The lore for Magic: The Gathering (which I will still stand behind as my favorite game ever) has entered a strange place over the past several years. For a while there - and as I think I may have noted on here a time or two - the MTG story team at WotC was absolutely killin' it from my perspective. (In a good way, in case that isn't clear.) They repeatedly addressed the question, "What would ____ look like as an MTG world?" with creativity and genuine affection for both the mother IP and the genres that were tackled. Along the way, there were some real high points for fans of innovative, game-able worlds (especially, as MTG lore fans are called, Vorthoses): the fantasy cyberpunk of Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty, for example, and the friendly anthro-animal antics of Bloomburrow were both pretty well-received.
That's not to say that every decision was 100% spot-on. Folks got tired of what came to be known as hat sets, the expansions that overlaid a theme on the MTG multiverse partly by putting characters in hats that you don't expect in a traditional fantasy setting...for example, cowboy hats for a Western set and detective hats (or...sort of fedoras, I guess...) for a murder mystery set. (It really is interesting that the sets that have been praised over this time (like those mentioned above) basically followed the same gameplan as the oft-dismissed hat sets, they just didn't put characters in funny hats. So, while I suspect that the set design and gameplay also had an impact on the sets' reception...well, maybe there really is something to this hat thing...
Of course, that approach is arguably negligible when you consider the biggest change to the MTG creative approach over the last several years: the release of Universes Beyond sets (which feature IPs outside of MTG's regular lore) and their eventual incorporation into the regular cadence of yearly set releases. Right now, in Magic's Standard format - which is treated as the "default" format for competitive MTG enough to be called "Standard" - folks are playing with cards representing the lore of Final Fantasy, Avatar (the Airbender type), and (perhaps most surprisingly) freaking Spider-Man.
I will admit that I am so far undecided on how I feel about this "invasion" of other IPs into the MTG battles played out on tabletops around the world. (I don't play enough currently, especially out in public with strangers, to really have an opinion yet.) BUT...I can definitely understand why this grinds the gears of many MTG lore devotees. It has not gone unnoticed that when the Ninja Turtles set (yep) drops in about a month and a half, there will be more currently available Magic expansions set in New York City than in most of the (maybe any...?) original MTG worlds. And I'm kind of okay with that (I like NYC!), but it is...weird.
Anyway...all of that is to say that when this promotion for the new set Lorwyn Eclipsed was released a couple of weeks ago, it was such a breath of fresh air that I don't think some MTG lore fanatics knew what to do with themselves. The bright plane of Lorwyn and its dark counterpart Shadowmoor are built upon the folklore of the British Isles, and the new set (which just had prerelease tourneys this past weekend) really examines the interaction between the contrasts of the related planes. And that includes this amazing music video, featuring some beautiful puppet renditions of the settings' goblins (AKA boggarts), produced by The Jim Henson Company.
I'll quit rambling now so you can just enjoy this video...
