• What lessons have you brought from previous ventures into Chikyu that you felt most benefitted Chaos Rains?

"I think the lesson I most took into CCR was about art. Monsters of Chikyu struggled so hard in getting art that "felt like Magic art" to try to prove itself as a serious Magic set. But for the people that bought in, this art was often hit or miss, and for the people who weren't going to buy in, the art was never going to convince them. For Chaos Rains, I loosened the reigns, letting in more of the cheery or cartoony art in. It can be a delicate balance, I do want to maintain Chikyu's duality of a plane that can wondrous or terrifying depending where you look, but I think it's worked out so far. Let your sets embrace their weirdness."

• Much as it does in Pokemon, Weather introduces an interesting wrinkle into the gameplay. How did you come to the current design for Weather cards and Acclimate, and how have you found them to play in your testing?

"I have long been interested in the tug-of-war mechanic of World Enchantments, so they were a very early idea for replicating the tug-of-war of Pokemon's Weather Wars. For a while I did want to make them World, and have CCR redeem the mechanic much like MON had done with phasing. Being able to conditionally stack them up made them more interesting, and giving them their own type afforded much cooler interactions such as acclimate. Timespiraled helped get us into our current iteration, disposable common Weathers that trigger on ETB, stronger uncommons that trigger each time you attack, and powerful rares that trigger on each spell cast.

From Field Test, Weathers currently look a smidge too powerful via the amount of versatility acclimate gives you, though I do find this promising for getting them into a place where they can establish themselves in a format."

• Would you like to give any special thanks to anyone on this server for their help?

"I gotta thank Pipsqueak for helping keeping this set on track, both back when I was struggling with time early on and running Field Test which helped it find a finish line. Relatedly, LeetWizard for doing so much to grind down its rougher edges within Field Test. CCR also would have struggled to get going without Dodger building up half the mechanic suite and DrChillbrain building like half the set during the community set stages."