Forget the Dragonstorm arc, MTG Modern Horizons 3 is a prequel

So it turns out MTG Modern Horizons 3 is a prequel set. Alongside your fevered attempts to get your hands on an Eldrazi Commander deck or fine tune your Modern-legal deck, you might not have even had time to think about that being a possibility.

Magic: The Gathering didn’t land its spot as one of the best card games in the biz solely through its storytelling. In fact, not everyone who plays MTG even keeps up the Magic Story. This is a reality I’m willing to accept. That said, I believe everyone can find a certain joy in trying to spot the narrative throughline between Outlaws of Thunder Junction’s rootin’ tootin’ daddy issues and Modern Horizons 3’s apparent resurrection of the Eldrazi. It turns out the obvious answer is … we’re going backwards.

According to Product Architect, Mike Turian, not only will players receive a bit of a blast from the past thanks to the older cards receiving a refresh for Modern format, but new cards created specifically for Modern Horizons 3 have a bit of time-travelling theming to them too. “One of the exciting things that we get to do with Horizons sets is free them from the typical constraints that many of our other sets have.” Mike explained, “With MH3, we took advantage of this by going back and showing the moment these Planeswalkers’ spark ignited.”

As a supplementary set, Modern Horizons 3 isn’t as closely beholden to any sense of order so it’s not unfeasible to see moments from across Magic’s timeline represented simultaneously in your MH3 Commander deck or boosters. According to Mike, “The combination of creative freedom and success we had with this when we had done this before with Magic Origins inspired us to go and show the spark moment of these Planeswalkers."

With all this in mind, we won’t see the Dragonstorm arc kick off until the release of Bloomburrow. Although that set will leave us with a whole other set of pressing lore-related questions. How will Ral Zarek figure out how to adjust back to human life after spending time as an otter? Will he ever be able to go swimming without holding another otter’s hands again? This is important stuff to consider, guys.

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