Then came more cards. These were called Beta. The size and shape of these more closely resembles the cards in all other sets. They, too, had black borders. Many of the same cards were reprinted in this version, and some were added. Still, it was just cards. Cards with objects and spells on them.
Then came Unlimited. We lost the black borders on our cards, making it easier to tell the difference between the successive generations. At this point, many cards had been reprinted and in play for all three sets. But also some had dropped off while others made their debut. By now the game was really starting to catch on, but while no cohesive story was behind the game, hints at a larger universe existed. Mystical objects like the gemlike moxen and the powerful black lotus were causing speculation among the fans. Sure these cards had been around since the beginning, but there was such a thing as flavor text. And now that more people were playing, they were also starting to wonder what the rest of the world looked like. Where was the fantastical grove where these black lotuses grew? Who grew them? How did they come to be?
Then Wizards of the Coast released its first story-driven set -- Arabian Nights. Most people were already familiar with the characters (or at least some of the characters). It was a classic tale that transcended time. And people loved that there was something more to the game that they played. There was a feeling of belonging to a much larger community and of there being more to these cards than simply a game between two people.
Now, don't get me wrong, it was still the cards (and how good they were) that attracted the players. Truthfully, if a card was good enough, it could be called #24565 and players would still include it in their decks, but the backstory added a little flavor to a game. Why play with card #24565 if the Library of Alexandria did the same thing? Wouldn't you rather have some cool literary character from the annals of literary fiction than card #24565?
Well, yeah.
If you wanted to play a game where you simply outwitted your opponent, you could bring out the chess board. With Magic there was something different. Not only was the game fun, but you also got to roleplay as well. When you picked up your cards, you became a warrior mage, who was stepping onto the field of battle and prepared to fight with only your deck and your own sharp mind. The game transported you to a new place and let you leave this world for a while. The larger scope of the Magic universe encouraged us all to use our imaginations and let go of the burdens of reality. The game was fun because it had good rules but also because it created a community -- a fantastical environment that all players could bear witness to.
Seeing that the story had such an impact, Wizards started down a new road. To be fair, I should say they started down two roads. On one of those they placed the base sets. The first of these was Revised: a thoroughly solid set and a starting point for what would become a huge explosion in the sale of Magic cards. These base sets would eventually become known as ?editions.? This was the place where Magic players could get the staple cards (those with ultimate utility), such as the counterspells, disenchants, and fireballs that made up the backbone of the game. Today we?re all the way up to Eighth, and right now, there are people busily working on Ninth and already having meetings to talk about Tenth.
On the other road were the story-driven sets. The first of those was called Legends. And they packed a ton of story into this one. They introduced us to the elder dragons and characters that were unique to the game of Magic itself. We met Stang and Marhault Elsdragon, Hazezon and Sol'Kanar the Swamp King. We learned through flavor text that some of these characters knew each other, and some didn't. We learned about new places and races, new creatures and monsters. And it was fun. But while this little glimpse into the world was exciting, it didn't go far enough. It was just a teaser really. It peaked our imaginations and made our mouths water for more. And when it came right down to it, the stories in Legends were vignettes, images, shreds of journal entries, and tales of woe. Still, with so many characters, each of them had a separate story to tell. It would take a lifetime to chronicle the exploits and adventures of just the gold border cards in that set. It was a good start, but it needed more focus.
Then came Antiquities. This time there was a storyline -- a thread that ran through the entire set. It was a world of artifacts. Almost everything was made from metal. More than just defining the look and feel of the world, this time they included a core conflict. We learned about two brothers, Urza and Mishra, and they were at war. We also found out that there was a more sinister evil lurking behind this conflict. One of the brothers had been corrupted by the Phyrexians and their demon leader, Yawgmoth. Using powerful magic, the brothers fought for a long time.
The stage had been set. The characters had made their debut. And history was set in motion.
By the time The Dark had come out, the game had really caught on. Wizards had a hard time keeping up with the demand. Their printers were making cards day and night, but still supply was limited. None of this, however, has anything to do with the now developing storyline. The Brothers' War had ended, and it had ended badly. The world had been thrown into chaos and what amounted to a nuclear winter. The land was covered in, well, darkness, and those who had survived were very suspicious of magic users and blamed them for the disastrous state the world was in. Trying to avoid a repeat of the Brothers' War, the evangelical church cracked down on the use of magic in all of its forms, and sorcerers, healers, and wizards alike had to go underground.
Nearly eight hundred years passed after the story in The Dark ended. After the cold darkness came something even colder, the Ice Age. The story that had started in Antiquities continued on. The Brothers' War had done more damage to the world than anyone could possibly imagine, and the world of Dominaria slowly receded under a blanket of snow. The now-desperate state of the world was depicted on the cards. Creatures that had nearly been extinct were now thriving. Woolly mammoths and sabertooth tigers roamed around freely. The human populations were nearly wiped out. Many turned to barbarism, and those who clung to their civilizations were forced to build walls to keep out the predators -- human and beast alike. Maybe the only good thing (from a character's point of view) was that the evangelical church that had been threatening to gain oppressive control over the continent of Terisiare was now stymied by the glaciers covering the world.
From a game design standpoint, the Ice Age was one of the best things to ever happen to Magic. The environment was visually distinct from anything in any of the other sets, which meant that artists had more room to work with. They could come up with new concepts without worrying about covering old ground. The continuity team could also explore new creatures and spells. Direct damage, for example, could now be expressed as an avalanche, rather than a volcanic eruption. Overall, Ice Age was a very successful expansion. It gave players a sense of story and drew the community closer together. And it gave the game designers more room to work in. It added flavor and dimension to the game. The story-driven expansion set was here to stay. The future would be full of them.
So the world was covered in ice. The use of magic had made a resurgence. The evangelical church that had sought to punish wizards and warlocks for the sins of the brothers Urza and Mishra was all but disbanded. Mastering the arcane arts became a matter of survival. Some cities would have been completely frozen over, covered by the advancing glaciers, if it hadn't been for the magical shields and enchantments that held the ice at bay.
By then, Dominaria had a new problem. The frozen wastes between civilizations made contact with other groups very difficult, and it made patrolling extended areas completely impossible. Those with evil intent were free to do as they liked, as long as they were far enough away from any do-gooders who might easily stumble upon them. One such man was the necromancer Lim Dul.
Unaffected by the pelting snow, and impervious to the bitter cold, the necromancer's zombie minions began causing havoc. It wasn't enough that the warm-blooded populations had to deal with the advancing ice -- now they had undead harassing them as well. Things in the Magic story were really starting to get exciting. There were conflicts everywhere. No one was safe at night, and civilization seemed on the brink of falling apart.
In this segment of Magic history, even the game designers got into the story. They invented a new mechanic that would span over more than one card set. It was called snow-covered lands -- a tribute to the state of affairs in the world. Not only was it more difficult to get around if you lived on Dominaria, but it also required a bit more strategy as a player. The world wasn't more dangerous for only characters in the fictitious world; it was more treacherous for players as well.
Unfortunately, snow-covered lands didn't catch on so well. And though there are numerous example of where the story world has made an impact on the lands and land formations in the game of Magic, nothing quite as far reaching as snow-covered lands has been tried since.
As the conflict on the ice-covered plains came to a head, two armies marched out to do battle. On one side were the collected human forces. On the other, the minions of Lim Dul shambled out of the snow, bent to their masters will. Unbeknownst to both groups, in the forest far from the battlefield, a powerful planeswalker was in the process of casting a spell that would end the ice age and return Dominaria to its natural state.
In theory, this seemed like a good idea. In theory, the ice would melt, and the people who had so arduously carved an existence out of the snowy ground would go back to living the way they had hundred of years ago -- before the ice. But in practice, only a handful of people were left in the world who even remembered the world the way it had been before the glaciers. The people living on Dominaria now were accustomed to the cold and the ice. They had learned to survive in this climate. Changing it back would change the entire world -- again.
But planeswalkers sometimes lose track of scale, being immortal creatures and all. And despite being warned, the ritual was completed. The ice melted away in only a few short months, flooding the world and turning the perpetual winter into a sudden spring.
This set the stage for Alliances. Cultures that had at one time been separated by snow and, in some cases racial hatred, were now forced to work together. Tensions were high, and conflict lurked around every corner -- a great environment if you're trying to tell a story. From the research and development side, this was an opportunity to play around with the idea of opposing colors working together.
The entire Magic game system, as you likely know, is centered around the five colors and their relationship to each other. White plays well with green and blue, but doesn't so much like black and red. Blue plays well with black and white but despises red and green, and so forth. In Alliances, though, there were cards that sported opposing-color activation costs. Some blue enchantments and creatures had abilities that could only be activated with red mana. White cards sported the black mana symbol.
It was mayhem. And it was fun as heck.
The game environment again mirrored the story world. Opposing colors had to work together to form a winning strategy. The cultures on Dominaria had to put away their long-term hatreds of each other. The colors had to do the same.
The world went on like this for some time. In Mirage the phasing mechanic mimicked the time experiments of a planeswalker named Teferi. In Tempest a race of creatures called licids roamed both the plane of Rath and the decks of Magic players all over the world.
Some time around then, Wizards of the Coast purchased TSR. Most of the game designers, editors, and staff members of TSR moved from Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, to the Wizards facility in Renton, Washington. These were the people who had made famous the king daddy roleplaying game of all time -- Dungeons & Dragons. But beyond that, they were also the people who had been at the helm of the Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance novel lines.
For Magic, this was an opportunity for a fresh start at story.
There had already been a series of novels that were published featuring several of the most popular creatures from the game. (The Prodigal Sorcerer, for example, played the starring role in one.) But while these books were fairly successful (due mainly to the fact that each distinct novel came with a free, promotional card that was available only by purchasing that book), they weren't written hand in hand with the development of the cards. Now, with the addition of a book publishing department, Wizards could bring the production of the novels in house.
By the time Urza's Legacy came out, there were three new novels in the stores, and the story on the cards portrayed the story laid out in the pages of the books. It wasn't just mechanics mirroring the state of the world anymore. Anyone who wanted to could read all the juicy details about each of the characters. The major plot points were all portrayed in the art of the cards. The spells and weapons the characters used were turned into instants and artifacts. The land cards showed the way the world looked, and the legends were the characters themselves.
The Mercadian Masques cycle was the first where all of the books and the card sets were named the same. From that point on, each of the books was focused on telling the story of just one card set at a time. When a new set came out, so did a new novel. When you weren't playing, you could be reading about your favorite characters -- and vice versa.
The game world and the story world walked along peacefully, hand in hand. For the next few years, the card development and the story development took place at the same time. Authors would sit down at the beginning of the year, and the senior game designers would tell them about the latest mechanics, the cool new concepts, and the things they would like to see in the coming card cycle. As the cards became more locked down during development, a team in continuity would pair story events, characters, artifacts, and locations with the game pieces that best represented what was happening in the world.
It was a swell time, but that school of thought, much like the one the game originally started under, has passed on. Progress and the passage of time have changed things once again, and today things are a little different. Don't get me wrong: The author summits still take place. The novels still give you all the story, and the cards still display all the flavor of the Magic world. But now the process has been streamlined. All the elements -- from the characters to the artifacts to the landscape itself -- are portrayed in the art of the cards, but the events of the story itself are left to the authors. There has been a separation of church and state, so to speak. The cards are the game side, and the novels are the story side. The flavor of the world remains the same, but where you get your information differs a little.
It seems the game has come full circle, more closely mirroring its roots while retaining the best parts it picked up along the way.
As for where the world of Magic: The Gathering is going, well, I can't tell you too much.
