In the ever-accelerating moment of the Now, a few years is practically another era of Magic. It wasn’t so long ago that Universes Beyond was kept at a distance from Standard playability, Modern Horizons had come back around to shatter formats, and a novel moniker had been levied against the game’s aesthetic sensibilities. But before you pine for those glory days know this. It was short, it was tumultuous; but we were in the midst of the ‘hat set.’

Critics of this design direction were out in full force, picking apart previews and turning any whiff of homage into a befouled attempt at sardonic, corporate-approved humour. Opinions are liable to soften with time or turnabout altogether with an overdue reclamation. It could be that I’m better at keeping my peace, only dipping my toes into the conversation infrequently, keeping to the shallow pools of welcoming discord servers, but the ongoing opposition to Universes Beyond is measured compared to the ire of hat set design. Respectful, constructive feedback is vital to the health of any community driven venture, who knows how long Magic would have lasted if design and gameplay decisions were sealed off from ongoing conversation and player perspective, though players can miss out if they prioritize their grievances. Even in the sets dressed up in garish tropes and cheap hats, there are wonderful designs.

If you are new to the game, or you’ve established healthy boundaries separating you from online conversation, the term ‘hat set’ may be unfamiliar. Over at EDHrec, Cas Hinds traced the origins of the term back to the idea of Planet of Hats, where a single characteristic comes to define an entire world or society. In Magic, this was typified by a variety of signature pieces that frequently popped up in artwork to give the player a quick indication of the locale. Race car helmet? You’re heading to Aetherdrift. Fedora — or trilby if you’re one to doff a cap — meant a whodunnit in Karlov Manor. Catch your favourite villain wearing a cowboy hat and you better hitch on your spurs and getting ready for some wrasslin’ because you’re catching the next train to Thunder Junction. Understandably, this was not the most inspired level of worldbuilding.

The term hat set has never sat right with me. Like other new phrases spurring from the collective discourse — see any term affixed with the suffix ‘slop’— hat set is too vague, a malleable term flexible in its definition depending on the user. When used to cudgel a design decision the player doesn’t agree with, a label to disregard a creative approach rather than engaging with it critically, then it becomes an issue. I don’t discount the importance of a good first impression; people will often sift through everything they encounter with a crib sheet of likes and dislikes to make the initial meeting more expedient.

I’m guilty of hasty first impressions myself, rolling my eyes at the haunted house and terrifying tales ripped right from the 1980s then packaged up as Duskmourn. The intervening months have only shown how wrong I was, with some seriously fascinating stories published courtesy of Wizards and author Seanan McGuire — under the pen name Mira Grant — that the plane was more than an assemblage of overused tropes. Through the stories of intruders and survivors, you can tell the care that was put into the plane. There is a balance of tone that is plenty horrific without ever coming across as another attempt at Innistrad with a tape deck thrown in. There are card designs that still sit outside of my preferred aesthetic taste for Magic, but I’d be missing out on wonderful work if I disregarded all the cards, the web fiction, and surrounding essays on a set that I initially wrote off as another hat set.

Is the same true for Thunder Junction? Not quite.

Thanks to the natural hype transference of my friends, I was looking forward to OTJ in the months leading up to its release. Murders at Karlov Manor had stumbled, but I had enjoyed the initial Omenpath stories and was excited to how Magic approached a setting with as mythical and thorny of a history like the Wild West. To my disappointment, they decided to elide these elements to create a rootin’ tootin’ Western instead.

Amongst the spurs and Stetsons, there are wonderful cards. I may have ignored them initially, after I finished the final chapter of Thunder Junction’s story, feeling apathy toward the upcoming spoilers rather than excited to see where the new designs could fit into my decks. But I went back, revisiting the old West after the dust had settled and general enthusiasm had pulled up stakes to capitalize on the next release. There I found a bird.

Of all the creatures in Magic, birds top my list, soaring above the rest of the competition. I remember as a kid being baffled by the seemingly overwhelming power of any creature with flying — there’s a reason I wasn’t making a play for the Pro Tour at ten years old. My first Commander deck centered birds and I’ve reliably snuck a few into every deck list since. It would have been a crime if I allowed Aven Interrupter to pass me by.

There has been a growing toolbox of white interaction, often weaker but more interesting compared to blue dominance on the stack, Aven Interrupter continues the trend of counterspell-adjacent cards. The designs call for greater thought from the player. Would you delay an opponent’s plan or waylaying them with some sort of barrier rather than countering the spell outright for the sake a card or a body? As players decry the diminishment of the colour pie, sanding the edges until it’s a frictionless catch-all circle, I’m thrilled when design approaches a matter of play from a different angle.

The bird has uses both in 60-card constructed and casual play, rendering instant-speed counterplay useless and hampering graveyard strategies. It’s hard to imagine Magic slowing down, both in terms of gameplay and products releases, rendering cards like Aven Interrupter vital for throttling the power at the table. Baffled to why such a card — decent stats, flying and flash no less! — was going for slightly over $2 CAD, I bought a flock and keep them on hand for any decks that need a touch of control to keep their strategy in focus. It is easily my favourite card from 2024 even though it came from the Cowboy set.

Best of luck to any invested soul trying to keep up with Magic’s release schedule. Unless you’re a serious tournament grinder, a fleetingly small slice of the player base, there is no reason to force yourself to memorize every upcoming sets. The proliferation of far-flung aesthetics and immersion-straining IPs have made me reevaluate my need to ‘keep up’ with the set calendar. I still jam a prerelease whenever I can, play with a wonderful group of friends and enjoy reading about flourishing strategies, behind-the-scenes insights into illustrations and all the surrounding intellectual ephemera that has come to define Magic. But I focus my passion and interest towards the cards that resonate with my taste.

It’s better to save my interest and time, find the cards that I’m truly excited about and play them where I can. This means revisiting those sets I initially wrote off as being a grab bag of tropes, because there’s no less passion in their design than in the sets that I call my recent favourite, even if all the aesthetics don’t align the same for me. It may not be the same as finding a gem tucked away in a forgotten longbox, but it’s pretty close.