Last week, Magic: The Gathering head designer Mark Rosewater shared a list of things he would change about Murders at Karlov Manor, and really it would’ve made more sense to list the stuff he would have kept the same, because it boils down to basically everything.
The main problem with the MTG set, as Rosewater has previously mentioned, is “Murders at Karlov Manor focused too much on the murder mystery theme and not enough on Ravnica”. To try and provide a better balance with the benefit of hindsight, the designer explains that he would cut out a bunch of murder mystery themed mechanics.
As a result, Suspect would be gone, Cloak would never see the light of day, Cases would be modified for greater clarity, and Detective typal would be cut. That last one would be a particular godsend for those who criticized the sheer density of gumshoes in Murders at Karlov Manor. It did seem a bit weird that so many people had randomly taken up mystery solving in a city of monsters, a less than stellar police force, and murder clowns.
Rosewater also says, “I would have changed the name. No ‘Murders’ and no ‘Karlov.’”
So what would stay in the Ravnica set ‘at Manor’? Well, if we look at what’s left it seems Collect Evidence, Investigate, and Disguise would remain, though the designer says the MTG Ward effect on facedown creatures could be toned down a bit.
This does seem to leave the strongest elements of the set intact, while leaving room for “a mechanic or two, and probably a couple of cycles, that felt very Ravnica-centric,” something Mark Rosewater says the set needed.
It also leaves in place a lot of cohesion and synergies between earlier and later sets, with Disguise gelling with Duskmourn’s facedown mechanics, and Collect Evidence interacting with Descend from Lost Caverns of Ixalan and other graveyard strategies.
As a result of numerous factors, the murder mystery set was a flop, and Rosewater has called it “a bad execution of a backdrop set”. Wizards has now acknowledged that it might have been overly reliant on tropes, obvious references, and genre nods in the last few sets.
However, it’s going to be a little while before we see any course correction, as apparently feedback given in 2024 has had little effect on 2025’s slate of releases.
For more Magic: The Gathering content, check out our guides to the MTG release schedule and the best MTG Commanders.
Source: Wargamer
