typicalcommanderplayer asked: Hi Mark. I'm curious about R&D's stance on parasitic design. Energy feels like the most parasitic mechanic since Arcane in Kamigawa. I do realize that great effort was made to make energy cards playable by themselves to help mitigate the parasitism, but that seems to reinforce the idea that parasitism is bad in general. Does R&D view parasitic mechanics as bad things?

A little parasitic design is fine. Too much can become a problem. Note that we spent a lot of time to make Energy far less parasitic. Cards work in isolation. Groups of cards can work in isolation. That was far less true with Splice onto Arcane.

Just remember that if a parasitic mechanic is liked (such as Slivers), we can bring them back and with each incarnation become less parasitic.