensely online segment of the Magic community make is thinking that all players are like them. Folks like me and them might buy Walking Dead because of human tribal or UNF for shock lands, but it seems obvious given how mainstream/ popular Magic is that’s a relatively minority position. Could you share a stat I’ve heard you reference, about what % of players have ever seen a planeswalker? The median MTG customer is not who we think!

The stat I gave is that the vast majority of tabletop Magic players (over 75%) don’t know what a planewalker is, don’t know who I am, don’t know what a format is (let alone know of any particular format), don’t frequent Magic content on the internet (including this blog). They are far less knowledgeable about the game than enfranchised fans realize.

“ That’s not true. I was very vocal on social media, and especially on this blog, BEFORE the product was sold “ I am an enfranchised Magic player of 30 years (in December) who follows “Magic news” daily. I bought the Walking Dead cards before hearing anything about the possibility of reprinting them. The impression I had was that maybe those mechanically unique cards may never be reprinted.

Then somehow that was the one month since this blog started that you weren’t on my blog. I was so vocal about it people were like, “okay we get it, you can stop saying it”. It was very important to me that people understand these mechanical executions weren’t locked to the one Secret Lair (just the Walking Dead versions of them) because I designed the cards and wanted to make sure people understood we could use them later.

I think most people's problem with The Walking Dead, mine included, was that it locked mechanically unique cards behind a $30, limited run, secret lair.

We heard that which is why we started releasing the in-universe versions (of Universes Beyond Secret Lairs) roughly six months later.

I’m sorry that you’re getting so much unhelpful criticism about the walking dead secret lair. Magic is a very cool special game and I am grateful for all the energy you put into it and how you interact with the community

Thank you for the kind words. It is appreciated.

I think when people describe the Walking Dead secret lair as greedy, they're mainly talking about the deliberate exploitation of FoMO (Fear of Missing Out). The product was advertised as mechanically exclusive cards that could only be purchased for a very short period and then never again. While it was later announced that magic-themed versions of these cards would eventually be made, this was only AFTER the ability to purchase them was closed.

That’s not true. I was very vocal on social media, and especially on this blog, BEFORE the product was sold that we promised the exclusivity was only on the Walking Dead versions of the cards and they we would print Magic versions if the need arose.