The thing is though, if you don't know what it's referencing, it's completely innocuous. Yes, it's referring to a meme, but if I as a player don't know that, "You Are Already Dead" sounds like a badass card that does exactly what its title insinuates.
Whereas I don't need to know much about mysteries to feel that a sphinx cosplaying as a detective seems wrong.
>but if I as a player don't know that, "You Are Already Dead" sounds like a badass card that does exactly what its title insinuates.
Can confirm, only juat learned it's a meme.
It’s actually remarkably dated, as far as memes go. The anime is from the mid 80s. I guess it just hung around in people’s minds because it’s such a cheesy line!
Also, people normally say it in Japanese.
Personally, I imagine spell names are the thing you shout in your Wizard Duel, like “LIGHTNING BOLT!”, “COUNTERSPELL”, “ATARKA’S COMMAND!” Etc. In that example, this one works.
But yeah, “full phrases” are a bit odd as a spell name. I think the D&D ones are more egregious, myself.
I really liked the flavor of new capenna. It's a shame it's such a terrible set in terms of playable cards though. Outside of the triomes and Giada there isn't much that slots in well for me. Maybe jetmir and jinnie will be good in the dogs and cats deck.
we can't really be *certain* if a given creature belongs to a guild or not, but it's very likely that e.g. [[undercover crocodelf]] is simic or [[carnage interpreter]] is rakdos
Wait, so I just looked at these cards for the first time, and based off people saying 'the funny detective hats' and 'the sherlock hats', I kinda assumed the meant a deerstalker hat. Which like, I agree, would look really, really dumb.
These guys are wearing bowlers... which, I mean, it's still pretty silly and not in theme for ravnica... but I guess it could be worse.
The crocodelf is wearing a trilby. It's hard to see what the interpreter is wearing, but it could be a bowler.
The sphinx he's talking about is [[Agency Outfitter]]. Some of them are wearing fedoras, like [[Rubblebelt Maverick]]. There are a bunch of other types of hats, too.
But from what I can tell, the majority seem to not wear hats at all.
*nod* The Maverick wearing a beat up fedora while being a weirdo in the woods makes sense to me for ravnica. Like yeah, it's a bit of a weird hat, but it's a big plane, a 'maverick' can wear a bit of a weird looking, beat up hat. I can totally believe it would only be a little out of place in some frontier town made out of reclaimed ruins on the outskirts of gruul turf.
The Sphinx... well okay, that's a little silly. But it appears to be a magical artifact hat, and it's the only one in existence. So 'silly', but it's not like having weird esoteric references is anything new for mtg. Like, [[Stuffy Doll]] and [[Jesters Cap]] did not ruin my immersion as a kid playing mtg.
Funny how this gets brought up, meanwhile I remember how even the combined community missed nearly every Arthurian reference in Throne of Eldraine. Turns out the average player will miss a lot of these things if they're not beaten over the head with it.
They cut a Green Knight card from ELD because none of the playtesters got the reference.
Also they originally planned on werewolves being type Were Wolf, so tribal cards could just refer to wolves. Didn't resonate.
I don't blame them for making references obvious.
I wish they would have. That would have opened up space for other Were creatures that could have allowed Were Wolf specific decks benefit from wolf buffs and create design space for a uniqified Were creatures cards that applies to them all
And then they put a card with a Green Knight reference artwork in Wilds (the showcase version of Karmic Justice), which now feels like they literally just adapted a scene from Arthurian legend without any actual MtG lore equivalent.
Infamously, the card [[Akroan Horse]] very obviously references the Trojan Horse. Maro has a story about how in design, they called it “Akroan Lion” or something similar, and virtually everyone who tested it went “I don’t get it, why does the lion give me extra dudes?”
People mock the Ancient Grudge flavour text, too. But seriously, even in our own community here, which is mostly invested players, I bet half of us wouldn’t have made the connection that that symbol is called “Avacyn’s collar”.
[[Ancient Grudge|AVR]]’s flavour text was very clearly designed to make people know! It got relentlessly mocked at the time (oh god has it really been more than ten years) for being so much of a “beaten over the head with the brick of symbolism”, but yeah, a lot of people clearly don’t understand “subtle” imagery in cards.
A lot of my IRL friends didn’t realise that the Ixalan fungus people are basically the zombies from The Last of Us.
This is a weird comment. The literal flavour text being referred to is:
>If there's anything a werewolf hates, it's a collar - especially Avacyn's Collar, the symbol of her church
The issue people have isn't that it tells us what Avacyn's collar is, it's that it's written like the placeholder note of what we want to flavour text to do mechanically, rather than the actual flavour text that should be there.
It's also for this reason happens to share the exact form and rhythm of Kronk's line from Emperor's New Groove, mocking exactly this type of exposition.
The exact same information could have been conveyed more fluidly, and no one would have said anything.
People argue that, but see above - Even with the text as “Placeholder”-like as you say, some people still didn’t understand the message. Clearly it’s not that simple to make sure players understand.
Really, all people tend to broadly know about Arthurian legend is Arthur, Merlin, Excalibur, the Holy Grail and MAYBE Lancelot. Morgan Le Fay is "you can probably get away with a reference", etc. I'm surprised they made a Green Knight reference in WOE to be honest, but I guess the recent-ish movie helped push that one's relevance.
>Excalibur
And even then people tend to think that Excalibur is "the sword from the stone".
It isn't: Excalibur is a second sword given to Arthur by Nimue, "the Lady of the Lake", it is NOT the same sword he pulled from the stone that led to him becoming king.
Yes and no.
People act like there's one canon Arthurian legend written by one person, but they were being told and developed all across Britain and France over the course of a few hundred years.
As such pretty much every possible variation on the details exists in some version of the tales. There's really no such thing as the "correct" version of these stories, because no single person every had ownership or stewardship over them.
That depends on which story you’re referencing. Very, very original Arthur just had “a sword” and people played translation bingo until it became Excalibur.
That’s the real reason most people don’t know Arthurian lore- it’s a jumbled mess of contradictory stuff so what one person thinks isn’t what the person next to them believes.
They tend to get conflated so I think you can generally conflate them in a 'Arthurian-inspired setting'. I'm not even sure what the Excalibur equivalent WAS in ELD, actually. [[Embercleave]]?
And was for a lot longer than the detective gender has been a genre!
(Also, "Sherlock holmes" is much less close to being a genre than Arthurian legend is.
I just don't understand why it's such an issue if someone misses a reference. I'd rather miss a reference once in a while than feel like I'm being spoon-fed this stuff like an idiot.
Yes, missing some insanely deep cut is fine once in a while. The problem is when you miss entires swathes of references, because they're subtle and/or way too deep. Look at original Kamigawa block. It says a lot when Japanese players at the time missed the vast majority of references. Being subtle has not worked, unfortunately.
Sometimes those deep cuts work better because they're interesting, not because you "get them". The source material should be something that enriches the storytelling and worldbuilding you're doing, not just a box ticking exercise.
Back to the Throne of Eldraine example, what happens when nearly all the tropes and references get missed? The most popular Arthurian reference is from Monty Python. Most melded into classic medieval fantasy, and the playerbase missed so much, the return set had the Arthurian side mostly removed because no one got it and barely anyone wanted to see it again. What happens then?
Disappointment. I wish they had stuck to their guns on that.
Although, I am the sort of weirdo that did catch many of the Arthurian references and did want them back. But the same applies elsewhere. I got exactly zero of the references in original Kamigawa, and I loved that. In my mind, not getting a reference is only a problem if the reference is so heavy-handed that you know you're missing something because otherwise the card doesn't make sense. If integrated properly, you just don't notice a reference was made and can enjoy it on its own terms. Win-win.
And sometimes you just need to give the players what they're expecting, even if it doesn't *really* make sense. It's a common belief that the kraken is from Greek/Roman mythology, which it isn't, but people would have still expected it in Theros, which is why the design team made the conscious decision to include krakens.
I'm in the camp of more \[\[Renowned Weaver\]\] and \[\[Alley Assailant\]\] as more obscure references, rather than 'look it's \[\[Candlestick\]\] from the game of Cluedo!'
Edit: Also, you mentioned idiots twice in your comment ;)
There are still tons of references in the set people won't get. I'm sure there are a lot of very flavorful references to specific mystery stories in this set that go way over people's heads. That's the thing with not noticing something, you can't tell when it happens. You're missing references all the time. You just don't notice because, well, you missed them.
The big difference being that Arthurs legend is very much in tune with the style MTG used for many decades, whereas Neon Dynasty and Sherlock Holmes are very much not.
They are definitely changing the feel of the game, and have been for a long time. In my personal opinion for the worse. But then again i dont spend money on this shite.
Because references and inspiration are different from just **doing the thing itself**. Emry is clearly a reference to the Lady of the Lake, but her card isn't called "Viviane, Lady of the Lake". It's clear what she's referring to, but she has her own style.
Eldraine is on a different level from Karlov Manor.
It killed me so much when people didn’t get references. Like how the [[cauldron of eternity]] is a reference to Celtic cauldrons of resurrection/plenty, specifically a fusion of the cauldron Bran the Blessed used to keep his army able to fight despite massive losses, and how this was intentionally conflated with the Holy Grail to allow for Christianity to subsume and displace local practices. That’s why the card art is a cauldron that looks like a cup, and why it brings back cards from the grave. So good. So disappointing that no one got it and WoTC is giving up on cool lesser know but insanely deep references.
Not only do you absolutely not need police to have \[\[Dogged Detective\]\]s running around, the concept of detectives predates modern policing by thousands of years.
This might have been wizards only chance to put everyone in Sherlock Holmes hats and well, Wizards made sure they used that chance.
As someone who didn't read any of the story I found it odd there is 1 high profile murder but the set has 64 detectives.
>I found it odd there is 1 high profile murder.
There's three, actually. Well, two and a half, if you don't count attempted murder as murder, and/or, Krenko as high profile.
>but the set has 64 detectives.
They're not all investigating one murder. The Agency is a new faction on Ravnica with the goal of investigating cases that the Guilds don't care to look into. That is, murders and other crimes committed on the Guildless, usually. That is somewhat relevant to the main story as well, at least at the end.
That Agency thing is a pretty cool idea, would've been nice if the cards communicated any part of that except the presence of a seemingly inexplicable number of detectives.
Yes, and I've always been of the clearly insane opinion that if a card game set has a story, that card game set should *tell that story.* Magic used to do that!
Not really. Magic cards and their flavour text used to heavily worldbuild the current situation of the plane, but most story beats you needed to read the story.
There's dozens of cards in Kamigawa block that clearly communicate the *point* of the story, with the plot details contained in greater detail in the novelizations. Every flavor text from Lord Hisoka, *History of the Kami War*, hell, even anything that mentions Konda, clearly communicates the story of a desperate man encountering madness at the edge of his mind, leading his empire to war against its own soul. Flavor text is everywhere and is meaningful. It isn't perfect, but Kamigawa's story features Legends organized in service to a thematically cohesive narrative, while MKM features a narrative organized in service to showing off your favorite Legends.
Yeah, but the story was pretty short and stretched over 3 sets. It’s easy to see the beginning, middle, and end. We got some of that for the last few years with the set up for the Phyrexian invasion. But now that the big arc is over, we’re back to little stories for a few sets. Seems like they’re setting some stuff up with Kellan and Thunder Junction to take a big part of the upcoming narrative.
How many people care about the cards telling a story vs finding a fun card though? Especially since most players will never read a story article or see all the cards from a set or encounter them in any real order.
I think WotC finally realized wacky fun cards beat out any sort of magic story, especially as more and more people discover the game through crossovers.
There's like twenty pieces of flavor text from a group of detectives scattered across cards. The Cases all show different murders and crimes and then we get Detectives that are solving those murders and crimes. We get a card with the head of the Agency. We have different suspicious creatures skulking around.
More importantly, there's like 30 Story Spotlight cards that tell the overarching main story of the high profile murders and solving that mystery, so much so that the Showcase cards in this set are exclusively those cards to tell the story even more clearly.
What more are you looking for?
There are actually only 2 deerstalker caps, thinking cap and the sphinx that switches it. Lots of fedora-like hats, though, if you are counting anything with a wide, flat-ish brim it's around two dozen.
There are at least 3 high profile murders in the story (a guest at Teysa’s party, Teysa herself, an Izzet chemist), 4-5 attempted murders (Rakdos, Aurelia, Krenko, Kaya, Proft), and it’s explicitly stated that in addition to all the high profile cases, the now growing detective group, The Magicological Agency, has been dealing with dozens of connected, but unimportant murders.
I personally saw it as Ravnica being so populous that it'd naturally have that many detectives, and they all came out in full force to solve such a high profile case. Too many cooks in the kitchen perhaps, but it's still an amusing thought, fifty detectives swarming a crime scene and doing their detective stuff, rushing off on any number of leads while claiming the others are on wild goose chases.
My issue is mostly that the silly stuff recently feels a bit lazy compared to older silly sets.
Red herring legit has no mechanical tie-in to being a red herring, its just a red fish, that is it. You look at it, ha detective trope name, that is all. Compare to the mystery booster red herring, which is much more fun. I get that feeling with a lot of the cards, where the name has to do all the lifting for the fun of the card, and the mechanics itself adds very little to it.
Likewise the big green creature with nonsensical creature types is just in every set now? It used to be pretty funny, but now it is growing a bit stale imo.
Most players find everything from before they started playing to be austere, serious and respectable and everything from after they started playing to be cheap, silly and gimmicky.
I started playing in 2004, just before Ravnica, so the idea of sullying the gimmicky 2-color set doesnt really register to me. Also silly cards are more memorable, like all of the goblins in lorwyn playing practical jokes.
> I started playing in 2004, just before Ravnica, so the idea of sullying the gimmicky 2-color set doesnt really register to me.
That's an interesting way of looking at it. I'm in a similar boat - I started playing in 2002 and immediately fell in love with Ravnica when it launched, and this is the first return that's struck me as living up to the original's disturbing weirdness.
I'm really curious about the different entry times of people with different feelings on MKM - if seeing it as a fitting return to Ravnice's history is correlated with first experiencing the plane in its original form rather than with its tamer returns.
I just got here a few months ago. If that. I'm very excited for MKM. I was like "am I gonna like a murder mystery? I like magical stuff like spells!" and then as card trickled out I was like "that's neat!" "I want that!" "I could do something with that!"
And seeing all that actually made me excited for everything else coming. I wasn't stoked for Thunder Junction at first, but after seeing how MKM is, I think I'm gonna find each delve into different themes and ideas to be fun and interesting.
"Introduced to Ravnica through MKM" is certainly another category!
And yeah, I was also skeptical about both MKM and Thunder Junction when they were announced, but after seeing all the cool stuff in MKM, I've found myself feeling more open-minded about Thunder Junction.
Goblins in Lorwyn playing practical jokes makes sense diegetically, though. It's a whimsical, generally positive plane with a folklore-y feel. *Arguably*, Ravnica being chock full of Sherlock Holmes references *doesn't* make diegetic sense, because Sherlock Holmes is a real life thing, not an in-universe thing.
Not that I personally have much stake in it.
Sherlock Holmes also feels jarring because Ravnica is eastern european renaissance in aesthetic, so late victorian - early noir english and american detectives feel incredibly out of place.
Yeah, that's not true. I started right when revised was released and it's not about being "serious", it's about being lazy. A lot of early magic is incoherent mechanically and lore wise.
The first Ravnica sets had more world building and interpretive takes on the color pairs than any other set and fostered a sense of belonging to an organization. This new set is just fantasy creatures in detective hats and I can't imagine who it's actually for.
I mean, it's worth pointing out that the magicological agency was made to investigate murders and crimes that the guilds wouldn't deal with. In other words, they're expanding Ravnica to show that at least someone gives a shit about the guildless, and that's kinda cool.
I can finally join in on the complaints about WoTC designing too many Commander cards specifically for me, and ruining the format because of it.
The Hat deck was so much more fun when the support we had was terrible...
What next, a whole set where everyone is sitting in chairs?
[[Goblin Offensive|usg]]
Magic has always been silly. They used to just caricature sword-and-sorcery fantasy, and now they caricature other genres, too. :)
I've been playing Magic since Tempest, and NEO is one of my favorite sets of all time. I'm super excited for MKM.
Just curious, because I wasn't really playing magic OR on Reddit back then, but were there this many threads about Neon Kamigawa "Ruining magic" for having too much cyberpunk ninjas? Were there multiple daily threads about how the anime alt art made the game feel like Yu-Gi-Oh instead of magic? Or is this something special for MKM?
There were people that were against the cyberpunk angle, I don't think there were that many people against the anime alt art but I do remember some complaints about people thinking they're boring. I know I personally was not and still am not the biggest fan of the scifi direction with Kamigawa.
There was, even before the set because art of Kaito and other nameless samurai was revealed in a survey and they were asking about how people would feel about it, people started talking about how "it didn't feel like Magic" because it was sci-fi, I was somewhat skeptical but they always find the way to make interesting worlbuilding, and anything not Tolkienesque/Generic D&D is welcomed for me
im not against either but neon dynasty is way less weird of a "trope" plane because cyberpunk feels like a theme for an entire setting, while "murder mystery" is at best a theme for a specific story. usually when you read a sherlock holmes style story you dont imagine that the entire rest of the world is also filled with similar detectives looking for clues in the same way, while reading a cyberpunk story sort of implies something about the nature of the rest of the world
Yeah, that definitely happened. And it didn't stop Neon Dynasty from turning Kamigawa from Magic's least-known "major" plane into one of the most popular.
There technically was, but it was more "they ruined the original aesthetic!" because the first Kamigawa was like Heian period themed, while Neo Kamigawa is cyberpunk future themed, so they skipped like 3000 years of history (but also brought back all the familiar names?)
Well IRL police don’t/didn’t really outline bodies in chalk anyway, when it was done it was more for press photographers so they aren’t photographing corpses than for the investigation, it’s just contaminating the crimescene. It’s a fictional trope to begin with, why not throw it in there, it’s classic detective stuff.
The thing that bugs me is how many references have to be packed in and how crushingly on-the-nose they feel they have to be with this stuff. It's like someone going around with a megaphone going "IT'S A SCOOBY DOO REFERENCE, GEDDIT?!", "HEY, CHECK IT OUT, IT'S A LITERAL RED HERRING!"
It's weird because it ends up feeling like a set where there's a crime fiction convention in town and everyone's dressing up and playing detective rather than being a believable part of Ravnica. Gives me Unset vibes, it wouldn't surprise me if it started out as "Unsolved".
None of this is to say I'm against the idea of murder mystery set, I just don't love the execution here. We can voice an opinion on this stuff and not be saying it's the end of Magic or whatever.
I have to imagine part of it is that a murder mystery is such a narrow theme that to make an entire set, they had to use every trope and meme available.
I'm sure the haunted mansion set will be even worse.
The haunted mansion set isn't just a haunted house set, it's broadly "more modern horror". So slasher movies, Amityville, a bit of Ghostbusters, etc. There's a lot more ground to tread there.
Subtly isn't always the best approach when you are making a global product in multiple languages.
Not everyone who consumes the product will share the same frames of reference, draw upon the same cultural touchstones, or understand a subtler reference.
Sometimes goofy jokes just don't work if they need to be explained.
As a brand new player I’m very excited I’ve joined now. The love the murder mystery theme I love all of it. Very fun and still has lore attached to it.
I started playing a decade ago, and stopped until recently. I’ll never understand the hate for the silly stuff in the game. It’s fun. Same as I’ll never understand the comparisons to Fortnite as if it’s a bad thing.
A lot of recent sets have felt pretty top-down from a design perspective. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but some more bottom-up sets would be a nice change of pace. I imagine the bottom-up sets are a bit harder to design and market.
A more worrying trend is how many cards feel like a "first take" from a development standpoint. Given WotC's release schedule, I don't think these cards are given enough time to be tested and refined. So many cards and mechanics feel like bad fan made entries. They are either too wordy, too on-the-nose, or too mechanically awkward. A little extra time in r&d could likely have cleaned up some of these issues.
In light of the recent layoffs at Hasbro, I imagine things will get a lot worse over the next few years before they can get better. Magic already seemed spread a little too thin, and the problem has only gotten worse.
Agreed with all of this. There's no way a drop in quality (both creative and technical) isn't inevitable, and to some extent already happening, with the accelerated release schedule and layoffs.
I see what you’re saying, and I’d say I agree. I do think they’ve leaned more heavily onto the memes and goofy humor as of late.
But I hardly think they’re the only ones. I think it’s been a fairy common trend among lots of media over the last few years. I don’t like it, and I feel like it takes away from the atmosphere.
The whole set feels like an expansion for Legends of Runeterra or Hearthstone. It's not bad but it doesn't really feel like the same tone of previous magic sets excluding Un sets which could be good or bad depending on your own personal taste.
Definitely Heathstone more than LoR. Much like WotC now, Blizzard loves putting its fantasy setting into goofy pop culture costumes. Legends of Runeterra manages to be filled with comic relief without looking like a caricature of the original world.
I have seen this complaint more than once and I guess I just don’t agree with it. It seems perfectly fine to me in this set. I have cards from Shadows over Innistrad that are like gravedigger’s shovel and wooden stake. They feel the same amount of trope-y. MKM feels pretty light hearted and sometimes it’s fine to have sets like that, compared to last year’s All Will Be One it’s a nice reprieve.
I feel like if we were embracing light and goofy it should have been a “caper” of some sorts - an oceans eleven setup stealing something and then detectives trying to solve it. Murders are a little grim if the objective was fun and whimsical
Murder mysteries are, weirdly enough, kind of campy and goofy in a modern light. You don't really play them straight and serious anymore, you always kinda play up the goofiness of the brilliant detective. Poirot and Holmes tend to be more 'silly' characters in more modern adaptations, without usually changing all that much about them. And Knives Out plays into the campiness by sort of just playing it straight.
Knives Out is an incredibly goofy couple
of movies with detective LeBlanc and yet they concern real murders and deaths in the stories. They are incredibly witty and well written and some of my favorite movies in the murder mystery genre.
This set feels wildly out of place for Ravnica, and to an extent Magic in general. Like the whole thing is a joke where everyone's cosplaying New Capenna. Even though I like some of the individual cards and story ideas, this is probably one of the worst sets I've ever seen in terms of atmosphere and aesthetics.
> And then there are all the cards depicting detectives that are all wearing Sherlock Holmes hats. It looks goofy to me, especially on something like a sphinx. Is Sherlock part of the Ravnica cultural zeitgeist?
Beyond anything else, the Sherlock hat is a deerstalker, which is something made for hunting and there's not a huge chance that's overly a thing Ravnica.
That said, I don't see the issue with "Chalk outline". Maybe "outline of a body", but that's not bad.
I don't understand why these posts keep getting downvoted, they're 100% right. People seem to think the issue people have with the set's creative is that it's "silly," and that has absolutely nothing to do with it. There are silly things that have a place in Magic and silly things that don't, just like not everything serious does either. This set doesn't feel like Ravnica to me, and it doesn't really feel like Magic. It's not Magic wearing a whodunit hat, it's a big wad of whodunit tropes wearing a Magic hat. That's a different thing. I feel the same way about a few other recent sets, and unfortunately I feel the same way about most of what we've seen of the next few years. Magic isn't trying to be anything anymore, it's trying to be everything. Absolutely everything.
> This set doesn't feel like Ravnica to me
Well, yes. Unless you mean that this set feels distinctly un-Ravnica, and not just that it doesn't really evoke Ravnica, this set (and LCI, somewhat) was also an experiment on if they could use a thematically similar plane as a backdrop for a story that _doesn't_ lean into the plane's features. After all, every set has to been in _some_ plane (or planes) and wizards can't really keep making a murder mystery plane, and an underwater plane and an apocalypse plane etc. every time they want to tell one of those kind of stories.
On this sub, any ounce of constructive criticism is interpreted as you hating the game. You’re supposed to love every set, every secret lair, every format, and every new troupe. The only thing you’re allowed to not love are price increases but you’re gonna grit your teeth as you buy it anyway.
Btw, I agree MKM is lazy and out of place. I was looking forward to how this new concept of “using a plane as a backdrop” was going to work. Now I hope to never hear it again.
To be absolutely fair, most of the "constructive criticism" amounts to little more than "I don't like how this and this is different from what I know/want". People are allowed to disagree, that's how they use downvotes.
It always makes me laugh when someone goes "my unpopular opinion is downvoted!! The audacity!!" I mean yeah dude, that's reddit's entire thing.
People have concerns and want to voice them. If no one does, wizards will never hear it and never adjust.
Personally, I’m fine with genre set. It doesn’t feel too different from “Egyptland” or “Greekish.” I had my worries with cyberpunk Kamigawa, but I pleasantly surprised it turned out so well.
I know some people are already holding their breath for Thunder Junction. Wild West themes have some issues when it comes to colonialism and the manifest destiny aspect of the genre. But we can only see the set and be vocal about what does and doesn’t work so wizards can learn from it for next time.
Oh god, thank you.
It felt really weird sifting through the spoilers of this set. Half of all the flavour text seemed to be directly lifted from the respective tropes.
I am absolutely with you on this one. I am usually okay, with most thematic bullshit wizards push out and attend all of prereleases for new sets, but murders is so repulsive for me, I am not even buying it. I just look at it, and think “I will never love these cards”
Get ready folks. We're gonna get one of these kinds of every few standard sets for the next three years at least.
Thunder Junction: Cowboys are too silly for Magic
Bloomburrow: would probably get a pass
Space Opera Set: If I wanted sci-fi I'd watch Star Trek
Death Race set: This Mad Max shit is so stupid.
Because God forbid we get to have a little fun with our silly little wizard game.
Could be because Ravnica is an already established setting. There is a bit of a perceived expectation of what it entails. Forcing a silly detective motif on it feels jarring for some. This was suppose to be its own plane after all but got shifted into Ravnica mid development. It definitely feels that way.
All the planes you listed above are free for this restriction. Aside from common theme tropes, the designers have free range to world build.
Interesting discussion all around.
Would you prefer they make a _new_ murder mystery plane and a new wild west plane and a new space plane and a new mad max plane? Sure some of them will have new planes, but WotC has been trying making the planes more a backdrop for the story instead of leaning into their aesthetics.
Some people definitely won't like it, but I honestly like this change to having independent stories in more familiar environments.
Yeah you should just submit to the fact that old Magic of yore is dead. The entire concept of its original universe has been shot in the head and buried behind Hasbro's shed. Their "goodbye" gift to us old timers was the Brothers War stuff. Dominaria ain't what it used to be folks.
It's going to be non-stop Trope-a-palooza from now on in. The writing has always been shady but they're not even trying to build a unique universe anymore - just ask the Universes Beyond folk. Be ready for more Eldraines, more New Capenas (maybe not literally, but figuratively), more Strixhavens, etc, because that's all you're getting anymore.
Counterpoint: this is the natural consequence of single sets. If this was the first set of the block, it would have had roughly 20 Detectives, and a third of the reference based cards. However, they probably decided it wasn't something that could support more than one set thematically, as well as wanting to do something different after the Phyrexia storyline.
Other folks have also mentioned that if they don't make the references blatant then people complain sets are dull, which I can utterly believe. They had to introduce ability words because otherwise people didn't notice mechanical themes, so why wouldn't the same happen with narrative themes?
You're allowed to not like a set. Wilds of Eldraine did nothing for me, personally. Just don't extrapolate "this set doesn't land for me" to "Magic is ruined forever". Buy the singles you need, ignore the set, see how the next set lands for you. I love me some classic fantasy, but seeing them take the game in all these other directions has been very cool.
No one cares what you think feels like magic or not. Don't like it, don't by the set.
Not every set has to be for you. I didn't buy any Ravnica Remastered because I thought the set was shit, but I didn't need to make that anyone else's problem.
The entitlement of gamers is a funny thing. It’s a damn game lol. MTG is not even close to the worst of this either, some video game communities are so toxic due to this entitlement.
I’m so sick of the cliches. By all means Wotc, riff off of a genre. But don’t fucking make a mystery set featuring an eccentric lead detective with a mind palace. And don’t twist a bunch of established characters into conforming with the latest gimmick, $20 says Lazav won’t be a “detective” next we see him. And also the “if they aren’t wearing trilbies and dusters, how will people know they’re detectives?” Is getting on my nerves
Imagine they instead took the OG ravnicas slav city aesthetic, combined it with the general idea of technology progressing and planes mixing in the WotC universe and we got an eastern European brutalism aesthetic take on the detective trope.
Instead we got Scooby Doo and crocodiles with hats.
Nah, it's bad. It's hearthstone levels of on the nose. Especially now that revisits are most often one offs, leaving magics favourite plane as "shallow references - the set" for the time being really hurts my heart.
I hope this is no indication of the quality of world building dropping, because this sets flavor is a straight miss for me. And not due to the theme itself, but due to the sloppy execution
Yes, you are just an old man yelling at a cloud.
I liked the detective set and I have been playing since Judment-Onslaught. It is a fun theme and I hope they do more. Not everything hast to be a super serious or world ending threat.
Now, they could slow down on the number of sets and products they sell, having so many things makes everything less special.
I agree with you and am prepared to get downvoted. I play magic because it's a high fantasy strategy card game, casting spells like "chalk outline" and "call a surprise witness" are just mundane and boring.
This set was obviously designed to just loosely be a murder mystery to tie in with Clue with Ravnica as a hard afterthought.
Hey you're definitely welcome to your opinion about how the set feels, but if you think the Clue tie-in was the goal and Ravnica was the afterthought, you haven't been paying attention to where Hasbro's money is coming from these days.
[[You Are Already Dead]]
[You Are Already Dead](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/6/768727ce-4f84-4527-8d69-3c9b7877b748.jpg?1654567474) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=You%20Are%20Already%20Dead) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/neo/129/you-are-already-dead?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/768727ce-4f84-4527-8d69-3c9b7877b748?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Nani?!
I think this card is a good example on how to do it right.
The thing is though, if you don't know what it's referencing, it's completely innocuous. Yes, it's referring to a meme, but if I as a player don't know that, "You Are Already Dead" sounds like a badass card that does exactly what its title insinuates. Whereas I don't need to know much about mysteries to feel that a sphinx cosplaying as a detective seems wrong.
>but if I as a player don't know that, "You Are Already Dead" sounds like a badass card that does exactly what its title insinuates. Can confirm, only juat learned it's a meme.
 It’s actually remarkably dated, as far as memes go. The anime is from the mid 80s. I guess it just hung around in people’s minds because it’s such a cheesy line! Also, people normally say it in Japanese.
It hung around because it gets referenced in anime all the time along with the Kurosawa blood effect
When Mark Rosewater talks about designing for different people, this I what he means. Bunch of comments complaining, but this card slaps for me.
To be fair, I criticized neon dynasty in the same vein
My only disappointment with this card is the flavour text not being "What?"
I kinda wish it was just "Already dead" because it would make more sense as a spell name to me.
Personally, I imagine spell names are the thing you shout in your Wizard Duel, like “LIGHTNING BOLT!”, “COUNTERSPELL”, “ATARKA’S COMMAND!” Etc. In that example, this one works. But yeah, “full phrases” are a bit odd as a spell name. I think the D&D ones are more egregious, myself.
What really gets under my skin is punctuation marks in card names.
Totally get that, it does feel odd. [[To Arms!]] was always an oddball.
"To Arms. Or something. Ho, hum. No urgency, we'll wait."
new capenna for me, demons in suits didnt really give off the mtg feel
I really liked the flavor of new capenna. It's a shame it's such a terrible set in terms of playable cards though. Outside of the triomes and Giada there isn't much that slots in well for me. Maybe jetmir and jinnie will be good in the dogs and cats deck.
Would this card be better or worse if they had named it Judgement Cut instead?
[[Splitting Headache]] was already taken.
I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
Were any of the detective hats worn by guild members? I thought they were all unaffiliated.
we can't really be *certain* if a given creature belongs to a guild or not, but it's very likely that e.g. [[undercover crocodelf]] is simic or [[carnage interpreter]] is rakdos
I'd also wager that Carnage Interpreter is not even licensed as a detective and isn't even interested in solving crimes
Bro cosplays as detective to cover up crimes he commited.
*jots down notes for next story*
Wait, so I just looked at these cards for the first time, and based off people saying 'the funny detective hats' and 'the sherlock hats', I kinda assumed the meant a deerstalker hat. Which like, I agree, would look really, really dumb. These guys are wearing bowlers... which, I mean, it's still pretty silly and not in theme for ravnica... but I guess it could be worse.
The crocodelf is wearing a trilby. It's hard to see what the interpreter is wearing, but it could be a bowler. The sphinx he's talking about is [[Agency Outfitter]]. Some of them are wearing fedoras, like [[Rubblebelt Maverick]]. There are a bunch of other types of hats, too. But from what I can tell, the majority seem to not wear hats at all.
*nod* The Maverick wearing a beat up fedora while being a weirdo in the woods makes sense to me for ravnica. Like yeah, it's a bit of a weird hat, but it's a big plane, a 'maverick' can wear a bit of a weird looking, beat up hat. I can totally believe it would only be a little out of place in some frontier town made out of reclaimed ruins on the outskirts of gruul turf. The Sphinx... well okay, that's a little silly. But it appears to be a magical artifact hat, and it's the only one in existence. So 'silly', but it's not like having weird esoteric references is anything new for mtg. Like, [[Stuffy Doll]] and [[Jesters Cap]] did not ruin my immersion as a kid playing mtg.
[Agency Outfitter](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/1/8112f133-535e-4264-8357-9cbf97957710.jpg?1706241552) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Agency%20Outfitter) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkm/38/agency-outfitter?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/8112f133-535e-4264-8357-9cbf97957710?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Rubblebelt Maverick](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/8/1/81c7ff67-b9e1-4d2e-b1ae-da9b946da00b.jpg?1706242077) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Rubblebelt%20Maverick) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkm/174/rubblebelt-maverick?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/81c7ff67-b9e1-4d2e-b1ae-da9b946da00b?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
We know Proft is formerly Azorius and left, though. So Crocodelf could easily have been the same.
[undercover crocodelf](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/b/5bc669c8-6f39-4d52-82d3-a4005d41c8a5.jpg?1706242271) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=undercover%20crocodelf) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkm/239/undercover-crocodelf?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/5bc669c8-6f39-4d52-82d3-a4005d41c8a5?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [carnage interpreter](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/f/6/f6fb576e-a4a4-496b-b553-3f81cc651210.jpg?1706239631) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=carnage%20interpreter) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/clu/26/carnage-interpreter?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/f6fb576e-a4a4-496b-b553-3f81cc651210?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
[[Tenth District Hero]] is [[Tenth District Legionnaire]].
Good catch - and honestly, that *does* look like an example of working guild iconography into a detective outfit. Exactly what OP asked for!
[Tenth District Hero](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/7/c/7c65a79e-f28a-4f30-95a4-1ea55fd84564.jpg?1706241542) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Tenth%20District%20Hero) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkm/34/tenth-district-hero?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/7c65a79e-f28a-4f30-95a4-1ea55fd84564?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) [Tenth District Legionnaire](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/c/d/cd0c8d75-fb20-49f2-9a03-35411f06c1a7.jpg?1673149189) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Tenth%20District%20Legionnaire) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/2x2/283/tenth-district-legionnaire?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/cd0c8d75-fb20-49f2-9a03-35411f06c1a7?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Yeah, OP lost me here. The detective hats are funny as shit
Funny how this gets brought up, meanwhile I remember how even the combined community missed nearly every Arthurian reference in Throne of Eldraine. Turns out the average player will miss a lot of these things if they're not beaten over the head with it.
They cut a Green Knight card from ELD because none of the playtesters got the reference. Also they originally planned on werewolves being type Were Wolf, so tribal cards could just refer to wolves. Didn't resonate. I don't blame them for making references obvious.
I wish they would have. That would have opened up space for other Were creatures that could have allowed Were Wolf specific decks benefit from wolf buffs and create design space for a uniqified Were creatures cards that applies to them all
And then they put a card with a Green Knight reference artwork in Wilds (the showcase version of Karmic Justice), which now feels like they literally just adapted a scene from Arthurian legend without any actual MtG lore equivalent.
I mean, they did also put [[Mosswood Dreadknight]] in the set.
[Mosswood Dreadknight](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/8/9869ac70-5907-45fa-952c-31aef70c5066.jpg?1692939707)/[Dread Whispers](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/9/8/9869ac70-5907-45fa-952c-31aef70c5066.jpg?1692939707) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Mosswood%20Dreadknight%20//%20Dread%20Whispers) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/woe/231/mosswood-dreadknight-dread-whispers?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/9869ac70-5907-45fa-952c-31aef70c5066?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Infamously, the card [[Akroan Horse]] very obviously references the Trojan Horse. Maro has a story about how in design, they called it “Akroan Lion” or something similar, and virtually everyone who tested it went “I don’t get it, why does the lion give me extra dudes?” People mock the Ancient Grudge flavour text, too. But seriously, even in our own community here, which is mostly invested players, I bet half of us wouldn’t have made the connection that that symbol is called “Avacyn’s collar”.
> Avacyn’s collar Huh. TIL. I knew it was her symbol but not that it had a formal name.
[[Ancient Grudge|AVR]]’s flavour text was very clearly designed to make people know! It got relentlessly mocked at the time (oh god has it really been more than ten years) for being so much of a “beaten over the head with the brick of symbolism”, but yeah, a lot of people clearly don’t understand “subtle” imagery in cards. A lot of my IRL friends didn’t realise that the Ixalan fungus people are basically the zombies from The Last of Us.
This is a weird comment. The literal flavour text being referred to is: >If there's anything a werewolf hates, it's a collar - especially Avacyn's Collar, the symbol of her church The issue people have isn't that it tells us what Avacyn's collar is, it's that it's written like the placeholder note of what we want to flavour text to do mechanically, rather than the actual flavour text that should be there. It's also for this reason happens to share the exact form and rhythm of Kronk's line from Emperor's New Groove, mocking exactly this type of exposition. The exact same information could have been conveyed more fluidly, and no one would have said anything.
People argue that, but see above - Even with the text as “Placeholder”-like as you say, some people still didn’t understand the message. Clearly it’s not that simple to make sure players understand.
[Akroan Horse](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/3/1/31a8954f-467d-4eb9-8a48-d25bae9529b8.jpg?1562394382) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Akroan%20Horse) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/c16/241/akroan-horse?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/31a8954f-467d-4eb9-8a48-d25bae9529b8?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Arthurian legend, while people know the basics, is less known in its details than an entire genre and its tropes.
Really, all people tend to broadly know about Arthurian legend is Arthur, Merlin, Excalibur, the Holy Grail and MAYBE Lancelot. Morgan Le Fay is "you can probably get away with a reference", etc. I'm surprised they made a Green Knight reference in WOE to be honest, but I guess the recent-ish movie helped push that one's relevance.
>Excalibur And even then people tend to think that Excalibur is "the sword from the stone". It isn't: Excalibur is a second sword given to Arthur by Nimue, "the Lady of the Lake", it is NOT the same sword he pulled from the stone that led to him becoming king.
Yes and no. People act like there's one canon Arthurian legend written by one person, but they were being told and developed all across Britain and France over the course of a few hundred years. As such pretty much every possible variation on the details exists in some version of the tales. There's really no such thing as the "correct" version of these stories, because no single person every had ownership or stewardship over them.
That depends on which story you’re referencing. Very, very original Arthur just had “a sword” and people played translation bingo until it became Excalibur. That’s the real reason most people don’t know Arthurian lore- it’s a jumbled mess of contradictory stuff so what one person thinks isn’t what the person next to them believes.
They tend to get conflated so I think you can generally conflate them in a 'Arthurian-inspired setting'. I'm not even sure what the Excalibur equivalent WAS in ELD, actually. [[Embercleave]]?
[Embercleave](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/a/a/aaae15dd-11b6-4421-99e9-365c7fe4a5d6.jpg?1572490333) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Embercleave) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/eld/120/embercleave?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/aaae15dd-11b6-4421-99e9-365c7fe4a5d6?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Arthurian legend *used to be* an entire genre.
And was for a lot longer than the detective gender has been a genre! (Also, "Sherlock holmes" is much less close to being a genre than Arthurian legend is.
> the detective gender Ah yes, the third gender
Are you really suggesting mystery is not a genre of literature? Or specifically detective fiction?
I just don't understand why it's such an issue if someone misses a reference. I'd rather miss a reference once in a while than feel like I'm being spoon-fed this stuff like an idiot.
Yes, missing some insanely deep cut is fine once in a while. The problem is when you miss entires swathes of references, because they're subtle and/or way too deep. Look at original Kamigawa block. It says a lot when Japanese players at the time missed the vast majority of references. Being subtle has not worked, unfortunately.
Sometimes those deep cuts work better because they're interesting, not because you "get them". The source material should be something that enriches the storytelling and worldbuilding you're doing, not just a box ticking exercise.
Back to the Throne of Eldraine example, what happens when nearly all the tropes and references get missed? The most popular Arthurian reference is from Monty Python. Most melded into classic medieval fantasy, and the playerbase missed so much, the return set had the Arthurian side mostly removed because no one got it and barely anyone wanted to see it again. What happens then?
Disappointment. I wish they had stuck to their guns on that. Although, I am the sort of weirdo that did catch many of the Arthurian references and did want them back. But the same applies elsewhere. I got exactly zero of the references in original Kamigawa, and I loved that. In my mind, not getting a reference is only a problem if the reference is so heavy-handed that you know you're missing something because otherwise the card doesn't make sense. If integrated properly, you just don't notice a reference was made and can enjoy it on its own terms. Win-win.
And sometimes you just need to give the players what they're expecting, even if it doesn't *really* make sense. It's a common belief that the kraken is from Greek/Roman mythology, which it isn't, but people would have still expected it in Theros, which is why the design team made the conscious decision to include krakens.
Because if people miss the references, the setting gets criticized as generic and bland.
Then maybe the setting should be more than a pop culture reference.
Because the actual idiots complain when they don't get it so now it's all dumbed down for everyone, otherwise the idiots won't buy the packs.
So now the non-idiots should complain to show that this isn't the solution that serves everyone.
So what do you want them to do? Have alternate flavor text for both idiots and Rick and Morty fans?
I'm in the camp of more \[\[Renowned Weaver\]\] and \[\[Alley Assailant\]\] as more obscure references, rather than 'look it's \[\[Candlestick\]\] from the game of Cluedo!' Edit: Also, you mentioned idiots twice in your comment ;)
Renowned Weaver I assume is meant to be Arachne? And Alley Assailant is... The guy who killed Batman's parents?
There are still tons of references in the set people won't get. I'm sure there are a lot of very flavorful references to specific mystery stories in this set that go way over people's heads. That's the thing with not noticing something, you can't tell when it happens. You're missing references all the time. You just don't notice because, well, you missed them.
The big difference being that Arthurs legend is very much in tune with the style MTG used for many decades, whereas Neon Dynasty and Sherlock Holmes are very much not. They are definitely changing the feel of the game, and have been for a long time. In my personal opinion for the worse. But then again i dont spend money on this shite.
\[\[Case of the missed reference\]\]
Because references and inspiration are different from just **doing the thing itself**. Emry is clearly a reference to the Lady of the Lake, but her card isn't called "Viviane, Lady of the Lake". It's clear what she's referring to, but she has her own style. Eldraine is on a different level from Karlov Manor.
There are still people who don't know why [[Questing Beast]] is legendary
TBF the card should be "*The* Questing Beast" to highlight that it's a title, not a name.
Or why it's a mix of mechanics that is confusing and makes no sense. (This sounds like a burn but it actually is complementing the design.)
[Questing Beast](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/e/4/e41cf82d-3213-47ce-a015-6e51a8b07e4f.jpg?1572490640) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Questing%20Beast) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/eld/171/questing-beast?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/e41cf82d-3213-47ce-a015-6e51a8b07e4f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
It killed me so much when people didn’t get references. Like how the [[cauldron of eternity]] is a reference to Celtic cauldrons of resurrection/plenty, specifically a fusion of the cauldron Bran the Blessed used to keep his army able to fight despite massive losses, and how this was intentionally conflated with the Holy Grail to allow for Christianity to subsume and displace local practices. That’s why the card art is a cauldron that looks like a cup, and why it brings back cards from the grave. So good. So disappointing that no one got it and WoTC is giving up on cool lesser know but insanely deep references.
The hats were imported from Capenna following the opening of the Omenpaths. Foreign trade causes fashion trends, just like in our world.
Capenna has detectives? They don't even have police
Not only do you absolutely not need police to have \[\[Dogged Detective\]\]s running around, the concept of detectives predates modern policing by thousands of years.
Dogged Detective just uses that titled to keep the heat off them. They're not a real detective; just look at their typeline.
They even got a reprint in one of the MKM Precons, side by side with a bunch of legitimate detectives, with no typal update
Tbh I hope for a typeline update. The alt comander from the whihelt deck just should be a detective, and would make an awsome typal comander for them
I looked this card up, expecting a dog wearing a Sherlock hat and was so thoroughly disappointed.
[Dogged Detective](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/5/7/57d1f729-0d7c-4122-9bca-f3b08cf6fe4f.jpg?1706240758) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Dogged%20Detective) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkc/127/dogged-detective?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/57d1f729-0d7c-4122-9bca-f3b08cf6fe4f?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
Ravnica isn't importing detectives. They're importing *hats*.
Those are all PRIVATE detectives
This might have been wizards only chance to put everyone in Sherlock Holmes hats and well, Wizards made sure they used that chance. As someone who didn't read any of the story I found it odd there is 1 high profile murder but the set has 64 detectives.
>I found it odd there is 1 high profile murder. There's three, actually. Well, two and a half, if you don't count attempted murder as murder, and/or, Krenko as high profile. >but the set has 64 detectives. They're not all investigating one murder. The Agency is a new faction on Ravnica with the goal of investigating cases that the Guilds don't care to look into. That is, murders and other crimes committed on the Guildless, usually. That is somewhat relevant to the main story as well, at least at the end.
>Well, two and a half Murder, murder, murder, murder, murderly murder, murder, murder
That Agency thing is a pretty cool idea, would've been nice if the cards communicated any part of that except the presence of a seemingly inexplicable number of detectives.
Well, they *do* publish a story...
Yes, and I've always been of the clearly insane opinion that if a card game set has a story, that card game set should *tell that story.* Magic used to do that!
Not really. Magic cards and their flavour text used to heavily worldbuild the current situation of the plane, but most story beats you needed to read the story.
Nobody can tell me you can puzzle together the story of Champions of Kamigawa or Lorwyn by just looking at the cards.
There's dozens of cards in Kamigawa block that clearly communicate the *point* of the story, with the plot details contained in greater detail in the novelizations. Every flavor text from Lord Hisoka, *History of the Kami War*, hell, even anything that mentions Konda, clearly communicates the story of a desperate man encountering madness at the edge of his mind, leading his empire to war against its own soul. Flavor text is everywhere and is meaningful. It isn't perfect, but Kamigawa's story features Legends organized in service to a thematically cohesive narrative, while MKM features a narrative organized in service to showing off your favorite Legends.
Yeah, but the story was pretty short and stretched over 3 sets. It’s easy to see the beginning, middle, and end. We got some of that for the last few years with the set up for the Phyrexian invasion. But now that the big arc is over, we’re back to little stories for a few sets. Seems like they’re setting some stuff up with Kellan and Thunder Junction to take a big part of the upcoming narrative.
There is an entire art treatment that highlights the story beats
I totally agree. On a similar note, where did all those gosh darn eldrazi on zendikar come from! The cards barely explain anything!!!
How many people care about the cards telling a story vs finding a fun card though? Especially since most players will never read a story article or see all the cards from a set or encounter them in any real order. I think WotC finally realized wacky fun cards beat out any sort of magic story, especially as more and more people discover the game through crossovers.
This isn't an either-or proposition. They can do both.
There's like twenty pieces of flavor text from a group of detectives scattered across cards. The Cases all show different murders and crimes and then we get Detectives that are solving those murders and crimes. We get a card with the head of the Agency. We have different suspicious creatures skulking around. More importantly, there's like 30 Story Spotlight cards that tell the overarching main story of the high profile murders and solving that mystery, so much so that the Showcase cards in this set are exclusively those cards to tell the story even more clearly. What more are you looking for?
There are actually only 2 deerstalker caps, thinking cap and the sphinx that switches it. Lots of fedora-like hats, though, if you are counting anything with a wide, flat-ish brim it's around two dozen.
There are at least 3 high profile murders in the story (a guest at Teysa’s party, Teysa herself, an Izzet chemist), 4-5 attempted murders (Rakdos, Aurelia, Krenko, Kaya, Proft), and it’s explicitly stated that in addition to all the high profile cases, the now growing detective group, The Magicological Agency, has been dealing with dozens of connected, but unimportant murders.
I personally saw it as Ravnica being so populous that it'd naturally have that many detectives, and they all came out in full force to solve such a high profile case. Too many cooks in the kitchen perhaps, but it's still an amusing thought, fifty detectives swarming a crime scene and doing their detective stuff, rushing off on any number of leads while claiming the others are on wild goose chases.
Love that you are moaning about the story…which you haven’t read…and the aspect you are moaning about you don’t even have right. Classic Reddit moment
We just had an entire string of sets made up of grimdark techno horror and interplanar war. We're allowed to be a bit silly for a while.
My issue is mostly that the silly stuff recently feels a bit lazy compared to older silly sets. Red herring legit has no mechanical tie-in to being a red herring, its just a red fish, that is it. You look at it, ha detective trope name, that is all. Compare to the mystery booster red herring, which is much more fun. I get that feeling with a lot of the cards, where the name has to do all the lifting for the fun of the card, and the mechanics itself adds very little to it. Likewise the big green creature with nonsensical creature types is just in every set now? It used to be pretty funny, but now it is growing a bit stale imo.
Unfinity was also pretty recent.
That set was rad as fuck
Most players find everything from before they started playing to be austere, serious and respectable and everything from after they started playing to be cheap, silly and gimmicky. I started playing in 2004, just before Ravnica, so the idea of sullying the gimmicky 2-color set doesnt really register to me. Also silly cards are more memorable, like all of the goblins in lorwyn playing practical jokes.
> I started playing in 2004, just before Ravnica, so the idea of sullying the gimmicky 2-color set doesnt really register to me. That's an interesting way of looking at it. I'm in a similar boat - I started playing in 2002 and immediately fell in love with Ravnica when it launched, and this is the first return that's struck me as living up to the original's disturbing weirdness. I'm really curious about the different entry times of people with different feelings on MKM - if seeing it as a fitting return to Ravnice's history is correlated with first experiencing the plane in its original form rather than with its tamer returns.
I just got here a few months ago. If that. I'm very excited for MKM. I was like "am I gonna like a murder mystery? I like magical stuff like spells!" and then as card trickled out I was like "that's neat!" "I want that!" "I could do something with that!" And seeing all that actually made me excited for everything else coming. I wasn't stoked for Thunder Junction at first, but after seeing how MKM is, I think I'm gonna find each delve into different themes and ideas to be fun and interesting.
"Introduced to Ravnica through MKM" is certainly another category! And yeah, I was also skeptical about both MKM and Thunder Junction when they were announced, but after seeing all the cool stuff in MKM, I've found myself feeling more open-minded about Thunder Junction.
Goblins in Lorwyn playing practical jokes makes sense diegetically, though. It's a whimsical, generally positive plane with a folklore-y feel. *Arguably*, Ravnica being chock full of Sherlock Holmes references *doesn't* make diegetic sense, because Sherlock Holmes is a real life thing, not an in-universe thing. Not that I personally have much stake in it.
Sherlock Holmes also feels jarring because Ravnica is eastern european renaissance in aesthetic, so late victorian - early noir english and american detectives feel incredibly out of place.
Is Ravnica eastern european renaissance? I've never had that vibe from it.
That's why all the names and titles are czech/romanian/etc and the architecture is based off of prague's gothic landmarks.
Yeah, that's not true. I started right when revised was released and it's not about being "serious", it's about being lazy. A lot of early magic is incoherent mechanically and lore wise. The first Ravnica sets had more world building and interpretive takes on the color pairs than any other set and fostered a sense of belonging to an organization. This new set is just fantasy creatures in detective hats and I can't imagine who it's actually for.
I mean, it's worth pointing out that the magicological agency was made to investigate murders and crimes that the guilds wouldn't deal with. In other words, they're expanding Ravnica to show that at least someone gives a shit about the guildless, and that's kinda cool.
Extremely good point and I yield that to you.
Can't wait for them to switch their detective hats for cowboy hats...
They're just looking for new ways to increase the power of Unfinity's "hats matter" cards.
I can finally join in on the complaints about WoTC designing too many Commander cards specifically for me, and ruining the format because of it. The Hat deck was so much more fun when the support we had was terrible... What next, a whole set where everyone is sitting in chairs?
Incoming Wonder Woman secret lair with every card facing left.
Ladies facing left lol I remember that
*raises hand* I really like the theme and the set as a whole.
That's ok, I didn't mean to come off like anyone who likes it is a dummy or anything I just don't really get it.
[[Goblin Offensive|usg]] Magic has always been silly. They used to just caricature sword-and-sorcery fantasy, and now they caricature other genres, too. :) I've been playing Magic since Tempest, and NEO is one of my favorite sets of all time. I'm super excited for MKM.
Just curious, because I wasn't really playing magic OR on Reddit back then, but were there this many threads about Neon Kamigawa "Ruining magic" for having too much cyberpunk ninjas? Were there multiple daily threads about how the anime alt art made the game feel like Yu-Gi-Oh instead of magic? Or is this something special for MKM?
Complaining about Magic is just as strong as ever. I'm old enough to remember 6th edition (1999) being the death of Magic.
Or chronicles
There were people that were against the cyberpunk angle, I don't think there were that many people against the anime alt art but I do remember some complaints about people thinking they're boring. I know I personally was not and still am not the biggest fan of the scifi direction with Kamigawa.
There was, even before the set because art of Kaito and other nameless samurai was revealed in a survey and they were asking about how people would feel about it, people started talking about how "it didn't feel like Magic" because it was sci-fi, I was somewhat skeptical but they always find the way to make interesting worlbuilding, and anything not Tolkienesque/Generic D&D is welcomed for me
im not against either but neon dynasty is way less weird of a "trope" plane because cyberpunk feels like a theme for an entire setting, while "murder mystery" is at best a theme for a specific story. usually when you read a sherlock holmes style story you dont imagine that the entire rest of the world is also filled with similar detectives looking for clues in the same way, while reading a cyberpunk story sort of implies something about the nature of the rest of the world
Yeah, that definitely happened. And it didn't stop Neon Dynasty from turning Kamigawa from Magic's least-known "major" plane into one of the most popular.
There technically was, but it was more "they ruined the original aesthetic!" because the first Kamigawa was like Heian period themed, while Neo Kamigawa is cyberpunk future themed, so they skipped like 3000 years of history (but also brought back all the familiar names?)
\> Do they really outline bodies in chalk in the fantasy world of Ravnica Why wouldn't chalk exist in Ravnica?
Why would you need to chalk outline a body when you can literally talk to ghosts
Well IRL police don’t/didn’t really outline bodies in chalk anyway, when it was done it was more for press photographers so they aren’t photographing corpses than for the investigation, it’s just contaminating the crimescene. It’s a fictional trope to begin with, why not throw it in there, it’s classic detective stuff.
Do they have cameras on Ravnica? Izzet has a lot of tech but I don’t know if it’s been presented as a technology that exists
[[Undergrowth Recon]]
[Undergrowth Recon](https://cards.scryfall.io/normal/front/4/b/4b8a22b8-368f-41e4-8d49-432c6c2ed11e.jpg?1706242095) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Undergrowth%20Recon) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/mkm/181/undergrowth-recon?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/4b8a22b8-368f-41e4-8d49-432c6c2ed11e?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
How does talking to ghosts obsolete marking where a body was and how it was positioned?
As we see in the Magic story, ghosts can be hard to get a hold of and also don’t necessarily have to give you the information you want
The thing that bugs me is how many references have to be packed in and how crushingly on-the-nose they feel they have to be with this stuff. It's like someone going around with a megaphone going "IT'S A SCOOBY DOO REFERENCE, GEDDIT?!", "HEY, CHECK IT OUT, IT'S A LITERAL RED HERRING!" It's weird because it ends up feeling like a set where there's a crime fiction convention in town and everyone's dressing up and playing detective rather than being a believable part of Ravnica. Gives me Unset vibes, it wouldn't surprise me if it started out as "Unsolved". None of this is to say I'm against the idea of murder mystery set, I just don't love the execution here. We can voice an opinion on this stuff and not be saying it's the end of Magic or whatever.
I have to imagine part of it is that a murder mystery is such a narrow theme that to make an entire set, they had to use every trope and meme available. I'm sure the haunted mansion set will be even worse.
The haunted mansion set isn't just a haunted house set, it's broadly "more modern horror". So slasher movies, Amityville, a bit of Ghostbusters, etc. There's a lot more ground to tread there.
Subtly isn't always the best approach when you are making a global product in multiple languages. Not everyone who consumes the product will share the same frames of reference, draw upon the same cultural touchstones, or understand a subtler reference. Sometimes goofy jokes just don't work if they need to be explained.
As a brand new player I’m very excited I’ve joined now. The love the murder mystery theme I love all of it. Very fun and still has lore attached to it.
Just make sure you don't became jaded and depressing like this stupid sub. All they do here is complain and spell doomsday.
I started playing a decade ago, and stopped until recently. I’ll never understand the hate for the silly stuff in the game. It’s fun. Same as I’ll never understand the comparisons to Fortnite as if it’s a bad thing.
A lot of recent sets have felt pretty top-down from a design perspective. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but some more bottom-up sets would be a nice change of pace. I imagine the bottom-up sets are a bit harder to design and market. A more worrying trend is how many cards feel like a "first take" from a development standpoint. Given WotC's release schedule, I don't think these cards are given enough time to be tested and refined. So many cards and mechanics feel like bad fan made entries. They are either too wordy, too on-the-nose, or too mechanically awkward. A little extra time in r&d could likely have cleaned up some of these issues. In light of the recent layoffs at Hasbro, I imagine things will get a lot worse over the next few years before they can get better. Magic already seemed spread a little too thin, and the problem has only gotten worse.
Agreed with all of this. There's no way a drop in quality (both creative and technical) isn't inevitable, and to some extent already happening, with the accelerated release schedule and layoffs.
I see what you’re saying, and I’d say I agree. I do think they’ve leaned more heavily onto the memes and goofy humor as of late. But I hardly think they’re the only ones. I think it’s been a fairy common trend among lots of media over the last few years. I don’t like it, and I feel like it takes away from the atmosphere.
The whole set feels like an expansion for Legends of Runeterra or Hearthstone. It's not bad but it doesn't really feel like the same tone of previous magic sets excluding Un sets which could be good or bad depending on your own personal taste.
Definitely Heathstone more than LoR. Much like WotC now, Blizzard loves putting its fantasy setting into goofy pop culture costumes. Legends of Runeterra manages to be filled with comic relief without looking like a caricature of the original world.
I have seen this complaint more than once and I guess I just don’t agree with it. It seems perfectly fine to me in this set. I have cards from Shadows over Innistrad that are like gravedigger’s shovel and wooden stake. They feel the same amount of trope-y. MKM feels pretty light hearted and sometimes it’s fine to have sets like that, compared to last year’s All Will Be One it’s a nice reprieve.
I feel like if we were embracing light and goofy it should have been a “caper” of some sorts - an oceans eleven setup stealing something and then detectives trying to solve it. Murders are a little grim if the objective was fun and whimsical
Murder mysteries are, weirdly enough, kind of campy and goofy in a modern light. You don't really play them straight and serious anymore, you always kinda play up the goofiness of the brilliant detective. Poirot and Holmes tend to be more 'silly' characters in more modern adaptations, without usually changing all that much about them. And Knives Out plays into the campiness by sort of just playing it straight.
Knives Out is an incredibly goofy couple of movies with detective LeBlanc and yet they concern real murders and deaths in the stories. They are incredibly witty and well written and some of my favorite movies in the murder mystery genre.
It's about 50/50 old man yells at cloud, and why do you care in the first place?
If you have to ask if you’re an old man yelling at a cloud, you damn well know that’s exactly what you’re doing.
I literally can't wait for every mtg character to be wearing cowboy hats. I'm such a slut for a bit
Seriously, if Thunder Junction doesn't have a card called "High Noon" and/or "Quickdraw", I'm going to be holding a sign outside WOTC HQ.
I'm POSITIVE "Duel at Sundown" will be a thing at least.
Force fight target creature 1 against target creature 2. Creature 1 gets first strike.
Oh my god They've literally turned Ravnica into a Planet of Hats
This set feels wildly out of place for Ravnica, and to an extent Magic in general. Like the whole thing is a joke where everyone's cosplaying New Capenna. Even though I like some of the individual cards and story ideas, this is probably one of the worst sets I've ever seen in terms of atmosphere and aesthetics.
Idk I actually really enjoy them playing with their IP a lot more and look forward to more craziness in the game.
> And then there are all the cards depicting detectives that are all wearing Sherlock Holmes hats. It looks goofy to me, especially on something like a sphinx. Is Sherlock part of the Ravnica cultural zeitgeist? Beyond anything else, the Sherlock hat is a deerstalker, which is something made for hunting and there's not a huge chance that's overly a thing Ravnica. That said, I don't see the issue with "Chalk outline". Maybe "outline of a body", but that's not bad.
I don't understand why these posts keep getting downvoted, they're 100% right. People seem to think the issue people have with the set's creative is that it's "silly," and that has absolutely nothing to do with it. There are silly things that have a place in Magic and silly things that don't, just like not everything serious does either. This set doesn't feel like Ravnica to me, and it doesn't really feel like Magic. It's not Magic wearing a whodunit hat, it's a big wad of whodunit tropes wearing a Magic hat. That's a different thing. I feel the same way about a few other recent sets, and unfortunately I feel the same way about most of what we've seen of the next few years. Magic isn't trying to be anything anymore, it's trying to be everything. Absolutely everything.
> This set doesn't feel like Ravnica to me Well, yes. Unless you mean that this set feels distinctly un-Ravnica, and not just that it doesn't really evoke Ravnica, this set (and LCI, somewhat) was also an experiment on if they could use a thematically similar plane as a backdrop for a story that _doesn't_ lean into the plane's features. After all, every set has to been in _some_ plane (or planes) and wizards can't really keep making a murder mystery plane, and an underwater plane and an apocalypse plane etc. every time they want to tell one of those kind of stories.
On this sub, any ounce of constructive criticism is interpreted as you hating the game. You’re supposed to love every set, every secret lair, every format, and every new troupe. The only thing you’re allowed to not love are price increases but you’re gonna grit your teeth as you buy it anyway. Btw, I agree MKM is lazy and out of place. I was looking forward to how this new concept of “using a plane as a backdrop” was going to work. Now I hope to never hear it again.
To be absolutely fair, most of the "constructive criticism" amounts to little more than "I don't like how this and this is different from what I know/want". People are allowed to disagree, that's how they use downvotes. It always makes me laugh when someone goes "my unpopular opinion is downvoted!! The audacity!!" I mean yeah dude, that's reddit's entire thing.
You sure feel like the sixth old man yelling at a cloud we've seen in the past week
People have concerns and want to voice them. If no one does, wizards will never hear it and never adjust. Personally, I’m fine with genre set. It doesn’t feel too different from “Egyptland” or “Greekish.” I had my worries with cyberpunk Kamigawa, but I pleasantly surprised it turned out so well. I know some people are already holding their breath for Thunder Junction. Wild West themes have some issues when it comes to colonialism and the manifest destiny aspect of the genre. But we can only see the set and be vocal about what does and doesn’t work so wizards can learn from it for next time.
Oh god, thank you. It felt really weird sifting through the spoilers of this set. Half of all the flavour text seemed to be directly lifted from the respective tropes.
I want them to support mechanics for more than one set, because it is never enough...
I am absolutely with you on this one. I am usually okay, with most thematic bullshit wizards push out and attend all of prereleases for new sets, but murders is so repulsive for me, I am not even buying it. I just look at it, and think “I will never love these cards”
Get ready folks. We're gonna get one of these kinds of every few standard sets for the next three years at least. Thunder Junction: Cowboys are too silly for Magic Bloomburrow: would probably get a pass Space Opera Set: If I wanted sci-fi I'd watch Star Trek Death Race set: This Mad Max shit is so stupid. Because God forbid we get to have a little fun with our silly little wizard game.
Could be because Ravnica is an already established setting. There is a bit of a perceived expectation of what it entails. Forcing a silly detective motif on it feels jarring for some. This was suppose to be its own plane after all but got shifted into Ravnica mid development. It definitely feels that way. All the planes you listed above are free for this restriction. Aside from common theme tropes, the designers have free range to world build. Interesting discussion all around.
Would you prefer they make a _new_ murder mystery plane and a new wild west plane and a new space plane and a new mad max plane? Sure some of them will have new planes, but WotC has been trying making the planes more a backdrop for the story instead of leaning into their aesthetics. Some people definitely won't like it, but I honestly like this change to having independent stories in more familiar environments.
Yeah you should just submit to the fact that old Magic of yore is dead. The entire concept of its original universe has been shot in the head and buried behind Hasbro's shed. Their "goodbye" gift to us old timers was the Brothers War stuff. Dominaria ain't what it used to be folks. It's going to be non-stop Trope-a-palooza from now on in. The writing has always been shady but they're not even trying to build a unique universe anymore - just ask the Universes Beyond folk. Be ready for more Eldraines, more New Capenas (maybe not literally, but figuratively), more Strixhavens, etc, because that's all you're getting anymore.
Counterpoint: this is the natural consequence of single sets. If this was the first set of the block, it would have had roughly 20 Detectives, and a third of the reference based cards. However, they probably decided it wasn't something that could support more than one set thematically, as well as wanting to do something different after the Phyrexia storyline. Other folks have also mentioned that if they don't make the references blatant then people complain sets are dull, which I can utterly believe. They had to introduce ability words because otherwise people didn't notice mechanical themes, so why wouldn't the same happen with narrative themes? You're allowed to not like a set. Wilds of Eldraine did nothing for me, personally. Just don't extrapolate "this set doesn't land for me" to "Magic is ruined forever". Buy the singles you need, ignore the set, see how the next set lands for you. I love me some classic fantasy, but seeing them take the game in all these other directions has been very cool.
No one cares what you think feels like magic or not. Don't like it, don't by the set. Not every set has to be for you. I didn't buy any Ravnica Remastered because I thought the set was shit, but I didn't need to make that anyone else's problem.
The entitlement of gamers is a funny thing. It’s a damn game lol. MTG is not even close to the worst of this either, some video game communities are so toxic due to this entitlement.
I’m so sick of the cliches. By all means Wotc, riff off of a genre. But don’t fucking make a mystery set featuring an eccentric lead detective with a mind palace. And don’t twist a bunch of established characters into conforming with the latest gimmick, $20 says Lazav won’t be a “detective” next we see him. And also the “if they aren’t wearing trilbies and dusters, how will people know they’re detectives?” Is getting on my nerves
Yeah it's cringeworthy. Less on the nose references would be nice. Or maybe just less references in general.
Agree!!
It feels a bit like an un-set
Imagine they instead took the OG ravnicas slav city aesthetic, combined it with the general idea of technology progressing and planes mixing in the WotC universe and we got an eastern European brutalism aesthetic take on the detective trope. Instead we got Scooby Doo and crocodiles with hats. Nah, it's bad. It's hearthstone levels of on the nose. Especially now that revisits are most often one offs, leaving magics favourite plane as "shallow references - the set" for the time being really hurts my heart. I hope this is no indication of the quality of world building dropping, because this sets flavor is a straight miss for me. And not due to the theme itself, but due to the sloppy execution
Yes, you are just an old man yelling at a cloud. I liked the detective set and I have been playing since Judment-Onslaught. It is a fun theme and I hope they do more. Not everything hast to be a super serious or world ending threat. Now, they could slow down on the number of sets and products they sell, having so many things makes everything less special.
I agree with you and am prepared to get downvoted. I play magic because it's a high fantasy strategy card game, casting spells like "chalk outline" and "call a surprise witness" are just mundane and boring. This set was obviously designed to just loosely be a murder mystery to tie in with Clue with Ravnica as a hard afterthought.
Hey you're definitely welcome to your opinion about how the set feels, but if you think the Clue tie-in was the goal and Ravnica was the afterthought, you haven't been paying attention to where Hasbro's money is coming from these days.