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The latest set in the ever-expanding world of Magic: The Gathering is Aetherdrift, but the expansion isn’t without its critics. It isn’t just the use of vehicles as the latest gimmick in the game or the lack of low-power cards to allow fans to easily incorporate it into their decks. We couldn’t quite figure out why Aetherdrift wasn’t quite gelling with fans, but author Brandon Sanderson might have pinpointed exactly what the overall issue is with Aetherdrift and why it has divided fans.

“They’re doing a death race,” he said in a video on his YouTube channel about Magic: The Gathering. “So, it’s like Wacky Racers.” That is a surprisingly apt way to describe Aetherdrift, which pulls inspiration from pretty much every possible racing-themed media you can think of. There is a thematic juxtaposition that isn’t entirely gelling with what Magic: The Gathering usually delivers.

Unsurprisingly, the Mistborn author also focused on some storytelling issues within the latest expansion set that hasn’t really worked for him. He compared it to the recent Western set, which he enjoyed, but noted that characters simply “put on cowboy hats and they started riding horses and became outlaws,” as opposed to feeling like they had been pulled into a new plane. Instead, they were acting out the story “like they were on a holodeck. “It doesn’t make any sense at all. And now in [Aetherdrift] they’re all just getting on motorcycles and cars and joining in a giant race. It feels like… instead of going to a cool place and experiencing that world, they’re play-acting.”

It is a fair criticism and might go a long way to explain why the Aetherdrift expansion in Magic: The Gathering has had such a lukewarm reception from the fan base. It is hard to buy into a new set if it doesn’t feel like even the characters in the game are taking themselves seriously.

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