By Ryan Carroll
Can Magic be a story and a card game at the same time?
From the perspective of Magic’s design, the simple answer is yes. Magic has a story, after all. And indeed, recent Magic story has tended to be in dialogue with, or explicitly reference, the storytelling patterns of blockbuster films.
At its most obvious, this trend looks like sets modeled around specific kinds of films with specific narrative beats: the Western/heist of Outlaws of Thunder Junction, the murder-mystery of Murders at Karlov Manor, and the death race of Aetherdrift. In other contexts, Magic’s blockbuster leanings look like well-defined heroes going up against broad catastrophes (the titular dragonstorms in Tarkir: Dragonstorm, the Calamity Beasts in Bloomburrow, the Archaic freakout in Secrets of Strixhaven, and the mysterious artifact in Edge of Eternity), specific villains (Extus in Strixhaven: School of Mages, Ob Nixilis in Streets of New Capenna, Belzenlok in Dominaria, Eriette in Wilds of Eldraine, Valgavoth in Duskmourn), or lurking multi-set mega-antagonists(the Phyrexians, Nicol Bolas, the Eldrazi, and most recently, Jace).
Magic has, in short, plenty of villains.
