[2023] Reminder: because LOR's rotation is hand-chosen, *any* combination of cards they rotated would have inconsistencies. Doesn't mean it's bad.

There’s also a lot of various factors at play, and they often do conflict in natural ways. For example, every region is going to want some reasonable cards of various costs, and a certain number of cards in standard. There’s no guarantee that the number of color pie bleeds or overly restrictive cards is equally distributed across regions or mana curve. Often a decision must weigh the importance of one factor against the importance of another. That’s game design.

Also, we work about a year ahead of release (sometimes more) for new cards and make some decisions with future cards in mind.

I wasn’t involved in most specific rotation meetings, I’m a design lead on features and don’t get as much time as I’d like to focus on cards most of the time. It’s only when I have an unusually light week or am far ahead of my own work (and no fires pop up in the meanwhile) that I get to join the cards playtests, card crafting meetings, and discussions.

I actually was hired originally as a card designer but there’s almost always been some other design challenge, and since I have a background in system and feature design too I ended up volunteering for a lot of less fun but important work. :)

We actually have a very similar official role called Jungler at work for individual contributors that go where they're needed. :)

Yup. Often more than 1 year ahead for that, but it varies substantially based on when it's known by others.