Ever since the game’s debut in 1993, flavor text has been an integral part of MTG. It’s the main way that most players experience the narrative behind the cards, and therefore an important outlet for Wizards to leverage. Unfortunately, as cards have grown more complex over time, the cardboard real estate available for this crucial text has diminished. Many players are, as a result, being left wanting in terms of story content.
Fortunately, it seems that Wizards is aware of this problem. In a recent Blogatog post, Mark Rosewater promised that the company is actively pursuing more flavor text in new sets. Looking at the last few releases, we can see evidence of this work in action. While these are good steps, Wizards may need to go even further to combat the rising tide of complexity, and keep Magic: The Gathering’s story in shape.
Players Ask For More Flavor Text In MTG
This discussion stemmed from MTG player Attunepog requesting more flavor text in the game. They noted that, thanks to wordier rules text, there’s been a ‘significant decline in worldbuilding and story’ on the cards.
It’s hard to disagree with this statement. Power creep is discussed quite regularly in the Magic: The Gathering community, but complexity creep is just as big an issue. Each new set adds multiple new mechanics, which inevitably need their own reminder text. On top of this, cards are just wordier now than they’ve ever been in the past. With the game speeding up and vanilla creatures now being a thing of the past, there’s much less room for flavor text.
This, in turn, leaves much less room for the game’s crucial story elements. Sure, players can read the storyline of the latest set online, but that’s typically a path for the truly committed. For more casual players, art and flavor text are the ideal conduits. Cutting down on the latter has the inevitable effect of alienating a large chunk of players from the game’s narrative.
Thankfully, Wizards is well aware of this issue. Responding to Attunepog’s question, Mark Rosewater noted that “We are making a conscious effort to prioritize having more cards with flavor text.” While this is fairly vague, it does at least provide some reassurance to players like Attunepog who value the story. Additionally, unlike many of Rosewater’s future-facing design promises, this is one we can actually observe in sets that are out right now.
A Conscious Effort
One of the proposed solutions to the MTG flavor text problem that Attunepog offers in their question is the addition of extra flavor text to “fancy versions” of cards with lots of rules text. For those unaware, regular versions of cards typically feature reminder text for abilities, particularly new ones. Special versions, Showcase or Borderless treatments, etc., don’t have this text. This can leave a lot of unused space on cards, which could be filled with flavor text instead.
Turns out this is already a solution that Wizards is employing. As far back as Assassin’s Creed, we’ve seen special variants of cards gain extra flavor text. In that case, it was only found on Etched Foil cards, but other sets have used the idea more widely. With Bloomburrow, we started to see flavor text added to Showcase versions of cards, such as Dawn’s Truce and Jackdaw Savior. In some cases, like with Keen-Eyed Curator, cards even received alternative flavor text in their Showcase versions. While not as big a shift as a card going from no flavor text to some, this alternative text does still help to expand the story.
All in all, Bloomburrow had 18 cards that gained extra or alternative flavor text this way. That’s a relatively small amount in the grand scheme of things, but still a decent boost. More recent sets have been a bit of a mixed bag. Duskmourn only had a few cards with alternative flavor text, but Aetherdrift had tons of extra on all of the Revved Up and Rude Riders cards. Edge of Eternities, our last major set, brought things back to Bloomburrow levels with 18. This seems to be the sweet spot Wizards is aiming for, at least for the time being.
Limitless Horizons
Looking at the raw stats, Rosewater’s promise that they’re prioritizing flavor text seems to be bearing out. The average number of cards with flavor text has been steadily increasing over the past few years. In 2022, the average number of cards with flavor text per set was 162. In 2023 this rose to 180, then 188 in 2024, and now 227 in 2025.
That said, the current approach isn’t perfect by any means. Aetherdrift had a ton of flavor text, for example, but a lot of it was cheesy “dialogue” intended to reflect the alternate art styles of the set. For lore fans, this isn’t exactly the kind of extra material that makes a big difference. There’s also room for Wizards to take things even further. Extended Art cards tend to increase the font size when they lose rules text, but they could get new flavor text instead.
Hopefully Wizards keeps building on the work of the past few years to bring MTG flavor text back into the limelight.
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