Once a year, I like to do a mailbag column where I answer fan-submitted questions about all the premier Magic sets of that year, in this case Murders at Karlov Manor, Outlaws of Thunder Junction, Bloomburrow, and Duskmourn: House of Horror.

Here's the tweet I posted:

As always, I'll try to answer as many questions as I can, but here's why I might not answer your question:

  • I have an allotted word count, which means that there are only so many questions I can get to.
  • Someone else might have asked the same question. I will usually answer the first person who asks.
  • Some questions I either don't know the answer to or don't feel qualified enough in the area to answer properly. Where I was able, I went to the person that would know the answer.
  • Some topics I'm not allowed to answer for all sorts of reasons, including previews for future sets.

That said, let's get to the questions:

Q: What card went through the least design changes? What was like, "Oh that's perfect ship it."

In R&D, we refer to a card that gets printed exactly as it was initially designed as "brain to print." Here's a brain-to-print card from each major product in 2024:

  • Murderers at Karlov Manor: Final-Word Phantom
  • Magic: The Gathering® – Fallout®: Radstorm
  • Outlaws of Thunder Junction: Shoot the Sheriff
  • Magic: The Gathering® – Assassin's Creed®: Towering Viewpoint
  • Modern Horizons 3: Null Elemental Blast
  • Bloomburrow: Bushy Bodyguard
  • Duskmourn: House of Horror: Leyline of Transformation

Q: Were there any card concepts too gnarly/horrific to print for Duskmourn?

I talked with Ovidio Cartagena, the art director for Duskmourn. Here's what he said:

"From the artistic point of view, we wanted to have fun with horror imagery, but personally I don't favor gore or an unfair fight … so there were definitely some ideas we had to tone down and others we had to scrap. Emily Teng, the worldbuilding lead, and I share a similar sensitivity on what is scary and what is over the line, so it was a pretty easy and fun process! In the end, we came up with a lot of scary ideas that were more witty than explicit."

Q: You've heard about product fatigue. That there're too many Magic products produced too quickly for many players to keep up these days, mentally or financially. The Big Score being crammed into Thunder Junction likely helped. Are there other steps being taken to address this issue?

We have a panel scheduled for MagicCon: Las Vegas in October called "The Foundations of Magic's Next Era" where we will discuss issues such as this. The event will be live at MagicCon and recorded for people to watch at home a few days later.

Q: With so many interesting planes being introduced this year, is the team considering multi-set blocks or returning to planes more often? Bloomburrow was my favorite set in a long time, a truly phenomenal plane with interesting characters and fun mechanics. Sad to see it go so soon.

We spend a lot of energy collecting data from players, and the message from the data is very clear. Players prefer sampling a lot of different planes to staying on one plane for multiple sets. I understand that a lot of players have expressed a desire to return to blocks, but the data does not remotely back that up. That's not even getting into sales data that even more strongly supports the desire of players to go to different planes from set to set. We are willing to remain on the same plane for multiple sets if there's a strong reason to do it, but the bar for doing so has gotten higher.

We are more than willing to return to planes. Here are some examples in the next couple of years:

"Tennis" – This is the death-race set. It visits three planes, two of which have been visited before as the central plane of a premier set. The third is a plane we've referenced on cards but haven't visited as a main setting.

"Ultimate" – This is a return to Tarkir.

"Wrestling" – This is a return to Lorwyn.

"Yachting" – This is a return to Arcavios, the plane Strixhaven: School of Mages was set on.

"Amsterdam" through "Dublin" – These are sets we're currently working on. The new codenames for premier sets are cities around the world in alphabetical order. I can't give specifics about any of them yet, but I can confirm multiple returns to planes not visited in "Tennis" through "Ziplining."

If players show a strong affinity for a setting, we'll revisit it. That allows us to gather data before choosing to have a second expansion on a given plane, something we can't do if they show up next to each other. And yes, with us spending less time on a particular plane, we're reevaluating how long is appropriate between a debut visit and a revisit. For example, we returned to Eldraine quicker than we've returned to many planes in the past.

Q: Story question: How did Bloomburrow and Duskmourn defend themselves from the Phyrexians?

I asked Magic Story Lead Roy Graham. Here's what he had to say:

"Canonically, there's no answer to this, but from what we know, I'd say: Bloomburrow was one of the few planes untouched by the Phyrexians. The little critters remain protected from multiversal calamity, at least for now. As for Duskmourn, it's hard to know—Phyrexians would blend right in with the other terrors in the house, so even the survivors wouldn't be able to say whether they saw any extraplanar invaders. One thing is certain—if they did come to Duskmourn, the House consumed them before they consumed the House."

Q: There was a time when you printed bad cards. Not cards for a niche audience but objectively weak, bad cards. You wrote more than one article on why this was necessary. Today, nearly all cards are at least playable. Did the philosophy on the need for bad cards change?

Yes, R&D's philosophy on bad cards has changed over time. This is due to many factors. One, we're just making cards for more formats, and that had to come from somewhere. These bad cards didn't go into anyone's deck, so it was something we could remove from a set without impacting what people could play. Two, in the world of Play Boosters, we just don't have space in Limited for bad cards. Every card slot, especially at lower rarities, has to fill multiple roles. Three, a lot of our thinking on bad cards had to do with how we saw the introductory process for the game. We've come to realize that what draws players into the game is not simple cards that make it easier to learn but cards that are exciting and encourage them to want to learn and play more.

Q: What's been behind the shift towards more "modern" settings like Thunder Junction and Duskmourn (continuing the trend we saw in Neon Dynasty and New Capenna)? IIRC, you previously indicated Innistrad was about as "modern" as Magic settings were going to get.

One of Magic's key qualities is its ever-growing, ever-adapting state. There was a time where I did think Innistrad was about as modern as we were going to go, but I was wrong. The success of Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty is one of the bigger factors that has us pushing more into exploring "modern" settings, such as Duskmourn. The other big influence is the popularity of Universes Beyond sets. The more players see and feel comfortable with modernity on cards, the more comfortable we feel exploring it.

Q: Why did you do the Duskmourn first look before previews for Bloomburrow started?

There are a lot of moving pieces that come with putting out a product that premieres on the same day worldwide. One is that we need distributors to order product. Distributors are the companies that act as the midpoint between us, the manufacturer of Magic, and the stores. To help them order the right amount of product, the distributors ask the stores to put in their orders before our deadline.

To judge how much product they need, stores talk to their players to gauge interest. For them to be able to do that, we need to reveal some information about the set. Duskmourn was extra tricky. It was us pushing into new space, with a new plane, with a more modern take than we traditionally do, and we needed to provide a little more information than normal to help players understand what the set was going to be about.

It turns out that window of time was shortly before the release of Bloomburrow. That's why the first look for Duskmourn happened before Bloomburrow previews. All first looks at a Magic set happen in a similar time window. The only difference with Duskmourn is that we released the Planeswalker's Guide, which is earlier than we normally release that specific article. Most first looks involve showing a few cards and discussing larger mechanical themes.

Q: What's been the trickiest mechanic to figure out this year?

First, for reference, here are all the mechanics from premier sets in 2024:

  • Cases
  • Collect evidence
  • Crimes
  • Delirium
  • Deserts
  • Disguise/cloak
  • Eerie
  • Expend
  • Forage
  • Gift
  • Manifest dread
  • Mercenary tokens
  • Impending
  • Investigate
  • Offspring
  • Outlaws
  • Plot
  • Rooms
  • Saddle/Mounts
  • Spree
  • Survival
  • Suspect
  • Threshold
  • Valiant

I believe the two trickiest mechanics to balance were plot from Outlaws of Thunder Junction and manifest dread from Duskmourn. Plot was novel design space, which means we have less institutional knowledge to work from. Also, it uses public knowledge (meaning that the other players know what card you have but haven't played yet) which can make balancing things more complicated. Manifest dread has the potential to become any creature in your deck, and there are a lot of moving pieces to balance.

Q: I'm interested to hear more about the effects of Play Boosters on design and the player base. How have they been received and will they continue to evolve?

Q: Are you concerned about the speed of Limited being so fast in all of these formats?

I gave both these questions to Andrew Brown, the head play designer. He responded to both in the same answer:

"On the design side, we are overall happy with how Play Boosters have affected Limited play. We worked hard to develop heuristics and philosophies around how to design Limited in this new world. We are much happier with how the change in the booster has affected Draft than Sealed.

Over the past year and a half, we have been slightly unhappy with the overall speed of some of our Limited formats. We aim to have a wide variety of formats with different speeds, but too many of them have been a turn or so too fast in aggregate. We have adjusted a lot of the sets in the future to try to get the speed and game length to where we want it."

Q: I was surprised to see Valgavoth's Lair didn't have the Lair subtype. What's the deciding factor for whether a card can be a one-off part of an archetype not in Standard?

Naming cards happens after we lock down the mechanics for a set, so there's a good chance this card didn't even have "Lair" in its name when it was being designed. We don't make it a rule that all cards with a subtype in their name are that subtype, because it greatly restricts naming. Whether a card has a subtype only relevant in older formats is something Set Design and Play Design decides on a case-by-case basis. First, will it having that type cause design issues? Second, do we feel having that type will enhance the card to players?

Q: If you could go back and make one change to a 2024 release, what would it be?

I think I'd swap the release dates of Bloomburrow and Duskmourn. That would give Bloomburrow a little more time in the sun and lead into Foundations, which is closer to Bloomburrow's aesthetic than Duskmourn. It also would allow Bloomburrow to overlap with a MagicCon.

Q: Why can't we get a Jund -1/-1 counters commander?

Here's the issue. Each player has a card that they long for. Every time we make a set, they read through the cards hoping to find the thing they've been waiting for, maybe for years or even decades. Then, we make a set that presents the perfect opportunity for us to make that thing. Finally, there's a home for it for … and it's not there. What's going on? We had the perfect opportunity, why didn't we take it?

Magic has many millions of players. Each has their own card they want us to make. Even with overlapping, that's millions of cards, or at best hundreds of thousands of cards. Now, we do keep track of cards that players want, and with every set, we look for places to put them, especially themes that many players want, but there are a lot of demands each set has for itself, and there are only so many desired designs we can fit.

I like to say Magic is a hungry monster. We'll keep making more cards, and I hope one day, we'll make the card that you specifically want, but that's why we might not have made the card that you personally have been wanting for years. In particular, the Jund -1/-1 counters commander is complicated by the fact that we don't make a lot of -1/-1 counter cards these days. That said, I firmly believe we could one day make it.

Q: What was the single most successful mechanic from this year of Magic premier sets?

R&D has a channel we call "Magic Design Pit," where anyone in R&D can ask questions of the group, so I asked this question. I got a bunch of answers. The top answer was plot from Outlaws of Thunder Junction. It was one of the more innovative mechanics of the year and has been seeing play in a variety of formats. Offspring from Bloomburrow was also mentioned. It's probably the mechanic that has gotten the most love online. Someone else mentioned Murders at Karlov Manor's surveil lands. Someone else said rad counters from Fallout, which don't technically fit the question as it isn't a premier set. When I looked into the market research data (which we only currently have for Murders at Karlov Manor and Outlaws of Thunder Junction), spree, from Outlaws of Thunder Junction, was at the top. Rooms, from Duskmourn, have also been dominating online discussion recently.

Q: With so many sets focusing on resonance this year, do you feel like the amount of "bottom-up" sets is naturally going down over time? After all, there are so many more resonant themes than mechanical ones to build a set around.

Top down and bottom up is really a technical thing talking about where the design starts and what's core to its structure. Top down means the set starts with flavor, while bottom up means it starts with mechanics. The nature of how Magic sets are designed has changed so much that those concepts are a lot harder to see from the outside. Why? Because every set nowadays has a resonant core, and the worldbuilding is done in tangent with the design so that the two feel interwoven. If we're doing our job correctly, the players shouldn't be able to tell whether a set was designed top down or bottom up.

I'll use an example: Bloomburrow. It's a setting built around the anthropomorphic animal genre. By all means, it would seem that it was a top-down design, but it wasn't. When we started vision design, we realized that the core structure for the set wanted to be that each two-color archetype was dedicated to a different animal. Yes, there was some flavoring in which animal we chose for which archetype, but the core challenge of the design's structure was very mechanical, figuring in a mix of gameplay themes that overlapped with the archetypes next to it. And yes, there were a lot of individual top-down designs, but if I had to classify the set as a whole, I'd call it bottom up.

My point is, we do mix up top-down and bottom-up design, but I'm not sure with our current system that it's so obvious, especially because, as you point out, we tend to market the sets based more on the flavor than the mechanics, making every set seem like a top-down design.

Q: Is there any reason the new versions of the partners didn't have a partner? Most of them seem to be worse versions of the older cards. Some people don't like partners, but I think a big part is homogeneity, which could be fixed by releasing more partners to increase choice.

The partner mechanic has what we call a combinatorics problem. That is, each new one we print makes all existing ones more powerful, and that power level ramps up for each new one we make. Essentially, if we print too many of them, we break them all, and there's some people who already believe they're broken. Because of that, we've chosen not to print any more general partner cards, meaning it partners with any other card with partner, with a handful of exceptions like Yoshimaru or Francisco.

We've instead shifted to subsets of partner. We can make a group of cards that only partner with themselves and keep them to a small enough number so that it doesn't start creating problems of its own. This allows for some partnering without causing balance issues.

Q: Grievous Wound feels like a Curse. The team considered it but declined. Why?

Here's what happened. In vision design, we had a mechanic called injury (which you can see in the Duskmourn Vision Design Handoff Document I showed recently), which represented the trope of getting hurt while being chased in modern horror stories. Grievous Wound was originally an injury, so it got concepted as an injury in the art. I don't know the timing between when the card was concepted and when the mechanic was removed. The Set Design team redesigned the card to match that artwork. While the card mechanically felt like a Curse, it wasn't concepted that way and didn't creatively look like a curse. That kept Set Design from making it a Curse.

Q: Are the epilogue sets over?

Yes, epilogue sets are over. In market research, one of the things we do is have players rate a product on a scale of one to five, with five being the best. We then look at what percentage of players gave it a high rating. That number is a common metric to gauge the general popularity of a product. A product with an 80-percent or higher rating is considered a huge success. A rating of 60 to 80 percent is positive, although on the lower side. When a product starts getting around 30 or 40 percent, that means it didn't do well, and we need to explore what went wrong. March of the Machine: The Aftermath got five percent. It's the lowest we've ever seen by close to fifteen percent. To say players hated it is probably an understatement. So no, we have no plans to do more.

Red Letter Day

That's all the time I have for today. As always, I'm eager to hear any feedback on any of my or my co-worker's answers. You can email me or contact me through any of my social media accounts (X, Tumblr, Instagram, and TikTok).

Join me next week for part two of my mailbag column.

Until then, may you keep asking questions.