Five Planes We're Never Going Back To (And Why)
When Magic was initially concepted as a multiverse, it was with a great intention: hop around to different settings means a lot of potential for fresh starts and ways to build audience resonance. After about a decade of going back to Dominaria and (mostly) staying there, we entered the Planeshopping Era. Then we kicked blocks to the curb and really went planeshopping! In the twenty years since Magic has kicked free of Dominaria and been willing to really run about, there are certain planes that just... haven't gotten much of a second glance. Last year, we got a rare three-year glimpse of the future and found that even planes as unlikely as Lorwyn were getting a visit... but not these.
To lay down some foundational ideas with this article, the plane will need to have been in a premier set (sorry, Fiora and Kylem!) and have more than a few scattered cameos (sorry, Xerex and Segovia!). I will allow for things like Core Sets to factor in, as they have historically had the space to flesh out a plane's identity well enough for visiting purposes. (This does go against Mark Rosewater's usual definition of a visit being a full "expert" expansion, as they were once called.) I will be counting a revisit as being the focus of a premier set.
So, which planes do I think are never getting the Kamigawan glow-up? Let's dig in!
Alara
Alara is a world of five shards, with each shard only having access to three colors of mana. These mana-distorted worlds each developed radically different societies as a result. Bant, the shard of Green-White-Blue, is a hierarchical caste society run by Angels and full of Knights. Esper, the White-Blue-Black shard, is an artificial world of machinery run by Sphinxes and full of Constructs. Grixis, the Blue-Black-Red shard, is a necromantic world run by Demons and full of Zombies.
Then you have Jund, the Black-Red-Green shard, is a chaotic world ruled by Dragons and full of Goblins. Finally, Naya (my beloved), the Red-Green-White shard, a primitive world ruled by Beasts and full of Elves. In the end, the shards were crashed back together in an event known as the conflux, which resulted in the "every card is multicolored" set.
So Why Don't I Think We're Going Back?
Unfortunately, the conflux pushed Alara away from being a Shard world and into being a multicolor/five-color world. This was back when Wizards would blow up a setting by releasing Eldrazi or a god-tier Angel, but unlike Zendikar and Innistrad, they never felt like fixing Alara in the 15-year gap since then. The most we've gotten has been the occasional odd cameo. Two of the 4-color Commander 2016 face commanders were from the plane, reinforcing the idea that the setting is still the gold soup world. We've even had a set which featured a new run at the shards!
What Could Cause Us To Visit Alara, Anyway?
Streets of New Capenna did not prove super popular due to some problems with the limited format and some creative issues, which does leave the door open for Alara. Alara's only hope to even be seen in the next two years is the death race set (not a full return, notably), and after that... it'll have been over 17 years since leaving the plane with the release of Alara Reborn. That was the same length of time as we saw between the final set of Kamigawa and Neon Dynasty, so the odds are... low.
I want to go back, though, if only for my boy Ajani to get his due.
Shandalar
It's very likely that I annoy some older fans with this one. Shandalar is one of the oldest planes in Magic, with a ton of story if you go digging deep enough. Weirdly, it's also one of the planes that has gotten solid development without a true premier set. It was the subject of a video game released in 1997, and has been depicted most often in various Core Sets since. The ancient struggle of epic characters, like Lim-Dûl, happened there, and the mysterious artifact known as the The Chain Veil hail from it. The most recent "focus" came in M13, where we found Shandalar developing a Sliver problem. It's a plane full of wild, surging magic. We know Talrand is from there!
So Why Don't I Think We're Going Back?
The problem with Shandalar as it stands now is that the world is... generic. It was conceived in the early years of the game as a good place to put into an introductory experience with no baggage. The PC game seemed to be a hit for that reason, but it didn't leave Shandalar itself as a compelling place to visit for a full expansion. Shandalar being the subject of a Core Set makes sense in this context, but it also makes it clear that the plane just may not get a full run-through.
The problem of Lim-Dûl and the Chain Veil have also been touched upon without a revisit, as Liliana addressed them herself in Homecoming. We do keep getting occasional teases of the Onakke, but who knows if or when that could actually develop into anything major. Thanks to the Omenpaths, it's even less necessary than ever for a full visit to Shandalar, given that their quarry (the Chain Veil) is not currently on the plane itself either.
What Could Cause Us To Visit Shandalar Anyway?
...Maybe a remaster of the old PC game? There aren't a lot of solid plot hooks to cause us to want to go there at this point, and the world itself lacks a strong identity. One of the few quirky things about Shandalar was actually that it had cards that only worked digitally, but now that Arena has Alchemy, even that novelty is no longer unique. Come on, even Invasion of Shandalar's back side's flavor text is a relatively generic piece about its wild magic! Wild, uncontrolled leylines? That sounds too much like Zendikar. Slivers? Originally found elsewhere.
This brings us to the final hope I think Shandalar might have: a Thunder Junction-style set in which it focuses on a theme that could map well to the set, like say... jungle explorer, and then put a bunch of random legendary creatures in those funny straw helmets.
It just... might... work!
Mercadia
Mercadia was once a major location due to its involvement with the Weatherlight Saga. The plane was populated mostly with the descendants of people from Dominaria trying to escape either the Thran Civil War or the Brother's War. There are upside-down mountains and a corrupt government run by... Uh. We'll get to that. In the story, the Weatherlight crashes on Mercadia while escaping Rath. The story is focused on them repairing the ship and helping the citizens overthrow their terrible government. As for the block itself, well, go check out Luka Sharaska's article about the top Commander cards to find out some real gems, but let's just go ahead and note Rhystic Study.
So Why Don't I Think We'll Go Back?
It once played a part in the Weatherlight saga, but it was mostly built for that saga. Much like modern Magic storytelling takes some notes from current popular trends (in our case, superhero films), the old Magic storytelling was taking its cue from, well, Q. Star Trek was all the rage, so the easy trope of "crash land on a world similar yet foreign to our own" was ripe for the picking. It had a little mystery about a founding myth and how the peoples could be so similar to Dominaria despite being on another world, and... that was it. The world didn't have a particularly strong resonant theme. Shout out to all 572 Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero players out there, but Rebels are not exactly a popular theme.
Plus, uh, the world was being secretly run by a group of bigger, smarter Goblins which is... an uncomfortable world-building feature. I think it's best for everyone if we just left this one in the dustbin of history...
What Could Cause Us To Visit Mercadia Anyway?
Did you know that the original plan for Scars of Mirrodin block was to start out calling it New Phyrexia and then slowly reveal that it was Mirrodin all along? We'd need that, but for Mercadia. Make sure to come back and comment on my article if that's how the Phyrexians get revealed in 2040!
Ulgrotha
I... Hm. Ulgrotha was... part of the original Ice Age block, technically. It was a world torn apart by warring wizards, until the ancient planeswalkers Serra and Feroz decided to rescue it. They revitalized the plane, and Feroz's Ban was laid down there to keep further intruders from mucking it up. Unfortunately for the plane, Feroz would die in a lab accident, and Serra left. She apparently didn't leave behind any of her Angels to help keep things in check, because Baron Sengir would remain there to slowly take over the plane. It does have some of the original Minotaur cards of note, but... yeesh, this list is bleak. The most-played card from the set is Merchant Scroll...
Why Do I Think We're Never Going Back?
It's Ulgrotha. This plane got a shout-out once six years ago in Children of the Nameless and some occasional references purely due to Baron Sengir's latent popularity. There do not seem to be any major beloved facets from the set (no one is calling for a reprint of Greater Werewolf... in fact, a copy of every single card from its originating set, Homelands, would run you under $100...). Ulgrotha was there with a handful of other worlds that only got represented in the single battle and nowhere else in March of the Machine. Baron Sengir was last heard of as "looking for some Dwarven Gate", which was a plotline never picked up and could easily be swapped out for him finding an Omenpath somewhere else.
What Could Cause Us To Visit Ulgrotha Anyway?
...Maybe show us what happens when planes collide by having Ulgrotha crash into Innistrad. Blow it up and bring the only thing worth saving (Sengir family name) in a world people actually care about. Seriously, this plane doesn't have any serious elements worth salvaging, and it would all ultimately be in service of making a set that feels like a worse version of Innistrad. Let's not.
Honorable Mention: Vryn
Before I hit upon the number one spot, I'd like to give a special shout-out to Vryn, a plane which very nearly made the list save for not technically getting a true full visit. (At least Shandalar had been the focus of a Core Set and its own game.)
Vryn honestly seems cool. Its gritty, poverty-stricken aesthetics would lend themselves incredibly well to the start of a, say, Netflix series (screenshot this and send to your Vorthos friends for psychic damage). The fact that it was introduced almost a decade ago as the home of Jace Beleren and then was never deemed relevant enough to actually visit in full made it seem apparent that Wizards just wasn't into it. The fact that they gave up on pulling on the "Jace finally goes home" thread for a set and just slid that into the Thunder Junction Epilogue says a lot.
The only hope for even a partial visit in the near-future is the Death Race set, which would be hilarious on some level. Sharing with two other planes is, strictly speaking, five times better than it did with Magic Origins!
But for the finale:
Rabiah
You knew it going on. If you're enfranchised enough to be reading Commander's Herald, you probably know that Mark Rosewater has a scale for how likely we are to visit a world, and that it's named after this world. Arabian Nights was a delightfully weird set in hindsight. It tries to capture a real world culture! They designed it before making the legendary rule, so they had to make up a bit about Rabiah being 1,001 subplanes all existing simultaneously to make it make sense that Aladdin isn't legendary. Najal, the Storm Runner is from there?
Seriously, Though, Never?
Some Magic players criticized parts of Eldraine and Kaldheim for being too on-the-nose with the designs. Mark Rosewater has noted time and again that players prefer it when cultural references are "Magic's spin on it" and not "the reference put on a card"-- unless it's a Universes Beyond property tie-in I guess? Look, unless there's a massive audience of people who are passionate, devoted fans of it, Magic is way more likely to recraft it into something that actually promotes and cultivates its own brand.
It's the same reason they don't normally put real world quotes on the cards anymore.
What Could Happen to--
The entire creative team gets hit by a bus. Look, we didn't even get an Invasion of Rabiah card. We got a card for Ergamon, for Serra's sake. Rabiah ain't happening.
See You Never...
So there we have it! Five planes we're never going back to. Which one of these do you miss most! Which ones do you seriously have a case for? Do any of you think Ulgrotha has a chance? Let me know in the comments below!
