I don’t actually have a problem with the Universes Beyond/Crossover sets

As long as 1) The crossover is a good fit 2) The set is good

Final Fantasy is a good fit. Lord of the Rings is obviously a good fit.

What makes a good fit? Mostly vibes, honestly.

But I think we can all agree that Spider-Man was not a good fit.

My concern is that I think the success of the Final Fantasy set may have cooked some brains at WotC (or, more accurately, at Hasbro)

Because it sold like fucking crazy and was the first Standard universes beyond set

And ‘attach a well-known IP = BIG MONEY FOREVER’ is a line of thinking that appeals to business suits

And I just don’t think that that’s going to work out for them the way they think it will

Final Fantasy did gangbusters because it was a good fit and also an incredible set

It was well designed, it had great mechanics, it was a fantastic draft experience, and the design team went absolutely crazy making card designs that captured the essence of the characters they were based on

If you want to make a standard-legal UB set and have it be a positive addition to the game, you are taking on additional responsibility. It has to be a good set AND be a good version of what items based on.

Final Fantasy was that. The upcoming Avatar set looks pretty good too. Spider-Man absolutely is not that.

And with seven(!!!!!) sets coming out next year it’s hard for me to imagine many of them getting the same kind of level of care that got out into Final Fantasy

It feels like WotC executives think they’ve found an infinite money tree and uh

I don’t think they have

Spider-Man is not doing well

But by the time they get that sales feedback they’re already committed to this production schedule

So, it’s fucked for at LEAST a year

once again "90% of hasbro is doing like dogshit and they are fending off investors telling them to divest wotc from the rest of the company with a baseball bat" rears its ugly head

the feedback lag on a tcg is dreadfully slow

Yeah the problem is Hasbro for sure

the enshittification of both m:tg and d&d has only accelerated with how awful the rest of hasbro is doing

Why are hasbro’s problems WotC’s problems? Because corporate mergers are the devil.

corporate mergers have literally never resulted in one good thing on a consumer level

Actually I want to go in a little more detail about what I think makes for a good fit

Because it IS mostly a vibes thing but Indo think that there’s a specific type of vibe that’s required

So like...nobody actually gives a fuck about Magic: The Gathering’s lore, right? I mean okay some people do but that’s not REALLY why people are here.

People talk about telling a story through a card set but that’s just. That’s just not really what happens.

I’m not sure what that would even look like, to be honest, the prospect puts me in mind of turning a movie into a bi-monthly curated box of snacksBojack Horseman - future of cinema

What they DO is come up with a setting and/or an event, and then take interesting snippets from that and capture it in card form.

Each card is like a little window into one thing that was happening, or a struggle that one character was going through, or place that exists in it. And each card is thus a little vignette of this place/event, and with well over 200 cards in most sets all together they create a sense of place and, more importantly, scale.

It’s not storytelling, but it evokes the feeling of storytelling. It implies the existence of a world with lots of cool fantasy shit to see in it.

So a big part of whether a property makes a good fit is, does it have enough stuff in it to suggest that kind of scale and history

So, Final Fantasy? 100%.

But Spider-Man? The set feels so fucking small and insular because it’s all just about one guy, and a lot of the cards are about mundane events and things. Like a ferry. Or a bagel. Or paying the rent.

Implied scope is so important.

So with that in mind, here’s my take on the upcoming Universes Beyond sets and how good of a fit they are

Avatar: Good fit. It’s not like Asian-inspired fantasy is remotely new to Magic. The events of The Last Airbender cover a lot of momentous events that are ripe for making cards out of. It’s got the right scope.

Marvel Super Heroes: Sigh.

I think it’s got a better shot than having a set that’s just Spider-Man did, there’s some stuff to work with

But, just. Sigh.

Unannounced Set: They’re not announcing what the March set will be until NYCC but everyone’s assuming it’s going to be Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for some reason

If that’s correct: Jesus Christ that might be a worse pick than Spider-Man

You know what’s fatal to the concept of scope? Series that are grounded in the specifics of the real world we live in

Can’t wait for Forgiveness Is Divine But Never Pay Full Price For A Late Pizza, a sorcery costing a white and a colorless that creates a food token, discount one colorless if it’s cast after turn three

The Hobbit: I mean. Yeah, sure. It’s just Lord of the Rings again. It fits.

Star Trek: I actually think this is a better fit than you might think.

It’s got scope, there’s plenty to work with there

And there have been lots of cool monster designs in the Star Trek library to draw on

Unironically want to see a black card that turns target into a 0/1 creature that has art of Worf getting hit by an empty barrel

That said I think this would be better suited to a commander-only product, I think WotC would have to work really hard to make it land as a standard set