DesparkDespark | Art by Slawomir Maniak

Hello and welcome back to How to Be New, the series in which I, a new player, teach you, possibly also a new player, how to exist in the wider sphere of Magic players who seem to know every card by name somehow.

Even the really niche ones like Guildsworn ProwlerGuildsworn Prowler.

"Magic Isn't Magic Anymore"

This week, we're talking about how to be a new player who doesn't know Magic lore. As I've lamented in previous articles, there really is so much involved in getting into Magic. And it feels like the lore is way farther down the list than "How to create a consistent land base for my decks" and "Ok, please remind me what 'delvedelve' means for the eighth time."

But that doesn't mean that there's not a strong, tangible sense that you're not privy to Magic in the same way that others are. It feels like there's something you're standing on the surface of, and you don't dare look down for the fear of discovering exactly how far under your feet the depths really gohow far under your feet the depths really go.

This sense gets heightened when the more veteran players start complaining about how "Magic isn't Magic" anymore. These discussions often start around "hat sets," a derogatory nickname for sets with a non-fantasy theme. These sets, like Outlaws of Thunder Junction (cowboy hatcowboy hat), Murders at Karlov Manor (fedorafedora), and Aetherdrift (I was going to say "motorcycle helmet," but it seems like not a single characternot a single character is wearing a helmet, so we'll add "safety concerns" to a list of reasons people didn't exactly vibe with that set), receive much ire from veteran players.

And while some have legitimate concerns, it often boils down to one simple phrase: "It just isn't Magic.

Even more often, this gets applied to Universes Beyond sets and products. At least, it certainly does to Universes Beyond products that don't align with the complainer's specific pop culture interests and/or products that aren't very strong (I haven't heard a single bad word about the Warhammer crossover, despite the fact that it seems at least as far away from core Magic as Fallout, because those precons are loaded to the gills with ridiculously strong cards).

This chorus has grown louder and louder recently, after cards featuring Final Fantasy, Spongebob, and Sonic the Hedgehog, have all made their way into the game in the last few months. And with Spider-Man and Avatar: The Last Airbender soon on the way, it's not dying down soon.

In fact, it seems to only be getting louder, with several important voices in the community further amplifying these messages.

As a new player, it's almost felt like watching your parents argue. You don't want to ruffle the feathers of the MtG "cool kids" and risk getting exiled from your new, exciting hobby. But on the other hand, if you're anything like me, you're happy to see your old pals Sonic, Spider-Man, Aang, and Spongebob show up in your favorite card game. It brings a little spark of joy that can be harder and harder to come by nowadays.

I know this has certainly been the case with me, at least. And the one thought I kept coming back to was: "I don't understand why they're all so mad."

So I investigated.

Where Does Magic Lore Come From?

At Gen Con this year, I stayed in a house with an old friend who I knew was a Magic lifer. When we found ourselves hanging out on Wednesday night, waiting for some other friends to get in, I decided to pick his brain. We talked a little bit about the new Universes Beyond sets, and I could see in him the grating effect that the words "Universes Beyond" seem to have had on so many other longtime players.

And that same phrase "It just isn't Magic" came up. So I dug a little deeper and found out that it was clashing with the lore of the game for him. And sensing my opportunity to help fill in some of those lore gaps for myself, I asked him to tell me some lore. Wanting a tie-in where I could at least have some solid footing, I asked him about the lore of my favorite Magic character, Chandra NalaarChandra Nalaar.

He braced himself, warned me that Chandra's story, in particular, takes some twists and turns, and he dove in. And even knowing that there would be a lot, there was still so much more than I expected. And a lot of that lore even came from sources I didn't expect.

I had previously learned a decent amount about the block structure that set releases used to take, where three sets were released sequentially in order to tell a story. Even just by playing with, drafting, or opening the sets, players could follow along with a story. And these stories were some of the most legendary in Magic's history.

For example, the Invasion block tells the story of Urza gathering together some of Magic's most famous Planeswalkers to keep the Phyrexian hordes from sundering Dominaria. And it told this story not just through its cards, but also through its mechanics, releasing more multicolored cards than any set beforehand to give the player a sense of how the disparate forces aligned to those different sources of mana were coming together to fight against the invasion.

That's fantastic in-game storytelling! And that type of storytelling is certainly much more difficult in modern times since the block-structure was dissolved.

In talking with my friend, I learned that these stories wove not only through a number of sets across years, but also through tie-in novels and online short stories and other works of fiction. These things outside of the game itself were widespread and considered common knowledge by fans of the game at that time (honestly, in a way I don't think I've seen with any modern game save for League of Legends and Arcane).

I also learned that these works were often penned by different people who would put different spins on these characters, sometimes even to the point of total retcon (this is especially true for Chandra, it turned out, whose origin and sexuality were famously changed dramatically in the past much to the chagrin of the fanbase).

It felt like talking to a Star Wars fan about Star Wars. There's always another connection, another Disney Plus series, another episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars that's tangentially related to the last point of discussion. Magic's lore is a deeply interconnected web that an enormous amount of people had fully wrapped themselves in, across cards, novels, chatrooms, and whatever else they could obsess over.

And this wasn't a chore, or something done out of some sense of dread over being the outsider who doesn't know the latest lore. This was the game's appeal for those players, just as much holding up two blue mana and watching their opponent start to sweat.

Where Has the Magic Gone?

As I heard my friend talk, I realized that I had, for ever so brief of a moment, looked down. I saw the depth that I was standing above. And it wasn't a gigantic sea creature threatening to break through the ice and swallow me up. It was more akin to the titans in Disney's Hercules, sealed away with the hope that eventually they would simply be forgotten (by the way, be on the lookout for the new Hercules set coming in Summer 2027).

After that conversation, I came to two conclusions:

1. There's more Magic lore than I ever care to learn about. I have a job and a wife. There just simply isn't enough time.
2. When older players say they miss how Magic used to be, they're not missing a typical fantasy setting with knights and goblins and elves. They're missing a time when Magic told a story, and that story mattered.

It honestly made me feel a little bad, because that experience sounds amazing. But it's also somewhat incompatible with what Magic has grown into. The same set that brought me into the game (Fallout) probably turned other people off of the game altogether. And I've talked to a number of people who were brought into the game by "hat sets" like Bloomburrow and Duskmourn.

People get interested when they hear that Spongebob is coming, or that there's going to be a whole Avatar set. And the fact that Final Fantasy was the best selling Magic set in history somewhat unfortunately proves that the new ways are working in the ways that the executives at Wizards of the Coast want them to. By providing new players with entrances to Magic that are divorced from the game's intimidating history (a tactic which I think is healthy for the player base and for inclusivity of the game as a whole), they're also alienating the players for whom the game's history is tied inexorably in with their enjoyment of Magic as a whole.

And that tension can put new players into an uncomfortable position. The very things that we're enjoying about Magic are the same things that some of the community's most established players are loathing about it.

So if you're like me and sometimes feel put into that position, please remember this:

These players don't dislike these new sets because they've brought you in. Their complaints honestly have little to do with the specifics of what outside property is getting a release next month. Really what's going on is that they're mourning a game that they loved and that simply can no longer be.

That truly does suck. So give them their space and let them vent their grief. And after it feels like an appropriate amount of time has passed, ask them what delve does just one more time.

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