Thematic Dissonance

Mind Warp card art

The current Standard environment in Magic has five sets:

- Innistrad: Midnight Hunt (MID)

- Innistrad: Crimson Vow (VOW)

- Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty (NEO)

- Streets of New Capenna (SNC)

- Dominaria United (DMU)

Their motifs, respectively, are:

- Gothic horror

- Gothic horror

- Futuristic Japanese Cyberpunk

- 1920s Art Deco + urban gangsters/organized crime

- Generic/traditional fantasy in the original Magic plane

If it isn't obvious from the descriptions, these motifs do not blend together well. It is bothering more than I realized.

Magic used to release a few sets in a row (called a block) with similar theme and mechanics. The original Innistrad set was this way- its title release was followed by Dark Ascension and Avacyn Restored. Blocks were 2-4 sets, and often released during an era that had core sets, too, which were intentionally more generic (a traditional fantasy theme). That means most Standard environments featured one or maybe two motifs at any given time. I liked that.

Magic went away from the block concept (at least officially) in 2017. Their argument was fair- it was sometimes difficult to develop that many cards around common mechanics, and they felt (for the 3-block sets in particular) it resulted in unbalanced releases. Since that time, there have been a few sets connected thematically- Guilds of Ravnica, Ravnica Allegiance, and War of the Spark, for example, or the two aforementioned Innistrad sets- but there have also been a lot of one-offs.

Last month, I looked at types of Magic players as defined by Wizards of the Coast. I mentioned "Vorthos" and how important theme was to that type of player. A Vorthos will construct a deck based on both synergy of cards and consistency of theme. I am more of a Vorthos than I realized, as I find myself really struggling in the current environment. 

There are many good cards in Standard right now, and many competitive deck archetypes. But most of those must mesh cards from all four themes together to accomplish their goals, and it drives me crazy. Thematic dissonance, it turns out, is not for me.