A familiar threat lurks in the new Magic the Gathering set, Neon Dynasty, but everything else seems like total chaos. Jellyfish cybernetics? Transforming tanuki masks? Anything seems possible as Magic glides on neon rails into the cyberpunk future for the first time. With the set arriving soon—February 10th on Arena and MTGO ahead of the tabletop release February 18th—the previews start today, so I've spent the last few days wearing mirror shades and jacking into Magic's equivalent of cyberspace.
Things are already looking pretty weird in this modern version of Kamigawa—I’ve been around since before Magic’s first Ice Age, and I’ve never had to decide whether to plug a jellyfish into my brain or turn it loose on my enemies before now.
This set travels to the current day in Kamigawa's history. In the previous three visits—all the way back in 2004/2005 in our boring and dragon-free world—Kamigawa was 1,200 years in the past from the current Magic timeline. Having grown and healed from the events of the original sets, the plane of Kamigawa has seen technological innovation cram its landscape with skyscrapers and neon washed streets. Traditional structures and shrines nestle between the high tech monoliths of glass and steel, and samurai stride the streets.
This definitely isn’t the pastoral Kamigawa of memory.
We’re on a familiar plane with a well-known threat, but mysteries abound: a missing emperor, Kamigawa’s guardian kami attacked just some 10 years ago, and a decidedly Phyrexian-flavored conversion of people into machines. Kaito Shizuki—a childhood friend of the emperor and a ninja planeswalker—is the protagonist for the main story, which saw the emperor disappear after a man with a metal arm broke into the palace and
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