Magic’s Adventures in the Forgotten Realms

So after teasing it forever with cards like Bag of Holding, Magic finally did a D&D set, the Adventures in the Forgotten Realms (but there are some Greyhawk stuff in there, too, like Tasha and Vecna).

Magic puts out so many cards each year and I don’t get into every set. I’ve been holding out for this one, skipping over the previous sets because I really wanted to mix D&D and Magic.

But the execution on this is not really what I wanted.

Here’s some stuff I love:

Iconic spells that feel they like their D&D counterparts like Magic Missile or Shocking Grasp.

Flavor words to represent abilities on creatures and artifacts, like Guild Thief or Dawnbringer Cleric.

Flavor words to represent choices on modal cards (almost like split cards), like You Come to a River. These are my fave.

Familiar characters like Farideh and Lolth.

All the flavorful locations you can visit, even basic lands like Plains.

How you can go into dungeons like the Lost Mine of Phandelver.

How creature types and flavor are free to be more D&D-like instead of shoehorned into Magic traditions, such as the blue elf Arcane Investigator.

I’m not as into the spells that do something completely opposite to what they do in D&D, like Tasha’s Hideous Laughter or Ray of Frost.

The biggest weird thing, though, is how so many of the cards refer to the rules of D&D rather than to the setting.

Rolling dice? +2 Mace? The twelve PHB classes?

Many of these cards seem fun to play with, but they kinda break the mood. D&D is an interface to the game world, as is Magic. Using Magic as an interface to the D&D rules is like trying to put surgical gloves on top of boxing gloves.

Having abilities be named the same is great (like the aforementioned Cure Wounds or Magic Missile) because it makes those abilities feel more diegetic. Having cards that give you the feel of joining a party or crawling a dungeon is also cool. But these “meta” cards feel like you’re pretending to pretend, like you’re playing that you’re playing.

I dunno.

I don’t mind adding dice rolling to black-bordered Magic, that’s something I’ve wanted for a long time. It’s just that this set as whole doesn’t feel at all like “Magic visits the Forgotten Realms” and more like “Magic makes fun of D&D’s mechanics”.

Lost Mine of Phandelver

Arcane Investigator

Tasha’s Hideous Laughter

Ray of Frost

+2 Mace

Cleric Class, one of the twelve PHB class cards

Update

After finding out that this was intentional I came around to it and it’s now one of my favorite sets and I love the +2 mace.