Hey Mark. I wanted to say that I’m sorry that the recent ban announcements made you sad, and I’m sure it’s very frustrating seeing a design you believe in (Unfinity) not receiving a very warm reception.

I got a lot of feedback from people who enjoyed it, and it is, by far, the best selling Un-set of all time. The people frustrated at ______ Goblin in Legacy were not the intended target.

"Players will do many unfun things in their quest to win. Our job as Magic designers is to try and make the best ways to win fun." One development that surprised me recently is bringing a sticker deck to a tournament while not playing any sticker cards. This is done to disguise the player as someone who's playing "name sticker" goblin. This seems to be a very unfun way to go about getting an edge in a match, but I'm having hard time finding a reason why a player wouldn't do this. Do you think name sticker specifically missed the mark or is it symptomatic of something else?

We once had an issue where a pro-player wore a shirt to a draft Pro Tour with the words “I prefer drafting white”. Was that against the rules? Not technically at the time. Min-maxes are going to min max. We’re not going to stop making things players will enjoy because min-maxers exist. No matter what we make, they’ll find ways to bend the system to eke minimal advantage. Note this is in contrast to a mechanic like gotcha where the core way to play it makes the game less fun.

Using my birthday wish to get trivia on my most favoritest creature type: Goblins!

Mons’s Goblin Raiders, the first Goblin, is named after Mons Johnson, a good friend of Richard’s that loves Goblins. Mons has worked at Wizards for many years and still loves Goblins. Happy Birthday!

Hey, big fan! I'm building a Space Family Goblinson deck (and apologies if this has been asked this before,) but when a Boomstacker stack falls, does that count as rolling dice for the purposes of triggers (The Space Family Goblinson, As Luck Would Have It, etc.?)

It does not. You have to be rolling dice for a specific card’s effect (aka the card tells you to roll die).

Hi Mark! Assuming you were to begin selecting a number of silver-bordered Un-Cards to be brought into black border, would a card's funny name deny its inclusion? E.g. "Box of Free-Range Goblins"

No. Magic has plenty of silly names on eternal legal card.

Is _____ Goblin supposed to be legal in eternal? I thought that canon wasn't supposed to care about things like vowels in names.

Card names come in various languages. The stickers exist in only one form.

Hi Mark!, My girlfriend and I were wondering, what is in Squee's hand in the cards: Squee, Dubious Monarch; Squee, the Immortal and maybe in Squee, Goblin Nabob. Best

That’s Squee’s Toy.

"Zombie is sometimes a race, sometimes a class. It depends what other creature types are on the card."I am actually glad this was brought up, as it is my biggest pet peeve about creature-typing. Why are humans the only race that can't synergize with their undead counterparts? It doesn't mechanically or flavorfully make sense that Discordant Piper, Dread Wanderer, or Festering Goblin would owe any allegiance to their respective races; isn't the point of a zombie that it loses what it once was?And if mechanics are the sole reason, then again, why are Humans the only race omitted? Human tribal is really only a problem in Modern and Legacy, so bannings can easily be made if there would truly be an issue.Just not sure what the justification is for this dissonant articulation of Zombies.

Humans are already so over-represented, we thought it was a spot we could let other creature types shine.

Are the names of cards and mechanics that appear on the Mystery Booster playtest cards considered "taken"? In other words, could we ever see a card named Mirrored Lotus? Could a mechanic be called Motivate without doing exactly what it does on Lazier Goblin?

The names aren’t officially taken, but we’d probably look elsewhere first.

You mentioned there used to be nicknames for lifelink, vigilance, and haste before they were keyworded. What were they? What about other later keywords like reach, deathtouch, etc?

Vigilance was called the Serra ability after Serra Angel. Lifelink was called spirit link after the Legends card (which worked slightly differently than what we ended up keywording. Haste was called Raging after Raging Goblin or celerity which is what R&D called it.Reach was called the Spider ability after Giant Spider. Deathtouch was called the basilisk ability after Thicket Baslisk in Alpha. My point is that players will come up with slang usually based on the first and/or most popular card with the ability, but once we give it an official name, it eventually becomes the default. And yes, players always say they’re going to keep using the slang, but they don’t, not when the cards give it a real name.