Donald, you've mentioned in the past that sometime you like to play around with Magic meta-mechanics, like Split cards or double-sided cards.
What would you do with something like Vehicles?
I'm not sure what you're remembering; you haven't put that a way that makes any sense to me. I haven't "played around" with those mechanics. Aside from the layout, Split cards go back to Alpha, so I can't say if they inspired anything for me or not. I mean Magic got me to pursue seriously designing games, so I knew things like "choose one" were possible before I got going. So I've done plenty of that stuff, but it doesn't feel like "playing around with Split cards" to me. It predates Split cards. Double-sided cards, again aside from layout, I've been doing cards that changed form since the beginning.
I hated Vehicles! Hated them so much. I don't think there's a Magic mechanic I've liked less.
- They're creatures that lots of removal doesn't work on. So much for playing with those cards! The new Rabid Bite looks cool; hey it's there for your vehicle-less cube.
- You can't kill off all of their creatures to stop them. Somehow, Equipment, which I like fine, doesn't always grant haste!
- They made some awful pushed ones, including the one they banned. Goes in every deck!
Their public comments were sad too. "We've gotta push some cards" and "this is why we don't make so many artifact blocks" and "we should have tied the Mirrodin artifacts to colors" (thus getting rid of the whole point to having artifacts). Man color is one way to stop a card from going into every deck; it isn't the only way! If the pushed artifacts are a millstone, a thing that likes enchantments, a graveyard recursion thing, etc., they don't just go in every deck. Only "just a generic thing, but pushed" goes in every deck. Give me colorless artifacts and just tie the pushed ones to different kinds of decks. Man.
I don't know if I wouldn't have hated Vehicles, if sick creatures couldn't pilot them, and they were creatures all the time so you could use your Rabid Bite or whatever (but obv. still requiring piloting to attack/block), and they hadn't made broken ones. I hated them though.
The move is for them to change the rule that lets sick creatures use tap abilities that don't have the tap symbol - a crazy confusing thing that needs fixing anyway - and then make a new keyword for vehicles so that they can be creatures all the time. Good luck, Wizards!