Now that Aetherdrift preview season is over, eagle-eyed players have noticed a glaring omission in the product lineup. The expansion is set on three different planes: Avishkar, Amonkhet, and Muraganda. The first two each have a dedicated Commander deck, but the third does not. For those who have been dreaming of Muraganda since Future Sight, the lack of a Commander deck for it in MTG Aetherdrift is disappointing, to say the least.
As always there are innumerable factors that go into a decision like this. Principal Designer Gavin Verhey outlined a few of them in a recent Good Morning Magic episode about the switch to just two decks. Adding some extra context, Head Designer Mark Rosewater has addressed the topic of Muraganda in a series of posts on Blogatog. If you were hoping for more vanilla goodness in Aetherdrift, then his response should ease your disappointment.
No Muraganda Commander Deck In MTG Aetherdrift
“Coboney: Do you know if there was any thought of a third Pre-Con deck dedicated to Muraganda given the other 2 precons are each focused on one of the planes ?
Mark Rosewater: There’s both not enough pre-existing cards set on the plane, and no pre-existing theme connected to the plane that would make a good Commander deck theme. (“Vanilla matters” isn’t it.)
Blogatog
Rosewater’s logic here makes a lot of sense on both counts. While not every card in a Commander precon needs to be set on one plane usually, a deck built around Muraganda would have that restriction. Other than Muraganda Petroglyphs, Invasion of Muraganda, and The Mimeoplasm, there are no other cards set on the plane so far, outside of Aetherdrift, at least.
While this restriction does make things difficult, Wizards does have the option to create new art for cards to change their setting, of course. You can see a lot of this in Eternal Might in particular, where a lot of Innistrad Zombies have been shifted to Amonkhet. With only three cards to work with, however, that would consume a lot of resources.
The lack of a strong theme is also a valid issue with this potential Commander deck. The few references to Muraganda we’ve seen so far, Mimeoplasm aside, point to it being a primordial plane that cares about vanilla creatures. This is a fun theme for Limited play, and possibly even a rogue Standard deck. In Commander, however, it’s not exactly conducive to engaging gameplay.
Bashing in with chunky creatures might be fun for a game or two, but it would likely get old fast. Vanilla creatures, by their very nature, lack the potential for the interesting interactions on which Commander is built.
The Virtues Of Vanilla
Despite the technical issues around it, a lot of players are actually quite keen on ‘Vanilla Matters’ as a theme. Rosewater’s tease about a cycle of vanilla legendary creatures generated a surprising amount of buzz early in preview season. Once revealed, this cycle turned out to be pretty underwhelming, but that hasn’t stopped players from asking for more.
Discussions on a possible return to Muraganda have been dominated by talk of the vanilla matters theme. Players thought through a number of workarounds that would allow such a theme to function while not being as overly simplistic as Rosewater fears. OooblyJooblies suggested the use of face-down mechanics like Morph or Disguise, for example. Even more interestingly, Sliver__Legion pointed out that vanilla creatures with Adventures still count as vanilla. This small piece of tech opens up a world of possibilities for the theme.
As to why vanilla matters has captured the hearts of so many players, it’s hard to say. In another Blogatog post Rosewater presents his own theory on this.
“‘Vanilla matters’ is just a theme that excites some players. It makes things that normally don’t matter, matter.”
Mark Rosewater
There’s a lot of truth to this. Vanilla matters being a ‘key’ that unlocks hidden power in otherwise underwhelming cards is a fun player fantasy. It’s almost akin to the iconic Exodia cards from early Yu-Gi-Oh! All five were useless alone, but together they literally won you the game. Turning vanilla creatures from zeroes to heroes is a great underdog story. It’s also one that can play out over the course of each game with a vanilla matters deck.
That said, this is definitely the kind of archetype that plays better in constructed Magic. There are more than enough vanilla creatures to fill a Commander deck. Printing enough vanilla support to do so is another story, however. Subsequently, Wizards’ decision to forego an MTG Muraganda Commander deck here makes sense.
Watch This Space
It’s unfortunate that a third Commander deck didn’t pan out here. The fact that players are so keen on vanilla matters as a theme, however, bodes well for a possible return to Muraganda in the future. While nothing has been confirmed as of yet, Rosewater has mentioned in multiple Blogatog posts that including the plane in Aetherdrift was a way to gauge player interest in a full Muraganda set.
“It depends a lot of the response to Muraganda in Aetherdrift. Part of the reason we chose it as the third world was to get a chance to show it off.”
Mark Rosewater
Despite, or perhaps because of, how little we’ve seen of it, players are very excited by this prospect. “I’m a bit mixed on Aetherdrift as a whole, but I’m absolutely LOVING all of the Muraganda cards,” noted i-post-my-dreams on another Blogatog post. They then went on to ask about the chances of a full Muraganda set in the future. In response, Rosewater simply stated, “The more people expressing a love for Muraganda, the greater the chance of a premier expansion being set there.”
Using Magic’s first travelogue set as a test run for a new world makes a lot of sense. Muraganda is undoubtedly beloved by some sections of the community. It has something of a cult status, in the same way that many ideas from Future Sight do. Putting it in a mainline set allows Wizards to gather data on what the average player thinks of the world. This will ultimately be the metric that determines whether it gets a full set or not.
How this pans out, we’ll just need to wait and see. Given how highly some are speaking about the plane right now, those upset by the lack of a Muraganda Commander deck in MTG Aetherdrift may have a lot to look forward to.