Back in 2019, Wizards of the Coast launched an epic saga spanning Magic: The Gathering's entire multiverse. The Gatewatch storyline introduced Nicol Bolas, the Elder Dragon, as the ultimate villain, bringing several new planes into the fray, and the Planeswalker showdown shook Ravnica to its very core. Now, Wizards is about to up the ante again with the Phyrexian invasion, and it looks like characters and settings from across MTG's lore are in danger.
The Phyrexians were introduced to MTG back in the mid-1990s, and they have won and lost many battles over the decades since. The people of Dominaria stood against them in past expansions and storylines, and they did again in Dominaria United, but this time it wasn't enough. Now, after the events of Phyrexia: All Will Be One, with March of the Machine on the horizon, the Phyrexians are finally poised to conquer not just Dominaria and Mirrodin but the entire Multiverse.
Dominaria's Final Stand Against the Phyrexians
Dominaria was the first Plane that MTG's creators envisioned, and it has been a focal point of MTG's lore ever since. Many storylines in the 1990s took place across various continents and realms in Dominaria, from the Brothers' War to the fall of the Thran Empire, and the Phyrexians invaded multiple times. In the 2018 Dominaria trailer, the silver golem Karn remarked how the Plane had survived apocalypse more times than anyone could count -- and now Dominaria is threatened once again, perhaps for the final time.
The Dominarians defeated the Phyrexians in the past by banding together, and with the help of Urza's aid. Now, the Dominarians must face Elesh Norn's mighty Machine Legion as it invades from New Phyrexia. The defending coalition was established in Dominaria United and the defenders won a few narrow victories, but now they are losing their ground. The Phyrexians are more cunning and diverse in their methods than ever, and several Planeswalkers have already been compleated, including Ajani Goldmane, Nissa Revane, and Tamiyo. Numerous locations and factions on Dominaria have been compleated or destroyed, like New Argive and its people, and even if Dominaria survives the invasion, the plane will be forever scarred.
How March of the Machine Circumvents the Rabiah Scale
This epic four-set saga will involve not just Dominaria and New Phyrexia but a remarkable variety of Planes across the Multiverse, some of which haven't appeared in MTG since the 2000s. Wizards of the Coast developer Mark Rosewater devised a system called the Rabiah Scale, which he publishes on his personal blog, that estimates the likelihood of planes from MTG's Multiverse returning to a Standard-legal set with surprising accuracy. Planes like Mercadia and Rabiah rank low on the scale for being extremely unlikely to appear again, and regular settings like Innistrad, Zendikar and Ravnica rank high. Now, March of the Machine's Multiverse-wide saga is shaking things up and will feature over a dozen planes as part of the same set, circumventing the Rabiah Scale's predictions for now.
Including planes from all over the Multiverse allows Wizards to give fans fun cameos while also emphasizing the sheer scale of the Phyrexian invasion. It's not just Dominaria that's besieged by the Machine Legion -- cards in March of the Machine will also feature battles in far-flung planes like the fairytale-inspired Lorwyn, the war-torn Tarkir, the cyberpunk Kamigawa, and the merchant-themed world of Mercadia, plus more recent, familiar locations like the Greek-inspired Theros and the demon-ruled world of Capenna. These planes either appeared too recently or rank too low on the Rabiah Scale to be likely to appear in expansion sets anytime soon, but fans who miss them will be able to briefly revisit them in March of the Machine.
MTG Is Dissolving the Barriers Between the Planes
While the Phyrexian invasion isn't the first epic saga in MTG, it's certainly one of the most monumental and wide-reaching storylines so far. Ordinarily, MTG's sets have been confined to one plane, since only Planeswalkers can traverse the Blind Eternities -- but previous storylines bent that rule, and now cross-plane stories are becoming standard procedure for the game. This helps MTG's lore to feel more cohesive and less like a scattered anthology of self-contained stories.
March of the Machine will involve the entire Multiverse, with Elesh Norn using the corrupted World Tree to spread her forces to every plane in existence, and everyone, Planeswalker and otherwise, is involved. In a way, this is the polar opposite of MTG's last epic storyline, the War of the Spark, a saga that saw many Planeswalkers converging on Ravnica to fight Nicol Bolas and his Eternalized army alongside the ten Ravnican guilds.
The best stories in MTG are the ones that involve many of its settings and characters coming together, either in conflict or cooperation. Whatever the outcome, it's certain that when this war is over, the Multiverse will be a single, unified canvas with which Wizards of the Coast can create incredible new stories where no plane is left out.