My Introduction to Vorthos
On May 5th, 2012, my brother introduced me to Magic. This was the day after the release of Avacyn Restored. I was almost immediately hooked. I knew the story of the set from reading online in my free time. Although I didn’t know any of the intricate details, but I knew the basics of Magic story up through Dragons of Tarkir as sets released. My oldest brothers had played in the 90s to the mid 2000s, so I had a lot of old books and cards to dig through. I ended up reading And Peace Shall Sleep by Sonia Orin Lyris, and Arena by William R. Forstchen.
After that, I wasn’t involved with the Magic storyline beyond those two books. In 2015, around the release of Magic: Origins, I found out that I could read the official Magic story online. I read every article from then until the end of the Ixalan storyline and began to read about old stories elsewhere online.
Blocks and the Storyline
For almost every block since Time Spiral to the end of blocks, I can easily tell you how the story developed, set by set. Magic long followed the sequence in a block of “Setting, Action, Result”.
Innistrad: A world where humans desperately defend against monsters. The angel that protected them is missing.
Dark Ascension: Humans are losing.
Avacyn Restored: Avacyn returned from the Helvault and saved humanity.

It’s an easy, simple story that follows the sets. Most blocks have a similar, easily explainable story. Even when I didn’t follow the story, just talking with people at prerelease or FNM ended up giving me more than enough information. For example, Liliana was the one who opened the Helvault, so she could kill Griselbrand.
Although I stopped reading the story articles when Martha Wells took over in Dominaria, I did still stay caught up by reading on various websites and online forums.
Removing Blocks from Magic
When I started writing this article, I looked up the storyline for the sets starting with Dominaria. Unlike every previous set, even the ones that I never read the actual stories on and stuck with Fandom wiki pages, I could not remember anything of the storyline. However, I was able to recall the storyline for the following Guilds of Ravnica, Ravnica Allegiance, and War of the Spark sets easily.
I couldn’t remember anything after that, once again.
Sets within a block give me enough context to recall the basics of Magic story. Although this seems minor, it does have a big effect in one way: It builds nostalgia. You can’t say “Oh, do you remember… “ about a story you can’t recall. I have nostalgia for many sets that I never had the opportunity to play because I enjoyed the story. That’s part of why I play the Old School and similar formats.
Further, in Mark Rosewater’s 2021 State of Design, he talks about how Kaldheim was too cramped and should have been two sets. He even admits that the world itself was a bit cramped. There are 10 realms in Kaldheim, and almost no one can remember a single one of the realms. In comparison, Guilds of Ravnica and Ravnica Allegiance had two full sets just to show off the guilds. If you want us to love a plane, give us time to enjoy it.
Story Spotlight Cards
Introducing Story Spotlight Cards
Way back in his 2016 State of Design, Mark Rosewater stated that “I have heard from many players that for the first time in years of playing they are actually aware of what the story is” in part due to the advent of Story Spotlight cards. Spotlight cards started in Kaladesh, and gave a basic breakdown of the critical points in the plot. In Kaladesh, the five cards were Inventor’s Fair, Captured by the Consulate, Deadlock Trap, Fateful Showdown, and Confiscation Coup.
There was the Inventor’s Fair, where everyone is showing off their cool inventions. At some point, Pia Nalaar, Nissa, and Chandra are captured. This leads to a Fateful Showdown against Tezzeret, and all of the inventions from the fair are Confiscated.
The cards were a fantastic way to show off the story on the cards in the set. I was a huge fan when Kaladesh released, and loved the cards. During prerelease, I actually took the time to track down people that had opened each of the various Story Spotlight cards so I could see them in person.
Story Spotlight cards have continued all the way to the most recent sets, except Adventures from the Forgotten Realms, as it’s not quite a Magic set.
The Current State of Story Spotlight Cards
Let’s compare the Kaladesh cards to the Story Spotlight cards from Strixhaven, shall we?
- Crackle with Power
- Culmination of Studies
- Defend the Campus
- Draconic Intervention
- Explosive Welcome
- Extus, Oriq Overlord
- Letter of Acceptance
- Mage Hunters’ Onslaught
- Mascot Interception
- Mentor’s Guidance
- Plumb the Forbidden
- Practical Research
- Professor’s Warning
- Rise of Extus
- Tempted by the Oriq
Wow, that’s a lot more than five cards. They’re not numbered either. How am I supposed to keep track of when this all happened? Literally everything I got out of this is that Extus is the bad guy who leads the Oriq who was researched “magic from the Blood Age”, and he got defeated by Will and Rowan Kenrith. Those two had been brought to Strixhaven based on a recommendation from Kasmina. Somehow, a dragon gets involved and I don’t know which dragon that is. Lastly, at some point the campus is attacked by mage hunters, so the center of campus is undefended. I’ll make the leap to say that’s to tell us that Extus used that distraction to get in. However, I’ve got no clue why Extus wanted in or what would have been there. Also, what’s the Strixhaven Snarl? It sounds like either a sports team, a rock band, or an unexplained energy vortex thingy. Maybe that’s what Extus wanted.
Try picking out a random three or four of these cards. Can you tell me how they relate to the story? I know I’d struggle with that.
Basically, Story Spotlight in Strixhaven mostly left me confused. At the very least, I would appreciate numbering everything. Beyond that, I’d appreciate there just being fewer story spotlight cards in general. They should be a brief outline of the story. We’re currently straying towards the Apocalypse end of the spectrum, where every card in the set had a direct reference to the story. See how out of context Jilt looks.
For the unaware, Yawgmoth was imitating Hannah, who was Gerrard’s girlfriend. I’m 99% sure that this little event could have been left out of the cards, just like 2/3rds of the Strixhaven Story Spotlight cards.
Novels and Articles
The End of Novels Part 1
For much of Magic’s history, the storyline was published in novels. Dozens and dozens of books were published.
In 2014, WotC announced they’d no longer be doing novels to represent Magic’s story. In their place, they’d post story articles called Uncharted Realms. I think this was an excellent call on WotC’s part. Novels had never done well, and they didn’t get stories into the hands of the masses. Shortly after this is when I started to get involved with Magic story, and it’s definitely because it was so easy to access on their website.
By the way, the best story from this period of articles is hands-down Sacrifice by Michael Yichao. It’s an incredible, terrifying, and creepy story set on Innistrad.
The Return of Novels and the cancelling of Uncharted Realms
Uncharted Realms started to be doing quite well, so Wizard’s announced that they’d be moving the writing to known authors such as Martha Wells and Greg Weissman, and introduce novels. These are great for giving much more nuance and depth to Magic story.
The resulting novels and novellas were:
- War of the Spark: Ravnica
- War of the Spark: Allegiance
- Children of the Nameless
- Throne of Eldraine: The Wildered Quest
- Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths – Sundered Bond
Initially, they continued to post the story articles on the website. This enabled players to follow the gist of the story without having to actually purchase the books. Then with Throne of Eldraine and Ikoria, they stopped posting the articles, leaving players in the dark. I would imagine this was to try and force more players to buy the books.
Many people know of the nightmare that was the War of the Spark books, with its “decidedly male” and Ajani “grinning his leonin grin”. Nissa and Chandra “broke up” in the most awful “we weren’t ever in love because China might not like it” way. Not to mention, the entire Jace x Vraska storyline that I loved from the Ixalan storyline was ended as well.
This lead to the cancellation of the Theros: Beyond Death book. Our replacement was a short article with the major plot points listed.
The novels really didn’t do well, with one exception.
Children of the Nameless
Brandon Sanderson is one of the most popular fantasy authors right now. Wizards of the Coast approached him about doing a novel, as they’ve dealt with him in the past. He’s gotten various Magic products to give out to people he plays Magic against.
He offered to write the book for free on two conditions. The first was that he had creative liberty over the story. The second was that the novella be published online for free, and would stay that way.
For several months, the novella was free on Magic’s website. Eventually, it was taken down, presumably by someone who realized it was very popular and thought they could make good money by selling it as a book instead of giving it away for free. Now, the page for the book only says that it’s coming to print soon, and has been that way for a long time.
If you want to read the novella for free, you can find it on the web archive. It’s fantastic and absolutely worth a read.
Wizards of the Coast wanted to print physical copies of Children of the Nameless. Brandon Sanderson had even given them permission to do this, stating that his portion of the sales was to go to charity. However, WotC wanted to make the free digital copy “go away” before they printed the novel, directly in contradiction with one of Brandon Sanderson’s two wishes.
I think it’s safe to say we won’t ever see another Brandon Sanderson book with Magic: the Gathering.
The End of Novels Part 2
Due to the general failure of the primary Magic novels, Wizards has stopped making full-on novels, again. To replace them, they went back to the tried-and-true story articles. They’ve made some collections of the short story articles posted on Wizard’s website. I generally do think that this is the best format for delivering the storyline to the masses. Losing the nuance of the novels is sad, but if we’re going to get writing as awful as War of the Spark: Forsaken, it’s probably better to not have novels at all.
In lieu of story articles for Adventures in the Forgotten Realms, Wizard’s made a great choice of making several D&D adventures to try, such as this one. AFR is not really Magic story, so it’s sensible to not make any articles to develop already written out characters.
Conclusion
A Wishlist to Wizards of the Coast
- Stay on planes for 2+ sets more frequently, especially for new planes
I like planes that are fully fleshed out. Ikoria never got that chance, and neither did Kaldheim. I know so little about these planes, and I really wish I had gotten to see more of them.
- Keep the storyline online, even if there are proper novels as well
War of the Spark had both an online element and the novels. If novels are going to come back, please keep putting articles online. Don’t gatekeep people from the storyline.
- Limit the number of Story Spotlight cards
I want to get the basic idea of the story from the Story Spotlight cards. There is no reason for me to know absolutely every bit of the story. Keep it to the important pieces. Maybe more than just five is necessary, but 15 is definitely too many.
- Number the Story Spotlight cards again
I have no clue what order the events of Strixhaven happened in. They just left me confused. It would help so much to just put the numbers on them again like how the Story Spotlight cards originally were.
- Put Children of the Nameless back on your website, and print a physical copy
Children of the Nameless was written to be free. Put it back that way, please. If that would resolve the issue between Wizards and Brandon Sanderson and enabled the printing of a physical copy of the book, I would absolutely buy it. I really do want a copy of the book for my collection.