profcrocodile asked: You seem to be getting a lot of flack on twitter about Slivers but I just want to say kudos on you guys for making the mechanical change. As someone who has put together a Tribal Cube, I know how "derpy" (for lack of a better word) double sided lords are. It's a pain, doesn't really add meaningful depth and it's just not that fun when your own cards kill you. I HATE the "Predator" look but you did well with the mechanics change :)
We obviously believe the mechanical change will lead to better gameplay which is why we made the change. I am always willing on any social media platform to stand up and defend any decisions we’ve made and explain why we did them.
alafavore asked: Was Undead Slayer ever considered for a reprint in Innistrad?
Yes. It saying skeleton when the set had one skeleton wasn’t great.
kaokun asked: Which is Mike Elliot's vanity card?
Emmessi Tome in Tempest (M.S.E. - Michael Scott Elliott).
ongelvin asked: It sounds like the main reason for friendly Slivers is NWO. Couldn't you use reminder text to ease the burden of knowledge? (ie, "Sliver creatures controlled by other players and opponents also receive this bonus.")
No, the main reason for the change is matching player intuition and better game play. It does happen to help New World Order (which is about complexity at common) a little but that was never the driver.
reiversmusings asked: "The granting the abilities to the opponent only comes up in mirror matches and was never the intent of the cards." - Except Plague Sliver which was blatantly designed to punish your opponents for playing slivers while having little drawback to yourself, considering creatures weren't quite as pushed then as they are currently and Juzam Djinn was an amazing creature.
Plague Sliver was hotly fought over. Much of R&D didn’t believe it was even a sliver in that it fought the essence of slivers. We almost didn’t print it. If that’s the design space we lose, I think we come out way ahead.
subbak asked: After how many games of Magic do you think it's reasonable to introduce a new player to drafting?
Let them get the basics down first. Then start by drafting a core set.
NOTE: Yes, start with sealed before draft.
blekkja asked: regarding slivers - multiplayer. they are a tribe which has huge casual appeal and for this reason i would have liked the old template to stay. it was quite a bit of fun to team up with another sliver player [or lend a mate your 'overflow' deck] and try to take on the rest of the table. as underdogs it gave us a bit of a boost in the monthly 8+ player games.
The greatest loss of the new template in my mind is the impact on multiplayer formats where players team up.
doopboopdoop asked: As black and red already share Intimidate, has there ever been discussion of putting haste secondary into blue?
No. Blue haste only makes sense for tap abilities and I don’t know how many 0 power haste creatures with tap abilities I want to make.
espersquid asked: How did Lorwyn/Shadowmoor do on the thematic side? Well or poorly recieved? Is a return to it likely?
The world of Shadowmoor did much better than the world of Lorwyn. The players seem to like dark better.
doopboopdoop asked: Do you feel Return to Ravnica block did much better hybrid design than Shadowmore?
No Shadowmoor had better hybrid design. It was the focus of the design after all. It just had too much of it.
teluin asked: You forgot to mention Timbermare as a card named after someone. I thought that was a really nice move by you guys at WotC and worth sharing. (SCG has an article about it)
There are actually a bunch of cards named after people. The question was about cards named after R&D folk I believe. I forgot Mons, by the way, of Mons’s Goblin Raiders fame. Mons is an old friend of Richard Garfield.
espersquid asked: While I find Tamiyo an interesting character and awesome planeswalker, I can understand that she did poorly in tests. The walker I find most interesting as a character though, is Sorin. How did he do creatively?
Very, very well. The audience likes Sorin.
theoneguyoverthere asked: I would personally like to thank you and all who work & learned more about it, the number of friends I had quadrupled. 2 weeks ago, one of those friends that taught me magic passed away at the age of 23. At his funeral,anyone who had a sphinx card (his favorite kind of creature) was allowed to put it next to his body as a final goodbye. We knew Travis because of Magic. He taught me how chaos can be fun in games. Thank you for the connections you have help me make with so many people.
I’m very sorry to hear of Travis’ passing. Thank you for sharing your story.
dhemmann asked: Happy Father's Day! My 8 year old daughter asked me to show her how to play Magic yesterday. We had a blast and she beat me twice. The 'simple' deck I built for her was a lot stronger than I thought!
A great Father’s Day present. : )
su92 asked: Re: Community vs. Individual and Morality vs. Ammorality being the same thing. Can you elaborate? I'm sure they're related, but I don't see how they are the same.
Morality doesn’t mean anything to a hermit living alone with no interaction with other humans. Morality comes from a need to create moral rights and wrongs within the context of a community.
