This is the second entry in a three-part series on nostalgia and Magic the Gathering over the course of the summer. If you haven’t had a chance to read the original comics or novel about the Brothers’ War I definitely recommend you dig them out

Before this summer, I’d say I was vaguely aware of the saga of the Brothers’ War. Urza and Mishra were two brothers of vague nobility and archeological aspirations. They found the Mightstone and Weakstone, grew powerful and jealous, then their familial spat ends up plunging the world into a near-cataclysmic ice age. Tale as old as time. Neither brother has been right in the head since.

Early sets recount the aftermath of their conflict. As players, we once assumed the role of the archaeologist in Antiquities. Cards carried flavour text gesturing toward what occurred, though when we encountered Urza, he was beyond a man — and Mishra was relegated to the doomed whispers of broken fables. The elder brother had ascended to a planeswalker, power transforming him into closer to a god.

If you’re a sensible player, where the story of Magic the Gathering extends as far as the cards, the names Urza and Mishra were commonly found on your favourite artifacts; but you’d be forgiven for believing them to be eccentric tinkerers building wonderous inventions that players would discover in time. First encountered in Antiquities, then greatly expanded in several series of comics publish by Armada in the mid-90s and a very readable novel by Jeff Grubb around the same time, the schism between Urza and Mishra was referenced in the game, but the full story lay elsewhere. Then came the Brothers’ War in 2022.

How we tell these stories is important, or at least it has a greater bearing on the cohesion of the Blind Eternities than its given credit for. We want the planes to mean something, beyond the set dressing and aesthetics for a given collection of cards.  Games as a medium offer a unique approach to storytelling compared to novels or films that can be disregarded when designers attempt a cinematic approach that deadens the sense of discovery that comes from figuring out how the hundreds of cards in a set fit into a narrative, or how they speak to past stories as another chapter in an ongoing saga.

It’s not a revelatory insight that games, whether digital or analog, to position the narrative of the player above the story crafted by the design team. In video games, players often skim the surface of the systems and stories offered over a hundred-hour play experience, forcing narrative teams to position the crucial pieces along a linear path and allowing invested players to discover the rest.

In Magic terms, these are the story spotlight cards that often correspond to the web fiction setting up a forthcoming set — gone are the days of the pack-in novels. I’ve continued to catch up with the story for every new release, and though there has been much hoopla made about the divided attention between the solidly crafted narratives of in-universe sets and their omission from universes beyond; there are narrative lessons in recent releases I wish we could go back and include in the Brothers’ War. Of course, those events have already passed. I can’t travel back in time.

Wizards has a thing for complicated blue mages, because between Jace Beleran and Urza they have a penchant for wreaking havoc across the multiverse through a blind belief they know better than everyone else. In the Brothers’ War, or War of Antiquities depending on your naming preference, Uzra is positioned as the stubborn but ultimately lawful brother while Mishra is the impulsive younger who ends up falling to the dark side. For anyone familiar with Mass Effect, Star Wars, early machinima, or any morally sticky science fiction, we have a regular old battle of Red versus Blue.

The original comics, and novel, present the conflict as a by-the-numbers story of warring ambitions eventually leading to corruption and an ultimate downfall. The story is a bit formulaic, but engaging enough, with an interesting look at the balance between characters and items as plot devices or as game pieces.

There are a series of letters and afterwards included in each issue by the set designers of Antiquities expanding on how they translated cards released the year prior and incorporated them into a coherent story. They admit to the leaps a reader might have to make when watching a might roc get taken down by the mere one damage delivered by a grapeshot catapult. To know that the authors are aware of the dissonance between the story on the page and the card mechanics they’re saddled with allows a reader to suspend their disbelief for the moment. Magic has asked for greater leaps in logic than this before.

Rediscovering these stories, there is a crunchy, weathered look to both the book’s illustrations and the set’s design. The desert setting of the growing conflict between Urza and Mishra is much more explicit in the comics and novel, though the multitude of earth tones in the cards convey a similar feeling. This is not the filigreed and bronze curvature of Avishkar or the cold inhuman chrome and oil of Phyrexia. As we unearth the story of Urza and Mishra, we learn of the sibling’s dual roles as both inventors and archeologists. They are trying to understand the Thran, a civilization that once lived alongside wonderous artifacts that Tocasia and her pupils are eager to unlock the secrets of. This is a nesting doll of narrative through remnants.

How do you make sense of multiple timelines and shifting eras in the Blind Eternities? Why, you bring in Teferi, of course. The third in the triumvirate of meddling blue mages, the temporal master/meddler acts as reader proxy as he peers back into time to understand how the brothers were able to defeat the Phyrexian onslaught and bring those lessons forward to curtail the mounting invasion. For longtime fans and aspiring Vorthos — unsure of the plural form in this case — the Brothers’ War brought one of the foundational stories of the game back into the spotlight. The trade-off came with the expectation that it would tie it into the overarching conflict between the planeswalkers and Phyrexians, lessens the impact of seeing these monumental characters brought back to the game.

The ten entries provided to the authors Reinhardt Suarez and Miguel Lopez are split between present day Chapters and long-ago Episodes. Oscillating between the timelines unmoors the story more than it should and, in comparison to the original works from the 90s, there’s a sense the authors are tasked with packing too much into story, world building and lore into a narrative that needs to appeal to readers both familiar and unfamiliar with the historic schism.

In hindsight there are several solves that ultimately could not live up to the expectations set by Wizards: spread the story across multiple sets or allow the Brothers’ War to stand apart from the looming Phyrexian Invasion. Allow Teferi to venture back and be a witness but suspend the rest of the action to be picked up in a later release. It’s an easy solve when you write it from 20206, but I understand it’s impracticality in the greater arc WOTC was building toward. Self-contained chapters of Magic were a rare thing even five years ago, though they have become a necessary form for storytelling in the game’s current narrative landscape.

Magic is presently in an era where it is attempting to juggle too many sets, some relying on an ongoing story and out-of-universe offerings with barely any story at all. This tick-tock cadence has led to the criticism that the current storyline feels meandering and unfocused. Yet there are sets that feel like an independent, fully-realized story that have come since; leading to strong chapters in a weaker overall narrative. Duskmourn and Edge of Eternities were both stellar examples of planes left to grow and develop their own narratives that tie into the greater project devised by Wizards, but it is unnecessary to follow Jace’s machinations to enjoy these rather self-contained stories.

Comparing the original Armada comics to the updated web serials, you can feel the stress of trying to incorporate the legend of Urza and Mishra’s schism into the Phyrexian arc, rather than allowing it to exist as its own chapter in Magic’s lore. If they ever revisit the idea, perhaps by flinging another blue mage back to witness the war of the Elder Dragons or Age of the Thran, they could always take a page from the current narrative ethos and allow these stories to stand alone in the ongoing chronicle of the Blind Eternities.