This is the topic of my bonus article for this block. Marked it.
Design lore: Core sets were killed for a second time. They decided to move this fourth set into “late fall” (we know that as November), that’s certainly a way of saying “we crammed the four Standard sets into basically a 10 month period now”. What could this set be? One option was to delay Neon Dynasty to think about something else for this slot. The other, and the one we went with, is to just make a second Innistrad set, because that means no more time needed for early design. It's pretty sad that giving Kamigawa that second set wasn’t even an option, that wouldn’t delay the design either and they actually have more time to think of better ideas for these two sets.
Well, in addition to “no more time needed for early design”, the second reason you could also fill in yourself. Back in these days, Innistrad was a lot more fondly known. So surely giving people double that must be a no brainer. Unlike a new plane that needs to prove itself, or a return that’s doing such radical things it’s as questioned as those new planes, you know you like this place.
Ultimately, it’s the execution that matters. Imagine if original Innistrad didn’t have those chase cards, didn’t have that great draft format, what would you think of it now? This challenge is further compounded by the way blocks have to be designed, that being that “each set have to be unique enough to warrant having a different name, but all sets have to form a cohesive whole together.” This block’s solution for that is: We’ll use basically the same set skeleton, just that the kindreds will get different mechanics in the different sets.
This isn’t the first time that idea was tested. That first time was in Tarkir block, with the whole two timelines ordeal and all. They tried to make the mechanics pair played well together, but that required things like Formidable or Megamorph to be made. Surely that wasn’t worth it. So this time, we don’t even care that the two mechanics play well together, we just need two mechanics. Huh.
You could excuse that on the fact that you don’t need to mix packs of different sets for drafts anymore. Well then, maybe try to give me the as distinct of experiences between the two sets as possible, not by using the same set skeleton for once. And no, distinctions that you need 17lands to find don’t count. Something like Ravnican guild splits does.
Finally, I have a separate vague piece about the block discourse:
Story is also an important element to why blocks are important. Each set serves a different chapter of the overall story arc, which gives them both that character and cohesion they need. This is shown in the first two Innistrad blocks very well. The original block goes something like: Spooky world, Spooky world goes darker, Spooky world suddenly go light. The second block serves as the second half of the Eldrazi arc, where the first set has you find mysteries about this horrible creature, then the second set actually having you seeing and fighting them. Those’re all very strong building blocks for those sets, they firmly belong somewhere and they have a clear emotional goal to give to you.
Meanwhile, what does this block have to offer? For once, we found out that too radical rethinks of the plane is bad, so we can’t do the light version nor the Eldrazi version. We gotta remove basically all references to those things. We gotta return to “the version everyone loved”, so the first set I think. That slims down the possibly a lot, especially for two sets to fill. What isn’t so slim is the number of kindreds, so we can use those, right? Even though you can draft all of them in both sets just fine.
So it’s decided that the first set would be prematurely announced as Werewolves, having the story be about some Selesnyan witches doing a ritual so that daytime can still exist on this plane, surely that will actually work. The second set would be about a Vampire wedding, where the bride would resummon the groom to get power through bonding the two families or something. Surely no one would find that ridiculous to make a Magic set of. That said, there could have been a set focusing on Zombies, what a done to death trope in pop culture, and we crossed out Spirits because we didn’t call them Ghosts.
It's also important to note that none of these things relate to the larger Magic story arc, through given cases like Bloomburrow or Edge of Eternites, that could be a good thing. Thing is, those sets actually took whatever settings they have seriously in a way straight up spelling “Wedding Invitation” isn’t. This would turn out to be a warning sign to many Magic sets in the near future, ones that those aforementioned certainly have taken too long to finally learn to avoid.
Someone basically did this article’s thesis for me: