Last week, Magic was at its dreariest point in the game’s
history. It needed something good to save it.
Mark
Rosewater wrote an article about things that many people said were going to
kill Magic, but guess what, they didn’t.
I found this piece profoundly annoying because of its smug, “heh, look at how
silly people were to think this would kill Magic” attitude, while leaving out
things that genuinely came close to killing the game. A few sets, and their
immediate aftermath, are in this category.
The seven-month gap after Fallen Empires probably should have killed Magic, or if not,
then the eight-month gap after Homelands could have finished it off. Urza Block
saw tournament players fleeing in droves. Masques Block didn’t sell for shit.
We can very easily look back on the introduction of Sixth Edition rules, which
happened between Urza’s Legacy and Urza’s Destiny,[1]
as a great thing now… but that’s because we’re used to Wizards going, “no,
really guys, we’re sure this is great for the game long-term. Just trust us on
this one.” Who, after those last two blocks, still had faith in Wizards? No one
rational. The logic surely went, “they clearly have no idea what in Christ
they’re doing with making cards, so why should we assume they know what they’re
doing with the rules?”
[1] Yes, Sixth came out two months after Legacy, and was followed by Destiny two months later. They changed the entire ruleset of the game while printing those absurd cards.
After a suck-awful set like Prophecy, the
statistically-minded would imagine that the following set, Invasion, would
regress to the mean and be better. It turned out to be the most revolutionary
expansion printed to that point.
