...but I'll stay.

I'll be the last pilgrim of KeeperofManyNames' promised utopia, I'll still follow the lore like my life depends on it. Duskmourn and Bloomburrow showed me that what remains is gold.

You're not alone here. Call me too old to change. Magic was a huge part of my childhood and as much as it seems determined to shake me off, an old hold is strong.

The funny thing is, Magic's lore (plot, characters, the systems side of worldbuilding, overall logic) was never very good, but Magic's aesthetic and atmosphere were great.

Jace was a boring protagonist, but Gerrard was hardly better, and who even knows who was the protagonist of the Innistrad block? The multiverse has Mary Sues pretty much baked into it's rules and Ravnica has four nature preservation guilds and two mad science guilds but no particular agriculture or construction to speak of.

But the aesthetic and feel were impeccable. Who cares about the protagonist of Innistrad block, look at how wicked cool the setting looks and feels! Who cares that Simic have no visible economic niche, look at the mutated helium blobs and vertical urban guides and twisting streets that bustle with fantasy city life! This is a very big advantage MTG had that no other big CCG had, with YGO being a clown circus and Pokemon being all cute critters all the time and HS being a cheeky self-parody.

And this is where the UB thing is hitting.

I'm still around, it's just that the most modern fare has been... Distinctly catering to tastes outside my own. As pointed out, Magic's aesthetic and atmosphere have always been it's strength. And while Bloomburrow had a good aesthetic, a LOT of modern magic hasn't.

The flip side to that is where the aesthetic might have been stronger, the story itself has repulsed me. I hated the Phyrexians resurgence top to bottom. I honestly haven't really enjoyed a set since War of the Spark.

So the announcement that UB is taking over half of all Magic is... Upsetting. But I'm upset for even different reasons, because I want Magic to be Magic but I also want it to be good. And if I have to stomach it being something from UB that I already have an interest in for it to be good, I guess I have to, because at least then I have SOMETHING that I can be excited about.

I hate the Marvel intrusion, I hate a lot of what UB is doing... But I like Final Fantasy at least. And gods know I'm dreading to see how they ruin their own settings coming up. (Neither Tarkir or Lorwyn were that strong an investment for me given their nature)

I actually really like Duskmourn's aesthetic, but it's very Not Magic and I definitely can see why people wouldn't like it (I sure wasn't sold by first spoilers). They could have done a better job of making a setting like this More Like Magic, anyway, even though I actually like this outcome.

As long as the other IPs are non-canon I don't really care about UB. I don't like we lost a non-UB set a year but hopefully that means creative can get more/long stories.

IMO Magic lore has always been the same dumb fun pulpy ride, with the worldbuilding always being the best aspects, the storyline being the weakest part and the characters overall fun. imo the only real weak plane was Thunder Junction otherwise mtg own setting imo has been really fun and really creative at time with both Bloomsburrow and Duskmourn being some of the more original stuff I've seen out of MTG.

With Duskmourne, I honestly don't see any magic at all in it. It could belong to a totally separate IP. And yet my biggest complaint about Duskmourne remains that they didn't actually do what they set out to do by making a slasher movie setting. There isn't a body count, and I would have been fine with any of the cast dying.

Thunder Junction was -75% setting and 200% aesthetic, but even though it leaned really heavy on cowboys, it at least looked like old Magic in ways I liked. Then again, my favorite setting ever was Caliman.

Bloomburrow, I liked in abstract, but didn't buy any of it. I just didn't need any of the cards.

i feel like most magic sets could be seperate IPs, it feels like the primary purpose of the multiverse setting is that they can make new settings on the fly that can mostly stand independently.

aesthetically duskmourne didn't feel more departed from mtg's high fantasy baseline than innistrad or ravnica did. some of the fourth-wall breaking was a little bit too aggressive for my liking but most of it was fine.

Agree to disagree here, imo a ton of Duskmourn uses magics own cosmology and "mtg world building tropes" it feels a lot like Magic to me.



Personally I just felt there was a lot of story of a bunch of planes tech and cultures coming together that was sideline to focus on characters and plot, both of which are the weaker parts vs the setting/world building of magics lore and didn't get enough support to showcase themselves.

We can agree to disagree.
But I simply can't get past things like Acrobatic Cheerleader or Reluctant Role Model being in the set.
Mind you, this isn't a NEW issue I have with the theme park tropes approach of modern magic design, but it's where I feel the most egregious since the aesthetic is a stark departure in comparison to older magic.
And I really do judge a LOT of weight on the feel to the aesthetic over the building per se.

Mind you, I have to reiterate that I have long been ill pleased with the likes of Innistrad as well, with the tricorn hats in particular always being a sticking point in my craw wurm



As far as the world building went, I honestly didn't give a damn. There wasn't anything that made the place feel like it existed or had any thought put into culture at all. It was a multiversal weigh station.
Arcavios is barely marginally better, and I abhor Strixhaven because it doesn't feel like a place either, it warps the entirety of the world around it and makes the setting inconsequential.
Strixhaven was everything about Tolaria done wrong to me.

I personally enjoyed Duskmourn a lot because it was a frankly creative set. Not often you see horror mansions being a multiversal threat. The technology angle was also unique in that the ancient relics are actually 80's technology. Most of the nightmares and horrors (which are the real stars of the set) are also unique and mesmerising.

I do agree a few things like that flying blazer or the baseball bat feel a bit wonky, but I think it adds to the charm

I hate to put it this way but... I kind of see both sides on Duskmourn.

On one hand, there's a lot more in the set than usual that feels like it could have come out of silver border land. Don't get me wrong, we've had odd concepts and funny names, arts, or flavor texts... basically forever. But Unwanted Remake still sounds like it belongs more with Prismatic Wardrobe than Path to Exile.

On the other hand... a lot of it's not markedly worse than the standard that was kind of set in Theros 1 of doing theme parks. You could argue Innistrad did that first but there's a degree to which I give Innistrad 1 a bit of a pass due to it coming off as pretty creative and magic-centric the first time around. I think about a card like Cursed Recording. It's an obvious reference, and it's got some of that 80's tech all over the art. But setting aside the weirdness of modern card design like colored artifacts, how much would I have flinched if Cursed Recording had been part of one of my favorite sets of all time and Magic's other set about the Great Indoors, Stronghold? Could the screens have existed on Rath? How much different would it have to have been to be acceptable in the Golden Age? I think, oddly, not that much. There's enough Phyrexian tech on Rath that has a very visceral tech feel that I think you could get "A screen". Sure they more go with big holo-projectors like on Invasion Plans but I doubt I would have flinched as a kid if Volrath had a security camera and Greven could watch it on some manner of glass, as long as it was cool and rath-looking cameras and glass. Decorate the frames around the image with some of that Giger-esque biomechanical construction you see from Rathi/Phyrexian material so they don't look EXACTLY like period televisions and you could probably bridge the concept of the art. I don't know about the name.

It wouldn't fit as-is, but on trying to pick it apart and analyze it, it's less far from the mark than I would have liked to believe.

Many of the problems we're seeing in modern in-universe sets aren't new, and they aren't so far gone as to be impossible to correct. We're suffering from the death of blocks, and the focus on settings as one-and-done theme parks. The online stories are... you know what I'll credit them as hit or miss. I love the Artifacts Cycle and Weatherlight Saga, I really do, but even then I have to concede that arc pumped out Prophecy so I can't damn an era with finite faults.

Though to me, Duskmourn's greatest sin might be that in order to evoke a genre and theme known for its gratuitous body count, it killed off nobody. Like you walk us through this much of a theme park and don't actually deliver?

Looking forward, the expansion of Universes Beyond is bad news. There's not really a good reason to think it's going to stop, or that assurances that the canon multiverse aren't expendable won't be walked back on the moment it's convenient. Maybe the folks who handle the lore for the in-universe stuff will have more time with each set now that some of the overstuffed release schedule is off their slate, but at best that gets back to three plots a year when the best stuff was typically made under blocks when there was one (three act) story in a year.

I dunno. I think I'm rambling at this point because I haven't fully processed... a lot of stuff. Unlike seemingly the rest of the magic community I was mentally checked out for Bloomburrow; I read only a couple redwall books as a kid and read them pretty late -- after I'd read LotR, the Silmarilion, and the Dune series through at least God-Emperor, not to mention Brothers' War -- so I don't have a lot of affection for the whole mouse hero forest critter vibe. And it's been rough trying to check back in to what's new.

Basically thought here, I really don't see the idea magic is out of creativity with how they did Duskmourn and and few other plane. A lot of the themes and idea might be pushing Magics boundaries but I think thats a good thing and imo has lead to some of the most creative and original stuff.

EDIT:



I found Unwanted Remake very clever and one of the best use of using a trope with magics own lore. I love how its showing the scene of Valgavoth breaking the other demons and "remaking" them from seemly more horned humanoids figures into the goat skill demons they are now.

I will agree that Acrobatic Cheerleader is very cringe and makes 0 sense unless you imagine unprompted that this card is like two centuries earlier in the timeline than the rest of the set, and I do wish that they made the technology less a copy of IRL 80s technology, the touch-tone phones and cathode ray TVs didn't need to be exactly as they were.

But the overall idea is great, the worldbuilding is kinda fire (I love the idea of ie Valgavoth having to think about stealthily restocking food and tone down the murders to keep survivor populations stable, and then omenpaths removing the need for that caution; I love the big brained and actually sensible ideology of his cult; I love random fears and the Wickerfolk and the Beasties), and the aesthetic is actually really, really, really strong (eldritch geometries! glitchy ghosts! moths in EVERY tiny detail! curling spiky maws! Ballustrade Wurm! underwater libraries! shroudstompers! occult-looking demons! eyes! cellarspawn! it's all just so good!)

Meanwhile, though, Ikoria and Kaldheim and Junction are complete pepega moments.