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(The original draft was me trying to define what a good Magic set does and then gave up, this seems to be the common reason to me killing all these side articles, lack of the skeleton the main series can just instinctively have. I hope I do better this time.)
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This is my extremely rational reason to justify my emotion of feeling UB don’t belong in Magic, isn’t it? You know, when look at something and it just doesn’t seem right to your feelings, so you tell someone that you don’t like it and they tries too hard to defend it, “leave the multi billion dollar company alone” you imagine them to be, because maybe your case isn’t all that convincing. For me for instance, I say “there’s so many legendary creatures it feels like it’s what all these sets want to do and barely much else”. And well, for this article I’ll elaborate my perspective on why I think this feeling exists.
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Future Discrete’s appendix: I have a feeling this specific issue deserve a better name that describe it: The Phone Book, the thing you open to find the phone number of a person and not much else, not any places, events, non-sentient things.
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Magic used to have very few legends in each set. Basically, the kind of prestige the planeswalkers have nowadays, that’s where the legends were. This prestige is the source of the legend rule after all, one where the whole board can only have a single copy of a legend, one that begun by literally restricting these legends to one copy each, all so that in case of a mirror match, both players have to race their luck to see who get to literally write legend.
Any time that there’s more than usual, it’s extremely deliberate, namely Legends and Kamigawa. Deliberate, for the purpose of my series, is to have clearly understandable rules that a fool like me can easily write a Scryfall syntax that fullfills it. For Legends, it was a clear hierarchy of cards in allied pairs and shards (this part is a different problem however). For Kamigawa, it was the clear fact that all rare permanents are legendary (plus some uncommons I guess), which well turned out not to be fully effective so MaRo once said “if your theme isn’t at common, it isn’t a theme”.
Is Commander the culprit? Not yet, we just now assign very clear placement for these cards, like every deck having two or three at mythic. Sure, there might be a few more reprint commanders in the deck, but well that’s an accurate representation of the card pool drawn to these decks. The clear placements also reflect on the draft sets starting from this era, where they designate in set a loud and clear cycle of commanders and hopefully whatever else spills out it’s within the old days’ boundaries. This very much extends the great job cycles have on Magic, giving people the point of anchor to compare and contrast and champion their own ways.
Is original Dominaria the culprit? Not yet either, the commanders are still contained in its own slot isolated from the rest of the boosters which still far outnumber them. You see, in those sets, they finally realized a good version of the Kamigawa rule, where there’s a slot that’s actually solely dedicated to legends. And the legends don’t brutally spill out to other slots still, so that’s how you kept their stature. Well, the more influential thing Dominaria brought are to make signpost uncommons into commanders, which definitely felt the strangest around the Omenpath year where 3 of the 4 sets put these fancy names.
It’s when you write a very clear goal with your set and everything you do in it contributes to that goal. Especially the commanders. A faction world have a cycle of commanders because that person is a leader who best represents what that faction is about. A set with a dedicated slot for commanders do so because its history of people who mattered made the place what it is today. So on and so forth.
For the Vorthoses, these cards are best reserved for the characters that have a lot to be told about them. That’s why most non-faction sets of old don’t have all that many commanders in it. Because the premise is that: anyone you open in a booster pack, you’re encouraged to find the card with their flavor text or read the novel to feel their life, what do they do in life, how they think of others. There’s going to be a lot to unpack because obviously, the novel is best off focusing on just a few characters instead of one paragraph for each character totaling a whole book because oops we have too many characters, and oh wait we left out some that might seems more interesting than those we actually made cards of.
For the Mels, these cards, as the top of the food chain, should get you in a lot of thinking about a strategy. It’s one of the things Magic used to take pride in, they may not put the most amount of words on their cards, but whatever words are here gets you thinking. Maybe the old cards are a bit too extreme on the lacking words department, like a bunch of them are just French vanilla or have a single tap ability. Eventually, the likes or Ravnica and Lorwyn would wisen up in this department, but still managed to keep things simple and elegant, this is certainly what you’re fond of.
Basically, what I’m babbling about this whole time is that Magic were deliberate in the sense of making the most of however little space they have to have legends in sets. They got the most flavor texts and the most unique abilities, but that still leaves room for a spread of practicality and enjoyment much reflective of the card pool at large. Instead of…
What is a highlight reel? It is something lazer focused on exactly the “best” “moments” and leaving other things to dust. Therefore, going through a highlight reel doesn’t give an accurate representation of the holistic whole, just a cherry picked, biased recap.
Think about something like Final Fantasy the set, where an enormous chunk of this highlight reels is just dedicated to all the different party members in the different games, then after the Sagas were used for conjured creatures those characters make, you don’t have that much room for the actual stories of these games, sure you get a few important events as sorceries here and a few important weapons there, but ultimately it still felt like not much elaboration was done. Ultimately from the set, you probably can recreate your childhood game’s party or maybe build your dream party of 4 waifus or somethings, but you can’t actually live through a story that makes any sense, that party might just as well stand there and stare at one another.
That’s one way of whining about this issue, another way is an analogy: Imagine you’re a normal person walking around in this world. You should be seeing people, creatures, tools, weapons, events, landmarks, and for whatever is worth, you should see about a kind of equal amount of each. With maybe every once in a while you get to meet a notable person whose actions really speak to you. That’s what fanning through a normal pack of Magic card does to you. And exactly what these highlight reels simply can not offer.
I suffice, a highlight reel’s original purpose is that you look at the book, then bookmark the thing you like the most and that’s about it, you don’t have to care about the others or how much they relate to your favorite thing to have be able to be on the same page. Which, unfortunately, has described how people think about Magic cards in this real life, far from what Richard Garfield intended.
A highlight reel’s goal for all the cards to aspire to be “the best”. Unlike most goals where contributing cards actually can live in harmony with one another, this goal require them to have bloody conflicts and overall just creates a mess. Because well, to be the best, you must brutally stand out as all cost, and keep on improving the flashiness in face of your competitors, it’s a cold war all by itself.
They all want to prove that their story is the most heroic and epic one of them all on their card, with no silly Saga or sorcery cards alongside, let’s just have two different value engines all on one text box, each value engine enough length to be considered wordy by some ancient Un cards, all by themselves. Sure, you could argue that they’re that wordy because Magic writes out a lot of stuff that could have been messily keyworded, but can you think of another reason to have this many words?