Okay, imagine you were WotC and you wanted to make a "proper" Shandalar set instead of just referencing the plane in another Core Set. What kind of creative and mechanical "identity" that could support an actual expansion set would you give to Shandalar?

I've been thinking about making a thread like this for a while now, and Youtube suggested a random video to me that talked about rumours of an upcoming Shandalar set the other day (without any real substance or concrete sources, mind you, so it's more like rumours about rumours)... I don't really want to look at all the lore and story threads and named locations etc. right now, I'm more interested in figuring out the broad strokes of the setting.

Now, Shandalar has been used as the somewhat generic fantasy backdrop for several Core Sets over the last few years, and I think the equation of Shandalar with Core Sets is both secretly brilliant and utterly terrible at the same time. Secretly brilliant because the plane of Shandalar as we used to know it does indeed have several aspects that would make it the perfect homeplane for Core Sets:

- there is an explicit formal division of colours through the five guilds we learn about in the Microprose computer game, which would suggest a pretty simple set structure with mostly mono-coloured cards

- Shandalar is a so-called rogue plane that moves through the Blind Eternities, occasionally touching other planes in the process, which would lend itself to a setting that can have all sorts of reprints and easter eggs from throughout the multiverse

- it's a fairly generic fantasy world on the surface, which may sound like a bad thing at first, but that also means it's full of pretty resonant stuff that's not too distracting for newer players

So what's so terrible about that? I'd say it's the fact that the first two points were for all intents and purposes ignored and not tied to the Core Set aspect at all, and the third point still applies to the parts of Shandalar that we saw in the Core Sets, but none of the elements from the comics or the computer game were used (not to mention the dangling story threads from the old lore), although they would have been equally appropriate for a Core Set. What's more, there is another major aspect of Shandalar that was... perhaps not outright contradicted, but certainly downplayed and mostly ignored: Shandalar's abundant, idiosyncratic mana and the prevalence of magic in the everyday lives of its inhabitants. Sure, there might be the occasional article or short story that mentions "abundant mana" or whatever, but it's never presented in quite the same way as in the comics. (Shout out to Eloren Wilds for referencing a place from the computer game and for being a mechanical representation of Shandalar's mana as it is in the comics, though). You can read the Shandalar comics (and most of the other old comics) here btw, although I should warn you that the art is pretty bad overall, and the story is a bit of a mess due to the lack of space:
https://archives.mtglore.com/comics/
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So, looking at all the things I just mentioned, how would I go about this? I could definitely see a kind of "mana (colour) matters" theme for Shandalar that also captures much of its Core Set feel (and yes, this would be different from Zendikar's "lands matter" theme). Here's what that could mean mechanically:

- A strong focus on mono-colour and colour matters themes. Devotion wouldn't be a good fit for Shandalar, but something like Adamant could certainly work. The mono-colour subtheme in Throne of Eldraine was probably more due to mechanical overlap with the Theros set, and neither Theros nor Eldraine have "mono-colour plane" as their primary creative or mechanical trait. I loved the ring cycle in M13 (Ring of Evos Isle and its friends) and was pretty upset that it was never reprinted in any of the later Core Sets, and I'd say something like this could be a great fit for a proper Shandalar set. Plus, there is stuff like the paragon cycle as well (Paragon of Eternal Wilds etc.), i.e. creatures that are basically Lords for their respective colour.

- While triggers like Landfall are basically Zendikar's thing, I think a Shandalar set could still care about the number of lands you control at any given time, particularly basic lands of a certain type (or care about whether or not you control a particular basic land type at all). Think Blanchwood Armor, Kelpie Guide, Flinthoof Boar etc. The latter one could be this set's version of signpost uncommons for draft, or at least allow for more elaborate and advanced strategies where you have to weigh the distribution of colours in your two-colour deck. (Doesn't mean they couldn't put any multi-coloured cards in the set, mind you).

- Effects that trigger when a land of a certain type is tapped for mana, or maybe when a certain colour of mana is produced in general. Would certainly be a flavourful representation of Shandalar's volatile and abundant mana.

- Effects that allow you to use your excess mana, e.g. Kicker or Multi-Kicker, which would admittedly have some overlap with Zendikar.

- Coloured artefacts and/or artefacts with coloured activation costs.

Cool flavourful stuff you could do:

- They could certainly establish that the five magic guilds are still around and that Alabaster Mage, Azure Mage, Crimson Mage, Jade Mage and Onyx Mage refer to those guilds. I have to admit that calling them things like "the Onyx Guild" sounds a lot less boring than just "the Black Guild". They could even make more cycles that are nods to stuff we've seen on Ravnica (Onyx Guildmage, Alabaster Signet, Azure Keyrune etc.).

- Reprint some of the Leylines (Leyline of the Void etc.) or make a new Leyline cycle. Everything that screams "abundant mana" and feels different from Zendikar is great.

- This would be a great place for more Spellshapers to represent common folk who know one or two simple spells to aid them in their profession (farmers, blacksmiths, what have you). Bonus points if they put this out in the same year as a return to Mercadia that has more Spellshapers It's probably not too late to acknowledge that aspect of Shandalar in the lore.

- Include some carefully selected reprints from (or other nods to) other planes and acknowledge they are from places that were touched by Shandalar at some point (although there is a lot of potential here to clash with the established timeline if they aren't careful, not least because Shandalar itself and several other planes like Ravnica, Ulgrotha etc. used to be isolated from the rest of the multiverse for quite some time).

From an aesthetic rather than mechanical side, when I think of Shandalar, I think it should kind of have an 80's retro-fantasy "look and feel" (think Krull or The Dark Crystal). Part of that is because, as discussed, its 'rogue plane' status makes it something of a kitchen sink. Another part is that it always felt like a 'big' world, perhaps due to the needs of a video game full of dungeons and different lands, so it kind of taps into that road trip fantasy vibe that's so prevalent in retro fantasy. There are a zillion places to go in Shandalar, and they're all basically unique even if there are some commonalities. The magic guilds are a good one, though I might want to evolve them into not-quite-secret societies, sort of color cults that could be found everywhere but don't really rule anywhere. Our best glimpses into what is now thought of as Shandalar -- Onakke Catacomb and Eloren Wilds could very much fit with that. They're loud and colorful in their own ways and interesting slices of pie to visit.

After all, Shandalar is a world that canonically has had and should continue to have quite a lot of turmoil. It's not the sort of place hegemons form and remain, it's the sort of place where countless individual settlements stand, for the moment, in sight of the ruins of ages past that most people have forgotten the meaning of, because some sort of time or catastrophy is always sweeping them away.

Just look at the plane's wiki page, a history of plane-spanning events and a laundary list of notable places. I think a proper set visit would have to evoke that kind of scope. They did it well when revisiting Dominaria, so I'm fairly sure it could be done here.

Most of all, I want to see things that don't have good explanations. Have a random nothing-special knight riding some leathery ostrich-giraffe-horse creature as its steed and never explain it. There are normal horses (and other mounts) elsewhere, but on some corner of Shandalar, at least one knight rides a whatever-that-is. A few creative designs could go a long way to making Shandalar convincing as a 'rogue' plane.

Shandalar being on surface generic fantasy but gradually revealing it's more surreal elements is appealing.

On the other hand, the fact that Shandalar was able to pass through the Shard of the Twelve Worlds would suggest that planes being isolated isn't necessarily an obstacle. In fact, Shandalar would be my preferred solution for the "How was Azor able to planeswalk out of Ravnica while it was isolated?" plothole.


Agreed, I think having lots of memorable and wondrous places would be important for this to really feel like Shandalar, and it would play into the "mana matters" theme I suggested. There are a lot of cool land cards that were originally printed in Future Sight as well as in Core Sets, Commander Decks or supplemental products like Jumpstart and Modern Horizons that I could absolutely see as locations on Shandalar. Command Beacon even has a flavour text quote by Riku of Two Reflections who we know is from Shandalar, so I guess gazing into that beacon is how he became the leader of some wizard's or planeswalker's army or something. In fact, a lot of those lands would evoke the 'wizard tower' feel and the wizard duel theme of the computer game, not least the Commander-related ones. Command Beacon, Command Tower, Opal Palace, Gargoyle Castle, Animal Sanctuary with its weird topography and the castles in the background... Sunpetal Grove and Co. would feel right at home on the plane that already has Eloren Wilds, and so would Grove of the Burnwillows and many others.


Something like that could work well, yeah. I'm not even sure how much influence they were supposed to have in the computer game. But the take on the guilds that you suggested would probably be more in line with what glimpses of modern Shandalar we've seen in the story. I'm pretty sure they are never mentioned anywhere in the modern sources, so learning that they have any kind of overt and large-scale influence would probably clash with that. Maybe the original guilds were destroyed or disbanded in the wake of... whatever the canonical ending of the computer game is supposed to be. Maybe the Onyx/Azure/etc. guilds were founded as successor organisations in the spirit of the old ones and are struggling for influence and recognition. When you think about it, the mechanical emphasis on mono-colour that I suggested would almost certainly be the result of Shandalar's abundant mana rather than the influence of the guilds. The abundant mana is probably why the guilds made sense in the first place, each colour of mana and the forms of magic that come with it could be so rich on Shandalar that a spellcaster would need a lifetime to even master a fraction of what it has to offer. That and the fact that there's more than enough mana of each colour to go around for everybody would probably eliminate the desire to dabble in additional colours in most spellcasters (although exceptions like Riku obviously exist).


Yeah, I'm really hoping they'll do a deep dive and reconsolidate all the new stuff with all the old stuff to form a cohesive whole. Getting a map with all named locations on it would be mind-blowing. Sounds like a job for Ethan... Should actually be A LOT easier to do than the Dominaria map, partly because there aren't as many sources, and partly because the names from the computer game were sprinkled on the map randomly, so everything that isn't pinned down by a specific source could be placed pretty much anywhere. There also is no full globe or any proper maps of Shandalar, so they could just design the various landmasses as needed. At least the blurb for Gor Muldrak, Amphinologist mentions Ardestan (from the comics), and the city of Lesh that was introduced on modern Shandalar is implied to be named after Leshrac, so they clearly haven't abandoned the plane's older incarnation completely.

That said, I don't think modern Shandalar is in any immediate danger of not having enough conflict and turmoil. We have, among other things, the Amphin, Talrand's conquest, the Sliver incursion (which I hope will have been handled off-screen by the time we visit Shandalar again so we won't have to put up with more Nu-Slivers), the Onakke and the Chain Veil, not to mention all the dangling plot threads from the older lore.


I think they could write a compelling short story with a premise like that, basically a jaded planeswalker arriving on Shandalar for the first time and thinking they know it all, only to be screwed over by the fickle mana or to stumble into a weird place like Sunpetal Grove (like the art on the Core Set version). "Gradually revealing" something is pretty much impossible to do in an actual card set where all the cards exist side by side, though.