The remaining sets to release this year will be Innistrad: Midnight Hunt and Innistrad: Crimson Vow.
We got a little about the premise of these sets in the 2021 Magic Showcase earlier today. Introduced originally last year as "Werewolves" and "Vampires," it's clear that those tribes are going to be pretty central in the two sets, though they've always been major factors in Innistrad sets. Story-wise, Midnight Hunt will be about something going wrong with Innistrad's Day-Night cycle, leaving the world shrouded in night longer than its days, which its werewolf population seeks to take advantage of. Crimson Vow will center around a wedding between Olivia Voldaren and some other powerful figure who has yet to be revealed (I think it's supposed to be a planeswalker.) I'll confess I don't know the lore for Innistrad super well. While it would make sense for Olivia to want to marry Sorin Markov, given his vast power, I also think that the vampires of Innistrad detest him for creating Avacyn and generally pumping the breaks on their desire to drink all the humans' blood. So we'll have to see what figure pops up here. (If they make Baron Sengir a planeswalker I'll be insanely happy, though I believe he's canonically dead.)
Especially after the cosmic horror invasion of Emrakul in Shadows Over Innistrad and Eldritch Moon, I could imagine they want to do a back-to-basics set somewhat like Zendikar Rising (though my general impression, which is admittedly more my own feelings, was that ZR was a bit meh in terms of lore. I guess I never experienced the disappointment of having the plane's mechanics and story taken over by the Eldrazi, and actually found them to be the most interesting part of the setting.) Still, Innistrad has a pretty good track record of top-down design, so I could imagine that the big new thing of these sets is their precise focus on two of its most iconic tribes.
Now, next we have Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty. This is obviously a huge departure in terms of aesthetic for the entire game. Even though we've had magepunk settings where super-advanced magic starts to look a lot like distant-future sci fi technology (what we've seen of Vrynn, for example, looks like it would be at home in the Dune novels) I think this is going to be the first time where they directly quote a fundamentally science-fiction subgenre, i.e. cyberpunk, in a Magic set. Of course, blending cyberpunk with fantasy has plenty of precedent, like Shadowrun, and the image of the massive metropolis that was one of the two art pieces we got in the preview clearly has fantastical elements.
Kamigawa's mechanical identity was, I'd say, two primary things in its original 2004-2005 block. The first was Legends matter - there were tons of legendary creatures, lands, artifacts, enchantments, and even a first run at legendary spells, which had the Epic mechanic. The other major theme was the spirit/non-spirit conflict. The story was about a war between mortals and the kami (aka spirits,) and so many spells were built around either spirit hate or non-spirit hate, or buffing whichever side your deck was built around.
The vast number of legends gave the setting a pretty rich identity, but my experience at least was of a somewhat imbalanced gameplay (to be fair, I was pretty new to the very idea of a metagame, and this was on MTGO, where getting the top cards was not nearly as easy as it is on Arena. But it definitely did seem that when Ravnica came out, we started seeing a much broader variety of decks.)
Anyway, the folks at WotC have explicitly said they're looking at a new mechanical identity for the plane. The futuristic nature of the setting could likely be represented in technology, which tends to take the form of artifacts. Artifacts will likely be a huge theme in The Brothers War, coming much later, which could on the one hand mean a bit of synergy between sets, but also likely means that Kamigawa will need to hit it from a different angle. Another theme could be some kind of "enhancement." Cyberpunk tends to involve a lot of cyborgs, where the human (or humanoid) intersects with technology, and where digital constructs can shape the physical world. I could imagine there being a heavy theme of modification through things like auras or equipment, or other spells that can be tacked on to others (perhaps reviving the original Kamigawa's "splice" mechanic or something similar.)
Streets of New Capenna's mechanical theme has already been presented: it'll center around five three-color gangs in the eponymous noir-ish art deco city. Our brief visit to Ikoria had a tri-color theme that was built around the "wedges" that were first explored in Tarkir. But the first three-color block was Alara, where the "shards" of a color and its two allies were the central theme. Given that, I would not be shocked if the three-color gangs were based on these. I'd love to see good three-color lands on par with the Ikoria Triomes come out to support this theme. I think it's also notable that this has a somewhat similar theme to the Hearthstone expansion Mean Streets of Gadgetzan, that was both built around three gangs in a 1920s-like setting (even if Gadgetzan in WoW is nothing like that) that also had a theme of gangs that provided cards usable by three different classes (which are sort of the rough equivalent of colors in Magic.) Blizzard and WotC have always had a fair amount of cross-polination in ideas, of course (Hearthstone I'm sure would never exist if not for Magic).
Moving on to Dominaria United, this won't be around for a while - by the time it comes out, Zendikar Rising, Kaldheim, Strixhaven, and AFR will rotate out of standard - but I suspect we're going to continue an exploration of Dominaria's new mechanical identity as explored in its eponymous set from 2018, which is the "historic" plane. I suspect we'll see some returning mechanics from that set, as well as the old nostalgic creature types and the like (Slivers, anyone?) Of course, Sagas became something of a perennial after its release, with the cards returning in both Theros Beyond Death and Kaldheim. I think there's a good chance we'll see a lot of artifacts as well, especially leading into the following set.
What's interesting about the two back-half sets in 2022 is that we're going to get two sets in a row on Dominaria, but they will, presumably, not be a continuous story (unless it involves time travel.) The Brothers War, which honestly just typing out makes me shiver with nostalgia and excitement, was the huge event that kind of set the entire Magic story in motion (yes, we've gotten stories about things that happened before it, but the war between Urza and Mishra is practically the foundation myth that first gave Magic an actual story). But, I think the heart of that war is that both brothers were artificers, and so there's no way it's not going to feature a ton of artifacts (Antiquities, the third ever Magic set and the one that first established that story, was a very artifact-heavy set, and I think debuted the idea of a set having a strong mechanical identity). What intrigues me is that WotC has said that they're going to look to more perspectives on what was going on with the war. I think we can probably expect legendary cards for Urza, Mishra, and probably Ashnod and... Talos, was it? But the thing about the Brothers War is that this deep personal rivalry caused a whole lot of grief for the rest of the plane. I'll be curious to see how the other peoples of Dominaria who just wanted to be left alone are represented.
I've got to say, I'm pretty excited about all of these sets. I mean, I think the ones I'm least excited for are Streets of New Capenna and Dominaria United, but I say that only because the other ones, along with the more imminent Innistrad sets, fill me with such eager anticipation.
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