Let Card Designs Speak For Themselves

With Universes Beyond becoming such a big part of Magic, there's been an explosion in the use of flavor text mixed into rules text. Usually in the from of A Phrase-. This has been something that Magic has done in the past, but usually in the context of modal cards where you need to choose between options and the flavor text offers a summary of those options.

With Universes Beyond, there has been a shift in the use where they are now used to explain the reference or attempt to further tie the card's abilities to the source material. Like these ones!

And I really don't like it.

For one, aesthetics are intruding on legibility in a way that I dislike. Italicized text in Magic almost never has rules significance. Even where it is used in something like Landfall, "landfall" itself is a word that has no meaning and they use it to group effects together. Every Landfall ability lists the trigger condition out explicitly. This is just One Of Those Things that makes Magic a more verbose and granular game than Bandai games or Altered (RIP in peace).

These phrases are long enough to be distracting, but they're all meaningless. It's preamble that I have to glaze over in order to get to the relevant information on the card. And I don't like doing it.

For two, they often strike me with the same feeling as someone ruining their joke by overly explaining it. With the Eleventh Doctor, I don't get the reference and it's intrusive text that doesn't seem connected to the abilities. Why is it here?

With Ignis Scientia, the activated ability is a callback to the venerable Scavenging Ooze. Exile a card from a graveyard, if it was a creature (i.e. edible and scavenge-able) you get a bonus. Combined with the art it implies that the new recipe is whatever he's scrounged together or the remains of a random encounter, which is kind of funny to think about. So why explain it?

Sauron feels like the worst offender to me. Yes, they are summarizing modes. However, it is also directly referencing a fan created meme in a way that feels desperate, which I don't like.

Why explain the options! It's literally healing vs. turning a creature into a dinosaur! I don't care if you've seen the meme! You do not have to take any pains to prove to me that you saw the meme! The options are healing vs. turning a creature into a dinosaur, what is the point of quoting it verbatim?! All you're showing me is that you have no faith in your own designs, you do not trust yourself to express something through game mechanics, and so you fall on the creatively shallowest option of quoting something the community (AND NOT YOU) has created in the hopes to curry favor.

And it don't have to be this way!

The Haow/Kowloon Gundam (dub vs. sub name) just got revealed for the Gundam Card Game, and the ability is a specific reference. But the ability scans well. You get to damage multiple enemies, and as a balancing factor it requires tapping resting another unit. Specifically, another Mobile Fighter. And if you're familiar with the source material, why the card works this way is obvious:

Master Asia's turning into a fireball with his head sticking out and someone needs to shoot him into the enemy.

But there's no need to overly explain the joke here, you can read the ability and if you know you know. If you don't, the card is not going to bludgeon you over the head that there's a club you're not in, you can ask someone else at the prerelease what's so funny or why they went "LAUNCH ME, DOMON!" when they used the ability.

No one is desperately trying to make sure that I know they know the reference. The design stands on its own.