Magic: The Gathering – Goodbye Standard: Zendikar Rising
With Dominaria United looming on the horizon, everything about Magic: The Gathering is about to change. Standard rotation, the culmination of a major story, characters dropping left and right, and god knows what else to be revealed during the 30th anniversary mean this is one of the last times we’ll have a good chance to look back at the past few years.
Zendikar Rising, launched in September 2020, was one of the first sets to launch after I got back into Magic over lockdown. It was the first product launch I really paid attention to, and everything seemed new and shiny to me. Landfall? Neat! Party? Total gamechanger. Double-faced cards? Confusing, but let’s work with it. Of course, with two more years of experience behind me now, Zendikar Rising feels like a weird set that laid the foundation for those after it to execute upon ideas in an overall more cohesive way.
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It was the first time we’d returned to the adventure world of Zendikar since it was devastated by the Eldrazi in the Battle for Zendikar block almost five years earlier. With the last remaining Eldrazi firmly locked up in Innistrad’s moon, and Nicol Bolas no longer wrecking the multiverse, it was the first of a series of sets that put general vibes over any ongoing story.
Wrapped up in there somewhere was Nissa and Nahiri going to war over how to fix Zendikar’s neverending natural disaster, the Roil, but honestly the consequences of that battle have been completely absent in the years since. Instead, Zendikar Rising returned to the general feel that made people love the setting so much in its debut. Free from eldritch beings mucking up the place, it was also to focus on raiding tombs, climbing
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