MTG Lorwyn Eclipsed is a strong stance against slop

I don’t hate fun. That feels like an important thing to make clear from the get-go. Magic: The Gathering is meant to be playful and even occasionally outright ridiculous.

Still – like the plane of Lorwyn-Shadowmoor itself – maintaining a balancing act between light and dark has been one of Magic’s greatest strengths. A strength that one of the best card games has perhaps failed to exercise in recent times.

While dubbing Magic the 'Fortnite of TCGs' is usually meant as a prerogative, I find that Fornite is a helpful measuring stick for a game that has hit a sort of marketability saturation point.

Think of an experience that feels like doomscrolling social media on the toilet or eating a Pop Tart for breakfast. In the moment, it’s hard to say you’re getting much out of it, and you don’t exactly process it as worthwhile fun when it’s over either. It’s bright, sugary, and frictionless.

So, just like with Fortnite, Magic can only drop so many “uh wow, did they really do that?” collabs into my lap before the entire release schedule blurs into one glossy mass of established IP and repeated formulae. Once the novelty decays, everything which was once transgressive just feels textureless.

The recent unwhelming Spider-Man set crystallised a feeling that many fans have been circling for years: Magic has become far more comfortable borrowing cultural meaning than investing in its own, and it’s suffering from it. Of course, maybe not suffering financially, but suffering nonetheless.

I never put any stake in the idea that Universes Beyond is ‘destroying’ MTG’s identity. After all, the game has always been in conversation with wider pop culture to some degree. Still, it feels naive not to at least admit that it’s being crowded, deprived of the space and oxygen it needs.

The resulting experience is a barrage of sets that feel disposable. Sets get announced, they get spoiled (usually way too early), they release… and then leave very little residue behind. It feels as though these releases exist to be hyped, consumed, and forgotten.

I think that’s why MTG Lorwyn Eclipsed (despite being a ‘return to’ set) feels so fresh. It recognises Magic’s own worldbuilding as something worth diving into again… and it’s also just bloody weird. As Mark Rosenstock wrote on his blog, “Lorwyn’s artistic style was controversial at the time. Many thought it was pushing Magic outside 'what Magic was.'” This is a pretty foreign concept by today’s standards. After all, the idea of ‘what Magic is’ has become as fractured as ever. How could Boggarts rock the boat when we’ve had Furbies? However, it’s worth noting that through a combination of design complexity and its almost cutesy, folkloric, storybook aesthetic, Lorwyn was once the worst-selling large set in the history of Magic: The Gathering.

So, why revisit this aberration in the game’s past? Why follow the path of risk when there’s plenty safer, more middle-of-the road themes to center a set around?

In lore, the elves of Lorwyn once had a troubling obsession with beauty and homogeneity. Anything that didn’t satisfy their standards of perfection was termed an Eyeblight and was to be destroyed. It’s difficult not to recognise a parallel between the ideology of the Eyeblight cullers and Magic’s creative posture as of late. Yet, in embracing the whimsy and weirdness of Lorwyn-Shadowmoor, Wizards of the Coast has spared an Eyeblight. I can only hope that this is the shape of things to come.

While I seriously doubt that Magic’s marketing cycle dominates conversation at any player’s table, I think it’s worth reflecting on the Lorwyn trailers, which were created in collaboration with the Jim Henson Company. Not because of the Jim Henson name recognition, though. In fact, I would’ve taken a fatal amount of psychic damage if faced with a Fraggle Rock cameo. What really matters to me is their artistry, their use of real world puppetry, and to be crass: just how cost-inefficient they seem.

Writing these scripts; creating a practical set; composing and producing music; bringing characters to life with complex, handmade puppets and animatronics — these are big swings. There was an alternate path of least resistance that the people at Magic decided to turn away from.

These videos are invigorating in how they feel like a thesis statement, or a declaration of the intent behind Lorwyn: Eclipsed as a whole. These are odd little things very evidently made by people.

I and many others want (maybe even need!) odd little things very evidently made by people.

Because, in a time where ‘slop’ is Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year, the texture and humanity of a work is like gold dust. Rough edges and rogue creative choices aren’t contradicting quality, they’re indicators of it.

So, while light, saccharine crossover content pleases the collective palate and helps drive sales, it’s important to remember that shadows are essential too.

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