WotC announced a Brothers' War set today: https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/a ... 2021-08-24

We got some art for this one as well...




...and like with Dominaria United there's something about the artwork that just feels off to me, especially the second one. None of the machines in that one ring a bell, which is super alarming considering how iconic a lot of the stuff in the Antiquities set and The Brothers' War novel is. Also, what was the last time we got a set focused on telling an iconic story from the past? That's right, Core 19, aka the set that ruined all Elder Dragons forever and retconned Bolas to smithereens. Oh, and remember Magic Origins, that other set about re-telling established stories, except it didn't do that and threw everything we knew out the window instead? I'd like to point out that none of the people talking about the set in the stream mentioned the actual novel. That on its own wouldn't necessarily mean anything, but I am dreading this set, and it's entirely the Creative team's fault for destroying my faith in projects like this. I hope they just reprint the old novel and call it a day. Heck, The Brothers' War is the best Magic novel ever written, and they already paid Jeff Grubb.

What a fun idea to start off the 30th anniversary, wonder if Urza will be a planeswalker card or legendary creature.

Whelp, I had wanted a Modern Horizons or Commander Legends to be flavored around The Brother's War, but I definitely didn't expect an actual Standard set. I agree that they should reprint the book. Maybe even in hardcover

The only thing that makes me itch with this is that it's released AFTER Dominaria United...

I can sum up my thoughts on this one in an image



Pavor lists a lot of good reasons why I shouldn't trust and look forward to this. The creative team (unsure if the same one or not, the turnover is pretty intense) botched Bolas hard, and botched Origins hard. The material is old, and its unclear what connection those working now have to it. The material is old, and doesn't have the 'unproblematic' corporate vetting; Urza is not a clean hero, he's at best slightly less of a war criminal than Mishra, and I'm not sure that's something Wizards is OK with these days. The concept art seems to be kind of loose on the concept -- Yeah, that's a mechanical army but it's not distinctly Urza's army, that I would expect to look more mechanical and less mystical versions of Khador clamjacks.

But if it's done right, if we return, on the cards, to the greatest story Magic has had and do it justice? If we see good renditions of characters like Ashnod and Gix or new versions like young Urza (parallel to Mishra's current card) or old Mishra (parallel to Urza's current creature card)? If we see cards that convey the scope and length of the conflict the way the best of the ones in Antiquities did? This could be something I've wanted to see since Apocalypse, the story told in a way that's more cohesive than Antiquities. And it could bring the really great Magic story to a new generation of fans.

Permit me to just sort of ruminate in an extemporaneous fashion about these announcements for a bit.

To me, these announcements feel like something in the upper echelons of Magic is spinning its wheels. I don't know if it's corporate or if the game's health is actually in decline but we've had "chase" cards, the introduction and massive expansion of Secret Lair, a new willingness to abandon long-held "sacred cows" like the tech level (if Neon Dynasty is anything to go by), and don't even get me started on Universes Beyond nonsense... it has the look and feel of reaching for something, anything, to be a big winner. But that's not all doom and gloom: sometimes good things are discovered by being willing to think outside the box. I hated, absolutely loathed, D&D 4th edition, but now that it's dead and buried I have to admit that the experiment done with it was, in some ways, noble in purpose. If we don't question what needs to be kept and what needs to be evolved, we become a stale franchise.

All the same, I HATED 4e, and enjoy the heck out of 5th, which after the experiment of 4th really got back to the roots of the game -- with lessons learned, but back to the roots all the same. I've got a similar feeling about the Heroes of Might and Magic series: 4 was a bold experiment in reinventing the game, and it was terrible, while 5 sort of took what was learned from that failure and made something that was new and good, something that stayed true to the points that made the series good in the first place but incorporated promising developments.

And I kind of see an attempt to do that in the 2022 Lineup. You have Kamigawa and Streets, both of which are trying to take magic to new genres. Streets seems to go for noire/crime, sort of the way the NGA set Velicta did, while Kamigawa of course veers into magical cyberpunk. They both do have ties back to Magic (Elspeth and, well, Kamigawa) but they're clearly representative of the fact that when it comes to period fantasy theme parks to visit, we're running out. So, how wild and crazy can we get? How far from the core identity of Magic (Quasi-European period fantasy with a dash of magitech) can we get and still have this be accepted as Magic, not Universes Beyond. But then there's the other side, Dominaria United and Brothers' War, asking instead "How fresh can we keep things if we get back to our roots?". IIRC the "Half-life" of a M:tG player isn't actually that long. A lot of players probably weren't around for Dominaria, the vast majority weren't around for Time Spiral, and very few Old Fogeys like me were around in the Weatherlight Saga (or remember that the Saga itself is "Post-revision"). At this point, Brothers' War played absolutely straight, a sweeping tale of a generation of warfare in a fantasy world rather than a snippet of a Young Adult novel (and yes I'm aware of the irony of using 'Young Adult novel' in a derisive tone when I wrote to that very market), is something legitimately new to most Magic players, something they've never seen before. If they're smart, they KNOW that doing it faithfully is the way to please the grognards, and my thought and hope is that the same thing is the best test of something different to do than Magic has been doing lately, an alternate way to impress the crowd that's used to Eldraine and Kaldheim and Strixhaven and so on and so forth.

Also, I feel almost like blocks are creeping back with a double feature of Innistrad followed by a double feature of modernesque followed by a double feature of Dominaria.

And would you look at that, Neon Dynasty is also confirmed.

Well, I guess pessimism has kinda become my superpower when it comes to Magic

I've been thinking something along those lines as well, not least because of the "Magic's values" nonsense they used to justify Magic Origins. I mean, imagine being either such a corporate robot or such a PC nutjob that you read The Brothers' War for the first time and all you have to say about it is "BuT iT's OfFeNsIvE aNd PrObLeMaTiC!" I'm sure the company's outlook would be a much bigger problem here than that of a tiny part of the audience, though. Then again, if they could get Children of the Nameless approved in late 2018, maybe we can still have nice things every once in a while.


I could certainly see something spinning its wheels when it comes to focusing on older parts of the franchise. I don't remember exactly what was said and by whom, but it was almost like WotC's surprise at its success and popularity after the release of Dominaria was palpable. Not only was it popular with normies and new players, the impression I got was that it also did a lot to mobilise former players that had already stopped engaging with Magic and drew them back in with the setting they knew and loved. Maybe it's just wishful thinking, but the thought of some upper management guys in suits who don't have a clue about Magic looking at the numbers and being like "Wait, you mean you had access to that Domina thing this entire time? And you haven't used it for how long? Get your act together!" really amuses me. Supplemental products have done a lot of (relatively risk-free) experimentation on that front, too, and it's been really popular. Never thought I'd be sitting at my table building a Geyadrone Dihada Oathbreaker deck this year, but here we are. Then again, designing one-off cards for old characters is one thing, delivering successful stories or returning to beloved settings (without botching them) quite another. And I suppose the focus on older lore could just be a natural byproduct of WotC wanting Magic to appeal to absolutely everyone and their goldfish, which might just happen to include old nerds like us. If the latter scenario is closer to the truth than te former, I'd expect that kind of stuff to be less frequent and less faithful than if it really was more of a conscious effort to double down on that front (i.e. cheap nostalgia baiting vs an actual appreciation of old assets for their own sake). We'll see where on that spectrum it's going to fall. As far as what needs to be kept and what needs to be evolved is concerned, though, I think they've been making terrible decisions on that front for I don't even know how many years. I'd really appreciate it if we could move from that long phase of questionable experiments to something more solid again...


I mean, you'd think "We keep failing at telling new stories based on new sets, maybe we should just go back to established old stories that people already love and build new sets based on those" is a lesson they'd learn eventually. Then again, I have my doubts about them being smart when it comes to doing it faithfully. Looking at projects like Tarkir block, Magic Origins and Core 19, I couldn't believe they could be that dumb, and now I can't believe they are actually going to be that smart. The art direction in Commander Legends was a pretty mixed bag as well when it comes to faithfully representing established characters. Then again, it was pretty good in MH2, and the beauty of bracing for the worst and having low expectations is that we might be pleasantly surprised. It's hard to predict how I'm going to react to all the stuff we'll be getting next year, but to me personally, Magic is standing on pretty thin ice right now. If we return to the Brothers' War and I get the distinct feeling that I'm not the target audience for it (e.g. by treating it like they did Magic Origins), though, I'd say they're just begging me to quit Magic and never come back. Releasing "This-product-isn't-for-you" stuff all the time is one thing, but please, for the love of Gaea, don't go back to the stuff I love and that keeps me invested in Magic only to actively ruin it. That's like lighting a candle on both ends.


Apropos of nothing, here is a little self-important reminder about something in MH2 that I pointed out a while ago:
With Dominaria United showing us parts of Terisiare and the Brothers' War being set there as well, I think I might have been on to something. Think of how they introduced the new look for the Cabal on a new printing of Cabal Ritual in advance for example.


Considering how they've handled this in other sets that were, shall we say, pretending to be flashbacks to past stories, the smart money is probably on a flip-walker.

That begs another interesting question, though, namely what other planeswalkers could be in the set. Yeah, there's a chance they won't put anyone other than Urza in there, but that's not really how sets work these days because 'walkers sell packs. Maybe it's just going to be multiple Urzas that show him at different points in time from his ascension to his death, gaining additional colours along the way or something. Could go --> --> --> . Something like that has been done with Chandra, but she didn't have the luxury of moving out of mono-red.

Alternatively, here are some other potential candidates:

- Bo Levar ascended during the Sylex Blast as well, and if they are going for flip-walkers, we might see one for Captain Crucias / Bo Levar too.

- It's suggested in the Fallen Empires comics that Tev Loneglade was active as a planeswalker on Dominaria during that time and that he heard of the war while it took place. You could just give him the 'Szat' type and people would probably get that they are looking at the human form of Tevesh Szat.

- Lord Windgrace was around when the Sylex Blast turned Urborg from a lush jungle into a dismal swamp. IIRC, he already was a planeswalker back then.

- Depending on how far into the future they are willing to reach, Urza's mentor Meshuvel who's mentioned in the novel Planeswalker might also work.

- Mayyybe Taysir, but that's a bit of a stretch, and I guess it's not even entirely clear whether Arabian Nights happened before or after the Brothers' War... Putting a Taysir card into the set might also potentially overshadow Urza for being the first five-colour planeswalker.


Yeah, that's an odd choice. I suppose it's going to make sense in 2023... I could see it being one of two reasons. Either they are going to spend 2023 exploring other old stories by making new sets for them and The Brothers' War is the chronologically first of those stories. It seems kinda unlikely, however, and if it were the case, I'd be pretty disappointed they didn't start with The Thran. The other reason could be that 2023 is going to shine a spotlight on something in the current "storyline" that's going to have a connection to The Brothers' War. Which could be anything from Phyrexians to the Golgothian Sylex (which was destroyed by Jared Carthalion but has some really forced parallels to that bomb Karn wants to use against New Phyrexia)... Heck, even the Mightstone and Weakstone presumably still exist as a part of Karn. I'm honestly not sure one story element is worth making an entire flashback set, though, but maybe it's about all the story elements I just mentioned, i.e. 2023 is going to give us Karn blowing up New Phyrexia and the stones somehow being relevant to that or whatever. Maybe it'll even answer the question whether Glacian's mind/soul/spark is still in there...

You know, part of me would just laugh my ass off if they just straight up reprinted Golgothian Sylex in that set. I mean, it would be totally useless, but I think it'd be damn hilarious.

It's on the Reserved List anyway, so... You can bet they're going to print a new, functional version, though. Heck, I'd love it if the effect was the same as Urza's Ruinous Blast.

That raises the question, though, what cards from Antiquities, Urza block (and perhaps vaguely appropriate inclusions from other sets) could they reprint? I mean cards that 1.) aren't on the RL, 2.) don't violate modern design standards too much (colour pie, mentioning regeneration etc.), 3.) aren't insanely overpowered, and 4.) would actually be iconic, need a reprint, excite people or at least be playable.

Here are some ideas to choose from:

Antiquities:


I'm not going through the entire Urza block, but the relevant parts that refer to events of the Brothers' War are mostly just on green cards and artefacts from Urza's Saga. Time Spiral block might also have some worthwhile stuff to reprint...

An interesting quirk of the source material being adapted by modern Magic design is that some of the machines that have previously appeared on cards would be better represented by Vehicles or Equipment, so maybe we'll see some cool new takes on iconic cards. Other than that, I'm holding out for more Assembly-Workers, and all things considered, the odds for that probably aren't so bad.