Not to be confused with cube shapes that make the Minecraft world tick and the others get sued, here we’re talking about a set of a few mainline Magic sets released sequentially that are heavily connected to one another in mechanics and/or flavor.
Does that sound cool to you? Probably. And as with all cool and good things in life, it doesn’t exist anymore. Nowadays, each set explore one or more different world(s) with as much distinction as possible from one to another, like going from Bloomburrow to Duskmourn. This is the result of sometimes, the designers ask “Why do we have do things like this?” and everyone eventually coming to step by step going away from the block model to whatever we have right now. Step by step to fight each and every argument from both sides, which is the topic of today.
What are the sides, specifically? “For” is for “Blocks should have stuck”, which tends to comprise of older players. “Against” is for “Blocks died for good”, which is where most practical players and the design team have stood. This article will take the perspective of those two sides towards some categories, to see where you should really stand in this debate.
(MaRo can tell this part way better than I can, in many different places. Here’s just my understanding of a really abridged version.)
For a given amount of time, with a small group of a few designers, what would you have them do? Design a world and a few mechanics to spread across a card pool of three sets, or have them scramble a bunch of ideas to make dozens of smaller sets? The latter was certainly how early Magic functioned, which can lead to everything from Lightning Bolt to Fallen Empires. And then one day, they realized that they can tie Alliances with Ice Age and the rest is history (they realized blocks is so much better).
As time passes and Magic get bigger, more people are hired to work on it. Which makes the prospect of splitting this group into smaller teams to work on different sets much more plausible. After all, different people likes different things and they have different specializations, so some are better off working on early fundamentals, some can fine tune the balance, some learn the ropes through a return set and a few select can brave into a new experiment. And with that, things can certainly get a lot more diverse than just the same theme across three different sets for the entire year.
Look at the mess Standard is nowadays and tell me that the designers aren’t being overworked. It might be too wasteful to lock them to one or two blocks a year, but maybe it’s also too excessive to have them scramble to get 6 sets per year to a functional state. Yes, this is once again a discourse piece about current day Magic, but it’s a bit relevant to the argument.
Because while I’ve described above that you can split a group into multiple teams for different sets, there are some departments of the design team that can’t be split that easily. It’s Play Design mostly, where their job is to see how cards from one set can stack up with many neighboring ones. And that don’t scale linearly, that scales exponentially. For instance, 4 sets will get you 6 pairs while 6 sets will yield 15 pairs, that’s a 2.5 times leap, not just 50% more like they might proclaim.
Also, teams of creative people don’t scale as easily as you think. They are like those very cards, the communication between everyone to make them all be on the same page also gets exponentially harder the bigger the team is. So maybe, there’s a mental cap on how big the Magic design team will ever be. And that will put a limit on how quick sets can ever be made.
Block sets have to walk a tightrope between each set being unique from one another and all sets having a cohesive core to themselves. After all, while each set can have a different name, their boxes are still different recolors of the same texture. Generally, the solution is to have some mechanics that run throughout the whole block, usually the big theme, and then each set can have their own mechanics to complement. This is our big tightrope.
The designers don’t have infinite ideas, especially when you have to actively think for it and call for it. Many times, you can come up with enough good ones for the first two sets, then suddenly for the third set it’s eons more difficult. Which can make you desperate and you feel the need to upend the large theme in this set. Is it worth it? Just ask Fifth Dawn, going for Sunburst instead of Affinity, Saviors of Kamigawa, going for hand size instead of… something, Rise of the Eldrazi, digging the hole for BFZ to fall down, etc. Not to mention Prophecy and Dragon’s Maze.
Also this is where we’ll touch on mixed drafts. In case you Arena grinders don’t know, small sets of old weren’t restricted to Pick Two, the way they fit in a big normal draft is that you don’t draft 3 packs of them. Instead, you need to mix them with the previous sets in the blocks. Originally, those previous sets would actually go first in the draft, so your new set pack is just meant for filling slots in your decks. It’s crazy to think about nowadays, right: How would three distinct pools of cards work together, when they are still concerned about having actually good mechanics?
Many archetypes can’t stick the landing after just one set. A block would have given them all the tools they need. I hear you, the 4 people championing Mutate or Party and wishing those sets had a full block. Oh well, maybe you could bring those mechanics back in other planes.
The argument from the designers is generally that: If those things are successful, they will return in the future. Just a patient 4 years will do it. If not, deal with it, “the juice is not worth the squeeze”, maybe you can be lucky if the right designer look back at you at the right time through. Yeah, patient, when asking people to wait to the new year for Lorwyn but not wait any longer for some scramble at an UB set.