With the news that half of the standard legal Magic: the Gathering sets printed in 2025 will be Universes Beyond products, Wizards of the Coast has signalled that original Magic settings and characters are going to be an ever-shrinking component of a cross-franchise toybox. While dedicated lore lovers are outraged, I think this has merely exposed a long-existing fault-line: that Magic’s success as a game has never relied on the strength of its fictional world.
I have massive sympathy for the lore-loving Vorthoses of the MtG community. When the long-awaited return to Lorwyn is bumped from the MTG release schedule in favor of another Universes Beyond set, we can see the unique being sacrificed to the profitable in real time.
Mark Rosewater’s assertion that these changes aren’t a cash-grab ring hollow. Hasbro crows about the money it makes from Universes Beyond in every set of quarterly financial results, and as a corporate entity it is fulfilling its legal purpose by doing so. It would be frankly bizarre if we didn’t get more Universes Beyond MTG sets when they make so much money.
The video ‘Magic: The Gathering and the Death of the Future’ by the ever-erudite Spice8Rack is an excellent analysis of why we get invested in fictional worlds, and why the delamination of Magic the product from Magic the setting feels so jarring. But the fact that this is possible at all speaks of a fundamental weakness in the Magic IP, and particularly, its connection to the game of Magic.
People have asked me, “What if this happened to Warhammer 40k?”, my personal obsession. But it wouldn’t, and it couldn’t. That’s not because 40k lore is “better”, whatever that might mean. There is wild stuff in the MtG deep lore that could have made it into my lifelong obsession instead of Warhammer 40k if I’d only been born in LA and not the UK.
But the connection between the 40k product and the 40k lore – and between the product and the lore in several other prominent games – is much, much tighter than the connection between Magic the game and Magic the fictional setting. Magic has never needed its lore to succeed.
Magic’s success comes from its gameplay, not its lore
To be clear: Magic needed to have some sort of lore and art and vibe to get off the ground. But it never needed to have this lore or this art or this vibe. That’s not true for every successful game. The Pokémon TCG and YuGiOh TCG are only as big as they are because thousands of gamers want to catch ‘mons and summon Exodia.
Magic: the Gathering is as big as it is because it invented the TCG genre, and was immediately the best thing in it. Rules wise, Magic is a masterwork. It’s a framework that enables modes as diverse as Dandân, Commander, Standard Draft, Canadian Highlander, and Alchemy. It’s literally a Turing-complete coding language, able to represent a startling variety of concepts and incorporate new modules with remarkably little rewriting of its core systems.
But MtG’s lore has always been profoundly optional. Gen X Magic players who bought Antiquities packs in 1994: did you pick up the Duellist lore supplement that came out in May that year? The comics that came out in ‘95? The books that eventually turned up between ‘96 and ‘99? How much about Mishra and Urza did you glean from the set itself, other than their names?
Half of every Warhammer 40k rulebook is lore, explaining why these neat miniatures look the way they do and have the rules they do. People play Warhammer 40k even when they hate the rules because they want to play with their personal army. They play with their army even when it’s being trashed in competitive play, because it’s their army.
When people get pissed off by Modern Horizons sets pushing cards out of the eternal formats, they talk about the play experience they’re losing, not how it changes the lore. How often do you see someone try and play a lore consistent deck? Have you ever seen someone try to play a lore consistent deck?
We could point to all sorts of ways that Wizards of the Coast has undermined Magic: the Gathering’s ability to tell effective stories. Tie-in novels have been abandoned, and there was a long period without even connected online fiction. Ditching three set blocks in favor of single-set visits to each plane means there is no time for cards and supporting media to establish a world, develop a story, and give us a conclusion.
So it is that in Streets of New Capenna we’re introduced to a world that, in lore, mysteriously has no angels – in the same set that those angels return to the plane, so players never experience the world without them. In March of the Machine the Phyrexians invade the multiverse in the same set that they’re defeated. Or we have weird little oddities like Murders of Karlov Manor, which puts Ravnika into a detective hat for very little discernible reason.
But you can’t claim that this neglect has hurt Magic’s growth – it has never been more popular. Sure, Murders of Karlov was widely panned and sold badly – but that wasn’t because of the crap world building. Thunder Junction had an even dumber, thinner setting, with bigger, stupider hats. It also had powerful cards and a good draft environment, and it sold brilliantly.
Playing Magic has no relation to a Magic story
I think the disconnect between the game and the setting is baked right into Magic the Gathering. What, exactly, is the relationship supposed to be between what happens in MtG lore and the actions a player takes perform when they play a game? Who are you even supposed to be?
Well, you’re a Planeswalker, one of the rare few who can travel between worlds by traversing an interdimensional non-space called the Blind Eternities – though you’ll only Planeswalk during a game if you’re playing a niche multiplayer format with a supplemental deck.
You duel another Planeswalker by casting spells and sort of summoning monsters, only it’s more like they’re magical simulacra of your memories of those monsters, due to the way the Blind Eternities work. Your deck is your library of spells – and memories, sort of? – though remember you’re a Planeswalker, not a wizard, so you may not have a literal library.
Also your power comes from the mana of the land. This is absolutely central to the gameplay, but it’s a minor background detail in most of the stories. Liliana never stops casting spells because she gets mana screwed. Oh and in game, the cards for lands are distributed randomly through your deck, which is – let’s not forget – a library.
I’m hamming it up a bit, sure, but the lore explanation of what you are supposed to be doing is deeply eldritch, deeply buried, and doesn’t bear much resemblance to anything that happens in the Magic the Gathering stories. The gameplay of Flesh and Blood is a much better representation of a Planeswalker duel than MtG is.
Compare that to the Pokémon TCG. What do you do in the Pokémon TCG? You and your opponent use your Pokémon to fight one another, just like you do in the videogames, just like the heroes do in the anime. Even collecting Pokémon cards is playing out one of the core fantasies of the IP. The YuGiOh TCG is an even closer fit to its story: it isn’t a card game about the YuGiOh anime, it’s the game they play in the YuGiOh anime.
Magic decks are toyboxes
Even beyond how nebulous and unintuitive the core fantasy of MtG is, MtG decks don’t even approach having a coherent story. Do you remember the cat oven combo, which kills your opponent by repeatedly baking an immortal cat in a witch’s oven?
What about Craterhoof Behemoth decks, in which a gaggle of elves summon a big forest beast, suddenly grow absolutely enormous, and Naruto run over all your opponents? I would eat up an animated series with that energy, but how does any of that relate to MTG lore?
When playing a game of Magic, you pull a variety of toys out of a toybox and you slap them together. It’s a lot like Disney Lorcana. Why are these Disney characters all together in the same universe? There is a lore reason, but do you honestly think anyone cares? It’s successful because it’s a solid game and a big, Disney branded toy box. Toyboxes don’t need to justify themselves: the stuff is all just in there.
Liking Magic lore is a separate hobby from playing Magic the Gathering
Engaging with Magic the Gathering’s lore and IP is a parallel hobby to playing Magic: the Gathering. The two hobbies have run in parallel for a long time because every Magic game product is connected to the Magic lore.
That has had amazing benefits: consistent attention to a unique fantasy world from a large and talented team, a massive fandom community with shared interests, and of course the simple pleasure of seeing neat things from your favorite IP show up during a game – except when all the most playable cards are from sets you don’t like, that is.
But the MTG lore fandom isn’t so large that it’s profitable for Wizards of the Coast to sell them novels. Do you really think Wizards would leave that money on the table, if it was there to take?
Maybe there’s a world where the Magic canon is a multimedia powerhouse, and Wizards is giving up on trying to create that world. But I think the Magic IP and the Magic card game are two separate creative endeavors, with fundamentally distinct goals, that have up to this point coincided.
Vorthoses of the world, you have so much love to give. Hasbro doesn’t know how to make money from your passion and it’s putting less effort into trying. Take your time mourning what you’ve lost. Then start an internet book club, find some new fantasy authors, and send them to the moon with your sheer love and attention. You may even want to play some Magic: the Gathering at the same time. I don’t think it will feel that different.
If you enjoy bleak science fantasy and want an infinite well of lore to drown in, may I suggest you check out our guide to Warhammer 40k books? Or if you want to enjoy some lore-free Magic the Gathering, our guide to the MTG Arena Codes that are still up and running will help you grab some free cards for your MTG Arena decks.
Source: Wargamer
