Welcome readers to the first entry in a three-part series on nostalgia and Magic the Gathering over the course of the summer. One day this too will become dated and another forgotten piece of the game’s history

When a set releases, it’s not an ethereal collection to be cast once before exiled to the fading memory of eternity. These are ink and paper cards, often with hundreds of new designs, released into the world and printed for several years afterward. When the flow of new boxes ebb, the available copies continue to move through the ever-growing ecosystem of sellers, traders, players, and collectors. The prices of individual cards rise and fall on the whims of desirability, scarcity, and the hope of a reprint, but the pieces remain. Even the deteriorating supply of the Reserved List — as well as the collection of insensitive cards culturally banned from the game — haven’t dried up completely. There’s no such thing as an extinct Magic card. If you love a card, it may come back again, even if it looks different than you may remember.

This strategy has, on the whole, been a boon for the game — particularly for players entering after any given card’s initial printing. The looming fear of missing out will never be done away with entirely, Wizards enjoys money too much to let this happen, but the number of cards priced out of the budget of your average player is a gratefully small portion of the overall pool. A balance has been tenuously maintained between collectors and players, insofar as basic printings are concerned. The proliferation of alternate treatments has found another approach to wringing extra value from past designs and sought-after cards. As a surprise to no one mired in the cultural waves of the past decade, leveraging nostalgia continues to deliver for Wizards, though with diminishing returns.

At the onset of remastered sets and revisiting reproductions of older aesthetic designs, the player base and scene have been more than happy to provide their dollars and attention. There is a reason that Ravnica, Dominaria and Innistrad have been revisited time and again. If it was not for the popularity of this particular collection of planes, then designers would no doubt be more than happy to leave them in the past, like as was the fate for both Mercadia and Ulgrotha.

There are a handful of my favourites that I would welcome a return to in 2027, though my preference is nearly always for a novel plane when given the option. If Dominaria, Fiora or the unfairly maligned New Capenna — my opus on the plane will surely come in time — I’d be keen to preorder. Even the upcoming Reality Fracture has echoes of Magic Origins, though the quick return to Arcavios as a pillar feels less inspired to me, if perhaps narratively necessary. Over thirty years, the lore masters have created a vast archive they can delve into to appeal to new and longtime players; not only with designs but with aesthetic sensibilities.

One of the greatest tools in their employ is the revitalization of the old border. In conjunction with the star touched foiling, which often can’t help but fail to live up to their inspiration, the retro border — a shorthand for cards before the initial reimagining of the standard frame with Eighth Edition — has become a reliable treatment for sets that reinforce the connection between Magic as it was and what the game has become.

Introduced in 2021’s Time Spiral Remastered, this nostalgic corner of aesthetic design loops back around to becoming another in the growing set of card treatments amassed by collectors and players. Often without a desirable foil treatment, they are a rung below the anime, galaxy, surge, confetti, ripple, or fractured foil variants that provide the bulk of the perceived value in any given set. They are a reminder of where the game’s aesthetic tastes once began, though they look subdued when placed against a kaleidoscopic fractured variant of the same design.

In the consequential turn toward FIRE design, treatments have reached both forward and back in time, creating a liminal ‘now’ that feels increasingly hard to quantify. Every card is for everyone, in every era, for all time.

The reemergence of both the once-revolutionary future sight frame and much-loathed white border contributes time warping sense of nostalgic reproductions. Future Sight does right by its name, presenting Magic cards in a globular cast that echoes the design of mp3 players in the mid-aughts before Apple flattened the aesthetic into the clean, glass-screened futurism we’ve lived in since. Thanks to Mystery Box II and the handful of promos carrying the design, there have now been more cards produced aping the style than original articles. The scope of the reproduction has eclipsed the inspiration.

I doubt this will ever be the case for new white-bordered cards — a style I admittedly have a soft spot for thanks to my time playing ninth edition — though the intention shares similarities. Anecdotally, more players I know are fans of the oddity of a Future Sight frame over a white border, but they prefer other treatments or extended or alternate art, if given the choice. The market commonly reflects this, as only a handful of foiled Future Sight treatments earn the highest asking price among the available variations.

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A complete old border commander deck has long been a pet project of mine — becoming more playable and with less compromises as more cards are produced with the treatment. But I have to wonder why. By the time I had invested myself into the game, there had already been revisions to the standard frame. Yet, I sought out cards from the early eras as if I was trying to reclaim a memory I wasn’t around to create.

I still think there is a draw to this moment in the game’s history, as a digital sheen has become standardized alongside widescreen scenes and characters posed like action figures. Leaning on nostalgia doesn’t discredit the aesthetic merit of a particular choice. The desire to return to what has come before can’t be reduced to one single emotion or even growing profit margin. There are players who want the familiarity of a particular plane or artwork for a favourite card. Solemn simulacrum has found its way into every deck, with only one variation among them.

What’s troubling is the space that nostalgic reproductions take in the overall print strategy for Wizards. Given the rise of production errors and delays and shortages as the size of the game continues to balloon, arguably to unsustainable levels at this point, is the lack of new aesthetic designs and sensibilities for recent entrants into Magic. WOTC has done a stellar job churning out highly sought after exclusive treatments in a variety of styles in the past five years, but these high-ticket cards are rarely affordable or available to the average player.

Instead, they are left with a standard card in a standard frame. By no means is this a terrible option from a gameplay perspective, but the consistent devaluing of foils and anything that is not a collector booster has robbed much of the excitement of opening a standard pack of cards. I’m worried that Wizards has been mining their past and outside properties for so long they have forgotten to build a future history for the game. The last thing I want is for a 2020s Iconic Masters set to be filled with cast-off forgotten IP and emotionally detached pieces of cardboard wrapped in glitter and hollow stars.