Now Is The Perfect Time To Get Into The Magic: The Gathering Story

thegamer.com:

You'd be forgiven for not knowing just from looking at the cards, but Magic: The Gathering has an ongoing story that's been running nonstop for decades, with a whole multiverse of worlds to explore and an endlessly expanding cast of Planeswalkers who ebb and flow out of focus. Weirdly, it's probably one of the closest things gaming has to EastEnders, except instead of Janine Butcher causing havoc in the Queen Vic, it's Nicol Bolas systematically harvesting the sparks of all the Planeswalkers he trapped on Ravnica in his pursuit of godhood.

Like EastEnders, catching up with Magic can be a bit of a task because there's so much of it. Unlike Eastenders, you'll actually get something worthwhile from catching up with Magic. There won't even be as much required reading as you might be expecting.

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Like any long-running story, Magic splits itself into arcs. 2019 saw the end of 'The Bolas Arc', which saw the elder dragon Nicol Bolas attempt to bend the multiverse to his will in a massive battle known as the War of the Spark. For the few sets after that, Wiz+ards focused on exploring the multiverse recovering from such a cataclysmic event, with sets like Throne of Eldraine, Ikoria, and Theros: Beyond Death only marginally moving the story along.

2021's Kaldheim kicked things up a gear with the return of one of Magic's oldest enemies, the Phyrexian Praetor Vorinclex. Phyrexians are essentially Magic's take on the Borg or Cybermen – horrific amalgamations of metal and flesh who want to convert (or "compleat") the entire multiverse to their own ways, with the Praetors being their five leaders. It was a huge shock to see Vorinclex appear out of nowhere,