On the Stack 8: A far-out idea for a Magic: the Gathering setting

For a while now, I’ve been wondering how Earth, and specifically the version of Earth we live on, might fit into the multiverse of Magic: the Gathering settings. How would a world with no magic fit into a game that’s about being a wizard and casting spells? The simple answer is that it doesn’t, but that’s no fun.

So I’ve come up with as close to an Earthlike setting as I can: a plane where access to mana, the magical energy of the land which makes everything in Magic: the Gathering happen, is somehow blocked, and people have compensated by relying more and more on machines. The mana blockage was exacerbated by the pollution and environmental degradation that came with industrialization. There are still a few people in each generation who can access mana, but never very much of it, and they’re usually thought of as witches, psychic mediums, or (these days) hippies.

Planeswalkers can still come and go, but the less magic they have access to here, the less they’re interested. Until the evil elder dragon Nicol Bolas remembers that the artificers on this plane are able to make very powerful weapons, and he has an army of robot zombies that needs arming. So what I've got for a plot is, some subset of the Gatewatch goes to this plane to figure out what Bolas wants in a place with no magic, and finds themselves in the middle of an arms deal between Bolas and the government of one of the plane's major powers, and/or teaming up with a group of environmentalist hippies to figure out what happened to the plane's mana and try to fix it.

Now, I'm reasonably certain Wizards of the Coast is never going to do a set about a plane with this little access to mana, especially since that would mean an artifact-heavy set, and those tend to be dangerously overpowered. And they're also probably never going to do a story that's basically the Iran-Contra scandal but with dragons. But it would be an interesting thought experiment to apply the color pie to a world where it basically doesn't exist anymore. Maybe I'd need to bring Devoid back.