Game designer Mark Rosewater addressed the release of March of the Machine: Aftermath on Nov. 27, noting the Magic: The Gathering set scored poorly according to market research data.
The release of March of the Machine: Aftermath had its fair share of issues, from the entire set getting leaked before spoilers began to high prices on products containing only a handful of cards players wanted. Rosewater addressed the issues surrounding Aftermath through his Odds & Ends series on Nov. 27, revealing data from market research marked the supplemental set as one of the lowest-rated in 25 years of Magic‘s history.
“We often ask players to rank a set on a scale, and then we look at the top-two-box score, meaning how many people rated this with one of the top two ratings,” said Rosewater. “It’s a common metric used in data research. March of the Machine: The Aftermath has the lowest top-two-box score for a randomized booster product we’ve ever had. Ever! In the history of us tracking this metric, which is something like 25 years.
The score was so low that it’s unsurprising Rosewater is “not super optimistic” about the future of supplemental sets. Devs at WotC feel the entire Multiverse war with the Phyrexians could have been handled better, where the team could have divided up the sets so March of the Machine was more about the Magic planes fighting back instead of also including the invasion in the set as well, according to Rosewater.
Despite all the issues surrounding Aftermath as a supplemental set, it’s clear players are more interested in getting well-rounded Standard-legal sets that are able to tell a story clearly while representing the characters through gameplay on the cards. And that’s just hard to do with a supplemental set.
