While Magic design looks to the future, we always have to be mindful of the past. Certain choices have cemented themselves beyond our ability to change them.
The rules don’t allow for two different cards to have the exact same name even if they are on the opposite sides of the same card.
Possibly. The mechanic was well liked. It would probably change its name though if we brought it back.
One of the things we talk about is what would we do differently if we had to start the game over. One of the things I would have done is make instant a supertype that overlayed on cards. The game would have Sorceries and Instant Sorceries. Creatures with flash would be Instant Creatures. But we can’t so we have what we have.
I haven’t updated it yet with Dark Ascension but I will once I do.
Because the term “nonpermanent spell” is very confusing.
I understand that you are a competitive player and for a deck to be worthy for you it has to win consistently. That is not the case for many Magic players. For a lot of players, the deck has to be able to win but it has to be something they want to play and enjoy playing.
Yes, zombie decks aren’t the top tier decks but they are very fun to play and I’ve gotten tons of positive feedback from players who are having a blast with their zombie decks. If the zombie deck isn’t for you, don’t play it. But for me and others like me, I’m having fun playing my zombie deck, so please don’t tell me I’m failing because I haven’t made something the way you want it. That’s not how Magic works. There are many different ways to play Magic and we design for all of them.
I’m a Johnny, so I love decks that allow me to have lots of options and do neat tricks. Probably my favorite kind of deck is what’s known a utility belt deck where the deck has access to one of lots of different cards to allow the deck to adapt to whatever fights it.
We had a long talk about Phyrexia going next to Innistrad. In a perfect world they wouldn’t have followed one another but there were many other factors at play. Next year’s block is not going to have strong horror undercurrents.
Mana screw is a side effect of one of the most important parts of the game: the mana system. There is a difference between unpopular things that make players enjoy the game (even if they don’t understand that it does) and unpopular things that merely detract. The first will come back, the latter less likely so.
The mechanics and power level were problems but the flavor was a turn-off for a fair amount of players as having so many foreign concepts and names made it very hard to keep track of what the cards all did.
Luckily we’ve used the lessons from Kamigawa block to get better at doing top down flavor in a way that is more approachable.
To separate black from red, black gets creature destruction (“destroy target creature”) while red gets direct damage (“CARDNAME deals 3 damage to target creature.”) So no, I don’t think you’re going to see a monored “destroy target creature card.
We do want continuity through the block and we are planning to have more crossover. Originally, we were going to have flashback in Avacyn Restored but then realized that flashback works best in a set that has enough focus on the graveyard that players remember to check it. Having just one thing in a set care tends to lead to unhappy gameplay.
It got a pretty negative reaction, yes.
I’d make it if they let me.
The designers will give them design names and then the creative team will give them creative names. I’d say about 20% of keyword mechanics keep their design name.
It’s something I’ll get back to. I just have to come up with something more to say on the topic before I revisit it. (I have some ideas.)
The restriction is not based on flavor but on green’s part of the color pie. That ability is what we call the Rootwalla ability in R&D and it can always only be activated once per turn.
