Last chance
October 2nd 2011 23:28
You may leave here for four days in space,
But when you return, it’s the same old place.
-- Barry McGuire, “Eve of Destruction”
For a Magic expansion that was touted as the first set with a Gothic horror theme and the first one to have a significant top-down or flavor-based perspective at all stages of development, Innistrad has a lot of things in it that are surprisingly unoriginal. Check out the backstory for Innistrad and the backstory for Homelands. Substitute “Avacyn” for “Serra” and they’re eerily similar. Olivia Voldaren easily stands in for Baron Sengir, although I’m not sure right now who the Autumn Willow’s counterpart would be. Heck, Homelands even had werewolves, though they weren’t as well developed in either a game sense or a lore sense as Innistrad’s. We also had the general concept of a world dominated by dark forces as recently as Shadowmoor, so you’d be forgiven for raising an eyebrow.
Innistrad’s other main flaw is that the standard concessions to competitive play – like the obviousness of which cards were designed for limited and which for constructed – are even more glaring in a set with so many flavor-based designs (eg. Wooden Stake). Nonetheless, I am encouraged by what I’ve seen of the set so far, and not because I’m holding out for the next two sets to “make it better.”
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and it’ll take more than one block for Magic to become the game that it always should have been. It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that competitive play has been the default form of Magic for so long that the fact we got a top-down set at all is a minor miracle. Innistrad wasn’t the first for many things, but in terms of Magic’s time cycles, it was effectively the first flavor-based set for many players, and it does deserve to be given a chance. If we do so, it will be the first of many, the first hope in years of a Magic fandom that isn’t dominated by the worst of its members.
But when you return, it’s the same old place.
-- Barry McGuire, “Eve of Destruction”
For a Magic expansion that was touted as the first set with a Gothic horror theme and the first one to have a significant top-down or flavor-based perspective at all stages of development, Innistrad has a lot of things in it that are surprisingly unoriginal. Check out the backstory for Innistrad and the backstory for Homelands. Substitute “Avacyn” for “Serra” and they’re eerily similar. Olivia Voldaren easily stands in for Baron Sengir, although I’m not sure right now who the Autumn Willow’s counterpart would be. Heck, Homelands even had werewolves, though they weren’t as well developed in either a game sense or a lore sense as Innistrad’s. We also had the general concept of a world dominated by dark forces as recently as Shadowmoor, so you’d be forgiven for raising an eyebrow.
They cut this card late in development. Not cool, guys.
Innistrad’s other main flaw is that the standard concessions to competitive play – like the obviousness of which cards were designed for limited and which for constructed – are even more glaring in a set with so many flavor-based designs (eg. Wooden Stake). Nonetheless, I am encouraged by what I’ve seen of the set so far, and not because I’m holding out for the next two sets to “make it better.”
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and it’ll take more than one block for Magic to become the game that it always should have been. It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that competitive play has been the default form of Magic for so long that the fact we got a top-down set at all is a minor miracle. Innistrad wasn’t the first for many things, but in terms of Magic’s time cycles, it was effectively the first flavor-based set for many players, and it does deserve to be given a chance. If we do so, it will be the first of many, the first hope in years of a Magic fandom that isn’t dominated by the worst of its members.
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