Mark Rosewater on the mixed reactions to the modernity aesthetics featured on Duskmourn: "We’re trying something new. Some people seem to like it, some don’t. Time will show whether it was overall a good idea. There are a lot of very popular Magic things that had an initial negative opinion."

That's exactly my initial reaction to this set.

The discourse has centered on technology and the TVs and all of that, but what I wanted to talk about was that what sounded like a cool, unique setting is basically just a big ol' house functioning as an excuse for horror movie references.

Magic settings are cool when the settings get to breathe and be alive. Not when they're just an excuse for references and memes and jokes.

I got into Magic around Tarkir. Tarkir was cool as shit by itself. Khanfall was a wildly popular short story, and that was purely about the planar characters themselves. Imagine if Tarkir was just an excuse to make a bunch of bad references to, like, martial arts movies. There's a big difference in the influences on the Jeskai tribe and straight up having, like, a legendary Jeskai monk with nunchunks in an obvious Bruce Lee reference.