Next February, Wizards of the Coast’s trading card game Magic: the Gathering is releasing a murder mystery expansion named Murders at Karlov Manor, themed after the classic board game Clue. But the clues don’t stop there: in a recent preview of the set, Blake Rasmussen noted that there will be a series of puzzles beginning at the game’s prerelease on February 2nd and culminating in a meta-puzzle that will, once solved, “unlock information about the future of Magic.”
A Brief Primer on Magic: the Gathering’s Story
Before getting into what sounds suspiciously like Magic’s foray into the world of puzzle hunts, a little backstory on how lore functions in Magic: the Gathering might provide some helpful context. Because while Magic is first and foremost a competitive trading card game, the franchise has hidden an overarching story through its expansions. While Magic fans are likely most familiar with experiencing the story through “flavor text” added in the marginalia of the game’s cards, those stories are supplemented and expanded through a series of short stories, comic books, and novels. So what starts as the slow process of piecing together the story of two estranged artificer brothers engaged in a protracted war through narrative snippets and artifacts are expanded upon in novels and short stories that help fill in the gaps.
For the past three years, that story has focused on the war between Planeswalkers and Phyrexians. Within Magic’s lore, Planeswalkers are entities who possess a “spark” that allows them to cross between planes, hopping between the deeply thematic universes and worlds that make up Magic’s Multiverse with relative ease. A race of biomechanical creatures known as Phyrexians don’t naturally possess the ability to cross planes, but stumbled across a number of artificial methods to cross universes in pursuit of their goal of assimilating or destroying all inferior life across the Multiverse.
At first, it started simple. A single Phyrexian infiltrating a plane and spreading chaos and dissent, setting the stage for future invasion. But then, Phyrexians started assimilating Planeswalkers to their side, through a process known as Compleation.
The three year story arc culminated in a massive confrontation that saw Phyrexians and their involuntarily conscripted Planeswalker allies invading practically every known plane. And while the Phyrexians were defeated, in the process something happened that stripped many Planeswalkers of their powers. Currently, Magic’s Multiverse is rebuilding from an inter-planar war, while simultaneously adjusting to life with considerably fewer Planeswalkers capable of crossing those planes. And the most recent expansions have focused on that fallout.
A Magical Murder Mystery
Which brings us to Ravnica: a world with an industrial city the size of its home planet, dominated by competing guilds. Kaya Cassir is a Planeswalker who previously served as leader of the Orzhov Syndicate, although she was replaced by Teysa Karlov when she went to fight against the Phyrexians, returning as one of the few to retain her ability to shift between planes.
Author Seanan McGuire released the first chapter of Murders at Karlov Manor‘s story, setting the stage for murder as Teysa Karlov throws a grand fête for her rival power-brokers in the planet-city. Told from Kaya’s perspective, readers are introduced to a colorful cast of characters before getting left hanging on a cliffhanger, as Kaya chases down a scream from across the manor. Has someone been murdered?
A handful of cards (and their flavor text) have already been spoiled, and it appears that in addition to an actual murder, an attempt has been made on Boros legion guildmaster Aurelia’s life, and the story’s detectives are on a deadline to solve the mystery. Rasmussen noted that this set is particularly heavy on “Story Spotlight” cards that feature key moments of the expansion’s narrative, so fans looking to piece together the narrative on their own will have a lot to work off.
A Familiar Storytelling Format, Taking the Next Step?
Magic’s pseudo-archaeological process of piecing together a story fragmented across media might be familiar to transmedia storytelling and alternate reality gaming fans, with some of the game’s former forays into the space going to some frankly incredible lengths. For instance, the Phyrexians have their own written and spoken language, leading some fans to study the language and learn how to translate it and unlock some of the game’s secrets early as a result of those efforts. Magic even created a series of linked escape rooms at competitive Magic Grand Prix events in Bologna, Melbourne, and Detroit.
This time, the Murders at Karlov Manor expansion seems to be embedding the experience more directly into the products themselves: in a release targeted to retailers, Wizards explains:
Each product in the set contains a puzzle to be solved; some puzzle components are only found within the physical products, but others encourage players to continue the discovery online with web-based puzzles added throughout the season.
There is one overarching puzzle—across all products and online—that gives players who crave a true challenge the opportunity to solve a greater mystery; however, there are still 12 individual puzzles that are self-contained and are just as satisfying cases to crack.”
So: there will be a puzzle hunt that involves a series of puzzles scattered across multiple Magic products, although some puzzles will be more focused online. Beyond that? It’s all speculation.
It’s All Speculation, But What’s the Speculation?
One of the more obvious potentials for puzzles are Murders at Karlov Manor‘s special variant cards treated with invisible ink. During the First Look stream, Rasmussen explained that these cards “are going to help you uncover the killer and learn a little bit more about the case.” And while that could just be a wildly creative extension of prior tactics like Phyrexian language flavor text that makes lore-hunters put in a little effort for their narrative discoveries, it would make for a tried-and-true method for using the Collector’s Edition-exclusive card type to hide puzzles.
Star City Games reported on a theory that the decision to have the set’s icon replacing the number 16 on spindown die for the Karlov Manor bundle set seems like a suspiciously puzzley choice to make.
It’s even worth noting that Wizards of the Coast has more than a passing familiarity with the concept of alternate reality games. Back in 2018, Wizards led up to the launch of its Dungeons and Dragons module Waterdeep: Dragon Heist with the ARG No Stone Unturned. During the game, players found Yelp reviews left by legendary traveler Volothamp Geddarm, who stumbled into our world with a nasty case of amnesia. The events of the ARG set the stage for the events of the module.
Your Primer to Embracing the Booster Fun
The next chapter of the Murders at Karlov Manor story is set to drop on January 2nd, so even those who are relatively new to the world of Magic have time to get caught up. Magic maintains an archive of recent story arcs going back to 2014 on their website, and I’ve found The Magic Historian’s Fantasy Geographic lore summaries to be particularly helpful in providing context on decades of fictional history.
Spoiler season for the cards will start up in full force starting on January 16th with card previews and potentially more details about the puzzle experience dropping then, with the official launch of the puzzle challenges starting on February 2nd with the game’s prerelease events, which feature custom boxes that local game stores can use to host launch events for the set. Wizards manages a store locator that can help find events in your area.
And while it sounds like some of the puzzles will be linked to physical products, it should still be possible to follow along with the story (and puzzles) online.
The post Clue Chasing with Magic’s Ravnica-Themed Puzzle Hunt first appeared on ARGNet: Alternate Reality Gaming Network.