Sam Stoddard on Kaladesh standard: "One of the big discussions internally is about the strength of answers versus the strength of threats and whether we have swung too far onto the threats end." Getting the message!
His jokes aren't funny - at all.
C'mon. Not even Look at Me, I'm the DCI? Or Who//What//Where//When//Why?
The logic of "Kamigawa doesn't sell so that means the plane is disliked/bad" remains so utterly bizarre and just smacks of the risk that comes from metrics-focused business thinking (e.g. Getting caught up on the wrong metrics).
I mean, I think this is an issue when you talk about, say, Time Spiral or Lorwyn block, but with Kamigawa over the years they've really covered in pretty thoroughly; if Rosewater's falling back on sales now it's just because it's been a decade of people absolutely refusing to believe him about the set no matter how much he explains it.
I mean, the full case against Kamigawa is something like: it sold worse than both the other blocks around it; it had a primary theme that was extremely unpopular at the time and only picked up any real traction years later thanks to Commander; it had a setting that hinted at something popular (basically, anime fantasy) while not actually being much like it; the art direction and card naming made distinguishing half the cards in each set so difficult it actively inhibited play; all the popular tribal types were left out thus hurting one element of casual appeal, and the most appealing ones in this setting were given their own parasitic new types; lots of mechanical themes in general that were parasitic and didn't impact larger formats; smack dab in the middle of Magic's creative nadir where art and general concepting were forgettable and poorly done; tons of unexciting garbage-y rares without a lot of really exciting chase cards; no new mechanics people really liked; the block ended with Saviors of Kamigawa which is one of the five worst sets of all time.
But saying all that in response to each question ask is kind of ponderous so just pointing to one piece of quantitative evidence kind of makes sense.
Honestly, I'd be OK if MaRo gave up on printing a set and just released some of the stuff he designed. The most interesting part of Un-sets was always reading the spoiler and seeing weird mechanics rather than actually buying/playing with them.
They just need to include silver-border cards in a set of premade decks instead of trying to sell boosters. They already have a slot for odd casual-oriented products each year anyway; this would let them burn their 40 best ideas or whatever (instead of trying to come up with 200 that also can be drafted, etc.) and make them focus on cards that play well in a specific context since they're shipping in prebuilt decks.
How do you figure? I can't recall any time where Karn has demonstrated any real care or interest in their gender or how they're referred to.
Yeah, Karn really hasn't ever had anything besides the pure fact of how other people refer to him that ties him to gender at all. I don't think it makes sense to change the way they write about him now just because that "he" is well-established for the specific character, but it's also true (and was noted publicly decades ago) that Karn himself doesn't consider that to be a thing and just goes with what other people say.
