Blogatog

When designing Embiggen, did you consider making up a new creature subtype that would never appear on a type line but would be in the official list of creature subtypes so that you could still exclude Mistform Ultimus and changelings but not any other creature (unlike now where four are excluded)? Or would that have pushed it into acorn territory?

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 02:16:22 -0400

I do not regret using Brushwagg. It was much funnier than new creature type you never heard of would have been.

Hello Mark, here’s my pre-release experience! I showed up a bit late because a sudden awful storm blew through my town, but when I got there someone had pulled the crazy $1k foil Japanese Force of Will, so the store was completely a buzz despite the bad weather. Green and Blue are my least favorite/used colors so far, so I decided to grab a Quandrix kit to try something new. I got a surprising about of Silverquill cards in it (including THE Silverquill) and I was tempted to run it, but I stuck with Quandrix instead for the sake of trying new things. If I hadn’t been delayed by the storm, I think I would have definitely made two decks. I…did badly! Two losses, one draw (we both ended on 3 life in that one). Two of my opponents were using Prismari, which seemed the most popular of my store? It was lots of getting whittled down by their fliers, which I didn’t have many answers to. I think I’ll wait a while to try Blue/Green again, but I’m still thankful to have tried something new and I did really enjoy Increment and the X spell synergies, and I’m excited to try and make a deck around Silverquill, the Disputant soon! I don’t know how much of a hand you had in this set, but thank you, I like it a LOT already. It’s magical. :)

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 02:15:06 -0400

Happy you enjoyed it ( I was on the exploratory design and vision design teams and had a big hand in prepared.)

Two prerelease notes– 1) Repartee is my favorite limited mechanic in a while, it made games feel very dynamic and skill-expressive, especially Silverquill mirror matches! 2) I was absolutely flabbergasted when I went to remove my opponent’s scary early creature while they were tapped out and they went “In response, I pay 1 life and exile a blue card from my hand…” Just an all timer prerelease moment.

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:59:36 -0400

Glad you enjoyed it.

I got a Lorehold box, but then… opened a Sylvan Library and nearly every rare was in Abzan colors. I had two Lluwens, two Honormancers, and a number of pseudo aristocrat or graveyard-leave payoffs and went 3-0, didn’t drop a single round and have now cast Sylvan Library more in limited than any other format. Best play was losing my board of almost all 3 mana value creatures, then immediately casting Fix What’s Broken the next turn to get them all back and close the game. Opened a FOW as a prize.

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:57:49 -0400

Thanks for sharing.

Hey Mark, what school should I enroll in at the SOS prerelease? All of them look equally enticing as the next!

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:57:25 -0400

They’re all fun. I’ll suggest Witherbloom.

My prerelease story: I was happy to try Lorehold, but my promo was Ral, and later I opened another! Went 2-0-1 playing Witherbloom; the draw was a mirror match where we both gained too much life. Anyway, my wife and I both had a blast!

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:18:04 -0400

Sounds fun!

Some people have noticed that SOS doesn’t have either equipments or auras. While I suppose you had to remove things to make rooms for instants and sorceries… but does it make the set a “gimmick set”?

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 23:16:33 -0400

What’s the gimmick? Slightly more instants and sorceries than normal?

My SOS Prerelease story is my brother is visiting this week. He doesn’t really play much, but enough to play with me whenever he’s in town. We went to unfinity together, for example. This time he confirmed he’d be here at this time on saturday night, after i’d come back from playing. So i went over on sunday to the store, just to see if they still had spots open. They did and i got one more and we’re both playing tomorrow (as of this writing)

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 23:15:26 -0400

I hope you gave a great time.

Do you prefer the stories in the comments or as an ask?

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 22:10:03 -0400

Either is good.

Tell Me Your Secrets of Strixhaven Prerelease Stories

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 21:21:53 -0400

I’d love to hear them.

I’m excited for SOS. Magic rules.

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 21:21:06 -0400

Happy to hear that. And yes, it does.

Does Arcavios have other schools besides Strixhaven? Schools with allied colors perhaps?

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 21:20:37 -0400

Arcavios does not have ally-colored schools.

Why ‘Counts as [creature type]’ so inconsistently applied to early Legends?

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 21:19:27 -0400

Typal just was a very low level thing in the early days. It wasn't really until I convinced R&D to put a typal theme in Onslaught that the rest of R&D became aware how popular typal themes were.

I know there’s cards like Staying Power where you designed them thinking they could possibly be done in black border but Rules said that they were silver-border/acorn territory, but what about the reverse? Are there cards you’ve made which (at the time that they were made, so not counting cards like Fowl Play or Goblin Bowling Team) you thought would have to be acorn cards but which Rules then said did in fact work within the standard rules? Are there examples outside of Unfinity?

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 21:17:53 -0400

I was literally shocked when I was told Exchange of Words could be eternal legal. I was confident that was an acorn design.

I assume the Book artifact type was introduced for a reason. Any chance you can tell us anything about that reason, or when we might find it out?

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 21:16:38 -0400

I can do neither right now.

With Strixhaven using Boros graveyard synergy, Is Boros still exploring its identity? It definitely feels the least identifiable of the two color pairings in my opinion.

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 21:16:01 -0400

Graveyard synergy in red/white is a Lorehold thing. It's a stretch we did to make them the history school. I don't expect us to do it in other sets.

How come you errata’d Viashino to Lizards but didn’t errata Minotaurs to Oxen?

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 20:15:48 -0400

Because Minotaurs have equity outside the game.

Hi Mark! Just back from my first of two SOS pre-releases and wanted to say the set is amazing, it feels like an absolute home run, play felt really fresh and all of the archetypes seemed super interesting. Got demolished 0-2 by a 4-colour Prismari storm deck in round three and couldn’t have been happier about it! One particular thing I want to commend though is the pest tokens changing to gain life when they attack! When I first saw it I thought it would be confusing being different to how pests played before, but I felt like it played really well and helped sell the Witherbloom focus on life gain (rather than aristocrats-style sacrifice synergies) a lot better. So high fives to whoever made that call! If anyone still feels like Witherbloom feels too close to Golgari after this set, I implore you to actually give the limited archetype a try. You’ll be impressed!

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 20:14:43 -0400

Glad you enjoyed it.

Do you have any advice for new players making their first standard deck?

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 20:14:12 -0400

It’s significantly more important that you enjoy playing it than its win percentage is as high as possible.

Hey Mark, This might be a bit of an odd question, but I was curious: Do you think a draft format built around mono-colored draft archetypes could work? (Maybe with secondary archetypes like we saw in ECL) Has anything like that ever been explored or discussed before? I’m wondering if it could be balanced through things like hybrid mana symbols, colorless cards, varying numbers of colored pips, or mechanics involving Treasures or land tokens.

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 19:06:06 -0400

We have had sets with moncolor draft archetypes. They are tricky to do, but we do them on occasion.