The planes in Magic that have had blocks (or special sets) in them are
Alara
Dominaria
Fiora (Conspiracy)
Innistrad
Kamigawa
Lorwyn / Shadowmoor
Mercadia
Mirrodin / New Phyrexia
Rabiah (Arabian Nights)
Rath
Ravinica
Tarkir
Theros
Ulgrotha (Homelands)
and Zendikar
Other planes that have popped up include:
Cridhe (lonely island plane)
Kaladesh (steampunk with thopters)
Kaldheim (it's snowy, I guess)
Kephalai (totalitarianism and bureaucracy)
Muraganda (primordial plane with dinosaurs)
Regatha (fiery plane)
Shandalar (mana-rich, high fantasy plane)
Valla (a storm-world with a lot of war)
Vryn (a plane ruled by mages)
Wildfire (land of djinns and efreets)
Others people have mentioned:
Belenon (there's basically no information)
Orignial Phyrexia (aww yeah)
Segovia (miniature plane)
I got all the information off of mtgsalvation.gamepedia.com. Several of them have basically no information available. Let me know if there are any mistakes. I'll add missing planes as they're mentioned.
Based on what the planes themselves have to offer thematically, which Magic planes do you love, and which ones annoy you?
Which would you want to see returned to, and which would you not?
Which unused planes are exciting, and which are unappealing?
What makes a plane appealing or not, and what kinds of things would you want out of new planes?
I'm just going to say it. I'm not a fan of Zendikar. I don't find the plane interesting. It was kind of okay pre-BFZ but the lack of any flavor in BFZ block pretty much killed it for me. It simply feels very bland.
On the flip side, I would really want to see Ulgrotha again but the horrendous nature of Homelands means we'll probably never see it. Lorwyn/Shadowmoor feels pretty fresh still and I'd like to see how much Alara has changed since the conflux.
If I could choose one completely unexplored plane to go to... It would probably be Belenon. The plane from Windriddle Palaces and Edge of Malacol.
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I know the end of the last Ravnica block was underwhelming, and the story was incredible levels of bad, but Ravnica is still an interesting plane with a lot of interesting potential.
Not really a Mirrodin fan, and it is nice to see the bad guys win one. Not really looking forward to Mirrodin 3.0
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"I hope to have such a death... lying in triumph atop the broken bodies of those who slew me..."
You don't call "dying to removal" if the removal is more expensive in resources than the creature. If you have to spend BG (Abrupt Decay), or W + basic land (PtE) to remove a 1G, that is not "dying to removal". Strictly speaking Goyf dies to removal, but actually your removal is dying to Goyf.
Real Phyrexia should count. The Nine Titans and Gerrard went there in Apocalypse.
It also predated Yawgmoth, and it stands to reason that it could continue on past the Apocalypse.
Then again, I'm the kind of person who really loved the original Kamigawa. They hit so many good notes with setting, flavour, and design, except that the power level was garbage and thus the set was unpopular, so Wizards treats the entire thing as failure and thus being tainted.
Also, on one final note, they need to make a block set in Segovia. Or at least give us a planeswalker from there. Because they'd be like two thirds of an inch tall (you're shrunk down when you enter the plane, but summoning the Segovian Leviathan shows us things from the plane stay tiny when leaving it). What's not to love?
I love Dominaria, despite how screwed up it is. It's not a one-note plane like many of the others are. Alara was also really fun like that. The planes had diversity, as if they actually were large enough to support multiple cultures and major ecosystems which may have had similar features, but different evolutionary paths.
Shandalar is pretty fun despite being unimaginative, though that's mostly because of my nostalgia filled memories of playing the Shandalar video game.
Lorwyn/Shadowmoor I didn't play enough, but I do like the different tone it took. Some of my favorite swamp cards are Lorwyn swamps because they have color other than black and slightly less black.
I really enjoyed Theros' aesthetics, but didn't like how the set worked. Zendikar is kinda pretentious because it's not really different from primitive fantasy setting #35438, just has a Cthulhu subtheme which is supposed to make it interesting, but didn't work with me.
Kamigawa was different enough, but the cards made me quit for a while because they put Jitte in a theme deck, so everyone always ran 4 in every deck they had. The monotony killed it for me.
I think with Shadows, Innstrad is the most interesting plane, the Ravinica setting is also amazing but the as other have said the return didn't make it work as well as the innstrad return has.
I really like the lorwyn cards its tongue in cheek feel was refreshing.
I also agree there were good things about the theros setting, most of them Phenax, actually all the gods being bastards was great but mechanically didn't work.
Alara was before I started playing but I was mesmerised by the esper cards my friends had, reading the flavour text between games at LANs.
I love New Phyrexian aesthetic, but mirridon itself is quite bland, the Phyrexians have improved it greatly... I hope we will see them again invading a new plane rather than mirridon 3.
I don't quite get Kamigawa, why is everything spirits and why are spirits monstrous twisted weird things?
I don't quite get Kamigawa, why is everything spirits and why are spirits monstrous twisted weird things?
Japanese mythology. The main hangup people tend to have with Kamigawa in that respect is it's based on historical Japanese mythology rather than pop Japanese mythology. It'd be the equivalent of "Creature - Angel" when the art shows a giant flaming wheel with a ton of eyes. Historically accurate, but doesn't quite meet audience expectations.
Kamigawa was based upon a war betweeen the Kami (gods) and the denizens of the plane, borrowing heavily from Japanese mythology. Moonfolk, fox people, Oni demons and their ogre slaves, ninjas, shinto spirits, the works. Very flavorful set with a lot of interesting art.
Unfortunately, despite having a few notably powerful cards, the block was very weak as a whole. This weakness was exacerbated because it succeeded the powerful and well received Mirrodin block. I remember when Kamigawa released, most people still just played affinity until it rotated out.
There's a lot to love about Kamigawa. The legendary theme was great, I like what they did with creature types, and the take on Japanese mythology is very cool. Unfortunately, the block has a number of problems, including its famously low power level, and the parasitic nature of its mechanics. Still, as a plane, Kamigawa is very different, and has a lot to offer.
Personally, I find all the strife and devastation inherent to a lot of the planes to be distracting. I prefer to simply visit a plane, and see all the crazy things going on, rather than always going to the places with the biggest wars, and the craziest apocalypses.
I'd love to see Segovia: I knew there was a miniature plane, but I couldn't remember what it was.
It would be cool to see something like Rabiah or Ulgrotha done in a special set.
Zendikar is kinda bleh. I don't know what it is about it. I loved playing in original Zendikar days (despite the insane power level in limited,) but I always found the plane to be uninspired. The Eldrazi totally shook things up in ROE, but when Battle for Zendikar rolled around, it wasn't long before I got tired of them. I hate to ride the BFZ hate train, but... bleh.
The planes I find the most intriguing and interesting for the imagination to explore are
(New) Phyrexia
Innistrad
Shadowmoor
Fiora
On the other hand, the ones that feel bland and uninspired:
Tarkir
Theros (feels like a cheap ripoff of greek mythology to me)
Eldrazified Zendikar, in particular the way it is in the god-awful BFZ-block
I love the flavor and lore of Tarkir, Innistrad, and Kamigawa. I'd love a return to Kamigawa, unlikely as it would be. And I'd like a return to Alara block so we can see how things turned out there. Did the nations of the shards survive, or have they blended into new ones? Like, are Akrasa and Valeron kingdoms intact, or the Arcane Sanctum and the sphinxs' rule, or the tribes of Naya?
I didn't like Zendikar lore-wise very much, or its setting. Just wild mana and elementals. The Eldrazi as MtG Lovecraft gods was a cool idea only in how alien and primordial the Eldrazi are, being shapeless beings born in the AEther before colored mana developed. Are there any other beings in the AEther, too?
I don't find Fiora very engaging. It's a nice little gimmick for the Conspiracy set, but it doesn't have a real hook beyond that. Totally meh. And while Theros was kind of fun, its Greek theme was pretty literally presented, with very few new twists or other ideas. It was pretty much just real mythology with ramped-up magic.
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UBR Sedris RG Omnath, Locus of Rage UB The Scarab God RUG Maelstrom Wanderer WU Dragonlord Ojutai
I can't believe I forgot to mention Theros, honestly. Two of my absolute favorite planeswalkers are there right now(one of them is quasi-dead, but still), the gods and their Nyx effect were cool, the aesthetic is pleasing and the devotion mechanic was great. I'd really like to see how Ajani sticking it to the man plays out. Hopefully it would mean we'd see Ajani get to be Red again.
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"Pop in, find a dragon, roast a dragon."
-Chandra Nalaar
Dominaria is where the all-powerful Planeswalkers began, yes? The best Planeswakers in my opinion are those that will never see print at the height of their power.
Dominaria is where the all-powerful Planeswalkers began, yes? The best Planeswakers in my opinion are those that will never see print at the height of their power.
In theory we could. We have oldwalkers already printed in Teferi, Temporal Archmage and Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury. It's not that they can't justify printing oldwalkers as planeswalker cards. It's just that they don't have much interest in doing so.
it was just phyrexia 2.0. except without all the evil.
what made it worse is that karn was its creator. karn. karn who was built by urza. karn who fought against the phyrexians and saw exactly how devastating they were to the multiverse over many years. karn who has urza's spark within him. urza, who fought against the phyrexians. who saw just how devastating they were to the multiverse over thousands of years. urza, who had glacian's spark within him. glacian who saw the creation of phyrexia and saw its corrupting influence from the very beginning. yeah, all of this is within karn, who creates a mechanical plane thats so much like phyrexia THAT NOW IT IS LITERALLY PHYREXIA. why would karn have ever created this mechanical paradise given all of this? it makes no ******* sense!
i also really dislike zendikar.
it was okay with the whole adventuring feel, but the hedrons felt out of place and kind of silly. then we went and literally destroyed the plane with the eldrazi, a total shift in theme. we go from adventure and high fantasy to otherworldly cosmic horror destroying the plane. it was just such a drastic shift. it was alien. it was uninteresting. it was as if the writing staff couldn't figure out how to flesh out zendikar beyond OMG ADVENTURE so they said **** it, lets destroy it.
planes i liked?
ravnica - giant city world? rudimentary tech and magic? detailed world building? while not my absolute favorite plane, its up there in the list.
innistrad - i'm a sucker for horror tropes and they did a fairly good job capturing all of that, with interesting background characters on top of that.
phyrexia (both versions) - i'm also a sucker for this trope apparently.
ulgrotha - the set was *****. just. *****. absolute *****. but the flavor? wow. the world building, the characters, all of it felt rich and deep - if it was or not is up for debate - but it felt that way.
outside of these - and dominaria - i find most of the recent planes entirely forgettable because they play so heavily into a theme or trope and not heavily enough into the flavor behind it
Alara
Dominaria
Fiora (Conspiracy)
Innistrad
Kamigawa
Lorwyn / Shadowmoor
Mercadia
Mirrodin / New Phyrexia
Rabiah (Arabian Nights)
Rath
Ravinica
Tarkir
Theros
Ulgrotha (Homelands)
and Zendikar
Other planes that have popped up include:
Cridhe (lonely island plane)
Kaladesh (steampunk with thopters)
Kaldheim (it's snowy, I guess)
Kephalai (totalitarianism and bureaucracy)
Muraganda (primordial plane with dinosaurs)
Regatha (fiery plane)
Shandalar (mana-rich, high fantasy plane)
Valla (a storm-world with a lot of war)
Vryn (a plane ruled by mages)
Wildfire (land of djinns and efreets)
Others people have mentioned:
Belenon (there's basically no information)
Orignial Phyrexia (aww yeah)
Segovia (miniature plane)
I got all the information off of mtgsalvation.gamepedia.com. Several of them have basically no information available. Let me know if there are any mistakes. I'll add missing planes as they're mentioned.
Based on what the planes themselves have to offer thematically, which Magic planes do you love, and which ones annoy you?
Which would you want to see returned to, and which would you not?
Which unused planes are exciting, and which are unappealing?
What makes a plane appealing or not, and what kinds of things would you want out of new planes?
Low-power cube enthusiast!
My 1570 card cube (no longer updated)
My 415 Peasant+ Artifact and Enchantment Cube
Ever-Expanding "Just throw it in" cube.
On the flip side, I would really want to see Ulgrotha again but the horrendous nature of Homelands means we'll probably never see it. Lorwyn/Shadowmoor feels pretty fresh still and I'd like to see how much Alara has changed since the conflux.
If I could choose one completely unexplored plane to go to... It would probably be Belenon. The plane from Windriddle Palaces and Edge of Malacol.
-Chandra Nalaar
Not really a Mirrodin fan, and it is nice to see the bad guys win one. Not really looking forward to Mirrodin 3.0
"I hope to have such a death... lying in triumph atop the broken bodies of those who slew me..."
It also predated Yawgmoth, and it stands to reason that it could continue on past the Apocalypse.
Then again, I'm the kind of person who really loved the original Kamigawa. They hit so many good notes with setting, flavour, and design, except that the power level was garbage and thus the set was unpopular, so Wizards treats the entire thing as failure and thus being tainted.
Also, on one final note, they need to make a block set in Segovia. Or at least give us a planeswalker from there. Because they'd be like two thirds of an inch tall (you're shrunk down when you enter the plane, but summoning the Segovian Leviathan shows us things from the plane stay tiny when leaving it). What's not to love?
Shandalar is pretty fun despite being unimaginative, though that's mostly because of my nostalgia filled memories of playing the Shandalar video game.
Lorwyn/Shadowmoor I didn't play enough, but I do like the different tone it took. Some of my favorite swamp cards are Lorwyn swamps because they have color other than black and slightly less black.
I really enjoyed Theros' aesthetics, but didn't like how the set worked. Zendikar is kinda pretentious because it's not really different from primitive fantasy setting #35438, just has a Cthulhu subtheme which is supposed to make it interesting, but didn't work with me.
Kamigawa was different enough, but the cards made me quit for a while because they put Jitte in a theme deck, so everyone always ran 4 in every deck they had. The monotony killed it for me.
I really like the lorwyn cards its tongue in cheek feel was refreshing.
I also agree there were good things about the theros setting, most of them Phenax, actually all the gods being bastards was great but mechanically didn't work.
Alara was before I started playing but I was mesmerised by the esper cards my friends had, reading the flavour text between games at LANs.
I love New Phyrexian aesthetic, but mirridon itself is quite bland, the Phyrexians have improved it greatly... I hope we will see them again invading a new plane rather than mirridon 3.
I don't quite get Kamigawa, why is everything spirits and why are spirits monstrous twisted weird things?
Pioneer:UR Pheonix
Modern:U Mono U Tron
EDH
GB Glissa, the traitor: Army of Cans
UW Dragonlord Ojutai: Dragonlord NOjutai
UWGDerevi, Empyrial Tactician "you cannot fight the storm"
R Zirilan of the claw. The solution to every problem is dragons
UB Etrata, the Silencer Cloning assassination
Peasant cube: Cards I own
Japanese mythology. The main hangup people tend to have with Kamigawa in that respect is it's based on historical Japanese mythology rather than pop Japanese mythology. It'd be the equivalent of "Creature - Angel" when the art shows a giant flaming wheel with a ton of eyes. Historically accurate, but doesn't quite meet audience expectations.
Unfortunately, despite having a few notably powerful cards, the block was very weak as a whole. This weakness was exacerbated because it succeeded the powerful and well received Mirrodin block. I remember when Kamigawa released, most people still just played affinity until it rotated out.
Pioneer:UR Pheonix
Modern:U Mono U Tron
EDH
GB Glissa, the traitor: Army of Cans
UW Dragonlord Ojutai: Dragonlord NOjutai
UWGDerevi, Empyrial Tactician "you cannot fight the storm"
R Zirilan of the claw. The solution to every problem is dragons
UB Etrata, the Silencer Cloning assassination
Peasant cube: Cards I own
Personally, I find all the strife and devastation inherent to a lot of the planes to be distracting. I prefer to simply visit a plane, and see all the crazy things going on, rather than always going to the places with the biggest wars, and the craziest apocalypses.
I'd love to see Segovia: I knew there was a miniature plane, but I couldn't remember what it was.
It would be cool to see something like Rabiah or Ulgrotha done in a special set.
Zendikar is kinda bleh. I don't know what it is about it. I loved playing in original Zendikar days (despite the insane power level in limited,) but I always found the plane to be uninspired. The Eldrazi totally shook things up in ROE, but when Battle for Zendikar rolled around, it wasn't long before I got tired of them. I hate to ride the BFZ hate train, but... bleh.
Low-power cube enthusiast!
My 1570 card cube (no longer updated)
My 415 Peasant+ Artifact and Enchantment Cube
Ever-Expanding "Just throw it in" cube.
(New) Phyrexia
Innistrad
Shadowmoor
Fiora
On the other hand, the ones that feel bland and uninspired:
Tarkir
Theros (feels like a cheap ripoff of greek mythology to me)
Eldrazified Zendikar, in particular the way it is in the god-awful BFZ-block
I didn't like Zendikar lore-wise very much, or its setting. Just wild mana and elementals. The Eldrazi as MtG Lovecraft gods was a cool idea only in how alien and primordial the Eldrazi are, being shapeless beings born in the AEther before colored mana developed. Are there any other beings in the AEther, too?
I don't find Fiora very engaging. It's a nice little gimmick for the Conspiracy set, but it doesn't have a real hook beyond that. Totally meh. And while Theros was kind of fun, its Greek theme was pretty literally presented, with very few new twists or other ideas. It was pretty much just real mythology with ramped-up magic.
UBR Sedris
RG Omnath, Locus of Rage
UB The Scarab God
RUG Maelstrom Wanderer
WU Dragonlord Ojutai
-Chandra Nalaar
In theory we could. We have oldwalkers already printed in Teferi, Temporal Archmage and Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury. It's not that they can't justify printing oldwalkers as planeswalker cards. It's just that they don't have much interest in doing so.
it was just phyrexia 2.0. except without all the evil.
what made it worse is that karn was its creator. karn. karn who was built by urza. karn who fought against the phyrexians and saw exactly how devastating they were to the multiverse over many years. karn who has urza's spark within him. urza, who fought against the phyrexians. who saw just how devastating they were to the multiverse over thousands of years. urza, who had glacian's spark within him. glacian who saw the creation of phyrexia and saw its corrupting influence from the very beginning. yeah, all of this is within karn, who creates a mechanical plane thats so much like phyrexia THAT NOW IT IS LITERALLY PHYREXIA. why would karn have ever created this mechanical paradise given all of this? it makes no ******* sense!
i also really dislike zendikar.
it was okay with the whole adventuring feel, but the hedrons felt out of place and kind of silly. then we went and literally destroyed the plane with the eldrazi, a total shift in theme. we go from adventure and high fantasy to otherworldly cosmic horror destroying the plane. it was just such a drastic shift. it was alien. it was uninteresting. it was as if the writing staff couldn't figure out how to flesh out zendikar beyond OMG ADVENTURE so they said **** it, lets destroy it.
planes i liked?
ravnica - giant city world? rudimentary tech and magic? detailed world building? while not my absolute favorite plane, its up there in the list.
innistrad - i'm a sucker for horror tropes and they did a fairly good job capturing all of that, with interesting background characters on top of that.
phyrexia (both versions) - i'm also a sucker for this trope apparently.
ulgrotha - the set was *****. just. *****. absolute *****. but the flavor? wow. the world building, the characters, all of it felt rich and deep - if it was or not is up for debate - but it felt that way.
outside of these - and dominaria - i find most of the recent planes entirely forgettable because they play so heavily into a theme or trope and not heavily enough into the flavor behind it