Maro has committed to an average of about 50% return sets. We've just had 2 new worlds in a row. This means we're due for another return. Maro has also said that response to SoI was that we returned too soon and that "I think the earliest revisit would be at least six, seven years." (though he's notorious for answering vaguely and without a lens into the current state of design). Let's see what's available:
Dominaria: Maro has recently said its chances are slim
Rabiah: They want their own IP now
Ulgrotha: They want Innistrad to be their horror plane
Rath: Gone
Mercadia: Scored poorly (upside down mountains??)
Mirrodin: Gone
Kamigawa: Scored poorly
Ravnica: Returned 5 years ago
Lorwyn: Scored Poorly
Shadowmoor: Probably bound to Lorwyn
Alara: AVAILABLE
Zendikar: Just returned
New Phyrexia: Odds are low due to logistics
Innistrad: Just returned
Ravnica: Returned 5 years ago
Theros: Only 4 years old
Tarkir: Only 3 years old
Regatha: Doesn't count as "new" so we can't "return" there
Vryn: Doesn't count as "new" so we can't "return" there
Zendikar: Returned 2 years ago
Innistrad: Returned 2 years ago
Kaladesh: New
Amonkhet: On the way
My money is on Alara (as excited as I'd be about new phyrexia), followed by a new setting (Vryn?) and then a third Ravnica.
Thoughts, discussion?
Moved to Speculation - Wildfire393
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Here are the little self-imposed guidelines I'm working with for the multiplayer decks I've been building:
• Must be cheap. Total price tag < $100, preferably < $50. Ideally ~$30. No one card greater than about ~$6
• Format: Modern (makes getting the cards somewhat easier for the play group, and almost all my cards are Modern-legal)
• Must be relatively interesting in 1:1 games. I don't need to win against Splinter Twin, but I should be able to play duels now and then
• Avoid instant-win combos; they only serve to make me target #1, and then the deck is worse than useless because I get killed first, every time
• Must have a funny name!
We got Arkhos and Mongseng: That's Theros and Tarkir.
MaRo also said we have a higher chance of going to Dominaria than going to Vryn, so I don't think a return to Dominaria is quite as small as you might think. The issue is just finding a way to keep it identifiable to those who are interested in Old School Dominaria while giving it a more distinct identity to new players who aren't as familiar with the sprawling geography and cultures.
It's probably Atlazan, then Dominaria, if I had to take a guess.
Besides, I think Alara is going to be revisited in the guise of Amonkhet. Don't ask me why, it's just a feeling.
Not this again. Sorry, but I am going to stop you there: Amonkhet *is not* and *can not* be Alara. There is no flavor overlap between them, at all. Amonkhet is a plane based on Egypt and Pharaonic mythology. There is nothing like that at all on Alara, and there has not been a long enough time frame for Alara' culture to have changed so drastically. It's been at most ten years of ingame time line between the two settings getting visited, probably closer to five, judging from Ajani's relative age.
As for the topic at hand, I suspect our next block is going to be Atlazan, after which we are going to get a return to a plane we haven't visited for a long time. Probably either Dominaria (unlikely), Alara (much more likely), or Ravnica (also quite likely). Dominaria's main issue is a lack of coherent identity, but if they have solved that, it rises considerably in the possibility of a return, and a lot of people are clamoring for it.
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It's about time for the reserved list to die, for the sake of Vintage and Legacy (And Commander).
If they revisit Ravnica yet again, I'd feel strengthened in my belief that the game needs something new with desperation.
By the time that the set after Amonkhet has been released, it will be around six years since our last visit to Ravnica, making it a strong contender for a revisit, particularly considering that it is one of, if not the, most popular planes.
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It's about time for the reserved list to die, for the sake of Vintage and Legacy (And Commander).
I still have no idea why Maro hates on Dominaria so much. It was the OG plane. There is a reason (outside of card value) why Reserved List cards are gobbled up & the 93/94 Magic old school format is still around.
I, for one, have been aching to see a return to Dominaria.
I still have no idea why Maro hates on Dominaria so much. It was the OG plane. There is a reason (outside of card value) why Reserved List cards are gobbled up & the 93/94 Magic old school format is still around.
I, for one, have been aching to see a return to Dominaria.
He actually loves Dominaria, but he also acknowledges the problems with the plane that will need to be addressed in a return. It's flavor is all over the place (see the differences between the Terisiare, Jamuura, Sarpadia, and Otaria for example) which makes it difficult (but not impossible) to make a coherent set. Remember, they actually saved the plane at the end of Time Spiral block through the Mending.
Personally, I want Dominaria to be the "post-apocalyptic" plane. Show us how the plane is slowly getting restored to its former glory, with the people of the various continents intermingling to create a more coherent culture. It would be nice.
I still have no idea why Maro hates on Dominaria so much. It was the OG plane. There is a reason (outside of card value) why Reserved List cards are gobbled up & the 93/94 Magic old school format is still around.
I, for one, have been aching to see a return to Dominaria.
A) Card prices and formats played aren't necessarily impacted by the setting. I'd argue people are more nostalgic for the cards themselves than the setting. Save the vortos players. Reserve list cards are partially sought after because they are powerful or rare. No one is like "yeah Dominaria! Let's get some Legion packs!"
B) I don't think Mark hates Dominaria. He's just saying it's unlikely that they'll return there soon. But even then I think he has said it's a when, not an if, to returning.
I still have no idea why Maro hates on Dominaria so much. It was the OG plane. There is a reason (outside of card value) why Reserved List cards are gobbled up & the 93/94 Magic old school format is still around.
I, for one, have been aching to see a return to Dominaria.
A) Card prices and formats played aren't necessarily impacted by the setting. I'd argue people are more nostalgic for the cards themselves than the setting. Save the vortos players. Reserve list cards are partially sought after because they are powerful or rare. No one is like "yeah Dominaria! Let's get some Legion packs!"
B) I don't think Mark hates Dominaria. He's just saying it's unlikely that they'll return there soon. But even then I think he has said it's a when, not an if, to returning.
Hey, Legions is friggin' awesome. Particularly if you are a commander player or like slivers.
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It's about time for the reserved list to die, for the sake of Vintage and Legacy (And Commander).
I for one think that Dominaria made things right. Having different cultures, settings and climates on the same plane is, well, actually just what the real world has. I'm not super familiar with all the dominaria-stories and settings, because I started with MtG in 2005, when they were already hopping from plane to plane (so it's not nostalgia speaking here), but the way they did it before, seems more logical to me and gives the plane much, much more depth.
The way we have it, it feels really one-dimnesional. Amonkhet is Egyptian, Innistrad is Horror, Ravnica is City, Theros is Greek - that's it. I see no reason why Theros couldn't be a few thousand miles southern from Innistrad. Actually a plane that is all horror-trope, or all greek mythology feels a lot more gimmicky and unreal to me.
I know there was also Rath for examle, and I'm not saying by all means that we should only have a single plane. Some distinct planes make sense, like Mirrordin, a plane based on metal is too specific to be just around the next corner on the other continent or something. But I'd prefer to have multidimensional, authentic worlds, where not the whole plane looks more or less the same.
MaRo actually explained this on his blog when asked. The reason the planes are focused as they are is the same reason that in Star Wars Hoth is the Ice Planet, Coruscant is the City Planet, and Dagobah is the Swamp planet. It makes the worlds more coherent, makes writing and worldbuilding easier, and makes the worlds more engaging for a majority of the people consuming the media. Dominaria was literally all over the place. Caliman is Steam Punk with Guns, Terisiaire is Medieval Europe, Shiv is Volcanoland, Jamuura is Africa at the height of the African Renaissance before the colonial age, and Madara is Imperial China where a former emperor was a literal dragon god (in the sense that old walkers were essentially gods). We had decades of sets where the majority of the action took place on Dominaria, which is pretty friggin' stupid when the game is about people able to travel from one world to another. It wasn't until post-eight edition that we really started to explore the multiverse, and to be honest, by that time Dominaria had started to become very, very, stale.
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It's about time for the reserved list to die, for the sake of Vintage and Legacy (And Commander).
More coherent sound to me like "more facile and one-dimensional"
Why can't Innistrad be a continent instead of a plane? Or Theros? Or Shandalar? They could still do sets specific to these places, but it would open so many story-telling opportunities. Imagine some viking from Kaldheim ferry across the sea to conquer Theros, or some Takiri warlords invading Kamigawa. Sound much more authentic and appealing to me than the fatuous power ranger-story they are telling at the moment.
Why can't Hoth have a tropical beach? Why can't Tatooine have a giant Ocean? Why can't Dagobah have a wide Desert? I already answered your question in my previous post: Because it makes the worlds seem scatterbrained and incoherent, which leads to bad writing? Do we really have to talk about the abortion that was the Invasion story, where WotC literally painted themselves into a corner where the only way for the good guys to win was a literal Deus Ex Author? Because it sounds to me like you want a return to those days, and I can tell you from experience, they friggin' sucked.
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It's about time for the reserved list to die, for the sake of Vintage and Legacy (And Commander).
Personally, I want Dominaria to be the "post-apocalyptic" plane. Show us how the plane is slowly getting restored to its former glory, with the people of the various continents intermingling to create a more coherent culture. It would be nice.
I love this idea. I started playing Magic during Kamigawa block and "old" Dominaria cards always felt kind of weird to me because as a whole, they just seemed so ... random. I remember seeing the card art on Void (Invasion) and being like "???? suddenly robots? this doesn't make sense!". As someone who has never read any stories or books from the pre-mending era, there were many moments like that. What was supposed to be a relatively "realistic", interconnected world tended to feel like a bunch of independent worlds glued together.
That being said, I loved Time Spiral block. I didn't get a lot of references of course, but now that all of Dominaria had an overarching theme (story-wise and visually), the world was a lot easier to access. Returning to a recovering Dominaria with some old kingdoms/lands having made it through the chaos, some having fallen or changed entirely and some new ones rising out of the ashes would be an absolute delight.
Yes. please explain me how focussing on distinct continents instead of monotone planes? They could tell the stories just the way they are doing right now. How could the Kaladesh story not being executed the same way, when Kaladesh was a continent or even country on a multidimensional plane?
I think we have bad storytelling right now, and those stories even are set in worlds, that aren't authentic often, like Amonkhet or Theros (a whole plane with only a single living culture ... yeah, sure).
I don't know about the Invasion story in detail, maybe it was super bad, maybe not. But it can't be much worse than what we got with BFZ, that's for sure. Anyway, let's not discuss which stories were good and which not, just explain me how the world of Dominaria being various had any bad influence on the storytelling during invasion?
Reading comprehension, do you have it? In a game about visiting new planes, how immensely different settings on the same plane exciting? How does it cause people to become engaged? Have you seen the pre-eight edition sets such as Invasion or Legends? When I said they were all over the place, I wasn't speaking in hyperbole. Take the last set of the Mirage block for example, there were no cohesion in the set at all, and nearly no discernible plot to be had (We didn't get that until Tempest started and Rath & Storm was released). Then Invasion came around and it was a horrendous mess. The problem with Dominaria is a lack of cohesion. It works in the real world, because we have literally over 7000 years of history to draw from, which is something that is quite literally impossible to do in a fictional setting.
Personally, I want Dominaria to be the "post-apocalyptic" plane. Show us how the plane is slowly getting restored to its former glory, with the people of the various continents intermingling to create a more coherent culture. It would be nice.
I love this idea. I started playing Magic during Kamigawa block and "old" Dominaria cards always felt kind of weird to me because as a whole, they just seemed so ... random. I remember seeing the card art on Void (Invasion) and being like "???? suddenly robots? this doesn't make sense!". As someone who has never read any stories or books from the pre-mending era, there were many moments like that. What was supposed to be a relatively "realistic", interconnected world tended to feel like a bunch of independent worlds glued together.
That being said, I loved Time Spiral block. I didn't get a lot of references of course, but now that all of Dominaria had an overarching theme (story-wise and visually), the world was a lot easier to access. Returning to a recovering Dominaria with some old kingdoms/lands having made it through the chaos, some having fallen or changed entirely and some new ones rising out of the ashes would be an absolute delight.
Exactly my point. And yes, Time Spiral was good, because it was coherent, and it was a way for WotC to reboot Dominaria so it will end up more coherent in the future.
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It's about time for the reserved list to die, for the sake of Vintage and Legacy (And Commander).
I definitely appreciate Dominaria's diversity. I don't think a block has to encompass the entire plane by any means - I don't think any block set on Dominaria has done that. But more than any other plane, Dominaria feels like a legitimate world to me. Themed planes have their place, but having "The Horror Plane" and "The Greek Plane" and "That One Time We Went To Japan Plane" etc. makes the worlds feel very small and bland to me after a while. I'd love to have more Dominaria-like planes. Just knowing "We're dealing with one region on this plane, which has its own theme and aesthetic, and which is part of a broader, more diverse body" would be great.
Of course I'd also love just Dominaria. I loved Time Spiral, and I think with some refinement (fewer "WFT?" cards that exist as throwbacks to obscure cards from over a decade ago, for example), it can function just fine as a coherent, focused setting.
I definitely appreciate Dominaria's diversity. I don't think a block has to encompass the entire plane by any means - I don't think any block set on Dominaria has done that. But more than any other plane, Dominaria feels like a legitimate world to me. Themed planes have their place, but having "The Horror Plane" and "The Greek Plane" and "That One Time We Went To Japan Plane" etc. makes the worlds feel very small and bland to me after a while. I'd love to have more Dominaria-like planes. Just knowing "We're dealing with one region on this plane, which has its own theme and aesthetic, and which is part of a broader, more diverse body" would be great.
Of course I'd also love just Dominaria.
Except, such a visit would lack cohesion. It makes no sense for a world as diverse as Old Dominaria to not have people from other regions visit and influence whatever region we visit, which was one of the big problems of the setting. And if you put to much of it, cohesion goes out the window and the whole thing ends up a hot mess like Invasion block, and lack of it causes questions as well. At least Time Spiral allowed them to "reboot" Dominaria, getting a more coherent world at the end. Old Dominaria is gone, don't expect a revisit to be anything like the old sets.
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It's about time for the reserved list to die, for the sake of Vintage and Legacy (And Commander).
I definitely appreciate Dominaria's diversity. I don't think a block has to encompass the entire plane by any means - I don't think any block set on Dominaria has done that. But more than any other plane, Dominaria feels like a legitimate world to me. Themed planes have their place, but having "The Horror Plane" and "The Greek Plane" and "That One Time We Went To Japan Plane" etc. makes the worlds feel very small and bland to me after a while. I'd love to have more Dominaria-like planes. Just knowing "We're dealing with one region on this plane, which has its own theme and aesthetic, and which is part of a broader, more diverse body" would be great.
Of course I'd also love just Dominaria.
Except, such a visit would lack cohesion. It makes no sense for a world as diverse as Old Dominaria to not have people from other regions visit and influence whatever region we visit, which was one of the big problems of the setting. And if you put to much of it, cohesion goes out the window and the whole thing ends up a hot mess like Invasion block, and lack of it causes questions as well. At least Time Spiral allowed them to "reboot" Dominaria, getting a more coherent world at the end. Old Dominaria is gone, don't expect a revisit to be anything like the old sets.
I edited the second paragraph in this post to explicitly state what you just said; just didn't do it quick enough apparently. There's no reason a Dominaria set needs to be an incoherent, must-feature-everything set like those of olde.
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Playing UX Mana Denial until Modern gets the answers it needs.
WUBRG Humans BRW Mardu Pyromancer UW UW "Control" UR Blue Moon
Are we supposed to believe that an entire plane is just one setting?
I agree with some of your points, but I think that overall your criticism would be more fitting if we were, say, talking about a series of fantasy novels. But Magic is a card game, first and foremost. Most people experience the look and feel of a plane through the cards they play with and there is a limited amount of information you can get across through card names, artwork and flavor text. Diversity is fine, but too much diversity makes the fantasy world that's being shown seem unfocused and scattered.
However, I do think that Wizards is overdoing it a bit sometimes. Kaladesh is a good example: If you don't read the story and just look at the cards, it more or less seems like "Kaladesh" is essentially the city of Ghirapur (or the Inventor's Fair, even). Sure, other places are mentioned, but they aren't prominently featured anywhere, which makes the plane feel ridiculously small. It's more or less the same for Theros: We know about the three big cities and some other key locations, but overall the plane is lacking a sense of scale. A plane feeling small makes sense in some cases (Lorwyn/Shadowmoor being a good example - and even that seemed bigger than Kaladesh...), but it doesn't work for every setting. I think Time Spiral is the block that has handled the balance between diversity and coherence best so far. Tarkir is second ... it's not just "the mongolian plane" or "the chinese plane" but the "pan-asian plane", which makes it come across as bigger.
Edit: I also think that planes with a very tight focus have the right to exist though. Part of what makes fantasy interesting is that not every world has to be an earthlike planet with continents and thousands of different cultures.
More coherent sound to me like "more facile and one-dimensional"
Why can't Innistrad be a continent instead of a plane? Or Theros? Or Shandalar? They could still do sets specific to these places, but it would open so many story-telling opportunities. Imagine some viking from Kaldheim ferry across the sea to conquer Theros, or some Takiri warlords invading Kamigawa. Sound much more authentic and appealing to me than the fatuous power ranger-story they are telling at the moment.
If all of the planes were just continents in the same world, the whole concept of planeswalking is just dead. Given that the Planeswalkers are the face of magic, this is a terrible idea.
Maro has committed to an average of about 50% return sets. We've just had 2 new worlds in a row. This means we're due for another return. Maro has also said that response to SoI was that we returned too soon and that "I think the earliest revisit would be at least six, seven years." (though he's notorious for answering vaguely and without a lens into the current state of design)
You should notice that this "50/50 new/old plane" and the "6/7 years" philosophies were used before the 2 block/year. Since story is going faster, we can either have more new planes in a row, or have returns earlier than 6/7 years.
I definitely appreciate Dominaria's diversity. I don't think a block has to encompass the entire plane by any means - I don't think any block set on Dominaria has done that. But more than any other plane, Dominaria feels like a legitimate world to me. Themed planes have their place, but having "The Horror Plane" and "The Greek Plane" and "That One Time We Went To Japan Plane" etc. makes the worlds feel very small and bland to me after a while. I'd love to have more Dominaria-like planes. Just knowing "We're dealing with one region on this plane, which has its own theme and aesthetic, and which is part of a broader, more diverse body" would be great.
Of course I'd also love just Dominaria.
Except, such a visit would lack cohesion. It makes no sense for a world as diverse as Old Dominaria to not have people from other regions visit and influence whatever region we visit, which was one of the big problems of the setting. And if you put to much of it, cohesion goes out the window and the whole thing ends up a hot mess like Invasion block, and lack of it causes questions as well. At least Time Spiral allowed them to "reboot" Dominaria, getting a more coherent world at the end. Old Dominaria is gone, don't expect a revisit to be anything like the old sets.
I edited the second paragraph in this post to explicitly state what you just said; just didn't do it quick enough apparently. There's no reason a Dominaria set needs to be an incoherent, must-feature-everything set like those of olde.
And it is unlikely it will be after getting a "Setting Reboot" via Time Spiral and the Mending.
I completely agree with some of the posts above. That's why you will all find upvotes in your inboxes.
There is a certain monotony in the planes. One all-encompassing theme that spreads across all cards from a block, and that is tiring. In fact, I think the entire concept of planes is a bit silly.
As it stands now, planes are nothing more than a planet. There's no other worlds anywhere. Sure, I'm certain Krishnath will point out some obscure time we went to another planet on another plane, but as it is, the planes might as well be different planets. I can't really explain it better than that. I'll try a little, though.
As I always saw it, planes are akin to entire galaxies. There are a nigh-on infinite number of them and there's tons of things to see and do there. However, all we're seeing is one planet in the entire galaxy. The scope is completely off. Comparison to our own situation:
We have the Milky Way as our playground, but our focus is only on Earth. Even, galactically speaking, our next-door neighbor Mars might have an interesting story to tell. This is the problem I have. The excuse "But we're not there!" might apply to Mars, but there's no such excuse in MTG.
Are we supposed to believe that an entire plane is just one setting?
If you think the concept of planes is tiring, I am sorry to say that you may be playing the wrong game as that is this games Core Concept.
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It's about time for the reserved list to die, for the sake of Vintage and Legacy (And Commander).
Mercadia and Kamigawa are not going to happen in Standard anytime soon, if at all. Both where pretty reviled sets. Don't get me wrong, both had their good mechanics (Spellshapers for Mercadia, Bushido and Ninjitsu for Kamigawa), but overall, they were just horrendous badly made blocks. We will likely see them both in Auxiliary Products. Indeed, we have been seeing modern parts of Kamigawa show up in both Planechase 2, Commander, and recently in duel decks.
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It's about time for the reserved list to die, for the sake of Vintage and Legacy (And Commander).
Mercadia and Kamigawa are not going to happen in Standard anytime soon, if at all. Both where pretty reviled sets. Don't get me wrong, both had their good mechanics (Spellshapers for Mercadia, Bushido and Ninjitsu for Kamigawa), but overall, they were just horrendous badly made blocks. We will likely see them both in Auxiliary Products. Indeed, we have been seeing modern parts of Kamigawa show up in both Planechase 2, Commander, and recently in duel decks.
Both also were follow ups to blocks that WotC made way too strong for standard at that time (Urza to Mercadia, Mirrodin to Kamigawa). Masques and Kamigawa actually have brought not just many good mechanics, but also many many staple tournament cards that see play even today. Fun thing to know about Masques, once Urza's block rotated out, it became the backbone of many competitive decks. They are serviceable blocks that are actually good, not great, in quality in retrospection. Mercadian Masques and Kamigawa have also delivered quite a few powerful Commander decks.
"Horrendous badly made blocks" is too hyperbolic to be taken even with a grain of salt.
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Dominaria: Maro has recently said its chances are slim
Rabiah: They want their own IP now
Ulgrotha: They want Innistrad to be their horror plane
Rath: Gone
Mercadia: Scored poorly (upside down mountains??)
Mirrodin: Gone
Kamigawa: Scored poorly
Ravnica: Returned 5 years ago
Lorwyn: Scored Poorly
Shadowmoor: Probably bound to Lorwyn
Alara: AVAILABLE
Zendikar: Just returned
New Phyrexia: Odds are low due to logistics
Innistrad: Just returned
Ravnica: Returned 5 years ago
Theros: Only 4 years old
Tarkir: Only 3 years old
Regatha: Doesn't count as "new" so we can't "return" there
Vryn: Doesn't count as "new" so we can't "return" there
Zendikar: Returned 2 years ago
Innistrad: Returned 2 years ago
Kaladesh: New
Amonkhet: On the way
My money is on Alara (as excited as I'd be about new phyrexia), followed by a new setting (Vryn?) and then a third Ravnica.
Thoughts, discussion?
Moved to Speculation - Wildfire393
• Must be cheap. Total price tag < $100, preferably < $50. Ideally ~$30. No one card greater than about ~$6
• Format: Modern (makes getting the cards somewhat easier for the play group, and almost all my cards are Modern-legal)
• Must be relatively interesting in 1:1 games. I don't need to win against Splinter Twin, but I should be able to play duels now and then
• Avoid instant-win combos; they only serve to make me target #1, and then the deck is worse than useless because I get killed first, every time
• Must have a funny name!
Amonkhet, Alara, Atlaztan (sp?)
or
Amonkhet, Atlaztan, Ravnica
Custom Set
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hu9uNBSUt92PwGhvexYlwFvsh6_SJBlEEIUV3H9_XyU/edit?usp=sharing
MaRo also said we have a higher chance of going to Dominaria than going to Vryn, so I don't think a return to Dominaria is quite as small as you might think. The issue is just finding a way to keep it identifiable to those who are interested in Old School Dominaria while giving it a more distinct identity to new players who aren't as familiar with the sprawling geography and cultures.
It's probably Atlazan, then Dominaria, if I had to take a guess.
Not this again. Sorry, but I am going to stop you there: Amonkhet *is not* and *can not* be Alara. There is no flavor overlap between them, at all. Amonkhet is a plane based on Egypt and Pharaonic mythology. There is nothing like that at all on Alara, and there has not been a long enough time frame for Alara' culture to have changed so drastically. It's been at most ten years of ingame time line between the two settings getting visited, probably closer to five, judging from Ajani's relative age.
As for the topic at hand, I suspect our next block is going to be Atlazan, after which we are going to get a return to a plane we haven't visited for a long time. Probably either Dominaria (unlikely), Alara (much more likely), or Ravnica (also quite likely). Dominaria's main issue is a lack of coherent identity, but if they have solved that, it rises considerably in the possibility of a return, and a lot of people are clamoring for it.
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Numquam evolutioni obstes. Solum conculceris.
Pascite draconem, evolvite aut morimini.
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Numquam evolutioni obstes. Solum conculceris.
Pascite draconem, evolvite aut morimini.
I, for one, have been aching to see a return to Dominaria.
Decks:
EDH: :symbw::symuw::symub:Merieke Ri Berit:symbw::symuw::symub:
Archenemy EDH: Reaper king
(")(")
GONZO
Genius, fast, and long eared.
He actually loves Dominaria, but he also acknowledges the problems with the plane that will need to be addressed in a return. It's flavor is all over the place (see the differences between the Terisiare, Jamuura, Sarpadia, and Otaria for example) which makes it difficult (but not impossible) to make a coherent set. Remember, they actually saved the plane at the end of Time Spiral block through the Mending.
Personally, I want Dominaria to be the "post-apocalyptic" plane. Show us how the plane is slowly getting restored to its former glory, with the people of the various continents intermingling to create a more coherent culture. It would be nice.
Highly unlikely considering just how poorly Kamigawa did. It's pretty much relegated to Auxiliary products such as Commander and Planechase now.
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Numquam evolutioni obstes. Solum conculceris.
Pascite draconem, evolvite aut morimini.
A) Card prices and formats played aren't necessarily impacted by the setting. I'd argue people are more nostalgic for the cards themselves than the setting. Save the vortos players. Reserve list cards are partially sought after because they are powerful or rare. No one is like "yeah Dominaria! Let's get some Legion packs!"
B) I don't think Mark hates Dominaria. He's just saying it's unlikely that they'll return there soon. But even then I think he has said it's a when, not an if, to returning.
Hey, Legions is friggin' awesome. Particularly if you are a commander player or like slivers.
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Numquam evolutioni obstes. Solum conculceris.
Pascite draconem, evolvite aut morimini.
MaRo actually explained this on his blog when asked. The reason the planes are focused as they are is the same reason that in Star Wars Hoth is the Ice Planet, Coruscant is the City Planet, and Dagobah is the Swamp planet. It makes the worlds more coherent, makes writing and worldbuilding easier, and makes the worlds more engaging for a majority of the people consuming the media. Dominaria was literally all over the place. Caliman is Steam Punk with Guns, Terisiaire is Medieval Europe, Shiv is Volcanoland, Jamuura is Africa at the height of the African Renaissance before the colonial age, and Madara is Imperial China where a former emperor was a literal dragon god (in the sense that old walkers were essentially gods). We had decades of sets where the majority of the action took place on Dominaria, which is pretty friggin' stupid when the game is about people able to travel from one world to another. It wasn't until post-eight edition that we really started to explore the multiverse, and to be honest, by that time Dominaria had started to become very, very, stale.
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Numquam evolutioni obstes. Solum conculceris.
Pascite draconem, evolvite aut morimini.
Why can't Hoth have a tropical beach? Why can't Tatooine have a giant Ocean? Why can't Dagobah have a wide Desert? I already answered your question in my previous post: Because it makes the worlds seem scatterbrained and incoherent, which leads to bad writing? Do we really have to talk about the abortion that was the Invasion story, where WotC literally painted themselves into a corner where the only way for the good guys to win was a literal Deus Ex Author? Because it sounds to me like you want a return to those days, and I can tell you from experience, they friggin' sucked.
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Numquam evolutioni obstes. Solum conculceris.
Pascite draconem, evolvite aut morimini.
I love this idea. I started playing Magic during Kamigawa block and "old" Dominaria cards always felt kind of weird to me because as a whole, they just seemed so ... random. I remember seeing the card art on Void (Invasion) and being like "???? suddenly robots? this doesn't make sense!". As someone who has never read any stories or books from the pre-mending era, there were many moments like that. What was supposed to be a relatively "realistic", interconnected world tended to feel like a bunch of independent worlds glued together.
That being said, I loved Time Spiral block. I didn't get a lot of references of course, but now that all of Dominaria had an overarching theme (story-wise and visually), the world was a lot easier to access. Returning to a recovering Dominaria with some old kingdoms/lands having made it through the chaos, some having fallen or changed entirely and some new ones rising out of the ashes would be an absolute delight.
Exactly my point. And yes, Time Spiral was good, because it was coherent, and it was a way for WotC to reboot Dominaria so it will end up more coherent in the future.
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Numquam evolutioni obstes. Solum conculceris.
Pascite draconem, evolvite aut morimini.
Of course I'd also love just Dominaria. I loved Time Spiral, and I think with some refinement (fewer "WFT?" cards that exist as throwbacks to obscure cards from over a decade ago, for example), it can function just fine as a coherent, focused setting.
WUBRG Humans
BRW Mardu Pyromancer
UW UW "Control"
UR Blue Moon
Except, such a visit would lack cohesion. It makes no sense for a world as diverse as Old Dominaria to not have people from other regions visit and influence whatever region we visit, which was one of the big problems of the setting. And if you put to much of it, cohesion goes out the window and the whole thing ends up a hot mess like Invasion block, and lack of it causes questions as well. At least Time Spiral allowed them to "reboot" Dominaria, getting a more coherent world at the end. Old Dominaria is gone, don't expect a revisit to be anything like the old sets.
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Numquam evolutioni obstes. Solum conculceris.
Pascite draconem, evolvite aut morimini.
I edited the second paragraph in this post to explicitly state what you just said; just didn't do it quick enough apparently. There's no reason a Dominaria set needs to be an incoherent, must-feature-everything set like those of olde.
WUBRG Humans
BRW Mardu Pyromancer
UW UW "Control"
UR Blue Moon
I agree with some of your points, but I think that overall your criticism would be more fitting if we were, say, talking about a series of fantasy novels. But Magic is a card game, first and foremost. Most people experience the look and feel of a plane through the cards they play with and there is a limited amount of information you can get across through card names, artwork and flavor text. Diversity is fine, but too much diversity makes the fantasy world that's being shown seem unfocused and scattered.
However, I do think that Wizards is overdoing it a bit sometimes. Kaladesh is a good example: If you don't read the story and just look at the cards, it more or less seems like "Kaladesh" is essentially the city of Ghirapur (or the Inventor's Fair, even). Sure, other places are mentioned, but they aren't prominently featured anywhere, which makes the plane feel ridiculously small. It's more or less the same for Theros: We know about the three big cities and some other key locations, but overall the plane is lacking a sense of scale. A plane feeling small makes sense in some cases (Lorwyn/Shadowmoor being a good example - and even that seemed bigger than Kaladesh...), but it doesn't work for every setting. I think Time Spiral is the block that has handled the balance between diversity and coherence best so far. Tarkir is second ... it's not just "the mongolian plane" or "the chinese plane" but the "pan-asian plane", which makes it come across as bigger.
Edit: I also think that planes with a very tight focus have the right to exist though. Part of what makes fantasy interesting is that not every world has to be an earthlike planet with continents and thousands of different cultures.
If all of the planes were just continents in the same world, the whole concept of planeswalking is just dead. Given that the Planeswalkers are the face of magic, this is a terrible idea.
And it is unlikely it will be after getting a "Setting Reboot" via Time Spiral and the Mending.
If you think the concept of planes is tiring, I am sorry to say that you may be playing the wrong game as that is this games Core Concept.
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Numquam evolutioni obstes. Solum conculceris.
Pascite draconem, evolvite aut morimini.
Mercadia and Kamigawa are not going to happen in Standard anytime soon, if at all. Both where pretty reviled sets. Don't get me wrong, both had their good mechanics (Spellshapers for Mercadia, Bushido and Ninjitsu for Kamigawa), but overall, they were just horrendous badly made blocks. We will likely see them both in Auxiliary Products. Indeed, we have been seeing modern parts of Kamigawa show up in both Planechase 2, Commander, and recently in duel decks.
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Numquam evolutioni obstes. Solum conculceris.
Pascite draconem, evolvite aut morimini.
Both also were follow ups to blocks that WotC made way too strong for standard at that time (Urza to Mercadia, Mirrodin to Kamigawa). Masques and Kamigawa actually have brought not just many good mechanics, but also many many staple tournament cards that see play even today. Fun thing to know about Masques, once Urza's block rotated out, it became the backbone of many competitive decks. They are serviceable blocks that are actually good, not great, in quality in retrospection. Mercadian Masques and Kamigawa have also delivered quite a few powerful Commander decks.
"Horrendous badly made blocks" is too hyperbolic to be taken even with a grain of salt.