The Zhalfir Set Could Be Magic’s Most Underrated Yet

I've been staring at early previews for Magic: The Gathering's next big story set. Wizards of the Coast (WotC) revealed Zhalfir at MagicCon Amsterdam as the third of three canon sets coming in 2027, landing October 1st after Nauctis in February and Kamigawa: Titanbreach in June.

The more I read about Zhalfir, the more I think we're looking at a repeat of what happened with Bloomburrow: a set nobody was screaming for that became one of the most beloved releases in years. Bloomburrow is still my favorite set of the past few years, and I'm getting that same feeling for Zhalfir, which has the ingredients to be next year's surprise favorite. I want to break down why, along with everything I'm hoping to see when the story drops.

{Teferi's Moat} by rk post

Where Zhalfir Fits in the Bigger Story

WotC confirmed that Reality Fracture, the final mainline set of 2026, wraps up the current story arc built around Jace's fall from grace after being compleated by the Phyrexians. Once that chapter closes, 2027 opens a fresh storyline, and Zhalfir is the last stop on that year's map, not the first.

Nauctis: The Sunken Realm kicks off a brand-new, multi-year story arc undersea on February 5th, Kamigawa: Titanbreach throws Kamigawa's mechs against Ikoria's kaiju on June 4th, and then Zhalfir closes the year on October 1st. By the time we get there, WotC will have spent most of the year building momentum for what might be the most emotionally loaded release of the three.

Mark Rosewater confirmed there were separate design leads for each of the three in-universe sets. Designer Carmen Klomparens said she's been on the Zhalfir team since the Vision team shaped a set's core identity. Zhalfir wasn't a rushed decision. WotC has been developing Zhalfir carefully, which aligns with its deliberate messaging.

{Teferi's Puzzle Box} by Kaja Foglio

Centuries ago, Zhalfir was the most advanced nation on Dominaria. Teferi Akosa phased it out of reality to protect his people from the first Phyrexian invasion, planning to bring it back once the danger passed. That plan fell apart, and the phasing spell never realigned with the timeline. Zhalfir was assumed lost for good, leaving behind the Zhalfirin Void.

Fast forward to the New Phyrexia invasion, and Zhalfir's warriors finally found a way back into the fight, landing reinforcements that helped take down the remaining praetors. The planeswalker Wrenn merged with the Realmbreaker World-Tree to pull Zhalfir back into the timeline.

When the dust settled on the war, Zhalfir swapped places with New Phyrexia in the fabric of the multiverse. New Phyrexia phased out, and Zhalfir took its spot entirely, inheriting Mirrodin's five suns in the process. Mirran survivors were taken in as refugees. Zhalfir is back as a standalone plane, sitting where the metal world used to be, wearing its five suns.

WotC described the set as an afro-fantasy world built with a predominantly black creative team, working with consultants, professors, and authors to root the plane in real West and North African history, mythology, and culture. Senior Creative Director Jackie Jones wants players to explore Zhalfir as its own place rather than a footnote in somewhere else's story; exactly the kind of narrative swing that made Bloomburrow work.

{Teferi's Realm} by Alan Rabinowitz

It's confident, specific, and not a retread of a plane we've already visited a dozen times. WotC is officially billing the set as "a land of suns and spirits."

A World Built From Leftovers

This is the part of the concept that has my brain running in circles. A population of Zhalfirans who, as far as they know, just stepped out of a war that started mere years ago, onto a plane that used to be built entirely out of metal. Five suns hang overhead that aren't theirs. Mirran refugees alongside them. And somewhere in the ground, oil residue from a Phyrexian empire erased mid-invasion may still persist.

A whole society must figure out how its magic functions in a new environment. Does Zhalfiran chronomancy behave differently under five suns? Do the Zhalfirans learn metalcraft out of necessity, blending their own traditions with whatever's left of Mirrodin's infrastructure?

I'd love to see Zhalfir lean into that tension mechanically: gameplay built from two cultures colliding rather than one plane replacing another. Give me spells that only wake up once you've got enough artifacts in play, alongside spells that key off the five suns.

{Teferi, Who Slows the Sun} by Heonhwa

Teferi Akosa

WotC has confirmed Teferi is steering this story. Is he still walking the planes, or does settling his people in their new home change what he wants out of his chronomancy? I'd love a version of him defined by having a home to protect rather than chase.

Endless Day, Endless Night

Zhalfir has five suns instead of one, so nightfall never happens on the surface of the plane. It's permanent daylight everywhere a sun touches. WotC acknowledged a spirit realm, which is a separate, permanently dark space where the dead and other spirits exist. Two versions of the same plane, one that never goes dark and one that never sees light, stacked on top of each other.

Think about what that actually means for a culture that just got its homeland back after centuries of being erased from time. Their ancestors, their dead, everyone lost while Zhalfir was phased out, presumably exist in that spirit realm, separate from the world of the living — worldbuilding about grief, memory, and continuity.

{Teferi's Honor Guard} by Cecil Fernando

If WotC leans into that duality mechanically — permanent daylight granting one kind of power, the spirit realm granting another, and characters having to move between the two to actually understand their history, Zhalfir could be remembered for its emotional core as much as its aesthetic.

The Mirrans Who Stayed Behind

The people who didn't get phased out are the Mirrans who fought and bled for their plane long before Zhalfir reappeared.

Koth has to be the first name the list. He was the leader of the Mirran Resistance who never left. He stayed to fight through the entire Phyrexian occupation while other planeswalkers came and went. If he made it through the war — {Koth, Fire of Resistance} suggest so — I hope he maintained his spark. Demoting him to a background character after everything he's been through would letdown one of Mirrodin's most loyal defenders.

{Koth of the Hammer} by Jason Chan

Then there's Melira. Her story is one of the most quietly powerful threads in modern Magic lore: a woman completely immune to Phyrexian oil, who could purify corrupted environments and cure compleated planeswalkers by being near them. If anyone from the Mirran side deserves a spotlight story about a plane trying to rebuild from contamination and loss, it's her.

What happened to everyone else swept up in Mirrodin's strange history? Karn built Mirrodin when it was still Argentum. Memnarch spent years abducting people from other worlds to populate it — humans, leonin, vulshok, auriok, and myr, who were built rather than born.

Some of those transplanted survivors might still wander the now Zhalfir. I'd love to see the myr get spotlight cards again; they've always been one of my favorite pieces of Mirrodin's identity, and there's something poetic about mechanical constructs surviving a metal world's disappearance.

A Karn cameo, or even a reforged version of Memnarch who's finally free to be what he was built for instead of the corrupted caretaker he became, would tie the legacy together without needing to remain a villain.

{Melira, Sylvok Outcast} by Min Yum

New Phyrexia phased out, but that doesn't mean every Phyrexian went with it. Characters like {Rona, Disciple of Gix}, and {Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle} were never confirmed dead on-page, and there are still a couple of heavy hitters wondering about, including {Geth, Lord of the Vault} and Glissa chief among them.

Vorinclex regenerating and turning up alive is probably a long shot given how thoroughly he was dealt with, but I wouldn't put it past WotC to leave that door cracked long enough for a surprise. I'd bet money there's at least one sleeper-agent planeswalker out there who was never revealed during the war. Big invasion stories typically leave one thread like that hanging.

The Faces From Zhalfir's Past

Zhalfir already has its cast of characters buried in Magic's older lore, and none of them require the Phyrexians at all. Back when Teferi ruled as a young lord, he tracked down and trained Yormeba, later crowning her queen to bring peace to Zhalfir. His trusted advisor, Sidar Jabari, and Queen Wezna led the nation right up until the moment Teferi phased everything out to protect it from the first Phyrexian invasion.

When Teferi found his way back into Zhalfir centuries later through a strange overlap in the timeline, he reconnected with both of them and discovered his old enemy Kaervek had escaped an amber prison Teferi sealed him in.

That's a villain who's tied to Zhalfir specifically, with unfinished business against Teferi. If WotC wants a threat that has nothing to do with metal or oil, Kaervek is built for the job.

My Pitch for the Big Twist

If I were writing this story, I wouldn't make the antagonist another Phyrexian retread or a leftover Mirrodin threat. Those wells have been visited plenty. I'd make the twist come from Zhalfir itself: an old face like Kaervek finally getting his revenge, or something entirely new.

Picture this: a handful of Zhalfirans get exposed to leftover oil residue buried in the ground of their new home, and instead of the invaders being the outside threat this time, the corruption grows from within the people this story is supposed to celebrate.

That forces Teferi and Koth into an alliance neither of them expected — a Zhalfiran planeswalker and a Mirran resistance leader having to trust each other to save a plane that belongs to both their peoples. Throw in a sympathetic Phyrexian character, maybe even Glissa siding with the good guys, and you've got a story about redemption instead of another purge.

{Kaervek, the Spiteful} by Daarken

More than anything, I want the story to spend real time on how these different cultures, Zhalfiran, Mirran, and whatever's left of the Phyrexian influence, to learn to share space, beliefs, and ways of life. That's the story Bloomburrow told so well, and it's exactly the kind of emotional core that turns a set from interesting mechanics into being memorable for years to come.

Zhalfir is still over a year out, and we've only scratched the surface. Between the setting, the creative behind it, the endless-day-and-spirit-realm duality, the unresolved history sitting on that plane, Koth, Melira, Wrenn's fingerprints, old enemies like Kaervek; this could be the sleeper hit of 2027.

Nobody's talking about this set the way they should be yet, and that's why I think it will land the same way Bloomburrow did: quietly, and then all at once.

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Featured image: {Teferi's Isle} by Gerry Grace