Very Far Ahead

WotC has treated fans to an announcement of sets coming out through 2026! There is some wild stuff there and for the most part I'm on board with the concepts. They feel weird and as though they did some 'swing for the fences' stuff. I adore that!

Now, there are some obvious winners for me: anytime they go to Ixalan, I'm hyped because dinosaurs. I refuse to tamp down the enthusiasm of 5 year old me for dinosaurs, ever. Even though my interest in non-Magic IPs in the game is diminished, I 100% see the audience for the Jurassic franchise being excited and hey, y'all go to town. 

It gets far more interesting after that, though, along with the guaranteed moneymakers that will shake up many formats and have the stick in the muds whining about 'my eternal format shouldn't rotate!'.

We ignore those people.

Ravnica remastered-very cool, let's give people another chance at cards from one of the most popular locations and solid mechanics of the game. 

Murders at Karlov Manor-I'm taking this as a 'hunt the serial killer' thing, a Silence of the Lambs but for Magic. I'm undeniably interested in this concept. 

The Ravnica: Clue thing, I haven't the slighted idea about. Clue might be a 'classic' boardgame but is it a good one? Are people actually excited about this notion?

The Commander: Fallout crossover is where I'm staring to see the pattern. If the IP doesn't have a fantasy element, then Commander standalone product is where it tends to go. Warhammer 40k, Doctor Who and now Fallout falling here and I can't say I'm upset about it. I don't care about it much because Commander as a format is one I'm really on the fringes of enjoyment of. 

Contrast this with the recent LotR set, and the upcoming Final Fantasy themed set being full on draftable ones and I am starting to see where WotC is willing to blend their product. The Assassin's Creed set is the outlier here, since the story is technically science fiction but all the action takes place in historical settings where it's easy to implement fantasy tropes. 

And while I am a fan of both Fallout and Final Fantasy, while caring very little about Assassin's Creed, the proof will be in the pudding, yes? I don't care about what they do with these properties, except insofar as they give me less Initiative or the Ringbearer mechanics and more Warhammer 40k's good cards. 

Outlaws of Thunder Junction is something that fans have been asking for for years, and the 'villains at a frontier town' concept is rad. I'm very interested.

Modern Horizons 3 is...going to have absolutely bonkers shit in it and if everyone could just get the yelling about it out of their system now, that'd be great. I personally am looking forward to it because I've liked both the previous Modern Horizons sets. 

Bloomburrow is something I can't believe they haven't done before, honestly. Redwall as Magic set is such a slam dunk for so many reasons, it really plays into what Magic should be messing around with, I think. Again, I'm just surprised they didn't do this before. 

Duskmourn: House of Horror takes the biggest risk of these sets, I think. An entire plane that exists inside a haunted mansion? That is just wild! But I'm excited to see WotC take on such a different idea. 

As for the 2025 sets and beyond, the details are mostly too vague for me to have an opinion about. I can say that of the planes we know we're revisiting, Strixhaven, Tarkir and Lorwyn, I'm far more interested in the Lorwyn one, as Shadowmoor/Eventide is one of my favorite Magic blocks, ever.