Do Most Planes Feel Like One-Trick Ponies?

Lore forum

Posted on March 11, 2020, 5:29 p.m. by DemonDragonJ

Mark Rosewater has stated that some planes are less popular than are others because they lack a clear identity, such as Dominaria before the set of the same name, Mercadia, or Ulgrotha.

However, I feel that some planes feel too limited by their identities, as if they were one-trick ponies who are limited to a specific gimmick without sufficient room for variety (i.e., Zendikar is a “lands matter” plane, Innistrad is a gothic horror plane, Theros is a Greek mythology plane, and so forth); Ravnica has amazing variety and diversity, but I believe that it is the only plane other than Dominaria to have such qualities. Rosewater stated that it previously had been difficult to return to Dominaria before the set of that name because the plane lacked a cohesive identity, but I like that trait, since our world in actuality does not have a cohesive identity, it has amazing variety, so Dominaria’s diversity appeals to me.

What does everyone else say about this? Do you feel that some planes feel like one-trick ponies?

Caerwyn says... #2

This is a complaint I also have about the many planes we have visited, though I am not sure I would limit it to just new planes.

I would also argue that MaRo is wrong about Dominaria lacking a cohesive theme--the underlying theme of Dominaria is that of traditional high fantasy. High fantasy stories like the Lord of the Rings and Wheel of Time excel because they have underlying rules and lore unifying a world of diverse cultures, environments, and states of technological development. Dominaria is firmly in that vein, and therein lies its greatness--Dominaria allows you to have a melting pot, a meeting of different cultures in either friendly alliances or chaotic clashes.

Which brings me to my thoughts on my favorite recent plane--Ixalan. As a set, Ixalan was pretty fun--after all, who doesn't like Pirates, Conquistadors, and Aztecs with dinosaurs?

But that wasn't what propelled it to being one of my favorites. Ixalan is the first plane we have seen in a really long time that implied there was something more. The entire basis of the set was "Ixalan might be dinosaur-Aztecs over on this continent, but, across the sea, there is an entire different culture made up of Age of Exploration-era Vampires."

That's strong worldbuilding, and makes me hopeful that, when we return to Ixalan, we will go visit one of its other continents. Perhaps those Age of Exploration Vampires are following Europe's path, setting out to conquer an African- or Far East-inspired continents. Perhaps we will get to see their European-inspired land, and the vampire-run society that lives there.

Granted, I'm pretty sure if we do go back Wizards is just going to be lazy and return to the parts of Ixalan we have already seen. But, until then, I'll happily live with my dreams.

March 11, 2020 6:02 p.m.

maxon says... #3

This is sort of a swedish fish argument. On one hand you have a bag of only red fish. Then on the other you have a bag of multicolor fish. Red is clearly the best fish, but it can only stand out when amongst the other colors.

But now you have a situation where all they sell is red fish, not because that's what their die-hard fans want, but because that's what sells to the mass market. I used to love swedish fish, but if you're only going to give me one flavor option I'll pass and go for the Haribo Gold gummy bears.

You feel me?

March 11, 2020 8:10 p.m.

dbpunk says... #4

I feel like this is going to be a problem with every plane, but I also feel like WOTC try to fix it whenever they return to a plane. For example, Innistrad delved into Eldritch horror for our last time there, and Zendikar has changed between our visits in a way that makes it more well built.

Also, maxon just make sure theyre not Haribo Gold Sugar Free Gummy Bears.

March 11, 2020 9:52 p.m.

maxon says... #5

dbpunk NEVER

March 11, 2020 10:20 p.m.

triproberts12 says... #6

I think exactly the planes you mention prove the opposite. Everyone hated Shadows Over Innistrad block because the original Innistrad killed it with the Gothic horror theme, and mashing it together with Lovecraftian horror was a mess. Same for Battle For Zendikar block. At least the Eldrazi were already part of the plane, but, as it turns out, everyone liked the allied-questing, high fantasy thing, so replacing all that with an Avengers-style superhero team thing made it just awful. Meanwhile, Theros and Ravnica have been great on each return trip, since they have such strong flavor AND mechanical identities.

March 11, 2020 10:28 p.m.

I feel that, in the case of Tarkir and Kaladesh, among others, some planes feel like none-trick ponies.

March 12, 2020 12:41 a.m.

Caerwyn: Regarding your hopes for Ixalan: I don't know if you followed the Ixalan story (I mostly didn't read it except the last few chapters). But in that last chapter, the sun emperor wanted Huatli to join his conquest of Torrezon (which basically is vampire spain/portugal). As Elenda also heads back to Torrezon after being released and shunning Vona and Mavren Fein, it's very likely Return to Ixalan will be called Torrezon and will feature plated dinosaurs crashing mediteranean palazzos. Also, we got a sneak peak of Torrezon in a story about Vivien that was revealed around the time of the core set she first appeared in. If you haven't read it, you should. It's a great story showing which part of green's identity Viv represents (It's THAT part of green btw.).

March 12, 2020 2:49 a.m.

Gleeock says... #9

Do they have a Weirdworld? You ever read Marvel Weirdworld?? Anyway, you always need a Savage Lands location where all the oddball stuff gets dumped (Ixalan?). I personally want a prison plane where some of the most powerful beings of MTG history end up after some types of exile (like a conservation of energy type of thing. You don't just unmake Avacyn & have that energy go nowhere).

March 12, 2020 8:25 a.m.

JakeHarlow says... #10

@ ClockworkSwordfish

I agree, those planes were so lame. “Guys, get excited, this is Mongolia with Dragons!” and “Okay guys, this is so epic, this entire plane is New Delhi with robots!!” just did zero things for me. I do want to discuss Tarkir for a bit though, because it highlights some of the laziness of WotC’s design. I won’t discuss Kaladesh because it was a snooze fest from start to finish. Super boring mechanics-wise and worldbuilding-wise.

Tarkir was a little less irksome than Kaladesh because the mechanics of the set were a bit more interesting to me and the cards seemed better-balanced apart from Siege Rhino in Standard. I think it was also helped a bit by having diverse environments and factions — the wedge color pie “clans” at least had somewhat well-defined characteristics and even featured watermarks on their cards reminiscent of the Ravnica guilds (I still felt like Mardu was not representative of its colors though; I was surprised when they made Dega (what used to be nicknamed) the “total chaos / aggro / Orcs ‘n’ stuff” clan — would not have been the choice I made...I mean when you take the Lawful Evil Orzhov, and add , does it just suddenly become a World of Warcraft Orc-party ripoff meme?). Each clan had a theme, a mechanic, and then the third set of block gave us five new factions that were allied color pairs, with a slight twist on the mechanics that their previous tri-colored incarnations used to have. The issue here, of course, was that these new allied color factions often just felt like ripoffs of the Ravnica guilds they mirrored, and didn’t feel new enough:

  • - colored Dromoka, was a Selesnya-ish faction that focused on +1/+1 counters. How many other sets has had do that?? Even the “community before everything” flavor was a total yoink from Ravnica’s Selesnya. At least it improved Abzan’s Outlast mechanic, which was boring and also unplayable in Constructed, to “bolster,” which was at least better in Limited...ultimately kind of a snooze fest though.

  • - colored Ojutai was basically just Azorius with a more “monks and mystics” flavor. This one was still the best and most unique in my opinion because it was themed around tempo-oriented and aggressive strategies whereas traditional Ravnican Azorius has always been more about pure control, strategy-wise. The prowess mechanic didn’t exactly show up again in its Jeskai form, but reprinting rebound onto new cards felt fun and appropriate for the colors. Still kept its “noncreature spells matter” identity but twisted it a bit — now this clan wanted to do a bit of tempo play before curving into big Dragons, which still cared, sometimes, about spells — a la Pristine Skywise.

  • - colored Silumgar was confusing to me. Sultai was this weird ramp-y, graveyard-based strategy that had all these fun delve cards (a reprinted mechanic itself, but done pretty well here), and actually felt unique and somewhat interesting. Silumgar switched to an aristocrats-style, almost aggro-oriented strategy with the “exploit” mechanic. It still cared about death and the graveyard to an extent, and did highlight the ruthlessness of the Dimir colors. I guess at the end of the day this clan was different enough from Ravnica’s Dimir that I have to give its design some credit, though ultimately I felt the mechanic was a little boring. It had very little impact on Standard, and the best way to play in those days was still inside of a hard control shell. I don’t recall my playing Silumgar in Limited as being particularly memorable. Just kind of a jumble of blue and black midrange-y creatures that sometimes wanted to eat each other. Almost felt like bad “devour” from the Alara block?

  • - colored Kolaghan became just...harder aggro than its prior incarnation in Mardu. The “dash” mechanic wasn’t even new, it had been printed on Mardu cards in the prior set, Fate Reforged. The slapdash “attack at all costs, aggro for life!!” theme of this clan was just Rakdos as we’ve always known it. Pretty boring. I didn’t even hardly notice the lack of white because it didn’t feel any different from Mardu, which had the “we have to attack every turn” mentality with the “raid” mechanic. Honestly, raid felt better when it was reprinted in Ixalan and attached to the Grixis-colored Pirate tribe. Kolaghan brought nothing new and felt straight up lazy.

  • - colored Atarka had - colored Temur’s ferocious become formidable. We care about 8 power now instead of 4. Really, that’s it?? Otherwise this was just straight up Gruul. It was the “we ramp hard into big dumb creatures and do aggro to smash things” clan. In other words, Ravnica’s Gruul to a T. Disappointing, because Temur was actually pretty interesting, mechanically, before it lost . It was basically a ramp-oriented monsters strategy that had access to tempo and interaction, even countermagic, and it felt fun and interesting. I loved the cards Temur Charm and Stubborn Denial, they were perfect for what Temur was mechanically. Removing just turned it into Gruul. Again, disappointing.

Finally, there were the clan-unifying mechanics of morph, a reprinted mechanic that was still done fairly well and felt interesting in Limited, and then its “twist” in the final set, “megamorph.” This was the most boring design cop-out I’d seen yet. “Guys, get excited. This is EXACTLY like morph, but it gets a +1/+1 counter when it goes face-up!!” My God. So. Lame.

Anyway, I think the wedge clans color shifting into allied color pairs really highlighted a big lack of creativity on the part of WotC. And I think they got some of the design behind the wedge clans wrong. Plus “the entire planet is Mongolia” thing was a bit silly.

Kaladesh was just lame and sucked. Didn’t help that the quality of the cardboard hit rock bottom in this era, but we aren’t here to discuss that.

March 15, 2020 11:36 a.m.

Gleeock says... #11

Kaladesh was indeed lame. I wanted some daisy-cutting thing to come smash all the incessant filigree aesthetic that was all-too present. Kaladesh would be much better if it was turned into a Madmaxesque wasteland :)

March 15, 2020 12:54 p.m.

DemonDragonJ says... #12

Gleeock, from little that has been shown of Vryn, it seems to be a barren wasteland akin to something from Mad Max, and, given that it is Jace's home plane, I am certain that WotC shall have an entire set on it at some point in the future.

March 15, 2020 8:54 p.m.

Gleeock says... #13

That would be sweet. Too bad our punk-rocking misguided feralboy planeswalker is no longer around. Maybe a Gruul or Rakdos Walker will come along to revel in the Anarchy & rule-by-might.

March 15, 2020 9:54 p.m.

triproberts12 says... #14

JakeHarlow, I think you're misremembering the flavor of Khans block. The idea was that the contamination of the enemy color philosophy was making each color pair weaker. The Sultai weren't able to live up to their creed of familial unity so long as they were binding the souls of their dead kin. The Mardu's dawdling with inter-party politics made them less effective in battle, as evidenced by the body count of Sarkhan and Zurgo's squabbling. The Temur's blue-based spiritual practices stood in contrast to the law-of-the-jungle world wilds they live in. The Sultai's lush, green-based decadence left them constantly on the verge of loosing control over their populace. The Jeskai weren't able to be true scholars, since they focused too much on fighting and not enough on enlightenment. The idea was that each Dragonlord expelled the respective practices that were making the clan weak, and that's how the consensus is that the world of Dragons of Tarkir is a righted version of the world of Khans.

March 16, 2020 11:12 a.m.

triproberts12 says... #15

*Abzan were the binding-dead-kin ones

March 16, 2020 11:13 a.m.

triproberts12 says... #16

god, and "losing," not "loosing." I should really proofread more carefully.

March 16, 2020 11:14 a.m.

JakeHarlow says... #17

@ triproberts12

Fascinating. That’s a really elegant breakdown of the Tarkir clans and the color shifting. I’m perhaps revising my opinion now with regards to the “flavor validity” argument I made above.

However (and I do know this is a lore thread), I stand by my points, more or less, with regards to a lack of creativity with the actual mechanics in the set (at least with regard to the Dragons of Tarkir clans), and furthermore, WotC’s attempts to tie said mechanics to the lore theme of each faction.

But overall after reading your comment I think you must be right. The Dragonlords “purified” each clan, at least thematically. That’s a good read and I had not considered that whole concept until you laid it out for me.

March 16, 2020 11:20 a.m.

DemonDragonJ says... #18

seshiro_of_the_orochi, if the game returns to Ixalan, I hope that it is revealed that not all of the vampires are evil or conquistadors; just as some merfolk and some members of the Sun Empire were evil, I hope that some members of the Legion of Dusk are good people.

March 16, 2020 5:47 p.m.

Gleeock says... #19

Understandable...Although, I am old school, in that I dislike the concept of vampires as being good peoples.

March 16, 2020 8:27 p.m.

DemonDragonJ says... #20

Gleeock, I prefer vampires to be evil, as well, but I dislike how the vampires in Ixalan are clearly modeled after European explorers, who were not all evil. I do not wish to discuss politics, here, but I really hope that WotC is not implying that the European settlers in the 1500's and 1600's were wholly evil, and that the native Americans were innocent victims, because, in actuality, there were good and evil people on both sides; for example, the Aztecs practiced human sacrifice, which was all but extinct in Europe by the time that the first settlers arrived in the new world, whereas the Pilgrims, of whom I am a descendant, were feeling religious persecution in Europe.

March 16, 2020 9:17 p.m.

triproberts12 says... #21

DemonDragonJ, while I definitely think the side stories about Vivien point to more of Torrezan (?), and the other parts of Ixalan at some point, I feel like a revolutionary uprising against the vampire aristocracy probably isn't happening. We just did "Citizen" power on Ravnica, and a people's revolution on Kaladesh, so they'd probably want to keep Ixalan's identiy separated as the New World world. If anything, there'd be a Pirates of the Carribean-esqe conflict between the Coalition and the eastern continent, since Rosewater has said he'd want to focus on the pirates and dinos next time around, since he feels like what people were excited about got diluted.

March 17, 2020 11:57 a.m.

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