This should be pretty darn obvious, but it is incredibly clear that Wizards cares about artistic integrity. You look at Magic and you will see that they regularly hire some of the biggest names in fantasy art, including going out of their way to commission pieces from famous artists. Folks they catch using plagiarized art or AI art are dealt with, never working for Wizards again. Heck, over in the D&D side of things, they just overturned fifty years of precedent and released a product where the art team was part of the design (as opposed to after-the-fact commissions) so art and design could work together to mesh their collective vision.

On the fun side of things, Wizards is regularly innovating and collecting data on what players find fun, then trying to give us more of that. Here in Magic, MaRo publishes regular articles breaking down what players did or did not find fun about sets and how they will develop the game based on that feedback. He does an annual article looking at the prior year in review and the lessons they learned from fans. Over in D&D, they regularly playtest content and survey customers - and just revised their entire product based on years and years of analysis of what players find fun. Sure, in both Magic and D&D they sometimes read the data wrong and produce something less than enjoyable - but that is not because they are not trying to make things fun; that is because they are talking risks and sometimes risks do not pay off.

Yeah, Wizards is a company that needs to make money. Yes, they sometimes make decisions that are purely financial. But they also very, very clearly care about artistry and fun - and clearly know producing fun, pretty products is the way to make money.

And trying to say otherwise because Wizards is not reprinting a card that is hard to release except in products players would not find fun? That is a bit silly.

Building on the above, Homeward Path does not really have a clear reprint path. For a card to be included in a preconstructed product or a set, there needs to be some worthwhile reason to include it. Path rarely will fit the bill.

For a preconstructed product, Path would need to further that deck’s gameplay. That means you would need to have cards that both give your opponents objects and that you might later want to take back. That is a weird niche - and, while donate might get a precon, I doubt we will ever see a “donate then take back” precon, as that is not an archetype that really exists (outside of very, very niche cases like Karona, False God).

For a set, it would need to be in a set with a heavy theme of theft - enough of a theme to warrant including tech designed to stop it. I doubt we will ever see a set with such a large theft component to justify Path’s inclusion. Theft is one of those things which makes players angry - and thus is seen as not fun by anyone except the theft player. That alone likely means we will not see a significantly theft-themed set.

More importantly than some players being bored, however, is how poorly theft actually plays - when the game is over, you have to go through and sort out whose cards are whose. That is a hassle and leads to non-gameplay elements taking up a disproportionate amount of time at events. That goes past simply getting folks frustrated in game - it makes the event worse for everyone.

As such, since there pretty much is no real reason to print Path, it just does not get printed very often.

Just to be very clear, posting only to say “You should not be posting” is effectively gatekeeping others’ usage of the site. If you don’t like the content of a thread, just ignore it - you don’t have to comment only to tell someone else you don’t like their posting style, that’s just rude.

As you correctly point out, there are two primary reasons for the Legendary tag - flavor and mechanical. Rosewater’s issue seems to stem from the first - he is uncomfortable with mechanical game design being limited by something more esoteric like flavor.

To a certain extent, he has a point - Legendary is limiting. It forces the design team to make “Legendary” cards worthy of being one-offs on a deck and also forces any card designed to be a one-off to be shoehorned into a lore-important figure.

As a game designer, he believes something superficial like flavor should be relegated to a non-mechanical indicator (basically glorified flavor text) and the mechanical requirements to produce unique cards could be produced with a lore-neutral keyword.

Personally, while I understand where he is coming from, I think he is wrong from a game design stance. There are design issues with “Legendary” as a mechanic, but I think those problems are eclipsed by the issues of MaRo’s desired solution. People do not like text that looks official, yet has no real meaning - that adds an additional word on a card that is confusing to new players. Additionally, important word bloat is an ongoing problem in the game - no need to have two different words (a mechanical one and a flavor text one) when you can just have one singular, universally applied supertype.

It looks like your goal is to have an artifact that easily bounces between every player and cannot be removed. As written, your version of the card has three design issues you should be aware of, as they could fundamentally undermine your goal.

First, you style the ability as a targeted ability. As presently written, cards like Leyline of Sanctity are disproportionately powerful--and possibly necessary--in a format like this, as they ensure you cannot get the Hot Potato.

A better way to write the ability would be "At the beginning of your end step, a player other than you, chosen at random, gains control of Hot Potato." This removes the targeting element and ensures Hexproof, Shroud, and Protection do not prevent a player from gaining the Potato.

Second, your artifact is hard to destroy, but not impossible - Indestructible only prevents destroy-based effects and protection only prevents targeted effects. A mass exile card, such as Consulate Crackdown would remove the Potato from play.

One solution would be to use a replacement effect that overrides any potential zone changes - "If Hot Potato would change zones, it remains in its zone instead."

Third, as written, damage prevention - particularly redirect - effects are disproportionately powerful. If you believe this is a problem adding a "The damage can't be prevented rider" would solve this issue.