One thing that frequently comes up, especially when talking about reprints, is the notion of cards being "too strong for standard". Are there general rules you apply for that, or is it more of a feel thing, and in either case, could you give us some idea of the work that goes into determining if something fits into that box?

Great one! I can already tell we’re going to get a lot of questions in this area. : )

It’s a complicated topic and there’s no one clear measurement we can apply to a card. One way I like to think about it is “If we gave a card this strong to a color, would we have to take something else away to compensate?” For example, if blue had Counterspell in standard, we’d have to pull back greatly on things like bounce and card draw, otherwise it would be too easy to keep the battlefield clear and refill with more cards.

A somewhat recent example is that when Lightning Bolt was in standard (with Magic 2010 and 2011, long before my time here), I’m told that the development team of the time had to pull back on a lot of other areas where red could have been powerful. The result was that a lot of decks splashed red just for Lightning Bolt, and there wasn’t as much reason to be base red. That dynamic can often cut back on deck diversity. In general we’d rather spread out the power among lots of different things each color can do, rather than concentrate it in one card or area.

Another reason is that by not having the absolute most pushed version of each type of effect, we open up a lot of design space to have meaningful choices between alternatives. For example, choosing between Magma Spray to exile creatures at instant speed versus Lava Spike to deal extra damage directly to your opponent leads to more creative deckbuilding and shifting metagames than the correct answer always being Lightning Bolt.

-Ian