The History of Sagas

Urza's Saga by Titus Lunter

The History of Sagas

If Magic's 30+ year history could be defined by any one thing, it would be innovation. The game started out with six card types, then introduced planeswalkers 14 years later and the battle card type after 30. Card types are certainly the rarest and splashiest innovations, but subtypes' effects on the game should not be understated. 

Some noncreature subtypes enter the game as a mere "tag", a word to be referenced on other cards. Cartouches and Bobbleheads are good examples. Others are used to solve a problem for a single set and are therefore unlikely to see use elsewhere, like Case and Map. Still others come to the game and immediately become beloved deciduous design tools, like Equipment.

In the six years since their inception, Sagas have been printed in 19 sets and now have over 150 cards, marking them clearly as another member in the third category. What about Sagas made them so immediately lovable, and how has the card subtype evolved since then? 

What is a Saga?

A Saga is an enchantment that enters the battlefield with a lore counter. On it there are three or more effects. When you put a lore counter on it, you trigger the effect that matches the number. At the beginning of your first main phase, you put another lore counter on it. When the last lore ability triggers, it gets sacrificed. When I first saw these, I tended to think of them as a three sorcery cards stapled together.

The Beginning: Dominaria (2018)

Sagas actually started out quite like many mechanics: an attempt to solve a problem posed by a single set. Dominaria was the first return to Magic's "home plane" since Time Spiral block (2006-2007), with over a decade between them. The plane had a ton of history, with nearly 30 sets which used it as the setting at the time. They needed a way to convey a lot of the plane's history. There are a lot of challenges posed here, boiled down to the difficulty of trying to tell a story in a card set. There are a lot of different ways it's been tried, with their own difficulties and pitfalls. If you print a "set" of cards that work together to tell a story, you run the risk of players not getting all of those cards or not putting the pieces together. Putting a story all on one card had been impossible until Mark Rosewater leaned back on an old attempt at a different cardtype altogether: planeswalkers.

In "The Saga of Sagas," Mark Rosewater lays out that planeswalkers would originally enter the battlefield and have an effect, then trigger a new effect on the subsequent turns before going back to the top and starting over. The problem was that it didn't feel like summoning another person to fight alongside you, but a script that was being followed... a story being told. From there, the decision had to be made: what type would they be? Artifacts represented "real" objects, while enchantments represented the immaterial, so enchantment it would be.

As this was a new subtype with unique possibilities, they slowly rolled it out. Mark Rosewater has talked before about reserving design space and saving on innovations, to make them more exciting as they release. Dominaria only saw 14 Sagas, all of them mono-colored and with three chapters.

Highest ranked Saga from the set: The Eldest Reborn.

Personal favorite: Also The Eldest Reborn. It was fun in Standard!

Theros Beyond Death (2020)

Sagas proved immediately popular. They were flavorful, intersting, and fun! So despite being a fairly new mechanic and working as far in the future as they did, they found a spot to use Sagas within two years of the mechanic's debut: Theros. Theros was a slam dunk for the mechanic, being a returning plane with Greek myth tropes to utilize and an enchantment theme to boot. Theros being a predominantly mono-color plane due to the devotion mechanic, its Sagas remained mono-color as well. These would be the first Sagas to be covering stories and histories not previously covered on the cards, being allusions to the tropes of the genre that then became baked into the plane's history.

The subtype received one small innovation: the first Sagas to have more than three chapters.

Highest ranked Saga from the set: Elspeth Conquers Death.

Personal favorite: The Birth of Meletis. Being able to dig up a land in white felt so good.

Kaldheim and Modern Horizons 2 (2021)

Following Theros Beyond Death, we wouldn't see another major gap between the usage of Sagas in sets. They've since been released in at least one set every year, sometimes two. Kaldheim was a brand new plane but featured a mythic setting like Theros. It made use of Sagas for two solid reasons. First, they immediately deployed a sense of epic history across the ten sub-planes. Second, the word saga literally refers to Icelandic prose narratives, from which the Norse myth used as a basis for the plane was derived. Slam dunk fit!

We didn't see any four-chapter Sagas this go-around, but we did see something very new: two-colored Sagas! The world of Kaldheim was based on Norse mythology, which featured a cosmos of nine planes connected by a World Tree. Magic likes multiples of five, so they bumped it up to ten and assigned each sub-plane a creature type. Each of the ten planes was then represented by a different two-color pairing. Selesnya for Bretagard and its Humans, Izzet for Surtland and its giants, and so on. The Sagas reinforced this, often by directly referencing the creatures in their rules text. History of Benalia was the first Saga to care about a particular creature type, but these were the first to care about a creature type that it didn't also create for you.

This set also ramped up the card type's numbers, nearly doubling it in one go. Previous sets had been cautious about the mechanic, but by the time Kaldheim was being developed, I guess they had a pretty good handle on it. A lot of the cards being mechanically narrow likely helped.

Highest ranked Saga from the set: Binding the Old Gods

Personal favorite: Showdown of the Skalds. I struggled so hard to play Boros in Commander in 2013. This was a blessing.

Also in 2021 came a little set called Modern Horizons 2. Urza's Saga is the first and only enchantment land and thus also the only Saga land. The entire card cares about artifacts. The joke is that Urza's Saga was a set that was billed as being an enchantments set but it ended up being about artifacts. It was very mean to poor enchantment players, who are watching the artifacts players run around with nineteen artifact lands to choose from.

But I digress.

Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty (2022)

The triumphant return of Kamigawa saw a unique need for Sagas. When we first visited the plane, we actually saw it 1,000 years in the past. This was a boon, as the first visit was sorely unpopular, and therefore gave them a justifiable reason to shake things up. It also gave them a specific use for Sagas. Players born the day Saviors of Kamigawa released would be able to drive themselves to the Neon Dynasty pre-release; the plane's history was not well-known. Beyond the lore side, Neon Dynasty wanted an enchantment theme, especially in green and white.

One of the problems with having a higher density of noncreature permanents is that Limited environments need creatures to actually end games. Sagas have the option to make tokens, but it makes it harder to tell the differing histories and design compelling cards if they all have to make a token. (This gets even harder given how most sets can only get a limited number of tokens.) To fix this, they came upon a major innovation for the card type: Sagas that transformed into creatures. First ever double-faced card Sagas.

These Sagas notably exiled themselves and returned to the battlefield transformed, which allowed the designers the option to choose whether the creature could attack immediately or not. Other firsts in the set: a five-color Saga and common Sagas! Thanks to becoming creatures, there was room for them at common, with very simple effects.

Highest ranked Saga from the set: Fable of the Mirror-Breaker

Personal favorite: Boseiju Reaches Skyward. I'm a dirty ramp player.

Dominaria United (2022)

That's right! This year saw two premier set releases with Sagas! Dominaria United would see a return to the plane Sagas originated on. They reverted to single-sided and mono-colored, but came with a new twist to the formula. A new mechanic called read ahead was included on all ten Sagas in the set, which allowed you to actually choose how many lore counters the card would enter with. This made Sagas modal and provided interesting choices: do you enter with one and get the most value out of it, albeit slowly, or do you skip out on some of that value to get a bigger impact immediately? Like most Sagas before these, the effects would tend to have some synergy with the other steps, so it could be tricky to decide.

Like Dominaria before it, Dominaria United's Sagas had more stories from the distant past depicted on them. The histories depicted had a greater focus on the Phyrexian parts of Dominaria's past, relevant given that the set kicked off the year-long conclusion to the Phyrexian arc that had been building for two years.

Highest ranked Saga from the set: The Cruelty of Gix

Personal favorite: The Elder Dragon War

Warhammer 40,000 (2022)

Towards the end of 2022, Wizards of the Coast partnered with Games Workshop to release four Commander decks themed around the Warhammer 40,000 setting. Each deck highlighted a different faction and included one Saga with a story relevant to that faction. These Sagas served a dual purpose. For Magic players with no familiarity, they would incite curiosity. What was The Horus Heresy referring to? That could lead the player to investigate and find a whole new setting they love. For already-invested Warhammer players, this was a fun way to include major lore moments they were already familiar with and also a tool to teach them how mechanics can have flavor.

This two-way feature of Sagas would make them an incredibly popular inclusion in future Universes Beyond sets. At the time of writing, there are 51 Sagas from Universes Beyond sets, making up just over one-third of all Sagas in the game.

Other firsts: three-color Sagas.

March of the Machine (2023)

Currently, the final innovation on Sagas as a card type came in March of the Machine. The five Praetors were making their final appearance for the grand finale. To give them appropriate gravitas, they couldn't just repeat the established formula of a beneficial effect for you and an inversion for your opponents. They needed something epic and never-before-seen. They turned, once again, to Sagas.

The Praetors each had an ability that would them transform into a Saga, named for their essential thesis or core belief. Their Sagas had game-shattering abilities that would almost certainly turn the tide. If you somehow didn't win, the Praetors would return at the Saga's conclusion to potentially do it again.

They've repeated this once for flavor reasons with Huatli, Poet of Unity, though she does not return to the battlefield afterwards. I think this is an interesting little niche of design space, albeit one I think they'll be careful about dipping into. I am delighted that Sagas can now be your commander now.

What About Now?

Aside from the first-ever artifact Saga in Unfinity (Greatest Show in the Multiverse), this covers every design evolution of Sagas! The other sets to feature them heavily since then have kept to the tools at hand. I'd cover them if I had room, but this story is getting long as it is. The card type has come a long way in a short time, developing in a lot of interesting ways. It's a fantastic subtype, allowing enchantment decks to play in unusual spaces and even giving the card type a graveyard strategy.

We've even gotten some Saga-specific commanders, currently seven at the time of writing! Tom Bombadil is naturally the most popular, being a five-color version of the deck archetype. Satsuki, the Living Lore is the commander most likely to go in the 99, being only two colors but very useful to the archetype. Of course, any kind of commander who manipulates counters is a potential storyteller, even Atraxa, Praetors' Voice.

I immediately loved Sagas as soon as they came out, just for the unique way they played. It's been fun getting to watch the subtype emerge and evolve, picking up different tools and ways to play with the years. I'm excited for what the future holds! More Saga lands? Saga Auras? Nonland Sagas with activated abilities? Whatever it is, I'll be excited to let this story continue to unfold.

Until next time!