Are you a Quiet Speculation member?
If not, now is a perfect time to join up! Our powerful tools, breaking-news analysis, and exclusive Discord channel will make sure you stay up to date and ahead of the curve.
I'm not sure whether all of you saw this, but I did.
As many advancements as they have made in the lore writing department, they are seeming to squeeze the lore conveyance department.
Picture this - it's 2004. Champions of Kamigawa has just come out. You head down to the LGS and pick up a fat pack.
Boom. It comes with a full color guide to the set, a foil basic land and a foil common, 6 boosters, a spindown and since the value train has a hard time braking quickly, what the hell, a full-length novel about Kamigawa lore. Each set has a fat pack and they're all this saucy.
Ravnica block is pretty cool, too, only now you get 2 boxes to hold cards in.
Lorwyn comes along and, eh, you still get the boxes but no novel for you. Shut your mouth, nerd.
2 boxes are too expensive to ship. Have a few more boosters and shut your mouth. The novel is now a flavor pamphlet.
You don't need a flavor pamhplet. Just go online and read about the flavor, you neck-bearded Vorthos basement-dweller.
I think there's some comic online or something, I don't know, no one asks about it.
No more card box, no more lore. Have a few extra boosters and thank you for shopping at Walmart.
Good lore is still being written by the flavor team at Wizards, but it's getting harder and harder to read. Enjoy it while you still can.
The reason why novels are being cut from 1 per set to 1 per block to 1 pamphlet per block is because it is bad.
I couldn’t give those books away when they were in the fat packs.
Now I can’t even give the basic lands away (short of the ZEN lands).
Until they do full art basics again, I’d be happy if they got rid of the basics as well.
The fat packs still contain the cool card box. The flimsy paper deck boxes are almost always just thrown away anyways. I do miss the books.
I use the small deck boxes as separators in my bigger long boxes of cards and front padding so I don’t pack the rows so tight that I can’t get cards out without damaging them.
It’s also generally best to use these as padding at either end of the cooler fatback boxes too so cards don’t get crushed by the cardboard insert at the top of the box. It would be nice if they’d make the bottom part of the fatback boxes tall enough to actually cover the height of a card and sleeve so I wouldn’t have to do this.
This tells the story perfectly. Keep up the great writing as nearly everything you write is so darn entertaining to read. I started playing Magic in the age of flavor pamphlets. While playing Magic is my favorite thing about Magic, it is a cool IP and I hope to eventually see a resurgence of Magic lore via books to go with the great artwork and game play. Maybe if the movie doesn’t suck, the doors will be opened for Magic themed books to be more successful. If Harry Potter and Eragon can succeed, surely there are things in the Magic universe that can be mined and turned into kick ass stories.
For the record–the Lorwyn/Shadowmoor block fat packs did come with an anthology of short stories (that’s pictured on the far right of the Lorwyn fat pack), but the Shards of Alara fat pack didn’t even come with The Planeswalker’s Guide to Alara pamphlet–that was a separate book that was sold in mass-markets for $16.95.
Hilarious, great article