My main problem with these later sets is that instead of feeling like magic's take on (thing), they feel more like magic characters shoved into (thing). If people like it that's cool, but I feel like the flavour I used to enjoy from this game is gone. I feel less like a wizard in a magical duel and more like a funny funko pop collector.
@@KyleTremblayTitularKtrey my point stands. That’s not very magic the gathering at all. In fact it’s a whole other ip. So anyone who also bought that but hates this set because it doesnt feel like magic the gathering is regarded.
@@damjanmuskinja9227 LOL so uh, they kinda did exactly that hahahaha Nashi has ZERO business outside of Kamigawa, and they just threw him in there I tuned right tf out if the preview stream when i saw that The lack of originality runs deep on this plane
I feel like they didn’t make the motifs their own Like brothers war and kamigawa felt like their own thing this feels like magic the gathering brought to you by Netflix
How do they make the existence of a TV "their own"? That is, without doing what they did and saying it's a portal. I agree that it feels a bit out of place, but I don't think out of place is the wrong choice. They are pushing the boundaries of what Magic can be. They are experimenting. This set may be a failure because it's so different. The fact that they are risking it means they are still trying to be innovative with the game rather than doing yet another return set or what is essentially mashing two other planes together (Bloomburrow seems like Lorwyn+Eldraine). So what if there are commercially made clothes and everyday electronics? Does every set need to take place far in the past or future? The only thing I can think of is that a TV seems mundane which is the opposite of magic, but a sundial is also mundane and people love Sundial of the Infinite.
@@theblaqknight it feels too safe if it’s supposed to be innovative for instance I liked the idea they tried in manor with the case mechanic From the art in house of horrors it appears they went more safe scary instead of leaning into the theme you get me?
@@__-nd5qi I get you. You wanted a true horror set. I can get behind that idea. I think it's unfortunately unlikely. I don't know how well true horror would sell. I'm not a market analyst, but I meet few people who are really into it. WotC also can't have too much gore on the cards to really sell how terrifying the creatures would be. The most gruesome card I can remember is the aptly named Grisly Spectacle.
@@johnpisser1983Well, "rad counters" do exist now due to the unnecessary Fallout Universes Beyond set, so part of me wouldn't surprised if they randomly popped in Standard via this set.
I'll be genuinely surprised if they don't use this as an opportunity to feature some UB side cards for ghostbusters or stranger things or the backyardigans or whatever
this is what these clowns that call themselves fans started by buying the universes beyond stuff in the first place. Now that magic is doing something like this, now its a problem. but people don't have a problem buying cards from other properties LOL
@@dmv99 UB itself isn’t a bad thing. LotR for instance is very similar to MtG and is probably the best UB product Wizards made, being on par with non UB sets. The problem is that the rest are mostly soulless cashgrabs and may not feel compatible with MtG.
they invite stuff like this. What I’m saying is this: IF people have an issue with this set because it isn’t very “mtg” but have bought UB stuff, they have no right to complain and are just stupid. The reason being is they’ve bought non-MTG like cards, but when a non-mtg like set comes from wizards now their upset.
I have to agree on the fact that a bunch of the latest sets are pretty much the definition of "tropification", with the worst offender probably being Thunder Junction. Having said that, I still have some hopes for future sets. At the end of the day, Innistrad itself was a very trope-y setting, yet they managed to create something great by virtue of fleshing it out and making it feel "alive", in a sense. Bloomburrow might be a good one, but who knows.
@@dmv99 Well, if you're asking me... I bought the 40k decks and that's it, and only because I've been collecting and playing WH40k for 20 years. I have yet to buy a single LotR card, let alone a booster, and I ain't touching the AC set with a ten foot pole for too many reasons. But the LotR set is extremely flavorful, for example. My point, and the video's (unless I got it wrong), is that it feels like whoever is in charge of the set design is giving priority to memes and jokes over fleshing out the world. Thunder Junction is, by far, the worst offender, because we're on a plane we've never visited before but full of characters from other planes that took their time to change their wardrobe because reasons, while the plane itself feels like a generic placeholder. New Capenna had flavor and lore but, at the same time, seemed a bit like "let's put a coat of fantasy over 30s Chicago". The Minecraft references in Ixalan felt out of place to me, even if I love Ixalan as a setting. And believe me when I say that I don't mind Duskmourn having sneakers and TV sets. But I want it to feel... "Alive". Like it's more than just an excuse to make cards and insert random characters from other planes and memes.
@@HarverTheSlayer a good reinforcement of what you said would be Garruk. When Garruk hopped planes in more recent sets, he still looked like a hulking grizzly of a barbarian man. Meanwhile Vivien and Kaya both adopted the outfits of the plane they went to. Like, I think it would be cool to see Ral Zarek, Saheeli, or Tezzeret in some 80's technomancer garb. They have backstory and arcs that would let us go "Yeah, ok, I get why inventors and artificers would be not only want to come here to begin with, but also really embrace the crafts as soon as they saw them" But if we instead see someone like Kiora or Angrath pop up and look like 80's nostalgia-bait I had better see some damn good reasons why more than "just to look like everyone else"
@HarverTheSlayer Did you read the Planeswalker Guide to Duskmourne? Because if you did, I'm not sure how you can say the plane isn't it's own coherent alive thing. I agree Thunder Junction dropped the ball a bit... but there are always dud sets. In 3 years, I don't think it'll stand out as that especially bad. It had some good ideas that were crowded out byan overly safe execution and some confused marketing. Original Ixalan also had that problem, and LCI pretty much fixed it. I'm hoping the same for OTJ.
when Duskmorn will come out, the next set will already be forgotten due to the All Golden Hype Spirit being sucked out from the last cards spoiled of the _next-next_ set into the first blurred photos leaked of the *next-next-next set*. Basically, 1 year lookahead spoilers and Hype raining / dilution. /sarcasm
I feel like Wotc have stopped trying to adapt concepts into mtg. Like back on Theros for example the greek myth influences were very obvious. But they weren't copied 1 to 1. The characters and gods had their own names, designs and even backstories. There were clear references but it didn't seem like Elspeth just went through a portal into actual greek mythology. Now it feels like they have a list of things that belong to whatever trope they want to adapt and instead of trying to come up with Mtg in universe equivalents of points on that list they just literally turn those points into cards. Like for example in Capenna they could have used a "Getaway Carriage" or whatever instead of Getaway Car and instead of that Traffic Light card they could have maybe had some Imp trapped in a cage forced to regulate traffic.
Fitting observation with good examples. Half the fun of mythology-inspired sets like Theros or Innistrad is finding the references and inspiration within the lore. This upcoming set feels more like an 80s movie crossover fan fiction. I actually wouldn't agree that they copied stuff 1 to 1 even in this set, but some changes are getting paper thin. It is like they tested the water with Universes Beyond. And now that players are used to "not actually Magic" Magic cards, try to push the boundaries with regular sets. I for one was a big fan of Neon Dynasty, it absolutely felt like a Magic take of the cyberpunk genre. I didn't even know some players were upset about it since it felt natural after they did steampunk so well with Kaladesh. I give them the benefit of the doubt and argue that they were trying to do something more specific; 80s pop culture inspired horror and science fiction that uses the now outdated computer tech of that decade. Fair enough. I don't even have much of a problem with the Ghostbuster-like gadgets. But of all the things, modern shoes are somehow what ticks me off the most. It's just a tad too pop culture that makes the Magic veneer break for me.
it was okay the first time wizards did this with ravnica, but the whole "the entire plane is a mansion, or desert, or school, or art deco city" routine is running really thin for me. can they not make another dominaria? can't they explore other areas of planes to tell more interwoven stories? I just feel like the opportunities for storytelling are incredibly limited when they narrow their focus to just one mansion.
As GamerGeek noted, it’s the same with Capenna. The New Capenna is the only city, and the rest of the plane is uninhabited because of a prior Phyrexian invasion. I do agree because one problem I’ve had is they call them planes. Looking at our own plane of existence, there’s millions of stars, plenty that could have planets with life. No reason Capenna couldn’t have like, 5 more planets untouched by Phyrexians...
nah, Ravnica was stupid too. And Kaladesh is basically just Ghirapur. I was introduced to it via the 'Plane Shift: Kaladesh' D&D sourcebook, which implicitly advised you to set the campaign in Ghirapur because the rest of the world wasn't built.
@@MetaKaios holy shit, really??? I guess that's what you get when you don't have competent writers: you jump from plane to plane, offering only the bare minimum in terms of world building. You could really tell when Magic's story started going downhill from the time they abolished the 3-set design they had until Tarkir.
What has always drawn me into Magic as a game is it's unique worlds, flavor, and how that translates into card design. Duskmourn seems to be pretty interesting in terms of having a unique setting, a bit silly, but a whole plane that is a haunted house is novel enough to get me, and the card designs themselves seem pretty cool as well- but the set's flavor is a travesty, it makes me want to claw my eyes out. I may be a bit hyperbolic, but the current era of top down design only manages to evoke a groan- every other card seems more on the nose than the last, prodding the player with it's mouth agape. No longer do cards tell their own story beyond a joke or piece of pop culture that could be gawked at like a wall of funko-pops. Magic isn't dying, but it's much less interested in itself and the stories it can tell.
I think the issue is that it lacks a proper style so to speak. Neon Dynasty worked visually as well as it did because the designers didn't just adapt the tropes of the genre they were working with. What they did was adapting their art-style to the genre, integrating it into the overarching visual identity MTG has (to some degree). Duskmorn on the other hand just feels like someone took screenshots from some random, forgotten, cult-favorite, low-budget horror flick from the 80ies. This can be charming and nostalgic, but the designers did honestly nothing with the setting really, which is why it feels really hollow. There is no reverse engineering done on, say, the not-TV or the gear of the characters which is normally what MTG did style-wise. It's missing some oddness, for a lack of a better term, that signals "This is a design from the larger MTG mythos". If properly translated people wouldn't mind the 80ies boots and what not, but, with how it is, it really sticks out a bit too much. This feels undercooked, like the designers needed a bit more time to give Duskmorn its own identity. P.S.: Also, is it just me, or is the plot of the plane basically just Castlevenia minus Dracula?
We at the part that Neon Kamigawa is hailed as the "right way to do it" when most of us remamber how the majority of MTG players cried and moaned when it was released. Wild.
Exactly, Neon Dynasty was a great set. Meanwhile, Thunder Junction is based on a plane we've never seen before, and that could be extremely interesting, yet it ended up just being a battle royale of people from other planes, but with cowboy hats. Even New Capenna, as cool as it looked and with its interesting setting, still felt a bit like "let's pick 20s Chicago and throw a coat of fantasy on it". Who knows, maybe these next sets are properly fleshed out, but I don't have high hopes for them (especially for Duskmourn) And yeah, now that you mention it, it IS basically Castlevania.
I'd also add that wotc may not be forgoing their original designs inspired by the source material. We may have this impression because of the cards spoiled ao far, and the flavorwise lackluster two last sets, but I kinda feel the room mechanic has potential to be very innovative. Fingers crossed!
what does the name duskmourn even have to do with campy 80's horror and analogue horror? it sounds like it should be evoking 1800's/early 1900's-era haunted house horror tropes but instead we're getting chainsaws, television sets and a cute fluffy mothman? there are so many disparate themes and motifs mixing here, what is this set's aesthetic and thematic identity?
My favorite part so far is the art on "come back wrong" with the white sneakers. Because you see, these sneakers may look like ordinary sneakers from our world. But don't be fooled because they don't work like sneakers in our world, these are special artefacts made by the Jordan gods that create portals allowing you to travel trought them. Jesus, wizards really decided to starting putting real world things like tv's and flashlights into magic, and then gaslight you into believing that it's not what it is.
I would kill to hear the person who claimed that explain in thier own words how "Cursed Recording" doesn't imply the existence of mundane recording and playback capablity on the TVs.
The problem with all this is that they didn't think logically about how a pair of sneakers comes to be. They use plastics and rubber, which need to come from smewhere.
@@lostalone9320 who says they have to be made of plastics and rubber? They could easily be made from tendons and leather. Seems like a lack of imagination on your part.
@@casteanpreswyn7528alpha was before magic had a cohesive identity or art style. So did many early sets. People complaining that this doesn't fit with the 2000s aethestics and pointing at something from 1994 isn't a valid argument
I wish that the alternative artworks could be the 80s/present day theme and style, while classic frames show art with close to the older school era of magic where there’s only up to a Ravnican-standard level of technology. Does that make sense?
yeah, I know exactly what you mean. I want a way to play cool new horror cards without elements that feel really out of place in my deck or just grate against my sense of aesthetics
My thoughts exactly. I don't mind the 80s aesthetic in a vacuum, I just don't like it being the canon look and feel of a Magic plane. If they'd given the main set cards a more appropriate aesthetic and kept the more modern-looking stuff to alternate art treatments, it would have been so much better.
The thing about the 80’s horror theme is that it’s based on films that came out 40 years ago. What I see in this set is that things like televisions, sneakers, flashlights are commercial goods that exist in our world, things that are mundane and grounded in reality. I think this clashes hard with a magical multiverse that is filled with fantastic creatures, divine power and dark magic. Neon Dynasty at least builds on well established preexisting plane and adds some technological themes with magic. The new sets are just kind of doing referential themes without doing much to ground it fantasy or do any interesting world building. Thunder Junction was the same way as it was supposedly an empty plane (although I guess the cactus people don’t count for some reason) and characters from other planes come there but the references seem to be to spaghetti western films. They want to do all this referential stuff without really doing much hard work on worldbuilding or doing anything original or meaningful. Either way they know piggies are gonna eat this slop anyways because more powerful cards are in it. They don’t have to try hard and they know it. This is why I opted out of buying new merchandise. It’s all the same stuff and I don’t want to loyal to some company that doesn’t actually care much about the products they make.
This is a refreshingly good take on the issue. I've seen entirely too many people in favour of Duskmourn take the incredibly blind stance of "Magic has always had variety, so this is perfectly in-keeping with what we've seen before!", as if the difference between a Greek hoplite and a Medieval knight is the same as the difference between those things and a dude in sneakers and a sports coat. Nice to see someone who likes the look of the set while actually understanding the complaints and concerns.
I got into Magic entirely for it's aesthetic and stuck around for it and the game's mechanics being fun. For me and many others, this change of aesthetic will in fact begin to kill the game for us. If I wanted ghostbusters and 80s tech I'd watch 80s movies, I want a fantasy card game that doesn't depict televisions and converse, or the fantasy styled story and characters being turned into a netflix team of teenagers that are ghost hunting. Magic used to feel like they took cool modern concepts and incorporated those things well into their own story, characters and settings, now it feels like they're shoving the characters into those worlds and saying "Look consumer, your favorite character is a ghost hunter with cool sci fi tech, buy our stuff!".
Innistrad is one of my favorite planes, so I was really into the idea of duskmourne, and while the horror and spooky stuff seems to be everything I wanted, I'm constantly irked by the psuedo-80s art direction they have taken in so many cards. A girl vanquishing monsters in jogging pants and a sweatband, Tyvar with a nailbat and a fanny pack, it all feels like suits chasing that stranger things popularity by cramming it all in here long after the hype has died down.
I’m truly and honest shocked at how cheap and corny this set feels. From the theme to the art direction, this is a huge miss. Why even go for this in-universe when Stranger Things exists?
My issue isn’t that it’s high tech, we went past that point back in mirrodin, I don’t think it’s a problem. My issue is, that they are completely fine with what we can identify as modern tennis shoes, but they wouldn’t give us guns in Thunder junction. Legit they’ve had cannons on dominaria for centuries but they weren’t okay with giving cowboys a boomstick?
I disagree. Actually, OTJ shouldn't have leaned into the Cowboy theme that much anyways, but at least by not giving them actual guns but sticking with magic they actually adapted the concept somewhat believably into MtG. But modern-day Tennis shoes? TVs? That's just as wrong as actual guns in MtG would be, in fact even worse.
@@lVideoWatcherl this is a fair take as the question of “when is to far to far” and I guess it really comes down to the view of magics style. I agree that modern tennis shoes are worse than having guns, but my point was more so why are they willing to compromise their branding now, rather than with what would have been a much safer choice. It feels like a double standard where wizards just cherry picks what fits the magic brand, for reasons I can’t really identify
@@lanibentz9976 I think you're wrong as in, they aren't compromising their branding only now. Yes, especially with the guns, they tried to play it safe with OTJ. But what they are doing now is emblematic to me regarding WotC's own disregard and disrespect of their very own Magic IP. They simply don't care, and the more designers and artists are hounded to output more and more cards and more and more art and more and more sets, the poorer the quality of those products will obviously be - after all, which creative can stay forcibly creative and continuously deliver an imaginative, gripping and interesting new artpiece, of which MtG sets and narratives belong in that group? Hasbro is literally burning out this game. I actually wonder whether I regret getting into paper magic and actually paying money for the game, but even just some years back it didn't look as bleak as it seems now.
it just makes sense given all of the universes beyond shit we've seen. like, yes, those aren't within the magic universe, but I still have to sit down at a table and play against them and see them on magic cards.
@@urahi830well i mean, the identity of mtg from the begggining has included: eqypt, real life japan, real life middle east, vikings, pirates, cyberpunk, steampunk, gothic horror, eldritch horror... the list goes on. There has never been a single identity, which is the whole point. Magic has always been a multiverse.
@@DarkDiamondInc Come on, man. By that logic, there's nothing at all you could introduce to MTG that would lose its identity - Vince said as much in the video. You have to know that's disingenous.
@@DarkDiamondInc wrong. there's 3 periods to magic: early magic which had no identity of its own. hence quotes by shakespeare and arabian nights, etc. golden age magic took heavy inspiration from culture and mythology but made it it's own. the best sets ever came from this era (zendikar, innistrad, mirrodin, ravnica) and current corpo magic. designed by hasbro and it's a cash grab pump and dump garbage with almost no world building.
Honestly, the kids are gonna love this "modern horror" is ancient to their FNAF creepypasta horror culture & the "mundane" of the past is awesome vintage tech to them
@@PleasantKenobiCheckout the video dead cover. It's the same exact pose. reaching out with one arm like that. I'm not doubting other things being influences but that image is basically spot on. Been collecting that stuff forever and have seen that image countless times. When I first saw this one I immediately made the comparison. You could say it jumped out of the screen at me. I'm digging the art so far for the set.
"Oo, this card looks really cool! So does this one! Hey! The Wanderer is here, neat! And this one- are those sneakers? ...Are those televisions? ...Are those 80s style headphones? ...I don't feel too good..." That's how my experience with the initial spoilers were.
@@lancejburns Lets be real here, someone going "im literally getting sick in the head from looking at the first 5 cards of a card game preview" is the definition of overreacting xD
Remember when Walking Dead was announced and we all said it was a matter of time before essentially modern day imagery was in mainline MTG products? Here we are.
Oh yes. When i think of the aesthetic of MTG, I think VHS players and wood-paneling. Is the creative barrel truly tapped? What are we even doing here, man.
The unique Magic aesthetic was the whole reason I even got into this game. I don't want a modern vibe, even if they're using the "but the TV isn't a TV!" cop out here.
RnD: What if we made a pleasant meadow set and a spooky woods set? Executive: is stranger things still popular? How about the goonies? Poltergeist? Fuck it just go with vague all encompassing “modern horror adventure” theming. Maybe we can sell the mice to furries.
If it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck... its a duck. The artist can tell me that that TV/Flashlight/Hockey armor is in fact " *insert excuse here* " but it simply looks like a TV/Flashlight/Hockey armor and thus will always feel like that regardless of what someone says. In other words, the explanaition is bullshidd
If you look at a majority of movies and TV shows in the last 5 years you'll notice that very few are original ideas. They are predominantly sequels, prequels, or remakes. It's as if truly innovative creativity is becoming more rare. Especially with MTGs ridiculous release schedule it's no wonder we seem to be recycling existing tropes and shoving MTG into them rather than designing an original MTG plane using the trope as inspiration at most.
@@beerman2000 Yep, can't believe more people don't get this feeling of apathy (playing contemporary Magic literally feels like watching an endless less than mediocre blockbuster movie) and are still willing to hype up and consume this when there isn't any form of genuinity left in this product. And there is never going to be another original set for as long as the main buyerbase doesn't acknowledge this.
I dunno, the Abhorrent Oculus feels like a reference to the Eye of Cthulhu from terraria, even looks like the humans in art are gearing up for a boss fight
@@dmv99 love how much you are defending WOTC in multiple posts. But you don't seem to understand where people are coming from so allow me to educate you a little. Football shoulder pads are more immersion breaking than something (people, items, locations) from WH40K or LOTR. Football doesn't exist in any fantasy realm. Meanwhile humanoid robots and hobbits do. That's it. It's that simple. Hopefully you understand.
Duskmourn to me looks like what we got in Fallout in terms of looks. And while I get the idea of saying "Oh it's not a TV, yadi yadi yada", it just doesn't work. You show that art to any person with no knowledge of magic, they will be like "Oh, it's a ghost coming outside of a tv". Same with the torchlight, the chainsaw and the night googles. Saying "oh they are not what they seem" and not putting anything that can really hint at it on the art feels jarring to me. I'm sure it will have great cards mechanically and some arts will be awesome, but I'm also sure they could have made it fit better with the overall feel and look of magic.
Glad I made you laugh. What's your point? That magic doesn't have an overall feel to it? That there is no cohesion between the different planes and in-universe sets?
The dissonance in my commander deck when everything else is fantastical and then one card has trainers means I won't put it in the deck. That's the same for every universes beyond, if there's a strong dissonance with the rest of the deck, then it won't go in. But if the art blends in with the rest of flavour of the deck it will go in. That is one of the biggest issues I have with the Doctor Who cards, even though generally speaking I liked the set, pretty much every card doesn't fit in with my current decks. I was looking at the Titanic vehicle card for Edward Kenway, but a flying space ship is pretty jarring for a pirate on a sail ship
@@TheEvolver311 it would entirely depend on the setting. 40k has monsters and space ships. A pirate story where the technology involves sail ships, generally speaking, and correct me if I'm wrong, doesn't tend to have space ships. But they can have flying monsters. Genre mashing is a thing, but not the default
@cjb3527 I don't see how an engineer building a thing would be nearly as astonishing as animating lifeless and I guess functionless without Mystical animation Artifacts.
I don’t have a problem with mixing science-fantasy into the regular fantasy, or adding modern technology to a plane. The issue is that it doesn’t just look modern, it also looks mundane and familiar, in a way that is jarring compared to the rest of magic. Neon Dynasty is based on the aesthetic of a crazy cyberpunk future. Kaladesh is all filigree and steampunk inspired by old indian and Persian aesthetics. Duskmorn just has an old looking TV that I might find in someone’s garage. It’s like they were so concerned people wouldn’t get the pop-culture references they were making that they chose to abandon any attempt at being subtle. I wish they would understand that it’s possible to draw inspiration from something without simply transplanting it directly into magic unaltered. Like, Lorwyn is *inspired* by fairy tales and Celtic mythology, but it stands as it’s own thing. I feel like over time, magic sets have become more and more…referential? Compare Lorwyn with Eldraine, which was a lot less subtle in its references and inspiration. Eldraine was fine, don’t get me wrong, but it was part of the same larger pattern that got us to this point.
I dont really get the idea that magic is supposed to be like Medieval Times the card game. I dont see why the game cant go to a plane where the setting is much closer to a modern era rather than the 1300's. If the whole story is based on the audience following these dimension travelling beings around, theres no reason why they cant go to dimensions that resemble our own. Magic left Dominaria a very long time ago.
My issue is this feeling like a cash in on the 80s retro craze retrofitted into a mtg universe. Pun unintended. Much remains to be seen of the set though.
I unironically think that it should stay medieval. It's about elves and dragons and dwarves and orcs and mages, why the fuck is there a card with a TV on it? They're ruining the game
@@HankusTheTankus333In my opinion It shouldn't, it's already had plenty of sets like that. So many fantasy things just stick to one trope/genre, it is refreshing for it to do different stuff.
As Clint Eastwood once said “don’t piss on my back and tell me it’s raining”. Magic’s once rich themes and visual motifs have become whatever generic trope that can sell.
Just finished reading planeswalker’s guide to duskmorn. I love how they’ve basically built an entire ecology into the House from house of leaves. The writing behind the concept is solid. Just wish it showed in the cards more. Anyone reading this should check it out.
As someone else said, if you need an entire other thing to understand the original thing, that original thing isn't designed too well. So no, I am not going to check it out. Not buying that set either. Because I want WotC to do better and the most effective way to do so is by not giving their sites traction and not buying the product. Because WotC is a subsidiary of Hasbro and money talks.
@@ThorsShadow I mean, what do you want? Entire world building novels on the cards? In-depth character development on a removal spell? Its impossible for a card game to tell its whole story on the cards, they need some other medium to help out. Even digital CG's like Hearthstone or Shadowverse need their visual novel style solo modes to tell compelling stories.
@@ich3730 Of course. I fully get what you mean. As a good example, just look at OG Kamigawa and OG Ravnica. We had books for those blocks. But they were more expanding everything, telling you a character's background or where they come from etc. They were also just good fantasy novels. They weren't needed to understand why a card exists or why a certain setting exists. Because the cards were made in such a way that it was clear. WotC were masters at telling stories through their cards and they kinda lost that a bit over the last few years imo.
When I was able to fully grasp the idea of the Multiverse many years ago, I thought to myself there must also be planes that are futuristic relative to the usual MTG settings. I was just waiting for planes with these (futuristic) themes.
Love MTG, played it since Odyssey, haven't bought any new stuff since OG Eldraine (some of the new Ixalan singles too) . It's not a problem though. The game has enough cards for me that I associate with it so I really don't have to engage with any of the sets since I stopped buying new releases. By the looks of it I won't start any time soon. Maybe the core set thingy. If the price is not crazy. If you love this stuff, by all means buy it and support the design team that did it. For the curmudgeon-y among us, my last comment will do.... ____ As someone that plays and collects since 2000, I never found another MTG story to be as immersive as the Weatherlight saga or sets like Odyssey (Novels were a thing then, a good thing...). Man, how I liked some of the characters... Tsabo, Gerrard, Seton, Kamahl, Urza, Ertai, Belbe, Yawgmoth, Sissay - It was an exciting, immersive fantasy setting that could offer the best strategic framework for a card game - ever! However these days it seems to be just that, a strategic gameplay framework where you can put anyhting in. Mechanics are for rent and the story went bankrupt. Apart from the cool Ixalan set, a lot of them seem like some hearthstone style gimmick. (Streets of new capenna - mean streets of Gadgetzan (almost the same set symbol), Murder at Karlov Manor - Murder at Castle Nathria (lol!), Showdown in the Badlands - Outlaws of thunder junction etc). It's "MTG meets the".... yeah, I dislike that. I dislike it a lot. Came to magic to meet magic. Stuff like that is cheap tricks in comparison. I get it, everything in MTG is inspired by something else, from folk tales to complex mythologies. I'm fine with inspiration, less fine the harder design leans in on it, and fully disinterested when there is no line between that which inspires and that which shows up on the card. If someone enjoys it and engages with it...power to them, I love them for it. Doesn't have to be me. Won't be me.
Don't slander capenna wtf. There is no comparison in the art, flavor, power and mechanics of capenna to hearthstone, wtf. Just because you are an art history ignorant doesn't mean you can have the ability to criticize capenna flavor
I've been playing since 1995 and the story back then was garbo. I was totally disappointed with the story of Urza the guy we've built up to be our protagonist in the flavor text was just a magical eugenics enthusiast
@@TheEvolver311Urza being an asshole eugenics enthusiast is sort of the point (and was definitely already in the flavor text, if cards like Urza’s Incubator is anything to go by). He was always an amoral person at best, his decisions were always profoundly flawed and callous. I felt like part of the cool thing that Urza’s story did is not simply making him the heroic savior of Dominaria, but making him a hero in the ancient, classical sense: a larger than life, full of hubris, murderous and doomed, and not actually a good person at all. Literally everyone he meets he either gets killed or he eventually causes them to hate him. He’s not the true good guy of the story; he’s a complete subversion of the trope of the wise old mentor or father figure. He alienates everyone who ever cared about him, turned his back on every chance he had to grow as a human being, and learns virtually nothing from his long list of mistakes, misdeeds, and catastrophes. By the end of the story, he has made himself into a mirror of Yawgmoth, to the point that in the novels Yawgmoth is able to corrupt him. Gerrard was a hero. Sisay was a hero. Hannah, Tanagharth and even Squee were heroes. Urza was a greek god, manipulating mortals as he saw fit, his help nearly as dangerous as his enmity, aiding and hindering according to his own personal plans, and never actually thinking of those around him as people instead of pieces on a board.
I'm pretty much fine with the "tech Level" since the story of the set is that the characters are traveling there from (modern) Kamigawa. So going from rodded-out mech racers and global wi-fi to CRT television sets is fine. Works a whole lot better than "Ravnica in a cowboy hat" or "Ravnica in a fedora and trenchcoat" and "Ravnica, but it's endgame"
MTG already has distinctive magic tech style for Ravnica, Kaladesh, Kamigawa and even Urza stuff. They literally could have drawn on any of those instead of using a rl aesthetic. The art from this set is great, but please don’t ruin it by giving the otherworldly horrors fidget spinners and having them do tic tok dances.
And a sort of reverse slippery-slope, you are not allowed to complain now if you didn't complain when 'X'-set happened and if you did why didn't you also complain when 'Y' happened
I liked what magic was for the vast majority of its life. I just wish the people making the game had even the slightest appreciation for that instead of a weird and thinly veiled contempt.
I get how something might feel like a departure from the general feel that Magic has established over the years but at the same time canonically it's a multiverse where literally everything is possible. Technically most of the different planes' inhabitants aren't even aware that other universes exist, so for them everything outside of their plane must feel equally alien. For example I don't see how sneakers and TV's should feel more bizarre to a person from Tarkir or Innistrad than a powerstone powered construct or an anthropomorphic talking mouse. I get how Neon Dynasty's mechs might feel like as much of an impossible fantasy to someone on Ixalan as they do to us here but at the same time Ixalan feels like an impossible fantasy to us and I'm sure that technically speaking, our world exists in Magic's multiverse so it would probably feel really strange to some of the inhabitants of other planes.
Cursed Recording is a huge nod to Ring, where a cursed recording ended up with the death (20 dmg in standard) within 7 (time counters) days of watching it.
The problem is that there's no "modern horror" genre You have slasher flicks, possession/ghost flicks, and then gorehound stuff. After that, you get "psychological horror/thriller" which is literally everything else, and where a lot of cinema from the past couple decades has been Babadook, Funny Games, A Quiet Place, Hereditary, It Follows, etc etc
We've had weird little tech things since the early days of magic. Then in recent eras Kaladesh gave us electricity (sorry, sorry 'energy') and airships and other vehicles. The return to Kamigawa gave us cyberpunk. This really isn't 'jumping the shark' as, if 'not being pure fantasy' is the issue, the shark has been jumped so long ago that it isn't even in the rearview mirror anymore.
There's a difference between "magical technology unique to a fantasy setting" and "this is just 1980s US suburbia on a magic card". Are we gonna get "Magical Ronald Reagan" or nah?
@dac314 but that is magic. It's making anything into magic. It's making ny into magic by converting it new capenna. It's making 80s movies in brothers wars. Think of magic as anime, the genre, and each set as a an individual anjme like naruto or dragon ball. What makes magic so amazing is that it has a creative team that can make reality and reduce it to a game that works. Capenna, kamigawa, MoM, Lotr, they can make everything become a Magic card and we should evaluate them on how good they make it fit, rather than limit whay Magic can actually accomplish.
@STS-qi1qy but it on honest I'm fucking tired of seeing angels knights and glass windows and having people lose their minds. Like its so passe, derivative or unoriginal yet so many magic players expect me to lose my mind on the same concept over and over again. People forget that OG Ravnica was literally evoking real eastern Europe.
This is me being a grumbling curmudgeon but I am not a fan of ripping card names straight from TvTropes, and I am big TvTropes fan. I want there be little bit more innuendo.
I was really looking forward to getting some classic creepy horror tropes, going back to some of the gross/scary looking things of Magic's past. Instead, I got the Ghostbusters on a Goosebumps cover. Make Magic creepy again!
I think the whole thing is trying to touch on the Campy Horror troupes so by virtue it will be referential and ‘slapstick’; It’s the reason Terrifier is so well received, because it indulges in the intrinsic comedy of slashers
@vince do you think settings like duskmourn would have benefited from a two set structure instead of a one and done? Also the explanation about the tv sounds cool, but if it doesn’t explain that on the card, either with text or through art direction, then is anyone who didn’t know that going to think it’s anything other than a tv?
Its a TV. Don't let them gaslight you into that is not. Cursed Recording is playing ON WHAT? On teleports? Teleport that can play recording is a Televisor. The designer that said it can eat glass from my "teleport" on which I read lesbian Nissa and Chandra fanfics.
Tbh, Magic did evolve, yes however, Im really looking forward to this set! Yes there are 80th vibes however, in the art there is much more than the few mundane items. Further I hope the set will really dive into the horror aspect, where actual almost real life items transport the vibe better for the younger audience which grew up with modern horror films.
What younger audience? I've yet to see another gen Z at an local event and none of my friends even want to touch MTG Arena or a booster pack because of the atrocious image WOTC has put on their product. And the more they push these corny themes the more likely I'm going to drop this "🤓" ahh hobby as well. Current MTG just doesn't have that spell slinging swagger that pulled me in when I was younger.
"modern horror" - full of 70s & 80s references. Coolio. Totally Modern. I guess they meant to say horror is coming into Modern, and they don't mean Nadu.
@@fearghaill9738 someone got triggered by a comment with 12 likes lmao point being i think he should criticize the design choices here because they're bad.
For me, it's mostly mechanics and the emotional rollercoaster you get from a game of edh. I do really like a coherent aesthetic, and vibe and it does seem a card like come back wrong would feel out of place in my sauron lidless eye deck because of the art even though it fits perfectly mechanically and emotionally. Mixed feelings for sure
I hate Kamigawa neon dynasty because I was one of the people who always filled out that I wanted to return to kamigawa in the player surveys they sent out and what I got was nothing like what I wanted to return to kamigawa for.
I really think the art for Doomsday Excruciator is perfect (it's regular art, not the action frame one). The demon looks imposing and all, but I love the callback to the 'Doomsday Orbs' from a25. 5 on the a25 card art for the 5 cards, 6 on Excruciator for the six cards. The mirror of the eyes and the orbs on the demon also makes me happy. The mana cost being double doomsday feels thematic and it really evokes the feeling of MTG's 'Doomsday' both mechanically, thematically and referentially. I love it.
I’m fine with a Magic set that has modern tech, but I don’t like how scattered the horror theming is in Duskmourn. It seems to be trying to do ghostbusters, zombie apocalypse, eldritch, aliens, and ghost possession at the same time. I was excited for it when I thought it was just eldritch horror, but I’m worried the set will seem disjointed trying to reference this many things. It’d be like if Murders at Karlov Manor was themed after every kind of mystery story instead of just murder mysteries
Perfect way of putting it! Looking at the Planeswalker's Guide for this and the setting is just perfect for the surreal side of eldritch horror (as opposed to the body horror or cosmic horror associated with the Eldrazi)
I just like the spellpunk aethetic that most other scifi-ish sets have, like how a lot of stuff was powered by halo in new capenna duskmourn on the other hand doesn't look magical we're just being told its magical, i kinda like some of the tv stuff because having the ghosts pushing their way through looks neat but its a bit jarring to just see a chainsaw, i didn't have a problem with thunder junctions guns because it looked fantastical and was still basically a gun
Surprisingly we already have chainsaws in magic, just not a card called chainsaw. There is a draft chaff common from new capena who is weilding a chainsaw.
It's absolutely wild that the only two announced Magic sets THIS YEAR that feels like Magic is Ixalan and Bloomburrow. This whole set just makes me roll my eyes aesthetically speaking, it's just the most surface level lip service to certain tropes and that's it. Can't wait for the inevitable Back to the Future secret lair or Chandra wearing Ray-bans or something like that. Ugh.
The worst fears of Magic setting purists could not have produced something this jarring. Slippery slope isn't even a fallacy anymore, we are careening down the mountain.
One of my favorite stories, back when I used to read them, was the story for the original Gitrog. That story really is a great example of that hopeless horror that I love to see in MTG, where the good guys don't always win, and sometimes they even become horribly twisted and turn on the things they held most dear. It was a great story, and really put that card into great perspective. Since, somehow, Thalia just teamed up with this cosmic horror of a beast and turned it into almost a joke for me. Its hard to look at something that could turn somebody mad with just a look the same way when somebody has used it as their mount.
It makes sense from a lore perspective. If you have infinite realities/planes of existence it would be silly to expect every reality to be medieval euro-centric fantasy world, especially if canonically WE the players are planeswalkers ourselves. Why can’t there be a sci-fi setting or modern fantasy setting? It can still fantasy.
i dont take the criticism of scifi in mtg seriously after people enjoyed the f out of kamigawa. like we skipped draft of new capenna just to keep drafting neon kamigawa. just close your eyes and let the set wash over you
Why does it look like a TV outside of the art director wanting to make a reference. What benefits in lore is there that the portals are 4:3 aspect ratio? It just feels like member berry's the magic set. Member Evil Dead? Member Ghost Busters?
I feel like Kamigawa pretty definitively proves that not all planes are on the same timeline, though. It's not that it has tech that makes it a justification. It's that it introduces disparity in time between planes. Regardless of what anyone says, there are 1200 years in between old Kamigawa and new. So that means the entirety of their history, including a period at roughly or technological level, is implicit. (And in fact, somewhat explicit if you read about the Saiba Futurists.) All this does is establish that tech levels like ours are implicitly canon. Whether it was depicted was just a matter of time. (And personally, I think the excuse about the TV was cheap. They should have just bit the bullet.)
I feel like Duskmourne is partially meant to give people who bought the walking Dead, Stranger Things, and Evil Dead secret layers cards that wouldn't feel out of place
And thus Magic turned into a meme set, each set its own meme: the fedora detective gang, the cowboy hat set, the animal set (still hoping for Bloomburrow to be more than cute vs bad animals), now the ghost busters/evil dead set.
I was hoping for a return to the loose threads of the Homelands story, but nope. Instead, we get cowboys, furries, and faux-80s pop-culture slop. Just… ephemeral, generic garbage rolled out for the undiscerning masses to consume.
well you see, its not a tv...its a 'maaaaagiicc' tv that totally doesn't work the same way so you can't be mad about it and your argument or opinion is invalid. Neon Dynasty works because it is 'far flung' future where it is so alien to normal everyday that it still evokes fantasy. Duskmorn fails because it is just capturing 80s-2000s aesthetics which makes everything feel to modern. It doesn't feel like magic.
I guarentee you dont know what "feeling like magic" is. Yknow, the game with the real life middle east setting, and the real life japan. Also egypt. Also cyberpunk, also steampunk.
@@DarkDiamondInc I don't think the argument that magic can cover a wide variety of settings invalidates the criticism that a modern day setting feels out of place in a game where the primary setting is high fantasy.
@@bradyseigfried2395 is the primary setting high fantasy? the biggest story arch is the brothers war and the phyrexia stuff, and thats primarily steampunk and robots and stuff, with eldritch body horror mixed in.
@@DarkDiamondIncsteampunk and magi-tech robots are both not exactly “modern”. Same goes for the weird glowy cyberpunk tech from Neon Dynasty. The issue isn’t just the technology being advanced, it’s that the technology is advanced in a way that looks like something mundane from our world.
I actually feels good realizing a lot of people feel the same thing, when i heard they would make a cowboy set i was scared but i'm glad they didn't add any firearms to it except those weird scifi looking stupid guns. If they want a cowboy set they could had creatures from Hunt Showdown, that would be an amazing set. But magic always felt like a medieval thingy, adding modern stuff kinda ruins it
Ya know what would have solved all these inconsistencies? Like ALL of them? Wizards should have just ended the base magic canon at the end of March of the machine or "aftermath" there were no large villains remaining to best. And everything beyond that set could have been their "new52" as it were. And then they could even sell us return to canon sets, or "what if" sets
Okay but you're missing the fundamentals. This isn't sci-fi. It's wearing a tattered hat saying "fantasy". It's not a TV, it's a mirror. The static are glitch ghosts and The Blind Eternities. Those aren't sneakers. That's footwear worn by the people who lived before Duskmourn. This is "nozz a la", which is closer to speculative fiction or fantasy because at no point does science exist. Only magic. It is truncated magic to display pop culture. No VHS Players, there's no VHS. No baseball shoes, there's no baseball.
I propose a new format: Boomer. All sets that represent cars, lasers, mechs, tvs, etc. are banned. All sets that represent crossovers that clash with the visual identity of what MTG players look for, its banned (No Optimus Prime, no Rick from the Walking Dead). Thats it, thats the format. While its mostly a joke, I am not a fan of the sillier and more modern themes, nor of the crossovers that did not fit within the preconceptions we have for MTG. I do miss the days of playing vampires vs dragons, goblins vs knights, etc. Its what originally got me into the game. I love the fantasy and the universe of MTG, but rhinos in suits, ghostbusters and leonardo da vinci in the game is definitely moving away from what I liked about mtg.
