Feels more inevitable than putting literal famous anime waifus on Magic cards, right? Do I have to repeat this song and dance again, Magic has always been infused with much more science fiction than you think. So just don’t sit here to think about whether the idea is right, just care about the execution, care about whether the cards are something fun to play.
Also, just to let you know, unless you count reskinning some UB cards back to the form they’re supposed to be in Arena’s grain resolution, this will be our last in universe set of the year. What a messed up timeline, this thing was supposed to be in a different standard year than Aetherdrift and Tarkir! And that problem will certainly come up somewhere.
Also, there’s actually a previous space set to this. It’s Unfinity, it’s even pathetic, to put it simply. One of the reasons is because looking at that set, you really feel how much that serious tone Magic artists put into the card really makes a genre setting stick, and that’s certainly really really hard to do when you also have to nail a theme park theme, which is let me joke about it again, just being honest about capitalism’s intentions when it comes to art.
About that serious tone to make a genre setting stick, apparently it’s due to the designers finally consciously putting a dividing line between allusions versus blatant tropes. So that’s to the hope of the end of the hat sets nightmare Magic went through, especially when we drew a clear line for a place that literally blatant tropes can reign (not with a card frame unfortunately).
Magic in recent memory has been defined by mechanics that if you just squint you can see the exact path to get there using previous mechanics. This set is ultimately no different. With flavor being what justified them being combined the way they are.
Something I definitely want to say first is that lmao they finally do the oversimplified Magic card frame I can stand behind. Which is to say, I like the black border, and having the art breaking out of the frame just that much feels like the right amount. They didn’t get a frame design I have presume because 1. The vehicles you have to crew every turn, so they need their own attention on the board 2. These spacey things want to be really big. 3. Vertical art is just more natural to vertical cards you play.
It's the smaller things that irk me about this frame. First off, the counter threshold, it’s a circle centered to the left pinline unlike all the other number headers in Magic which is pushed in, things like loyalty costs, Saga chapters or the levelers’ arrows. This design makes sense for the oversimplified frame direction, but functionally it’s middling. One of the reason to oversimplify the frame is for the things to grow really big, so you want a really big cost, like two digits. Then you have to put the plus after the number, so that’s three characters in this tiny circle. Which is frankly while those older things chose to push in for just a bigger, or at least wider, symbol.
That’s the left, the middle I got criticism about the opacity. You know the levelers have pretty clear dividing lines between their different levels, by having distinct levels of shades to the text box. Now onto these things, I mean you can see a dividing line, just not well at all. I feel like this is due to the text box needing that transparency for the art to justify being vertical. The other reason is that most of these just have two states, since unlike the levelers, the first state of these things actually has to provide something.
Lastly, the right, the power and toughness box. These things look weird to me, being that oversimplified. Size wise, they’re smaller than normal P/T boxes. Even though I look at the dividing line and I totally see enough space to put a normal P/T box in. And with the theme being some of these things can get big, you should have put a proper P/T box to host those big stats. Texture wise, they’re like the circle just that the outline is as thick at the main card’s pinline and there’s just a flat gray inside the box. This is certainly the thing that stood out to me with these things.
The most important part to mention is that this mechanic goes on 2 different subtypes, one is Spacecraft artifacts, and the other is Planet lands. Spacecraft is like big Vehicles, and Planet is like back in MOM they were thinking about making land cards to represent Planes.
| Rarity | W | U | B | R | G | M | C | T |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EOE-M | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 6 | |
| EOE-R | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 9 |
| EOE-U | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 10 | ||
| EOE-C | 2 | 2 | ||||||
| EOC | 1 | 1 | 2 | 4 | ||||
| Total | 5 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 3 | 5 | 31 |
At mythic, the cycle to note are the five Planets for this system. Which is why there won’t be more, the alternative is to just call these things “Artifact Land – Spacecraft”. Before all the convoking, these lands just simply arrive tapped and taps for a color without being otherwise fetchable. The special mode will take 12 charge counters to get there, and for that the two Simic lands are fixed scaling lands that ask for 1 mana, the two Rakdos lands ask for 2 mana and something sacrificed for other resources, and lastly white ask for 4 mana to copies stuff. Each has the typical name structure of one unique word (or two in black’s case), then one adjective and one fancy noun. All five have artworks done by the same artist so that’s fun.
The other mythic is an actual Spacecraft that really likes multiples of 10. After that UB cactus, I guess that 100 doesn’t feel as novel anymore.
Onto the rares, each color has a normal spacecraft except white has a commander too. White and blue each has three tiers, the middle asking for 2 for an ability and the last tier ask for multiples of 3 for 8 stat points and two keywords. Then the black one is like the blue one’s charge cost reduced by 1 each because the mana cost is the highest, and for that there are two abilities. Which leaves the remaining Naya trio, yes I’ll bring the commander into this part. They all cost 3 mana, the Boros pair has an arrival trigger so in case you can’t get the creature the card is still worth something, the Selesnya pair ask for 7 charges to be the x/5 creature with an ability, and the Gruul pair are both 4/x and not a commander I suffice.
The last three rare spacecrafts see two being 5 mana, 2 having the charge tier be a creature so you get an arrival ability upfront, and two are just colorless instead of 5 colors, which is how you make a multicolored commander alright, creating and drawing cards make me question. Frankly the black ship of this trio is the mana rock really, flavored to be a giant elevator, so obviously you don’t want it flying around space.
At uncommon, each color gets precisely two cards and that isn’t a joke, I can’t help but be happy for once. Most of them follow the arrival trigger then big charge cost for the creature with one exception, that being useless unlike you get the 3 power, which is definitely way less. The charge cost from here ranges to 7 (BG), 8 (UBRG), 9 (WU) and 10 (W). Effects wise, blue, black and red both divides equally between helpful pieces for yourself and harmful pieces to the opponent, then for green and white I kinda think back to MOM’s uncommon battles and kinda sees the pattern, but like, do I?
I did laid out these into two rows and I gotta realize, there’re four that ranges at just 3 and 4 mana, while the rest ranges at 5 and 6 mana. Which is very infuriating not gonna lie, I wish there was just two cycles for the two ranges, after all how is a lightning bolt got power decrypted to this deep?