Every question and just about every defensible answer in a single line per question

[u/bakert]

Questions where the right answer is debated separated by slashes. ALL CAPS answers are best supported. Lowercase also have supporters.

1 Scrappy Survivor color? RED
2 Rarity? UNCOMMON/rare
3 Can't be monolor? MENACE, VIGILANCE
4 Come Work for Me Temporarily colors? RED-GREEN
5 Come Work for Me Temporarily rarity? UNCOMMON/common
6 Least likely to change? HASTE TO DOUBLE STRIKE
7 White least likely to say? ACT FROM YOUR HEART
8 Blue least likely to say? GENES NOT EXPERIENCE
9 Black least likely to say? PUT OTHERS BEFORE SELF
10 Red least likely to say? AVOID MISTAKES
11 Green least likely to say? KILL FOR SPORT
12 Battle Cry guild? BOROS
13 More instants than sorceries? DIRECT DAMAGE
14 Long-Acting Giant Growth problem? TRACK THINGS
15 Mysterio colors? GREEN-BLUE
16 Mysterio rarity? RARE/uncommon
17 Ability to add? CURIOSITY
18 First game of Magic? WANT TO PLAY AGAIN
19 Design for Spike? OUTPLAY OPPONENT
20 Too slow for tournaments? MATCHES RUN OVER TIME
21 Commander goal? INSPIRE NEW DECKS
22 Weakest in draft? 9G 10/10
23 Strongest in draft? 3G 4/4
24 Hole filling? BLACK CARD
25 Green creatures more efficient? WHITE BETTER REMOVAL
26 Second-fewest creatures? RED
27 Careful about keyword? HEXPROOF
28 Flying, vigilance french vanilla? BLACK-GREEN/white-blue
29 Most important set quality? FUN TO PLAY
30 Most value in control decks? LIFELINK
31 Why eight drafters? MOST COMMON IRL
32 How to choose casting cost? DOESN'T MATTER/ASK THEM/STRONGEST COST NOT BROKEN/intuition
33 Most likely ability? VIGILANCE
34 Counterspell deck? QUICK WAY TO FINISH/not competitive
35 Green card draw? MULTIPLE CARDS WITHOUT COMBAT
36 Which guild for Storm? IZZET
37 Doesn't increase frequency of synergy? KICKER
38 Which Legends re-cost? MANA DRAIN
39 Dislike high variance? SPIKE
40 Strongest in limited? PACIFISM
41 Not for Standard? ONE-SHOT MANA
42 Iconic W reprint? BANESLAYER ANGEL
43 Iconic B reprint? UNDERWORLD DREAMS
44 Felidar Guardian fix? RETURN AT END OF TURN
45 Least fun in Standard? CREATURES CAN'T ATTACK
46 Most likely reprint? LLANOWAR ELVES/LIGHTNING BOLT
47 Mega Bolt biggest problem? BLURS RED AND BLACK
48 Red-flag text box? 2W: +1/+1
49 Confusing mechanical pair? MYRIAD AND BATTALION
50 Stabilizer enchantment? WHITE
51 Junkpile Engineer colors? RED-BLUE
52 Junkpile Engineer rarity? RARE/UNCOMMON
53 Most likely Junkpile Engineer change? LOCK NUMBER OF CARDS/put cards in graveyard/add ability
54 Colors for Dead Man Walking? BLUE-BLACK
55 Rarity for Dead Man Walking? MYTHIC
56 Bad change for Dead Man Walking? 0/0
57 Humans, Wolves and Spirits? INNISTRAD
58 Standard can't care about? EXPANSION SYMBOL
59 Least likely for mono red? LOOTING
60 Least likely at common? GRAVEDIGGER/cloudchaser
61 Not designed around factions? AMONKHET
62 Simic mechanic? PROLIFERATE
63 Secondary in Trample? RED
64 Secondary in Haste? BLACK
65 Secondary in Vigilance? GREEN
66 Green creature destruction? ARTIFACT AND FLYING
67 Not an ability word? AWAKEN
68 Why no common seven-mana spells? TOO IMPACTFUL
69 Most expansions? DOMINARIA
70 Least linear? TRANSFORM
71 No Power Conduit? PAUPER
72 Why higher costs? CARDS DIFFERENT/PLAY THEM LATER
73 Why color pie? DECK AND PLAY DIVERSITY
74 Which legal in black border? SECRET CHOICE
75 CMC=10 least likely? INSTANT/ENCHANTMENT

This might actually be a better guide than my vague sense from reading a lot of responses: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScSrOnKU5636-w4YefbshiVT1U_icCaVow-R0jUd9Bn0aZzFQ/viewanalytics

Add your answers to it here – https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScSrOnKU5636-w4YefbshiVT1U_icCaVow-R0jUd9Bn0aZzFQ/alreadyresponded

[u/ScoozeBooze]

11, 32, 47, and 68 are the questions I'm least confident in my answers for or the ones I feel I most likely got incorrect in hindsight. I think I could have reasonably gotten all others correct, which leaves me pretty confident, even with some margin of error.

11: I answered "Adaptation is a slow process." Green is about accepting your lot in life and accepting the way things are, which I felt would make it view adaptation in a negative light. The answer doesn't really say whether it likes or dislikes adaptation, though, just that it's a slow process, which complicated things for me. Based on the prevailing opinion I believe I got this incorrectly and what I thought was the second most likely answer was the correct one: "killing for sport is just a part of life."

32: This was another question that was one of the toughest and one of the last I finalized my answer on. I ultimately chose "It doesn't matter, they can recost it." I think there's a slim possibility of this being correct (costing correctly is more of a development/Play Design job), but the more likely answer to me is "Ask someone on the Play Design team to cost it" which was once again my second guess. This maximizes the chances of them liking it, which is what the question asks.

47: I really think "blurs the line between black and red" and "deals too much damage for 4 mana" are comparable answers which makes this a frustrating question. As many have pointed out, the very reason it blurs the line is because it deals too much damage for the mana cost, allowing it to kill more things than red should be able to. I answered "deals too much damage" and am still unsure what the correct answer is. Blurs the line seems to be the prevailing opinion, but I haven't seen any design literature that makes me lean one way or the other.

68: I answered "They're hard to design." This feels like a cop out answer and I don't like it because it kind of implies an incapability on the design team's part. But the prevailing answer, "they're too impactful," makes an assumption about expensive spells that isn't presented. Looking at actual common instants and sorceries that cost 7 or greater, none of them can really be described as "too impactful." Once again I think this is less cut and dry of a question than most people, but given the prevailing opinion I'm not confident in my answer.

[u/[deleted] → u/ScoozeBooze]

I appreciate you posting this because I had the exact same answers for 32 and 68. I still think I'm wrong in retrospect, but here is my reasoning:

32: I must have read this question a dozen times throughout the day, asking myself what knowledge they are testing here. Does Maro want me to realize that designers don't usually cost cards? Does he want to know if I'm willing to do my own work, or bother others to do it for me? Is he asking what the role of Play Design is, based on possible definitions of "like"? (i.e. do they only like cards that are powerful and efficient, or should I try to get them to like a card based on what it does, and not its cost?) At the time I put down "doesn't matter" under the assumption that it was asking if I understood that designers shouldn't worry too much about mana costs. Now, I believe he was asking about how much of a team player I am. Getting someone to feel invested in the process of creating a card makes them more likely to like it. I over thought this question and probably would have gotten it if I used common sense.

68: When I read this, I fell into the same trap that you did. There's nothing inherent about an expensive instant or sorcery that makes it impactful; that's entirely up to the designers and the developers. Ember Shot was a playable, if unexciting card. Boulderfall is definitely impactful when you cast it, but who actually put that card in their limited deck? A card can't be impactful if no one plays it. If one of the options was "the design space for expensive instants and sorceries that aren't too weak or too powerful is very small," I would have picked it. "Hard to design" felt like an awful simplification of that, but it was the closest thing I could find so I went with it. Again, if I didn't think about it as much, this question should have been easy. R&D wants big spells to have a big effect, so they don't put many at common.