#popperthingi

[markrosewater]

After all the "being careful with representing living religions" talk in Kaladesh, using Jewish religious symbols like The Plagues of Egypt *by Nicol Bolas, the most villainous of villains*, is really disappointing to me.

As a Jew (and note I'm just talking from my own perspective), the ten plagues don't carry spiritual baggage. They are far more story tropes at this point than religious symbols.

[markrosewater]

Mark, many of the questions you get about color pie are avtually commander issues. No Modern Burn player weeps because they can't kill enchantments. No one in Standard wishes Black could off an artifact. Many of these issues stem from the fact that Commander skews toward long game where the normal way the game balances doesn't work. But that's a flaw with Commander, not the Color Pie.

Well put.

[markrosewater]

Can we expand the possible card name pool with emoji?

🔥🏐? 😜

[markrosewater]

You've talked in the past about a set that all the sets around it stole mechanics from. Is that Ixalan?

Ixalan's main mechanic pre-design ended up getting used by Conspiracy: Take the Crown. You'll hear the whole story this fall.

[markrosewater]

Is Serra Sphinx a color pie break?

It's a bend more than a break. Blue can untap its own creatures which is similar to vigilance.

[markrosewater]

Reach seems like an ability that every color can have as tertiary if it needs it in some weird corner case. Kinda like Flash but less generally useful.

That's not how we use it.

[markrosewater]

If Amonkhet is *Also* more complex than normal, at what point do you just accept that the normal complexity you shoot for is simply too hard to maintain as the baseline and adjust? I'm not one to advocate highering the comlexity at all but I sense that R&D is having a difficult time getting the desired fun from the complexity you call baseline. To paraphrase "theme not at common", if your baseline isn't met in three years, it's not your baseline.

No, we took our eye off the ball. We've been changing a lot of facets and our attention has been elsewhere. We messed up in this aspect and we're aware of it and are actively fixing it in our past and present and your future.

[markrosewater]

Uughh, you weren't *on* a a design team for a standard expansion? That's... new. Should we be worried?

No. Going from three sets a year to four (that I had to oversee as Head Designer) just meant I had less time for the smaller sets. I was consulted on it. I just wasn't on the design team.