It's the end of the year. So that clearly means it's time to look at some Magic: The Gathering mechanics!
People have claimed that this year's sets have been too tropey, and moreso, that the mechanics themselves have a flavour that's too restrictive. As with many wide-ranging statements about Magic mechanics, all I can think is "Is that really true?". So let's have a look!
I'll be looking at new mechanics from six sets: the four Standard releases, along with the Fallout commander decks, and the Assassin's Creed miniset. How "reusable" the mechanics are will mostly be considered in terms of Standard sets, as supplemental sets have much looser flavour requirements, as they often draw from the entire Magic canon.
Murders at Karlov Manor
MKM is perhaps the set people are getting most up in arms about, to the point where they make ludicrous statements. No, this couldn't have been done on New Cappena, there are like a million issues with that idea. (But a new plane would have been fine since it wouldn't have all of SNC's baggage)
Disguise/Cloak - These two are variants on morph and manifest respectively, and the flavour is flexible, while being an accurate description of what the mechanics do. When you cast a spell for its disguise cost, you are literally disguising what it is. Cloak is a little less clean, but there's a similar conceptual throughline. While there's a little bit of baggage around why creatures (or other stuff) would be wearing disguises, it's still a pretty universal thing to be happening.
Cases - A new enchantment subtype with a condition to unlock additional abilities. The flavour is slightly restrictive here, but you can have a case outside of criminal investigations. Bloomburrow's use of the Class subtype also suggests that you can mostly ignore the subtype's flavour as long as the card name is evocative enough. Since a lot can be done with Cases, this is likely a situation where the flavour can be stretched in such a way, as opposed to other keywords and subtypes.
Collect Evidence - Now we're getting somewhere. Collecting evidence requires you to exile cards from your graveyard, which makes a lot of sense in terms of a murder investigation, but less so outside of one. The name is less of a problem, as like with Cases, collecting evidence isn't limited to crime solving. Still more restricted than the previous two, however. (Of course if it was just "Collect" it would be so open as to be usable anywhere.)
Suspect - Last and least for MKM is suspect. On its face, suspect is already quite restrictive, since you generally suspect people of doing crimes. Even in a slightly wider context, it's still tied into investigating implicitly bad things. But the specific mechanical implementation makes suspect incredibly clunky, as being suspected grants menace. So it somewhat implies that a suspect creature is suspected of doing something bad enough to make them scary.
Outlaws of Thunder Junction
In an attempt to avoid the problems with the Western genre, OTJ ended up being set on a world that's kind of weird and empty. Would a Thunder Junction Planeswalker's Guide helped things, or merely revealed that the plane is naught but a dusty canvas?
Mount + Saddle - A very open-ended subtype-mechanic pair, much like Vehicle and crew. If a plane has rideable animals and people to ride them, it can have Mounts to saddle. There's really not much else to say here.
Spree - Like Cases, there's enough leeway in the concept of sprees that this is a less restrictive name that it first appears. You can go on a crime spree or killing spree, but also a shopping spree! Which is nice, because "modular spell with modular cost" is a very usefull design tool. This might not be as stretchable as Cases, but it's not fully fixed to the crime and villain themes of OTJ.
Plot - This is an interesting one, because OTJ already ignores the implicit flavour restrictions. You can plot creatures, including wild animals. What does that even mean? So while this is theoretically narrow, it turns out in practice you can just do whatever you want with it. Perhaps this is a somewhat meta thing, as Magic is all about plotting your opponent's downfall.
Outlaws - Yeah, this batch of baddies is a very narrow idea, requiring a setting where being an outlaw is a Big Deal. I think this will be a general issue with batching going forward - it works very well to tied together specific set theme, but outside of the theme it ends up being too clunky. But batches are cheap, so it's not too much of an issue.
Committing Crime - It has crime in the name. Although in terms of putting a name to "targeting your opponent's stuff", I think that's as about as good as you can get. At least without coming up with a really weird technical-sounding term nobody likes. But yeah, it specifically uses the word crime, which brings a certain level of "caring about the law" into things that most Magic sets tend not to.
Bloomburrow
Everybody loves BLB, the set that's very original, assuming you aren't familiar with the material being referenced. It's cute and cuddly, except for the Calamity Beasts, living embodiments of natural disasters. Also it has a lot of mechanics.
Expend - This mechanic has basically zero flavour beyond what it is. You expend mana on spells, you get an effect. Since that's a thing happening in any set, expend has essentially no flavour restrictions.
Valiant - The updated version of heroic, which works with abilities, but only once a turn. Much like heroic, the flavour here is pretty flexible, since being heroic or valiant is something a lot of things do on a lot of planes. Not as extremely open-ended as expend, but still no serious restrictions.
Forage - Another funky cost mechanic like collect evidence. Unlike collect evidence, it's a bit more flexible, although the graveyard component is linked to the specific thing Bloomburrow's squirrels have going on. That's still something that bends fairly easily, but it's a restriction that the previous two didn't quite have.
Pawprints - A different way to do modular spells with modular costs, BLB featured a cycle of cards letting you chooses modes costing a total amount of pawprints. While this specific implementation is somewhat restrictive, the underlying technology can easily swap out the symbols. It's a little extra work, but it gets you where you want to go.
Gift - The first of the fun cute mechanics. Gift is essentially a kicker variant, where you get your kicks by being nice instead of paying more. While gifting is a universal concept, in the wizard-fights of Magic, the specific vibes of Bloomburrow are doing a non-trivial amout of work here. However, it's more a case that specific settings are broadly incompatible with the flavour of gift, rather than gift being locked to Bloomburrow.
Offspring - At first, offspring seems very flexible. Sure, maybe you can't put it on an angel or a construct, but lots of things have offspring. It's fine. Except when you think about it, Bloomburrow's cutesy flavour and funtime vibes manage to cover up that in some ways, offspring is a child soldier mechanic. It's right in the name! Perhaps that's a little bit of a mean reading... but March of the Machine did the same thing, just in the opposite direction. The scariness of Phyrexia covers for what exactly comes out of an incubator token. Which is also a mean reading I guess. Either way, offspring does have some peculiar flavour restrictions going on to avoid Big Troubles.
Duskmourn: House of Horror
I'm not going to lie to you: I love Duskmourn. It's a great concept for a plane and no amount of "but the cheerleaders" counts as an actual argument against it's strengths. Did you ever consider that Valgavoth wants the cheerleaders there, for his own sinister purposes? I thought not.
Rooms - Another new enchantment subtype, bringing the previously theoretical "split permanent" to life. Most planes have rooms. And since Rooms are enchantments, in some sense they represent the idea of a room more than the actually physical space. A tent could be a room. Or a cave. Or a cabin in the wood and it's princess-holding basement. But I digress. Flavourwise, Rooms can be dropped into essentially any set without serious work being needed to justify them. Can you believe people actually think otherwise?
Impending - It's like suspend, but on the battlefield. Plently of things can impend, although the word and time delay imply a certain level of grandness. An ordinary Ravnican does not impend, but Rakdos might. There's a bit of a catch in that an impending creature needs to also be an artifact or enchantment, but that's a fairly small hurdle to clear in terms of flavour. There's a lot of space to play in when it comes to "creature that shows up after a delay" that means the restrictions aren't too tough.
Survival - A little bit of a weird one, as it carries the implication that surviving isn't a normal thing. Many Magic planes are dangerous, but a certain level of survivability is generally implied. While this isn't entirely pinned to Duskmourn, there's a possible grimness to it that boxes survival into a more limited numbe of locations.
Manifest Dread - A second twist on manifest, for fun. Or terror, I suppose. Dread is a bit of a weird thing to manifest outside of places like Duskmourn and Innistrad, so this one definitely has a certain level of flavour baggage. While not entirely insurmountable, the flavour isn't quite as stretchable as some other mechanics.
Eerie - Like constellation, but it also works when fully opening a Room. This one actually feels very restrictive, because an enchantment entering or a Room unlocking is only eerie in the specific context of Duskmourn. In other contexts, that makes less sense. This might not be a large problem, since Rooms were used in a specific way in DSK, but eerie is still very glued to that.
Fallout
Pip pip, it's PIP. War never changes, but war has changed. I guess there's technically three mechanics here.
Junk tokens - It's junk. Lots of places have junk, and the junk effect is very generic. Just exiling a card off the top of the library so you can maybe play it. Perhaps the whole flavour package doesn't quite line up, but Blood tokens are in a similar niche. And Junk feels more like a thing that can show up anywhere than Blood does.
Rad counters - The problem here is not the concept of radiation. Every lorehead knows that Kaito and Eiko Skizuki's mother died due to radiation poisoning. Also, some guy called Yawgmoth investigated how powerstone radiation was bad for people, with terrible results. Thus, the multiverse has radiation that is bad for you, although only on planes with a certain technology level. The sticking point to me is that a "rad" is technically a real-world unit. Not as bad as the SI units that are named after actual people, perhaps, but still something to consider.
Bobbleheads - Honestly not quite a mechanic, but this artifact subtype does have a connected theme. This one is very wired in to the specific Fallout aesthetic, which is the first point against it. The other is that a bobblehead is a very particular thing, which most planes probably wouldn't be producing. Maybe pre-Valvagoth Duskmourn, but you know, the whole place got eaten by a demon.
Assassin's Creed
From my understanding, Assassin's Creed involves both an ancient precursor civilization, along with a millennia long conspiracy. So it's basically like Dominaria but less excessive.
Freerunning - An alternate cost, payable if you did combat damage with an Assassin or commander. It's a bit like prowl. It's also entirely wired into the specific details of the Assassin's Creed franchise. "Freerunning assassins" is like the entire point of those games. A very, very restrictive mechanic in terms of flavour, but it does feel like it was designed to be a one-off.
Conclusion?
Thematic keywords were not as troublesome as some might say. While a few end up being quite restrictive, others can be stretched further than expected, and some are actually quite generic, even with the context that created them. We also shouldn't forget that Magic has been doing this for a long time. Sometimes baking a little flavour into a mechanic's name is a good thing, especially if it doesn't really have the design space to exist outside of its original context.
Also it's a little weird there were two crime-themed sets in a row, and both 2023 and 2024 had what could uncharitably be described as child soldier mechanics.
