Magic: The Gathering's New Phyrexian Invasion was infamous for covering multiple planes while others went untouched.
In 2023, Phyrexia: All Will Be One surprised many players by having a full-out multiversal invasion happen, with a storyline that lingered for a long time.
Planes new and old were affected.
Amonkhet, Dominaria, Eldraine, Ikoria, Innistrad, Kaldheim, Mirrodin, Tarkir, and Zendikar were just a few that felt the brunt of the storyline, with a few new planes afterwards seeing the affects as well.
However, when mid 2023 sets started to come out with some new planes...they weren't there. In fact, for an errant dragon or two and some planeswalker shenanigans, it looked like Bloomburrow and Duskmourn were not even affected so much as the slightest.
Storywise, it kind of made sense. Bloomburrow, as seen with dragons and Ral Zarek, made any creature coming in one of the creatures of the plane. As for Duskmourn, the house itself seemed to dispatch any and all things going in deemed a threat.
On the developmental side, Bloomburrow was needed as a breather set while Duskmourn came in time for Halloween. It worked out too - Mark Rosewater has said as much that both sets exceeded expectations. Although MaRo said that both should have been switched around on release date:
"I think I'd swap the release dates of Bloomburrow and Duskmourn. That would give Bloomburrow a little more time in the sun and lead into Foundations, which is closer to Bloomburrow's aesthetic than Duskmourn. It also would allow Bloomburrow to overlap with a MagicCon."
But, as they needed a reason for them to avoid an invasion, Magic story lead had an official explanation. Well, kind of.
"Canonically, there's no answer to this, but from what we know, I'd say: Bloomburrow was one of the few planes untouched by the Phyrexians. The little critters remain protected from multiversal calamity, at least for now," Rosewater explained. "As for Duskmourn, it's hard to know—Phyrexians would blend right in with the other terrors in the house, so even the survivors wouldn't be able to say whether they saw any extraplanar invaders. One thing is certain—if they did come to Duskmourn, the House consumed them before they consumed the House."
While Phyrexia lingers on in some ways, the storyline is moving on. The next original plane, The Edge in Edge of Eternities, has yet to reveal if the invasion reached there. But there are reasons behind planes being affected and not affected within the Magic storyline.
