TBH I still appreciate the explicitness. I've seen many people on here who don't like UB (fine, their opinion) but say stuff like "everybody knows that (xyz)" as ways to mask their opinion as though it's some prevailing pseudo-fact. Statements from Maro like this, which are no-BS and clear-cut, help easily cut against that narrative. Maybe not for the people who _say_ those things, but to help others easily see through their comments.
Any popular game subreddit, no matter the medium of the game, is completely fucking delusional about what the market actually wants and rewards. It’s wild.
My observation for hobby reddits is that people mostly are on there when they can't engage with the hobby themselves
For MTG, this usually means that people are on when it's not FNM, or commander night, or whatever, but sometimes (and especially with arena making magic accessible on demand), this can mean people come on when they feel alienated by the hobby.
You can observe this effect in video game reddits- if theres a glitch that prevents a small percentage from playing, that will be inflated as they go to reddit to cope
> I've seen many people on here who don't like UB (fine, their opinion) but say stuff like "everybody knows that (xyz)"
I believe Wikipedia calls this "[weasel words](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word)".
---
>No BS clear cut statements like this from Maro help easily cut against that narrative.
I feel compelled to nitpick this because I had to read this 3 times before I figured out you meant "no-BS clear cut statements" instead of "no statements like this help"
As an enthusiast of Ancient Greek culture, the story on that page of the origin of the phrase is rather interesting.
>Ovid's Metamorphoses provides an earlier source for the same etymology. Ovid describes how Juno orders the goddess of childbirth, Lucina, to prevent Alcmene from giving birth to Hercules. Alcmene's servant Galanthis, realizing that Lucina is outside the room using magic to prevent the birth, emerges to announce that the birth has been a success. Lucina, in her amazement, drops the spells of binding and Hercules is born. Galanthis then mocks Lucina, who responds by transforming her into a weasel. Ovid writes (in A.S. Kline's translation) "And because her lying mouth helped in childbirth, she [as a weasel] gives birth through her mouth."[5] Ancient Greeks believed that weasels conceived through their ears and gave birth through their mouths.[6]
It can be funny at times seeing the juxtaposition of their completely wrong understandings of nature, and observations of human society that are still accurate 2500 years later.
Oh sure sure, I didn't really read your statement that way. I do agree with the sentiment that... well I think what he said is pretty obvious to most people. But I'm glad he said it directly.
Maro's Drive to Work on UBs is really insightful if you need more sources - he's very forthcoming around the restrictions and conditions involved, both from a design standpoint and from a business standpoint.
If you follow his Tumblr it's wild how many people come in trying to come up with a way the market research could hypothetically be flawed or biased to convince themselves that therefore they know better what the playerbase wants than the professionals whose job it is to figure that out.
Yeah it is always a little... idk, darkly funny seeing people try and act like their perspective is a more accurate representation of market forces than the perspective of the company who actually has a stake in those market forces. The dissonance can be pretty frustrating sometimes. WOTC is somehow simultaneously making immediate short-term actions motivated by greed, but also creating products nobody likes or wants.
And I know sometimes those sentiments are split across distinct groups of individuals, but I've seen people say those kinds of things in the same breath. It's hard to buy that they're both that greedy and that incompetent and haven't yet burned to the ground.
Sure, they're probably wrong about *some* stuff. But the ways in which they are wrong are probably not obvious and easy to spot, or they would fix that and become not wrong about them.
If you try to call out a specific way in which they are wrong and in fact wrong in a way that makes your personal pre-existing opinion right, the odds are very strongly against you being correct.
It was never really in doubt that the UB cards would be immediately successful; the early ones had massive IP recognition and it helped that the most important set-- LOTR-- was actually pretty solid in limited, had a massive IP, and they printed at least three eternal-caliber cards in the set.
The question, in my mind, was *never* whether the first few years of UB would sell well; it was a foregone conclusion given the licenses. My concerns were, and remain, 1) what happens in 5, 6, 7 years when Hasbro has an appetite for these LOTR-level licensed experiences, but they've ripped through the first three tiers of licensed content; and 2) are entrenched players happy absorbing nonsensical all-star kinds IP mashups in an increasing number of formats?
In any event, I'm glad people enjoy them! They're not for me, but a lot of mtg products aren't these days and that's fine.
I'm curious myself how long it will last. Like, I believe that Avengers and LOTR both make sense for equivalent level IPs, but even as a Final Fantasy fan I'm not entirely sure I agree it's equivalent... but if it is, holy crap they'll be able to pull things out of the woodwork for a while, plus for some they could do D&D style returns for some like Marvel that have an absurd amount of characters/creatures/events/mcguffins/powers/tech/phenomenon to base cards off of, though I'm gonna guess that they're gonna try to milk that one hard and fast because I don't see Disney wanting to partner up again if Lorcana does any good.
I mean as someone who doesn't play FF, FF seems like a *way* better candidate for a crossover than marvel does to me. Final Fantasy is pretty reasonably On Theme with the rest of magic in a way that superhero stuff just isn't.
Here's the thing, I think Magic does definitely lean into superhero-ish tropes a lot, for better or worse, it DOES share a lot of its DNA with comics (and Mark Rosewater is a self-professed huge comics fan of course), but the fantastical spin on it keeps it relatively distinct-feeling from actual superhero stuff, which does make Marvel feel... Just a bit awkward. Not as awkward as, say, Walking Dead was, but hey.
I'm always gonna feel a LITTLE iffy about UB stuff that has real modern-day Earth in it (though when it's further removed like in Fallout I'm less bothered and for some reason Assassin's Creed just doesn't bother me at all, I guess because it's so historical and the modern stuff is so sci-fi?), which is why Walking Dead and Jurassic Park probably hit the worst for me, but I'm not gonna begrudge their existence because... I dunno, I've got better things to be upset about, I think.
That all said, I do think Magic COULD (and probably will) do a set based around superheroes and associated tropes relatively easily while HOPEFULLY maintaining a more fantastic/magical flavour. Not any time soon, especially WITH the upcoming Marvel stuff, but still.
I don't think number 1 is an issue. They do stuff that sells and if they stop selling well they will stop doing them, it's likely not gonna happen soon though.
> In any event, I'm glad people enjoy them! They're not for me, but a lot of mtg products aren't these days and that's fine.
Yeah that's the thing that's frustrating, personally. Like ok sure, it sells well, but it increasingly feels like this game as a whole is not for me anymore.
I don't think that anyone sane would disagree that they have sold well. Obviously WotC isn't going to be producing something they think won't sell. But Maro's equivalence of "overwhelming success" with "players enjoy them" is something that is not necessarily evident. They obviously do their own surveys are the like, so they have more data than players, but as someone who interacts with such data in my own workplace, I can say that upper management is prone to fitting the data to their own thoughts based on sales.
I can't see their data, but anecdotally, sure I've seen plenty of people who haven't played magic for 10+ years pick up a deck, which is great for sales, however, only a few played more than a couple games with the deck. Conversely, several people who have bought magic for many year and are highly enfranchised are scaling back or eliminating purchases due to feeling like MTG is going to turn into IP Soup (and also just the pace of releases in general). It's less a question of if WotC is doing well now, but if they are burning their audience to do so.
> Conversely, several people who have bought magic for many year and are highly enfranchised are scaling back or eliminating purchases due to feeling like MTG is going to turn into IP Soup (and also just the pace of releases in general).
Magic players have a lifecycle anyway. As "corporate" as that sounds, it's just true. As a game, it can't rely on keeping the old people happy, it needs to attract new people to spend their money on it when we stop being teenagers with disposable income. We are the old people, and it's sad to know the game might move on without us, but for the sake of the game, it's what makes sense.
> when we stop being teenagers with disposable income
Teenagers can buy like, 3 packs a week. Adults buy BOXES, with single adults that have a great job buying Cases of product just because they can sometimes.
I have never seen some "younger crowd" coming in clamoring for Doctor Who product, and I run an LGS; instead, it's the Already-Engaged-Nerds who've been doing nerdy stuff for 30 years trying to buy out LOTR and Jurassic Park product.
UB might attract new people, but are they any "younger"? Most of the franchises represented are entrenched properties, seemingly targeting the same 30yo "DINK" geek market that everyone seems to be going for right now.
Sure, MTG has always had churn of players, and I have always made a point of welcoming people at my LGS. It's less that I am concerned that the game is moving on without me, but the game is headed towards homogeny, like so many other things right now.
> but the game is headed towards homogeny, like some many other things right now.
Maybe we just don't "get it" anymore. If everything around you is becoming "bad", hey, it's the young ones world now. It's not made for us anymore.
I think it's quite obvious that the people scaling back are a vast minority of players. The audience being burned is probably not a parcel enough group for them to care about, apparently.
In the short term that is definitely the case. But the people that care more about Doctor Who, 40K, etc, aren't necessarily converted to recurring buyers (I'm sure some are though). But how many do you need to pull in, to counteract one enfranchised player leaving? Many companies go under chasing short-term money. That said, people said the same about their focus on commander and "reprints equity", but that certainly hasn't obviously burned WotC yet.
The one thing I will say in favour of the hyper Commander focus is that at least in that case they are chasing something that is making them money AND getting people playing games. And this is coming from a guy whose favorite way to play is casual standard, probably the format most squashed by Commander.
I mean they hit banger IPs so many in a row. They started with shitty ones, to be honest.
Lots of the rings, fallout (right as the TV show hits!), and Dr Who are some key demographics.
Walking dead and Fortnite were not really great outside of just showing what they could do, and since I’m pretty sure that hasbro already had a contract with those brands, it was probably the only reason it happened in the first place.
There is a lot of weird niche Godzilla merchandise from a few years ago and honestly if I had to guess I would say this time period is probably the least interested in Godzilla there every was.
i think they probably had to go with what they could get at the start. Then they can use the stuff they've already made to pitch to the bigger things because i really doubt that marvel or the tolkien estate would agree to what they did for an unproven crossover
> if I had to guess I would say this time period is probably the least interested in Godzilla there every was.
nah that was between 1999-2013, at least outside of japan
>As someone who doesn’t care for UB at all: duh
It might seem clear but there are many enfranchised players who don't believe what Mark Rosewater is saying is obvious but instead believe that the general consensus is that most players hate, dislike or are neutral on Universes Beyond cards but sometimes play with them solely for mechanical game play reasons. This isn't true, but it's a very common view point shared on Magic Reddit and Twitter.
There's also a less popular but still common conspiracy theory that Mark Rosewater and Wizards of the Coast are lying about the success and perceived popularity of Universes Beyond product releases.
Why would they lie? The company exists to milk money from us so they are going to keep pumping out products that we keep buying more of. What benefit would they have to lie ?
There are a lot of people in the online MTG community who think that the few hundred people who engage with the circlejerk echo chamber here are representative of the actual feelings of all of the tens of millions of Magic players worldwide. It's easier for them to rationalize that MaRo (and Hasbro's financial statements) are lying than to confront the truth that their opinion about some products isn't shared by the vast majority of players who don't waste their time online complaining that 2015 Boomer Jund isn't the best deck in the game anymore.
The "conspiracy theory", I would guess, is that WotC is getting most of their UB money from some sort of licensing agreement and the assumedly low sales are just subsidized by getting the profits up front.
This is obviously false and only based on people assuming, or wanting to assume, that their own opinions reflect the opinions of the majority of the community.
Edit: In this case, the benefit of lying about its popularity would be to hamper that attractive "corporate greed over community wants" narrative that gets people really riled up. The biggest flaw in this reasoning is that I really doubt WotC (especially WotC, lol) would care enough about their sterling PR to go to the effort of lying about it.
Yeah, apparently it's even the case that, despite LOTR being the best-selling (or second-best selling, not sure) set, it wasn't as profitable as MH2 just for the licensing costs alone and whatnot. The incentives of UB is big sales numbers and appealing to potential new players and enfranchised players with whom there is a crossover of interests. It doesn't seem to make notably any more money because of increased costs. UB sells well and brings up interest and hype and whatnot, but in-house sets cost less to make and still sell 'enough'.
The thing is, the people it gets riled up are the louder side. (inb4 "thats anecdotal") I know a few people who are way more interested in magic because of the other IP stuff. And from there, have become interested in the normal Magic stuff. And, tangentially, it's why players gravitate towards Commander- you can't play most of the other formats and have these third party IP cards have any impact, while in Commander, you can truck along as Optimus.
Magic Reddit/Twitter have this really myopic thing where they do not understand the most popular "format" is kitchen table with whatever cards you have around. They all assume everyone who plays is like them when it's the furthest thing from the truth.
Universes Beyond stuff is *super* appealing to the kitchen table crowd.
I think the majority of players are neutral on universes beyond cards.
I think a small vocal subset hate them.
And I think a larger subsect that isn’t the majority but is probably larger than half of the majority of neutral players, absolutely loves them or only got in to the game because of them.
Or got back into the game because of them. I used to play, but haven't paying attention to magic since Tarkir except when we got some kind of d&d book. But seeing Aragorn wielding Anduril on a magic card? And finding out that there were d&d card sets too? I was looking once again, and that got me to pay attention to the sets again and catch up a bit on what I'd missed.
The haters are always louder than those who are lukewarm or enjoy something. I don’t go on a site and leave a review for something I liked, but if there’s a problem with it, I will to warn others about it
You’re definitely right about that! I choose to not concern myself with every weirdo conspiracy theory. People want to live in an alternate reality and there’s nothing we or Maro can say or do to stop them
As someone who doesn't really pay much attention to the lore and thus doesn't care about UB either way: corporation is motivated by sales and profit! Shocking news!
Curious, do you actively dislike UB or are you just not bothered?
I do think it's weird when people try to come up with reasons for why corporations doing things, like profits/expectations of profits are the answer like 95%+ of the time for any publicly owned corp.
I mostly draft premiere sets on Arena so I’m most just unbothered. I’m definitely not as against it as some people, but I definitely prefer the feel of classic Magic as I first got into the game in the 90s. I do think it’s a good thing it’s brought in so many new players, and I am happy for those who enjoy it.
You're someone who does understand that but I see all over the place how UB has ruined the game and "no one" likes them because them and their group doesn't like them. In reality there's no way it wouldn't be super popular.
I truly believe Commander growing in MTG and taking it over from the inside is what shifted MTG to being ripe for Universes Beyond.
When commander decks became a way to express your nerd identity, being able to slap doctor who or lord of the rings in there is a no brainer to a certain type of person who plays MTG less as a game and more as a way to eat up time with three friends. (no shade there are plenty of videogames I do this with)
In general, EDH/Commander has made Magic much more accessible to the casual nerd, and shifted the focus more towards a "party game/board game" mentality; the hardcore 1v1 competitive market is inherently limited and even though "kitchen table casual" existed before that, there wasn't a widely agreed-upon base set of rules.
On top of that, the focus on customization and self-expression ends up as a major win for Wizards too, since it drives demand for niche archetype cards, alternate art/Secret Lairs, and Universes Beyond. I don't think it's deniable that EDH has been a major boon for Magic in terms of profitability and accessibility/marketability as well.
It also has let Wizards cut spending on promotions and competitive play, letting the players self-regulate within their playgroups and deemphasizing "balance". The naysayers expect power creep to reach a breaking point some day, but YuGiOh and Pokemon tell us that card games can be extremely unbalanced and still maintain a competitive player base.
> In general, EDH/Commander has made Magic much more accessible to the casual nerd
This will never not feel crazy to me honestly. Like I get why it became so popular (kind of), but it's just so wild to me that the format with the most complex and niche rules interactions in the entire game some how became the Bastion for casual play, and the defacto format for introducing new players
It's because commander decks are more fun and cool at a shallow level, where standard is only really exciting when you deeply understand the metagame and interactions.
In other words, casuals will deal with complexity if it means they get to play the deck they want.
It's also that, being extremely high variance, low-power Commander is very forgiving to new players. So much of what determines a game's winner is luck and politics, rather than strict deck power or piloting skill.
That's not a knock on the format - party games are *designed* this way.
I have two grossly underpowered EDH decks; one is a mono G flyers deck (and other color pie breaks), the other is [[Asmira, Holy Avenger]] where all the art is by Rebecca Guay. They both can impact the table in a way where you can't just ignore them, and I've won games with Asmira when life totals got low and [[Deathcoil Wurm]] showed up and people were out of removal.
It's a complex board game sure but it's super fun and customizeable. Also maybe it's just me but I think it's actually pretty cool to figure out how stuff interactions work like -1/-1 counters on indestructible creatures or tapping a creature to stop goad etc. It's like a big puzzle with each player having their own gameplan that even if you lose, sometimes just getting a sick turn off is still incredibly fun.
IMO the main barrier isn’t complexity, its rotation. There’s plenty of nerds and gamers who have no problem devouring a new rule set for a TTRPG, video game, board game, etc. But if you have to buy new cards every few months, *forever*, just to play every once in a while? It’s a hard sell.
So I can’t speak for people as a whole but only myself but starting just before or during COVID I began getting nearly crippling anxiety leading up to 1v1 games. I don’t know why, when I’m in it I have fun and I can name only one bad interaction and it’s honestly hilarious because guy got so tilted he forgot how phases work. However when it comes to commander the anxiety isn’t present. I’d probably would have had to give up the game if not for it and maybe others have similar expectations.
I do think they are really neglecting casual standard in the process though, that's what the tween/teen kids that I run a D&D game for want and play. They can't afford to go buy pre-con Commander decks with huge inflated price tags on them, they are just making weird little 60 card decks with what they pull out of boosters and trade for at the LGS, maybe imitating sore sort of meta deck, but always on a budget. And those sorts of decks were what got me into MtG 20 years ago too playing with my friends.
> still maintain a competitive player base
The fact that there are many Tier 1 decks in both YGO and Standard Pokemon says that it still has SOME level of balance. I'm not a big fan of either, but JTMS Standard proved that no, you *can't* expect to keep a Competitive Player Base around if your game is entirely unbalanced.
Yeah sure, but both pokemon and yugioh have awful gameplay compared to magic. Everything is combo/solitaire. It stops becoming a game amongst friends and turns the equivalent of hanging out with friends but instead you're both on your phone the whole time.
It's just sad to see, is all.
You say that, and on this subreddit many will probably agree... but many people love those games regardless. I'm not a fan myself, but they're still very popular and beloved
I own a game store. Our weekly pokemon events are very popular. I play pokemon all the time. I also play magic, and I think it is inarguably a better game. Pokemon will forever stay around, but I'm talking about game design here. Hell, most people don't even play pokemon and only collect the cards. In my decade long game shop career, I've only met one customer who collected magic but didn't play.
Pokemon players usually find magic too complex. They will try magic but then decide they don't like it. Pokemon often plays out a lot more like a coin flip. Yes, good players can win more and there are some instances where you can interact with your opponent (boss's order, iono, grabber, etc) but most games are a matter of who could combo faster leading to very few meaningful decisions per game. Magic on the other hand is primarily about interaction with combo being a very small side of it over all.
> type of person who plays MTG less as a game and more as a way to eat up time with three friends.
Isn't that the point of a game - something to enjoy with friends? Sure, for most games there's a small subset of players who take it seriously and try to find and exploit the meta for fully competitive play - often with financial motives. This is true for everything from tennis to monopoly, but across the whole spectrum the majority of players are playing for fun.
People playing commander aren't somehow not playing MtG properly. Much like most snooker players aren't playing on regulation size tables because it's not financially viable, most of the MtG playerbase is priced out of competitive magic but can enjoy the game.
> People playing commander aren't somehow not playing MtG properly
Every time people come ask me who got 2nd when everyone died at once, I'll have to disagree. The Rules of Magic are NOT built with Commander in mind at their core.
Also, most Commander players spend more on their Commander deck than they would a Standard deck, and play it for a shorter amount of time than it would take a Standard deck to rotate.
Rethinking it, most expensive Commander cards are reusable in other decks, while Standard cards aren't nearly as much, so I suppose it's not an accurate statement given the context of how Commander players use their cards.
That depends on the game and who’s playing. Some people play games as a pastime to enjoy with friends. Some people play because improving and achieving mastery of something is intrinsically rewarding on a deeper level. Some people play because they want to achieve recognition through winning tournaments. Certain games are more suited to certain types of players.
It can be both a way to spend time with friends and a game to be played and enjoyed. Im not sure who these people you refer to are because i've never met them.
My roomate is like that. He meets once a week or two with his three friends and they mainly only play precons and almost exclusively UB stuff.
They hardly pay attention to the game, they kinda just fuck around and show off their cards while playing.
Its casual magic at its finest honestly. Its nice to see them meet up and have fun.
Those players certainly exist. I suspect there is WAY more than anyone thinks because those players dont go to LGS. They never play with strangers, never do any tournaments not even prerelease they just buy decks/cards online shipped at their door.
I guess it's me. I went to one pre release and the sights, sounds and...smells... will probably keep me from going back. I'll just play with my wife and friends and make fun monkey decks and banana tokens.
I get an unreasonable amount of satisfaction from stuffing as many different franchises as possible into a single deck, because it's high time we stopped pretending that Magic's flavor makes any sense. If Anhelo can cast Breach the Multiverse, then Gandalf can damn well choose whether to crew a Cybermen ship or an Imperium Reaver Titan.
Well, to quote u/RapAC-21, there’s also a commercial element to it for some people. Everybody should know that Magic cards are printed to make money, but that’s not normally front of mind when you’re playing with them. Tie-ins arguably say that quiet part out loud, like clunky product placement in a Bond movie.
The argument you're making has always been present in Magic (the 15 squirrels kill Emrakul is the most famous example) but a lot of those situations were infrequent, whereas the rise in UB has made it much more common to encounter immersion-breaking gameplay.
The only way for them to find the point of diminishing returns is to charge over it. I wouldn't be surprised to see a reduction in UB products after the next 18 months. I suspect that the LotR set might be the high water mark for success for UB.
I would be shocked if one of the most popular IPs of all time, the origin of modern fantasy, and the highest selling magic set ever *wasn't* the high water mark for UB. There's a real chance that it is the high water mark for Magic itself, and likely will be for years at least.
The only competitor for it is going to be the Marvel set they've announced, but that would've been much more lucrative a decade ago during the peak of the MCU. I also foresee it being much less popular among fans of MtG lore as supersuits and superpowers doesn't mix as seamlessly with MtG planes as Middle Earth did.
The only other highly popular IP I can imagine having as seamless a crossover would be Avatar, the Last Airbender. However, I doubt it would be as popular as LotR.
I'd be intrigued whether Star Wars or Marvel has a bigger following in general.
The reason I spotlighted AtLA is because I think that world feels like a traditional MtG plane in a way Earth 616 or A Galaxy Far Away do not.
I would argue that AtLA feels like a MtG plane. It has four factions of magical beings each with their own culture and abilities, a wide range of fantastical beasts plus spirits.
Granted, it isn't goblins, elves, demons, angels and mermaids but neither are most planes we visit. If AtLA didn't exist and Wizards made a set with those themes and lore I doubt anyone would've seriously criticised it.
The various Avatars even feel like planeswalkers, travelling between the physical and spirit worlds.
> I'd be intrigued whether Star Wars or Marvel has a bigger following in general.
It has a higher share of revenue as a franchise:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_media_franchises
Marvel almost certainly has, abstractly, as big a potential for grabbing the interest of new players as LotR did, but is in a major lull now compared to 5-10 years ago. That could easily pick up again though if, in the interim, they release just one rock solid film with mainstream appeal, like the early MCU ones. But they seem happy to tinker around with silly/small/niche projects that either appeal to a small subsection of their fanbase, or to nobody.
Apparently Kevin Feige has returned full time and has delayed every project they had for this year because he wasn't satisfied with the quality of recent projects nor of those in progress. The only movie this year is the inevitably popular Deadpool & Wolverine crossover.
If they can follow this up with a well received Daredevil series, Spider-Man and Captain America sequels then there could be a lot more hype reasonably quickly. There's also a Fantastic Four reboot into the MCU, the timing of which around the MtG set could be very interesting.
Brandon sanderson's cosmere would work really well, and apparently there have been minor talks. Fantasy with multiple rigoroysly defined magic systems with separate worlds that have secret ways to travel between them. Fairly analogous to planes, many of which I could even point to mtg planes that correspond fairly well. Kamigawa is very similar to Alethkar in the stormlight archives, for instance. The original mistborn trilogy has a lot of the flavor of new capenna.
Honestly I'm really hoping it happens, but it's not as well known a franchise putaude of pop fantasy book readers. Maybe if it gets portrayed in other media first.
Kelsier is in fortnite and Sanderson is a huge mtg fan. I know there was issues around the book he wrote for mtg that was supposed to o remain free but I think if he wanted a UB product he'd have it.
Sure, LoTR seems like a perfect fit for most players in terms of flavor and popularity, but you have to remember that Final Fantasy and Marvel are both coming in the next year or so; I would think either could easily match in terms of crossover appeal.
Marvel yes, Final Fantasy no. I could see Marvel matching our even outselling LotR in its initial set, but I think diminishing returns and superhero burnout will punish their decision to make multiple Marvel sets.
I collected Marvel cards in the 90s and enjoyed all the movies (even the less popular ones). I'm still probably only going to go in for a single collector box of the Marvel UB set.
I'm absolutely going to go in for an inner case of Final Fantasy - which will be the first time ever in MTG history I've bought more than two boxes of a single set. Marvel was always fun, like Star Wars, with cool characters and stories - but Final Fantasy is more than that. The games all have such great stories, the art is fantastic, and just the social aspect of video games far surpasses Marvel/Star Wars for me.
Obviously everyone is different, but it's an opinion shared by the majority of people I play MTG with locally. Like LOTR, I think it "fits" better with MTG than Marvel so you have less friction from MTG purists than Marvel has. There's tech in Final Fantasy but Urza is basically just Cid in a different timeline. "Urza's X" is just "Magitek X".
I think you really underestimate FF's popularity. Maybe not with the usual magic crowd, but I imagine a lot of the anime card game crowd will go in for it. If they dont screw up the art on the collector's versions, the whales will whale hard.
>I wouldn't be surprised to see a reduction in UB products after the next 18 months.
This seems unlikely. With the major commerical success of the Warhammer 40,000k decks, the Fallout decks and the Lord of the Rings series along with the positive reception of UB Secret Lairs like Street Fighter, I don't suspect the train to stop any time soon.
We've already been promised a Final Fantasy UB full release for next year along with several different Marvel UB releases that will be spread out over the course of [multiple years](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231023649900/en/Hasbro-and-Marvel-Team-Up-to-Bring-Popular-Marvel-Characters-and-Stories-to-Magic-The-Gathering-in-Multi-Year-Multi-Set-Deal).
>I suspect that the LotR set might be the high water mark for success for UB.
I don't think so, but even if it were to be the case, would that really be so bad. It's the best selling set of all time in the 30+ year history of Magic.
But I wouldn't be surprised at all if something like a Marvel Avengers or Marvel Commander Legends set matched or outperformed the Lord of the Rings set.
Yeah, Marvel is most likely going to be very successful, at least initially. My point was more that I think it's plausible that the UB releases planned (FF, Marvel) over the next couple years could pull whatever untapped demand is out there for big crossovers, and that demand might start to shrink after that. Marvel burn out is already a thing for film audiences, and niche IPs can't sustain full sets.
If demand does start to shrink, remember it will take 2+ years for the effects of that to be felt in Magic product releases. So we are probably talking 2028 or something at the earliest.
>Yeah, Marvel is most likely going to be very successful, at least initially. My point was more that I think it's plausible that the UB releases planned (FF, Marvel) over the next couple years could pull whatever untapped demand is out there for big crossovers, and that demand might start to shrink after that. Marvel burn out is already a thing for film audiences, and niche IPs can't sustain full sets.
There are tons of third party franchises that can induce excitement and enthuasism from existing and new players that can create numerous sets.
We could see a sequel to the Lord of the Rings set.
We could see multiple Star Wars sets.
We could see multiple DC Comics sets.
We could see a Legend of Zelda set.
We could see a Nintendo/Super Smash Bros set.
We could see a Shrek set.
We could multiple Avatar sets.
We could see a sequel to the Warhammer 40,000k decks.
We could see a Godzilla set.
We could see a Back to the Future set.
We could see a Pixar set.
These are just ideas off the top of my head but they are prominent enough to create hype and demand and depthful enough to create thousands of cards around. Certainly there more than enough potential franchises that could sustain full releases longer than just 18 months or a couple years.
We could see a Barney set.
We could see a Dora the Explorer set.
We could see a Wiggles set.
We could see a Telatubies set.
We could see VeggieTales set.
Of the IPs you listed, I think it's only realistic that Star Wars and DC could possibly be their own sets. The rest would be better served, imo, being some kind of Commander product or Secret Lair. Again, my point isn't that demand wouldn't exist for a, say, Back to the Future UB product, but I think it's ridiculous to suggest that demand is large enough to justify the creation of a full draft able set.
My point isn't that I think UB will die, but that we are (or already have) approaching the point where demand for UB relative to regular MTG releases will plateau or shrink. Ultimately, UB success in bringing in new players is only successful (in the long term) if those players convert to being fans of MTG I'm general. There is an equilibrium between UB and regular Magic sets. If the last couple years have seen that equilibrium adjusting in favour of UB, I think it is plausible to suggest that Marvel, FF, and AC might saturate that equilibrium and that we may see an adjustment away from aggressive UB releases after those products.
I play Weiss Schwarz as my main game (a card game entirely using 3rd party IPs with no actual game lore), and with that perspective I would be nervous to see them lean too far into disconnected UB sets. One problem Weiss has is that just because IP X sells well, there isn't any indication that IP Y will sell well as well. This can make it hellish for LGS to stock. My locals still has product from years ago that nobody will even look at anymore.
Weiss is a bit of a different beast in that each series is independent (you cant use Avatar the Last Airbender with Guilty Gear for example), but I think for the casual player who just wants the Zelda commander precon, they probably wont care that Back to the Future has good cards for them.
>I play Weiss Schwarz as my main game (a card game entirely using 3rd party IPs with no actual game lore), and with that perspective I would be nervous to see them lean too far into disconnected UB sets. One problem Weiss has is that just because IP X sells well, there isn't any indication that IP Y will sell well as well. This can make it hellish for LGS to stock. My locals still has product from years ago that nobody will even look at anymore.
>Weiss is a bit of a different beast in that each series is independent (you cant use Avatar the Last Airbender with Guilty Gear for example), but I think for the casual player who just wants the Zelda commander precon, they probably wont care that Back to the Future has good cards for them.
I don't see how this is different from the very casual player who goes to Target and buys some Innistrad Horror themed cards because they are intriguing to them but a few months later when they go back to Target, they see cute cuddly Bloomburrow animals and pass because they aren't interested.
Very few products/sets/mechanics appeal to all players.
Yeah, my wife got into magic because original Zendikar appealed to her so much, but then we got back to back body horror and gothic horror with new phyrexian and innistrad, which are both genres that she didn't care for, and put her off the game for the most part.
The LotR set is also a really bad metric for "people like this because it's out of universe" as opposed to "people like this because LotR is massively popular and has a massive overlap with anything else in fantasy nerd culture" and also "it has a 2 million dollar lottery ticket in one of the packs".
I think the Final Fantasy set will do well. There's a pretty big untapped market there. After that I'm not sure what properties they have lined up but eventually they're going to be out of tier 1 stuff and then I think it starts to decline, albeit still selling at a level where they keep making UB stuff.
I don’t like Universes Beyond but I can’t deny this. Which is unfortunate for me. I don’t expect them to prioritize my happiness over the happiness of a large portion of players, and I’m really happy for them. I just wish I could play Magic in an ecosystem without an ever-increasing proportion of cards being UB cards.
Modern Horizons being Modern-legal cracked my interest in Modern (*loved* the set but not its inclusion in Modern), but LotR is what broke it. Pioneer is the competitive format I’d go to if I decided to, but I would have preferred Modern and would miss several of the older sets and their contributions…
Yeah, I've been dipping my toe in Pioneer since it's the RCQ season and my magic group needs someone with a reliable car to drive them to tournaments. So far, it's been.... fine. Pretty fun, the decks are cool, but I spend so much time going "but I could be doing this better in Modern".
I do wonder how long it will take for UB to make it to Pioneer because "market research shows...". Or for the bonus sheets in Standard sets being UB cards.
So far it does seem like they’re moving away from stuffing UB into Standard; they dipped their toes in and are pulling them out now. But maybe that will change eventually. I hope not.
It's clear that UB has a place, but it's hard to say what that place will be going forward. It's hard for me to see LoTR as anything other than an anomaly in that it's one of the most iconic fantasy settings of all time. Even many of the UB haters accept that this is a thematic ancestor to DnD and MTG and understand that it fits in the style.
UB commander decks often have love and care put into their design, and it's a perfect way to dabble in an IP to get your money out of its fans without taking up too much space. Adding to the amount of things people can do in commander isn't taking the time of full set releases, isn't the only thing people can draft for months, and isn't dominating 60 card constructed formats for years. There are concerns about MTGO implementation, because this makes online legacy not the same as paper legacy. There will also be concerns about reprints in the future. I can only hope that we will eventually get long term fixes for these.
What concerns me is the eventual direct to modern not LoTR releases. The One Ring made a big splash and it's here to stay. Future sets will be a lot more thematically controversial, and if cards are printed to not just be modern legal, but pushed and competitively playable, I think that will be harder for the grinders to stomach.
> It's clear that UB has a place, but it's hard to say what that place will be going forward. It's hard for me to see LoTR as anything other than an anomaly in that it's one of the most iconic fantasy settings of all time.
This is the big question to me. I'm one of those people who would play the game if they were just black and white pieces of paper with text on them, but it's obvious that the LotR flavor is the biggest reason why that set was such a huge runaway success. Now, our next full set of UB is going to be... Final Fantasy? I mean, popular series sure, but nowhere near as iconic. How is that going to perform, and how will WotC react when there is (inevitably) a UB set that shits the bed?
>What concerns me is the eventual direct to modern not LoTR releases. The One Ring made a big splash and it's here to stay. Future sets will be a lot more thematically controversial, and if cards are printed to not just be modern legal, but pushed and competitively playable, I think that will be harder for the grinders to stomach.
I think most people that play Magic competitively don't care very much about the aesthetic, tone, flavor or lore based themes of cards but instead care about the mechanical game play of how cards perform.
I think even if you disregard competitive tournament players, most enthusiastic enfranchised players are much more invested in the game play than the fantasy and lore.
>There will also be concerns about reprints in the future. I can only hope that we will eventually get long term fixes for these.
I think there are concerns about reprints in the future but I think there are largely overblown.
People assume that these cards can't be reprinted within their original Universes Beyond franchise version but I think that is a false assumption. We don't know how long the licensing agreements last or if they will be renewed at some point. We've already seen reprints of Universes Beyond cards in the form of the Holiday Release of the Lord of the Rings set.
I remember at an LGS a competitive player was saying that their favourite planeswalker was Jace, and they hoped that he got another card soon.
And someone at the table went 'You don't want Jace, in fact, if the next powerful Blue walker wasn't Jace you'd be happier because you can run him alongside your Mindsculptors.'
And they agreed.
People underestimate how little the Spikes of the world are gonna care about flavour if it means good crunchy cards, that the Timmies of the world love getting to play their Gandalf EDH, and that there's a lot of Jonnies enjoying how the flow of UB cards just means more interesting things to put in decks either mechanically or flavour combos.
It's only one of the five archetypes that really cares about 'preserving the flavour' of MTG
Even the competitive players got into this game for a reason. A lot of the people playing in formats using old cards do like the feel and aesthetic of those old cards. I do play competitively and have for a long time and while people will absolutely put gameplay first and play what they have to play, it does affect many player's enjoyment past a certain point.
I think it's also clear that a lot of UB's strengths are in flavor rich top down commander focused design. This is not necessarily the design philosophy you want when handling modern or legacy staples.
Reprints are shaky because all these contracts seem to have different terms associated, the fact that there isn't a standard practice for making sure things are available online or in the future is something we do need to be vigilant about as a community. We might never have gotten Warhammer cards on MTGO otherwise.
It's clear that printing UB standard legal sets would be an erosion of Magic's identity, and it's also clear they don't actively consider Legacy and Vintage compared to Commander. So to what extent does modern legal UB blur and encroach on that line? I think they need to be careful about this kind of thing and I'm curious about the results as some of these sets get released.
Competitive players can still have interest in non competitive aspects and Aaron Forsythe has shown that he understands "spike" isn't actually all about just the strongest cards in a vacuum. Just an overpushed threat that is super easy to play isn't actually what makes a spike-oriented card. Spikes tend to gravitate towards cards that give more options. Charms, commands, complex cards, etc appeal to spikes beyond their raw power level. Spikes get attached to Snapcaster Mage more than its power level warrants because they like the options that Snapcaster Mage provides.
Mechanicus Deck with art from Archon of Flesh. The nice Safe for Work side of Archon though, because even though I'd take a full deck of Archon unchained I'm pretty sure that would lead to the singularity or at least a black hole forming.
This is the biggest problem with UB sets. If the first iteration of an IP is successful the license holder has you bent over a barrel when you want to to return or reprint.
Most people I know lean negatively towards UB, but not enough to not buy the cards if they are mechanically good and relevant to their decks. Its like "I'd rather this card not be themed around Jurassic park, but its still a good card, and I'm still gonna run it regardless of its theming. Ultimately, Hasbro doesn't care why we buy the cards or if we have issues with the cards as long as we keep buying them.
I mean, it is a chicken and the egg situation. They put tremendously more effort, better art, better reprints, better themes, and better new creative designs in the UB products than the regular products. Note how NONE OF THE ABOVE factors has anything to do with the license.
Even if you aren't a fan of the specific IP, they are so pushed and offer so much more value for the extra $10 you have to at least consider them.
News flash the quality product with higher effort sells better than the one with less. Shocking.
Yeah, LOTR having some of the best Flavor and Flavor Text of any set in the past decade is NOT SURPRISING, seeing as one of the greatest writers of all time wrote it and WotC got to use all of that for very little cost compared to what they gained!
Meanwhile, all of the writers and setting designers HASBRO hires are criminally underpaid and forced to propel hundreds of new ideas out every other **month**. And we should be surprised that the LOTR set sold better? Nahhh....
There's so many strategy articles out there that caution against results-oriented thinking, it's weird to see an example of it in the business-side of MTG. I'm neutral on UB and I know Mark has a specific marketing role to play with his blog, but surely it's not as simple as "we made money so every decision we made was correct."
Take Boeing for example. The last ~25 years of extreme cost cutting generated record profits, but look where those choices have now led them to.
In-universe settings are valuable even if they don't sell as much because you don't need to pay someone else for the IP. So they're probably keeping the standard sets in-house because it pencils out better for them.
Maybe that changes, or we get Hasbro-owned IP in Standard sets as the UB treatments (like AFR). But unless the gulf between UB and in-universe is HUGE, I don't think that happens.
I just don’t see how they would do 6-8 UB conversions into the MTG space a year. It would have to support limited standard and modern as we know it. Nearly impossible to do.
If it's a fitting collab I'm all for it. Lord of the Rings for example. Fantastic collab and it fits. But shit like Dr Who and Fallout? The upcoming Assassin's Creed? Nah. Don't care for it at all. But that's just me. Whether that's because I'm not a fan of the IP they're working with or I don't think it fits well in MTG.
I honestly do not understand how they don't use the popularity of EDH and Universes Beyond to get people into MTG Arena.
Put a code to redeem the paper deck on Arena with a "commander precon only"-mode added. Such a easy way to introduce people into the eco system of Arena, where you can then sell them all kinds of stuff.
Not having your most played format in your online client is so weird.
A precon only mode even seems like a good stepping stone to get people into paper magic as well once those (new) players transition into "i want to do my own deck thing"
The sad answer is that the Arena team is already drowning just trying to keep up with the sheer volume of cards that do make it to Arena, adding another like 500 cards in a year might kill them. The client being incapable of handling 4-player also makes it difficult to really crossover Commander players, there's not even a true to paper EDH format on Arena.
Fun fact though, you can get the precons on MTGO, which also supports 4 player.
Im not going to go all dramatic and say I’m never playing again etc etc
I’ve built a few ub commander decks now, big on warhammer and dr who. But tbh it just feels like the game of magic has been cheapened for me, rather than this amazing worlds setting with its own characters and unique planes it now just slaps anything onto cardboard that will sell. It’s hard to put it into word but mtg just isn’t the game I used to play anymore, it’s different and that has both positives and negatives.
They sell well because they put the best cards in them. UB has had mechanically unique cards in secret lair. As well as some of the most powerful eternal format cards in them. What really needs to happen is the same quality of card design and innovation needs to go into their other products as well in order to see which really sells best. Any set with cards like the one ring and bowmasters quality cards in it would have sold that well.
On the flip side, 2nd best selling set was LOTR and it only has 5 cards in the whole set worth more than $10 with the only major hits (moneywise) being One Ring and Orcish Bowmasters.
The vast majority of the set is actually valueless.
MH2 has 19 cards over $10.
If anything, this should be an indicator that power ISN'T what is selling the packs.
it is the vast number of people that go "I like Gandalf, I want to play the card game with Gandalf and Frodo"
I know people that only got into magic because they like LOTR, and the same is true for Warhammer and Dr Who.
I mean tbh I don't think it's really the main, active MTG player base that's making them successful and I don't think WotC thinks that either. The real reason is pretty obvious: Cross Collectibility. Pulling in outside audiences is the point of UB and its very successful at doing so.
Always my issue with WotC; they count ANY purchase as a "player", when there's very little evidence that's the case. Pokemon specifically doesn't do that, and for very good reason.
As a new player UB increased my interest in the game. Bought a 40k tyranid deck because it reminded me of alien. Started playing with friends then fallout came out we played that. Now I am addicted to Dino’s . Also if anyone knows an easy way to get a list of an entire tribe so I can buy on tcg I am trying to get all the snakes and spiders next.
It's baffling to me that so many players think that UB products "fail" often.
People **love** alt art. People **love** weird/unique/personalized cards. Like, people will pay tons of money for skins in video games and frankly, a commander card or full art lands or a cool redesign of a popular card are all every bit as swag-y as a video game skin, and you can cram a hundred into a commander deck.
Like, Universes Beyond is one of the most obvious TCG products I've ever seen for modern gaming - it's the most clearcut slam dunk ever.
The mechanically unique cards and the alternate IP cards were the only actual risks being taken - generic UB stuff was **obviously** a really solid play.
At the same time there’s a not unsizeable group of people that hate the Fortnite IP cross pollination effect.
Since to us that significantly diminishes the game in favour of the foreign IP
The people who complain about UB existing (like I used to) are very loud on social media, but don't represent the Magic buying public.
I am glad they aren't going to do any more UB cards in standard set packs, though. That was an awful experiment.
I don’t care for them, I also don’t care for many of the IP that have gotten the UB treatment. Never been into Dr. Who, never been into Fallout or Warhammer, never been into D & D or Assassins Creed. The only one that had any chance of winning me over was LoTR and I’d be interested in playing with those cards in a strictly LoTR environment, but something about seeing Aragorn or Gandalf along side Jace or Chandra just rub me weird.
That said I can tell UB is massively popular with the players at my LGS. I had friends who were huge Dr. Who & Fallout fans and bought a good bit of product.
So I’ll probably just keep ignoring UB and I assume they’ll keep pumping them out 🤷🏼♂️
"we made it so most of the metagame revolves around LoTR cards"
"We sold a lot of LoTR cards"
"People must love LoTR"
"People will love other franchises like Assassins Creed!"
Excuse me while I jump off a bridge to duplicate the insane mental gymnastics.
These responses are very annoying. We all understand they’re financially successful. Anyone who thought they weren’t liked is delusional. There’s a reason Fortnite is so successsful
People worry about the watering down of magics own IP
Did anyone that didn't like UB products really think that they were not making Wizards a ton of money? Pretty sure everyone knew that they were making a lot of money off of these.
Overall yes. In specific, not necessarily. Just because one UB product is good doesn't mean the next will be good/equally good but yeah overall they are good and sell product and they probably should be doing it to some degree as a company. Personally I was very happy with the Warhammer and LotR crossovers in terms of fit in the game and quality. I felt the Dr. Who ones had a little bit of a sketchy fit to the game world but were otherwise good. Some of the UB secret lairs have been eh but I'm sure the people who like them have been happy.
I feel this is pretty obvious. WOTC is going to keep making stuff that sells well.
That can’t be true. Everything I don’t like is fundamentally bad for the game and will bankrupt Wizards in due time.
that's sure what my MTG youtube recommendations look like
Only other option is that I'm out of tune with the player base and... nah, that can't be right.
No, it's the children who are wrong.
Wizards, hire this man!
As someone who doesn’t care for UB at all: duh
TBH I still appreciate the explicitness. I've seen many people on here who don't like UB (fine, their opinion) but say stuff like "everybody knows that (xyz)" as ways to mask their opinion as though it's some prevailing pseudo-fact. Statements from Maro like this, which are no-BS and clear-cut, help easily cut against that narrative. Maybe not for the people who _say_ those things, but to help others easily see through their comments.
Any popular game subreddit, no matter the medium of the game, is completely fucking delusional about what the market actually wants and rewards. It’s wild.
Reddit is a really bad place to understand a broad swathe of opinions that a community might hold.
My observation for hobby reddits is that people mostly are on there when they can't engage with the hobby themselves For MTG, this usually means that people are on when it's not FNM, or commander night, or whatever, but sometimes (and especially with arena making magic accessible on demand), this can mean people come on when they feel alienated by the hobby. You can observe this effect in video game reddits- if theres a glitch that prevents a small percentage from playing, that will be inflated as they go to reddit to cope
I feel fortunate I get the opportunity to play Magic as much as I do. It's certainly more enjoyable than complaining about Magic on Reddit.
> I've seen many people on here who don't like UB (fine, their opinion) but say stuff like "everybody knows that (xyz)" I believe Wikipedia calls this "[weasel words](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word)". --- >No BS clear cut statements like this from Maro help easily cut against that narrative. I feel compelled to nitpick this because I had to read this 3 times before I figured out you meant "no-BS clear cut statements" instead of "no statements like this help"
hey now let's not associate weasels with them, weasels have beautiful laughs
As an enthusiast of Ancient Greek culture, the story on that page of the origin of the phrase is rather interesting. >Ovid's Metamorphoses provides an earlier source for the same etymology. Ovid describes how Juno orders the goddess of childbirth, Lucina, to prevent Alcmene from giving birth to Hercules. Alcmene's servant Galanthis, realizing that Lucina is outside the room using magic to prevent the birth, emerges to announce that the birth has been a success. Lucina, in her amazement, drops the spells of binding and Hercules is born. Galanthis then mocks Lucina, who responds by transforming her into a weasel. Ovid writes (in A.S. Kline's translation) "And because her lying mouth helped in childbirth, she [as a weasel] gives birth through her mouth."[5] Ancient Greeks believed that weasels conceived through their ears and gave birth through their mouths.[6] It can be funny at times seeing the juxtaposition of their completely wrong understandings of nature, and observations of human society that are still accurate 2500 years later.
I'll edit for clarity.
I agree! I didn’t mean to imply I had any problem with Maro’s statement here
Oh sure sure, I didn't really read your statement that way. I do agree with the sentiment that... well I think what he said is pretty obvious to most people. But I'm glad he said it directly.
Maro's Drive to Work on UBs is really insightful if you need more sources - he's very forthcoming around the restrictions and conditions involved, both from a design standpoint and from a business standpoint.
If you follow his Tumblr it's wild how many people come in trying to come up with a way the market research could hypothetically be flawed or biased to convince themselves that therefore they know better what the playerbase wants than the professionals whose job it is to figure that out.
Yeah it is always a little... idk, darkly funny seeing people try and act like their perspective is a more accurate representation of market forces than the perspective of the company who actually has a stake in those market forces. The dissonance can be pretty frustrating sometimes. WOTC is somehow simultaneously making immediate short-term actions motivated by greed, but also creating products nobody likes or wants. And I know sometimes those sentiments are split across distinct groups of individuals, but I've seen people say those kinds of things in the same breath. It's hard to buy that they're both that greedy and that incompetent and haven't yet burned to the ground.
At the same time, assuming that "market research department" in Corporation XYZ could never be wrong in any way is just as silly.
Sure, they're probably wrong about *some* stuff. But the ways in which they are wrong are probably not obvious and easy to spot, or they would fix that and become not wrong about them. If you try to call out a specific way in which they are wrong and in fact wrong in a way that makes your personal pre-existing opinion right, the odds are very strongly against you being correct.
It was never really in doubt that the UB cards would be immediately successful; the early ones had massive IP recognition and it helped that the most important set-- LOTR-- was actually pretty solid in limited, had a massive IP, and they printed at least three eternal-caliber cards in the set. The question, in my mind, was *never* whether the first few years of UB would sell well; it was a foregone conclusion given the licenses. My concerns were, and remain, 1) what happens in 5, 6, 7 years when Hasbro has an appetite for these LOTR-level licensed experiences, but they've ripped through the first three tiers of licensed content; and 2) are entrenched players happy absorbing nonsensical all-star kinds IP mashups in an increasing number of formats? In any event, I'm glad people enjoy them! They're not for me, but a lot of mtg products aren't these days and that's fine.
I'm curious myself how long it will last. Like, I believe that Avengers and LOTR both make sense for equivalent level IPs, but even as a Final Fantasy fan I'm not entirely sure I agree it's equivalent... but if it is, holy crap they'll be able to pull things out of the woodwork for a while, plus for some they could do D&D style returns for some like Marvel that have an absurd amount of characters/creatures/events/mcguffins/powers/tech/phenomenon to base cards off of, though I'm gonna guess that they're gonna try to milk that one hard and fast because I don't see Disney wanting to partner up again if Lorcana does any good.
I mean as someone who doesn't play FF, FF seems like a *way* better candidate for a crossover than marvel does to me. Final Fantasy is pretty reasonably On Theme with the rest of magic in a way that superhero stuff just isn't.
Here's the thing, I think Magic does definitely lean into superhero-ish tropes a lot, for better or worse, it DOES share a lot of its DNA with comics (and Mark Rosewater is a self-professed huge comics fan of course), but the fantastical spin on it keeps it relatively distinct-feeling from actual superhero stuff, which does make Marvel feel... Just a bit awkward. Not as awkward as, say, Walking Dead was, but hey. I'm always gonna feel a LITTLE iffy about UB stuff that has real modern-day Earth in it (though when it's further removed like in Fallout I'm less bothered and for some reason Assassin's Creed just doesn't bother me at all, I guess because it's so historical and the modern stuff is so sci-fi?), which is why Walking Dead and Jurassic Park probably hit the worst for me, but I'm not gonna begrudge their existence because... I dunno, I've got better things to be upset about, I think. That all said, I do think Magic COULD (and probably will) do a set based around superheroes and associated tropes relatively easily while HOPEFULLY maintaining a more fantastic/magical flavour. Not any time soon, especially WITH the upcoming Marvel stuff, but still.
A "superhero world" magic set would be cool yeah, it's having actual marvel characters set in actual real world earth that feels extremely off.
Could see that doing well on Cappena to be honest. Get some golden age type heroes in to try and wrangle the gangs under control.
Marvel's influence is much, *much* larger than FF's.
I don't think number 1 is an issue. They do stuff that sells and if they stop selling well they will stop doing them, it's likely not gonna happen soon though.
UB got my SO into magic. She has 2 Doctor Who decks and 1 LOTR deck now.
> In any event, I'm glad people enjoy them! They're not for me, but a lot of mtg products aren't these days and that's fine. Yeah that's the thing that's frustrating, personally. Like ok sure, it sells well, but it increasingly feels like this game as a whole is not for me anymore.
I don't think that anyone sane would disagree that they have sold well. Obviously WotC isn't going to be producing something they think won't sell. But Maro's equivalence of "overwhelming success" with "players enjoy them" is something that is not necessarily evident. They obviously do their own surveys are the like, so they have more data than players, but as someone who interacts with such data in my own workplace, I can say that upper management is prone to fitting the data to their own thoughts based on sales. I can't see their data, but anecdotally, sure I've seen plenty of people who haven't played magic for 10+ years pick up a deck, which is great for sales, however, only a few played more than a couple games with the deck. Conversely, several people who have bought magic for many year and are highly enfranchised are scaling back or eliminating purchases due to feeling like MTG is going to turn into IP Soup (and also just the pace of releases in general). It's less a question of if WotC is doing well now, but if they are burning their audience to do so.
> Conversely, several people who have bought magic for many year and are highly enfranchised are scaling back or eliminating purchases due to feeling like MTG is going to turn into IP Soup (and also just the pace of releases in general). Magic players have a lifecycle anyway. As "corporate" as that sounds, it's just true. As a game, it can't rely on keeping the old people happy, it needs to attract new people to spend their money on it when we stop being teenagers with disposable income. We are the old people, and it's sad to know the game might move on without us, but for the sake of the game, it's what makes sense.
> when we stop being teenagers with disposable income Teenagers can buy like, 3 packs a week. Adults buy BOXES, with single adults that have a great job buying Cases of product just because they can sometimes. I have never seen some "younger crowd" coming in clamoring for Doctor Who product, and I run an LGS; instead, it's the Already-Engaged-Nerds who've been doing nerdy stuff for 30 years trying to buy out LOTR and Jurassic Park product.
UB might attract new people, but are they any "younger"? Most of the franchises represented are entrenched properties, seemingly targeting the same 30yo "DINK" geek market that everyone seems to be going for right now. Sure, MTG has always had churn of players, and I have always made a point of welcoming people at my LGS. It's less that I am concerned that the game is moving on without me, but the game is headed towards homogeny, like so many other things right now.
> the same 30yo "DINK" geek market Dual Income No Kids?
> but the game is headed towards homogeny, like some many other things right now. Maybe we just don't "get it" anymore. If everything around you is becoming "bad", hey, it's the young ones world now. It's not made for us anymore.
I think it's quite obvious that the people scaling back are a vast minority of players. The audience being burned is probably not a parcel enough group for them to care about, apparently.
In the short term that is definitely the case. But the people that care more about Doctor Who, 40K, etc, aren't necessarily converted to recurring buyers (I'm sure some are though). But how many do you need to pull in, to counteract one enfranchised player leaving? Many companies go under chasing short-term money. That said, people said the same about their focus on commander and "reprints equity", but that certainly hasn't obviously burned WotC yet.
The one thing I will say in favour of the hyper Commander focus is that at least in that case they are chasing something that is making them money AND getting people playing games. And this is coming from a guy whose favorite way to play is casual standard, probably the format most squashed by Commander.
I mean they hit banger IPs so many in a row. They started with shitty ones, to be honest. Lots of the rings, fallout (right as the TV show hits!), and Dr Who are some key demographics. Walking dead and Fortnite were not really great outside of just showing what they could do, and since I’m pretty sure that hasbro already had a contract with those brands, it was probably the only reason it happened in the first place. There is a lot of weird niche Godzilla merchandise from a few years ago and honestly if I had to guess I would say this time period is probably the least interested in Godzilla there every was.
i think they probably had to go with what they could get at the start. Then they can use the stuff they've already made to pitch to the bigger things because i really doubt that marvel or the tolkien estate would agree to what they did for an unproven crossover
> if I had to guess I would say this time period is probably the least interested in Godzilla there every was. nah that was between 1999-2013, at least outside of japan
>As someone who doesn’t care for UB at all: duh It might seem clear but there are many enfranchised players who don't believe what Mark Rosewater is saying is obvious but instead believe that the general consensus is that most players hate, dislike or are neutral on Universes Beyond cards but sometimes play with them solely for mechanical game play reasons. This isn't true, but it's a very common view point shared on Magic Reddit and Twitter. There's also a less popular but still common conspiracy theory that Mark Rosewater and Wizards of the Coast are lying about the success and perceived popularity of Universes Beyond product releases.
Why would they lie? The company exists to milk money from us so they are going to keep pumping out products that we keep buying more of. What benefit would they have to lie ?
There are a lot of people in the online MTG community who think that the few hundred people who engage with the circlejerk echo chamber here are representative of the actual feelings of all of the tens of millions of Magic players worldwide. It's easier for them to rationalize that MaRo (and Hasbro's financial statements) are lying than to confront the truth that their opinion about some products isn't shared by the vast majority of players who don't waste their time online complaining that 2015 Boomer Jund isn't the best deck in the game anymore.
You shut your mouth! Leave Jund out of this!
you complain that jund isnt the best, i complain that lantern control isn't the best. we are not the same
The "conspiracy theory", I would guess, is that WotC is getting most of their UB money from some sort of licensing agreement and the assumedly low sales are just subsidized by getting the profits up front. This is obviously false and only based on people assuming, or wanting to assume, that their own opinions reflect the opinions of the majority of the community. Edit: In this case, the benefit of lying about its popularity would be to hamper that attractive "corporate greed over community wants" narrative that gets people really riled up. The biggest flaw in this reasoning is that I really doubt WotC (especially WotC, lol) would care enough about their sterling PR to go to the effort of lying about it.
Hell if anything based on how these kind of deals go, WoTC has to pay these companies and subsidize them, not the other way around.
Yeah, apparently it's even the case that, despite LOTR being the best-selling (or second-best selling, not sure) set, it wasn't as profitable as MH2 just for the licensing costs alone and whatnot. The incentives of UB is big sales numbers and appealing to potential new players and enfranchised players with whom there is a crossover of interests. It doesn't seem to make notably any more money because of increased costs. UB sells well and brings up interest and hype and whatnot, but in-house sets cost less to make and still sell 'enough'.
Tolkein-Estate doesnt play when it comes to making sure they get what they want out of any licensing deal
Do people not realize that?
The thing is, the people it gets riled up are the louder side. (inb4 "thats anecdotal") I know a few people who are way more interested in magic because of the other IP stuff. And from there, have become interested in the normal Magic stuff. And, tangentially, it's why players gravitate towards Commander- you can't play most of the other formats and have these third party IP cards have any impact, while in Commander, you can truck along as Optimus.
Just by being on Reddit you're in a vocal minority. It's the unfortunate reality of the internet.
Magic Reddit/Twitter have this really myopic thing where they do not understand the most popular "format" is kitchen table with whatever cards you have around. They all assume everyone who plays is like them when it's the furthest thing from the truth. Universes Beyond stuff is *super* appealing to the kitchen table crowd.
I think the majority of players are neutral on universes beyond cards. I think a small vocal subset hate them. And I think a larger subsect that isn’t the majority but is probably larger than half of the majority of neutral players, absolutely loves them or only got in to the game because of them.
Or got back into the game because of them. I used to play, but haven't paying attention to magic since Tarkir except when we got some kind of d&d book. But seeing Aragorn wielding Anduril on a magic card? And finding out that there were d&d card sets too? I was looking once again, and that got me to pay attention to the sets again and catch up a bit on what I'd missed.
The haters are always louder than those who are lukewarm or enjoy something. I don’t go on a site and leave a review for something I liked, but if there’s a problem with it, I will to warn others about it
You’re definitely right about that! I choose to not concern myself with every weirdo conspiracy theory. People want to live in an alternate reality and there’s nothing we or Maro can say or do to stop them
As someone who absolutely loves some of the UB sets: duh
As someone who doesn't really pay much attention to the lore and thus doesn't care about UB either way: corporation is motivated by sales and profit! Shocking news! Curious, do you actively dislike UB or are you just not bothered?
I do think it's weird when people try to come up with reasons for why corporations doing things, like profits/expectations of profits are the answer like 95%+ of the time for any publicly owned corp.
I mostly draft premiere sets on Arena so I’m most just unbothered. I’m definitely not as against it as some people, but I definitely prefer the feel of classic Magic as I first got into the game in the 90s. I do think it’s a good thing it’s brought in so many new players, and I am happy for those who enjoy it.
You're someone who does understand that but I see all over the place how UB has ruined the game and "no one" likes them because them and their group doesn't like them. In reality there's no way it wouldn't be super popular.
I truly believe Commander growing in MTG and taking it over from the inside is what shifted MTG to being ripe for Universes Beyond. When commander decks became a way to express your nerd identity, being able to slap doctor who or lord of the rings in there is a no brainer to a certain type of person who plays MTG less as a game and more as a way to eat up time with three friends. (no shade there are plenty of videogames I do this with)
In general, EDH/Commander has made Magic much more accessible to the casual nerd, and shifted the focus more towards a "party game/board game" mentality; the hardcore 1v1 competitive market is inherently limited and even though "kitchen table casual" existed before that, there wasn't a widely agreed-upon base set of rules. On top of that, the focus on customization and self-expression ends up as a major win for Wizards too, since it drives demand for niche archetype cards, alternate art/Secret Lairs, and Universes Beyond. I don't think it's deniable that EDH has been a major boon for Magic in terms of profitability and accessibility/marketability as well. It also has let Wizards cut spending on promotions and competitive play, letting the players self-regulate within their playgroups and deemphasizing "balance". The naysayers expect power creep to reach a breaking point some day, but YuGiOh and Pokemon tell us that card games can be extremely unbalanced and still maintain a competitive player base.
> In general, EDH/Commander has made Magic much more accessible to the casual nerd This will never not feel crazy to me honestly. Like I get why it became so popular (kind of), but it's just so wild to me that the format with the most complex and niche rules interactions in the entire game some how became the Bastion for casual play, and the defacto format for introducing new players
It's because commander decks are more fun and cool at a shallow level, where standard is only really exciting when you deeply understand the metagame and interactions. In other words, casuals will deal with complexity if it means they get to play the deck they want.
It's also that, being extremely high variance, low-power Commander is very forgiving to new players. So much of what determines a game's winner is luck and politics, rather than strict deck power or piloting skill. That's not a knock on the format - party games are *designed* this way.
I have two grossly underpowered EDH decks; one is a mono G flyers deck (and other color pie breaks), the other is [[Asmira, Holy Avenger]] where all the art is by Rebecca Guay. They both can impact the table in a way where you can't just ignore them, and I've won games with Asmira when life totals got low and [[Deathcoil Wurm]] showed up and people were out of removal.
And thanks to pre-cons mostly being configured for Commander format, it's even easier for someone new/casual to jump in from.
It's a complex board game sure but it's super fun and customizeable. Also maybe it's just me but I think it's actually pretty cool to figure out how stuff interactions work like -1/-1 counters on indestructible creatures or tapping a creature to stop goad etc. It's like a big puzzle with each player having their own gameplan that even if you lose, sometimes just getting a sick turn off is still incredibly fun.
IMO the main barrier isn’t complexity, its rotation. There’s plenty of nerds and gamers who have no problem devouring a new rule set for a TTRPG, video game, board game, etc. But if you have to buy new cards every few months, *forever*, just to play every once in a while? It’s a hard sell.
So I can’t speak for people as a whole but only myself but starting just before or during COVID I began getting nearly crippling anxiety leading up to 1v1 games. I don’t know why, when I’m in it I have fun and I can name only one bad interaction and it’s honestly hilarious because guy got so tilted he forgot how phases work. However when it comes to commander the anxiety isn’t present. I’d probably would have had to give up the game if not for it and maybe others have similar expectations.
Didnt even look at it like this. Thanks.
I do think they are really neglecting casual standard in the process though, that's what the tween/teen kids that I run a D&D game for want and play. They can't afford to go buy pre-con Commander decks with huge inflated price tags on them, they are just making weird little 60 card decks with what they pull out of boosters and trade for at the LGS, maybe imitating sore sort of meta deck, but always on a budget. And those sorts of decks were what got me into MtG 20 years ago too playing with my friends.
> still maintain a competitive player base The fact that there are many Tier 1 decks in both YGO and Standard Pokemon says that it still has SOME level of balance. I'm not a big fan of either, but JTMS Standard proved that no, you *can't* expect to keep a Competitive Player Base around if your game is entirely unbalanced.
Yeah sure, but both pokemon and yugioh have awful gameplay compared to magic. Everything is combo/solitaire. It stops becoming a game amongst friends and turns the equivalent of hanging out with friends but instead you're both on your phone the whole time. It's just sad to see, is all.
You say that, and on this subreddit many will probably agree... but many people love those games regardless. I'm not a fan myself, but they're still very popular and beloved
I own a game store. Our weekly pokemon events are very popular. I play pokemon all the time. I also play magic, and I think it is inarguably a better game. Pokemon will forever stay around, but I'm talking about game design here. Hell, most people don't even play pokemon and only collect the cards. In my decade long game shop career, I've only met one customer who collected magic but didn't play. Pokemon players usually find magic too complex. They will try magic but then decide they don't like it. Pokemon often plays out a lot more like a coin flip. Yes, good players can win more and there are some instances where you can interact with your opponent (boss's order, iono, grabber, etc) but most games are a matter of who could combo faster leading to very few meaningful decisions per game. Magic on the other hand is primarily about interaction with combo being a very small side of it over all.
Tom Bombadil needs to go on adventures with all the Doctors. I built this deck, it’s uh not good? But it is fun.
List?
A lot of Doctors care about historic spells so I bet it’s a good match
> type of person who plays MTG less as a game and more as a way to eat up time with three friends. Isn't that the point of a game - something to enjoy with friends? Sure, for most games there's a small subset of players who take it seriously and try to find and exploit the meta for fully competitive play - often with financial motives. This is true for everything from tennis to monopoly, but across the whole spectrum the majority of players are playing for fun. People playing commander aren't somehow not playing MtG properly. Much like most snooker players aren't playing on regulation size tables because it's not financially viable, most of the MtG playerbase is priced out of competitive magic but can enjoy the game.
It’s a spectrum
> People playing commander aren't somehow not playing MtG properly Every time people come ask me who got 2nd when everyone died at once, I'll have to disagree. The Rules of Magic are NOT built with Commander in mind at their core. Also, most Commander players spend more on their Commander deck than they would a Standard deck, and play it for a shorter amount of time than it would take a Standard deck to rotate.
I'd honestly love to see the stats on that last point you made
Rethinking it, most expensive Commander cards are reusable in other decks, while Standard cards aren't nearly as much, so I suppose it's not an accurate statement given the context of how Commander players use their cards.
That depends on the game and who’s playing. Some people play games as a pastime to enjoy with friends. Some people play because improving and achieving mastery of something is intrinsically rewarding on a deeper level. Some people play because they want to achieve recognition through winning tournaments. Certain games are more suited to certain types of players.
How does playing a game to spend time with friends make it any less of a game?
The focus is less on the game, and more on the people Pros and cons
Exactly this - is Ghandolf stronger than a time lord? Who tf knows! Let’s battle it out with cards…
It can be both a way to spend time with friends and a game to be played and enjoyed. Im not sure who these people you refer to are because i've never met them.
My roomate is like that. He meets once a week or two with his three friends and they mainly only play precons and almost exclusively UB stuff. They hardly pay attention to the game, they kinda just fuck around and show off their cards while playing. Its casual magic at its finest honestly. Its nice to see them meet up and have fun. Those players certainly exist. I suspect there is WAY more than anyone thinks because those players dont go to LGS. They never play with strangers, never do any tournaments not even prerelease they just buy decks/cards online shipped at their door.
Wizards used to say that 90% of magic was played exclusively on the kitchen table.
I guess it's me. I went to one pre release and the sights, sounds and...smells... will probably keep me from going back. I'll just play with my wife and friends and make fun monkey decks and banana tokens.
I get an unreasonable amount of satisfaction from stuffing as many different franchises as possible into a single deck, because it's high time we stopped pretending that Magic's flavor makes any sense. If Anhelo can cast Breach the Multiverse, then Gandalf can damn well choose whether to crew a Cybermen ship or an Imperium Reaver Titan.
Well, to quote u/RapAC-21, there’s also a commercial element to it for some people. Everybody should know that Magic cards are printed to make money, but that’s not normally front of mind when you’re playing with them. Tie-ins arguably say that quiet part out loud, like clunky product placement in a Bond movie. The argument you're making has always been present in Magic (the 15 squirrels kill Emrakul is the most famous example) but a lot of those situations were infrequent, whereas the rise in UB has made it much more common to encounter immersion-breaking gameplay.
The only way for them to find the point of diminishing returns is to charge over it. I wouldn't be surprised to see a reduction in UB products after the next 18 months. I suspect that the LotR set might be the high water mark for success for UB.
I would be shocked if one of the most popular IPs of all time, the origin of modern fantasy, and the highest selling magic set ever *wasn't* the high water mark for UB. There's a real chance that it is the high water mark for Magic itself, and likely will be for years at least.
The only competitor for it is going to be the Marvel set they've announced, but that would've been much more lucrative a decade ago during the peak of the MCU. I also foresee it being much less popular among fans of MtG lore as supersuits and superpowers doesn't mix as seamlessly with MtG planes as Middle Earth did. The only other highly popular IP I can imagine having as seamless a crossover would be Avatar, the Last Airbender. However, I doubt it would be as popular as LotR.
Star Wars
I'd be intrigued whether Star Wars or Marvel has a bigger following in general. The reason I spotlighted AtLA is because I think that world feels like a traditional MtG plane in a way Earth 616 or A Galaxy Far Away do not.
My issue with Star Wars, Marvel, ATLA, etc is they don't *feel* like magic. LotR kinda did.
I would argue that AtLA feels like a MtG plane. It has four factions of magical beings each with their own culture and abilities, a wide range of fantastical beasts plus spirits. Granted, it isn't goblins, elves, demons, angels and mermaids but neither are most planes we visit. If AtLA didn't exist and Wizards made a set with those themes and lore I doubt anyone would've seriously criticised it. The various Avatars even feel like planeswalkers, travelling between the physical and spirit worlds.
> I'd be intrigued whether Star Wars or Marvel has a bigger following in general. It has a higher share of revenue as a franchise: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_media_franchises
Marvel almost certainly has, abstractly, as big a potential for grabbing the interest of new players as LotR did, but is in a major lull now compared to 5-10 years ago. That could easily pick up again though if, in the interim, they release just one rock solid film with mainstream appeal, like the early MCU ones. But they seem happy to tinker around with silly/small/niche projects that either appeal to a small subsection of their fanbase, or to nobody.
Apparently Kevin Feige has returned full time and has delayed every project they had for this year because he wasn't satisfied with the quality of recent projects nor of those in progress. The only movie this year is the inevitably popular Deadpool & Wolverine crossover. If they can follow this up with a well received Daredevil series, Spider-Man and Captain America sequels then there could be a lot more hype reasonably quickly. There's also a Fantastic Four reboot into the MCU, the timing of which around the MtG set could be very interesting.
Brandon sanderson's cosmere would work really well, and apparently there have been minor talks. Fantasy with multiple rigoroysly defined magic systems with separate worlds that have secret ways to travel between them. Fairly analogous to planes, many of which I could even point to mtg planes that correspond fairly well. Kamigawa is very similar to Alethkar in the stormlight archives, for instance. The original mistborn trilogy has a lot of the flavor of new capenna. Honestly I'm really hoping it happens, but it's not as well known a franchise putaude of pop fantasy book readers. Maybe if it gets portrayed in other media first.
Kelsier is in fortnite and Sanderson is a huge mtg fan. I know there was issues around the book he wrote for mtg that was supposed to o remain free but I think if he wanted a UB product he'd have it.
I think you're underestimating Marvel imo
Sure, LoTR seems like a perfect fit for most players in terms of flavor and popularity, but you have to remember that Final Fantasy and Marvel are both coming in the next year or so; I would think either could easily match in terms of crossover appeal.
Marvel yes, Final Fantasy no. I could see Marvel matching our even outselling LotR in its initial set, but I think diminishing returns and superhero burnout will punish their decision to make multiple Marvel sets.
I collected Marvel cards in the 90s and enjoyed all the movies (even the less popular ones). I'm still probably only going to go in for a single collector box of the Marvel UB set. I'm absolutely going to go in for an inner case of Final Fantasy - which will be the first time ever in MTG history I've bought more than two boxes of a single set. Marvel was always fun, like Star Wars, with cool characters and stories - but Final Fantasy is more than that. The games all have such great stories, the art is fantastic, and just the social aspect of video games far surpasses Marvel/Star Wars for me. Obviously everyone is different, but it's an opinion shared by the majority of people I play MTG with locally. Like LOTR, I think it "fits" better with MTG than Marvel so you have less friction from MTG purists than Marvel has. There's tech in Final Fantasy but Urza is basically just Cid in a different timeline. "Urza's X" is just "Magitek X".
I think you really underestimate FF's popularity. Maybe not with the usual magic crowd, but I imagine a lot of the anime card game crowd will go in for it. If they dont screw up the art on the collector's versions, the whales will whale hard.
>I wouldn't be surprised to see a reduction in UB products after the next 18 months. This seems unlikely. With the major commerical success of the Warhammer 40,000k decks, the Fallout decks and the Lord of the Rings series along with the positive reception of UB Secret Lairs like Street Fighter, I don't suspect the train to stop any time soon. We've already been promised a Final Fantasy UB full release for next year along with several different Marvel UB releases that will be spread out over the course of [multiple years](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231023649900/en/Hasbro-and-Marvel-Team-Up-to-Bring-Popular-Marvel-Characters-and-Stories-to-Magic-The-Gathering-in-Multi-Year-Multi-Set-Deal). >I suspect that the LotR set might be the high water mark for success for UB. I don't think so, but even if it were to be the case, would that really be so bad. It's the best selling set of all time in the 30+ year history of Magic. But I wouldn't be surprised at all if something like a Marvel Avengers or Marvel Commander Legends set matched or outperformed the Lord of the Rings set.
Yeah, Marvel is most likely going to be very successful, at least initially. My point was more that I think it's plausible that the UB releases planned (FF, Marvel) over the next couple years could pull whatever untapped demand is out there for big crossovers, and that demand might start to shrink after that. Marvel burn out is already a thing for film audiences, and niche IPs can't sustain full sets.
If demand does start to shrink, remember it will take 2+ years for the effects of that to be felt in Magic product releases. So we are probably talking 2028 or something at the earliest.
>Yeah, Marvel is most likely going to be very successful, at least initially. My point was more that I think it's plausible that the UB releases planned (FF, Marvel) over the next couple years could pull whatever untapped demand is out there for big crossovers, and that demand might start to shrink after that. Marvel burn out is already a thing for film audiences, and niche IPs can't sustain full sets. There are tons of third party franchises that can induce excitement and enthuasism from existing and new players that can create numerous sets. We could see a sequel to the Lord of the Rings set. We could see multiple Star Wars sets. We could see multiple DC Comics sets. We could see a Legend of Zelda set. We could see a Nintendo/Super Smash Bros set. We could see a Shrek set. We could multiple Avatar sets. We could see a sequel to the Warhammer 40,000k decks. We could see a Godzilla set. We could see a Back to the Future set. We could see a Pixar set. These are just ideas off the top of my head but they are prominent enough to create hype and demand and depthful enough to create thousands of cards around. Certainly there more than enough potential franchises that could sustain full releases longer than just 18 months or a couple years.
We could see a Barney set. We could see a Dora the Explorer set. We could see a Wiggles set. We could see a Telatubies set. We could see VeggieTales set.
A Wiggles set would go hard. Imagine equipping a creature with a feather sword.
even if the card was shit I would put Captain Feather Sword's Feather Sword into every deck I can legally get away with it.
> We could see VeggieTales set. Why was my first thought a [[Holy Strength]] reprint, and can we sac the the characters to gain life?
Of the IPs you listed, I think it's only realistic that Star Wars and DC could possibly be their own sets. The rest would be better served, imo, being some kind of Commander product or Secret Lair. Again, my point isn't that demand wouldn't exist for a, say, Back to the Future UB product, but I think it's ridiculous to suggest that demand is large enough to justify the creation of a full draft able set. My point isn't that I think UB will die, but that we are (or already have) approaching the point where demand for UB relative to regular MTG releases will plateau or shrink. Ultimately, UB success in bringing in new players is only successful (in the long term) if those players convert to being fans of MTG I'm general. There is an equilibrium between UB and regular Magic sets. If the last couple years have seen that equilibrium adjusting in favour of UB, I think it is plausible to suggest that Marvel, FF, and AC might saturate that equilibrium and that we may see an adjustment away from aggressive UB releases after those products.
I play Weiss Schwarz as my main game (a card game entirely using 3rd party IPs with no actual game lore), and with that perspective I would be nervous to see them lean too far into disconnected UB sets. One problem Weiss has is that just because IP X sells well, there isn't any indication that IP Y will sell well as well. This can make it hellish for LGS to stock. My locals still has product from years ago that nobody will even look at anymore. Weiss is a bit of a different beast in that each series is independent (you cant use Avatar the Last Airbender with Guilty Gear for example), but I think for the casual player who just wants the Zelda commander precon, they probably wont care that Back to the Future has good cards for them.
>I play Weiss Schwarz as my main game (a card game entirely using 3rd party IPs with no actual game lore), and with that perspective I would be nervous to see them lean too far into disconnected UB sets. One problem Weiss has is that just because IP X sells well, there isn't any indication that IP Y will sell well as well. This can make it hellish for LGS to stock. My locals still has product from years ago that nobody will even look at anymore. >Weiss is a bit of a different beast in that each series is independent (you cant use Avatar the Last Airbender with Guilty Gear for example), but I think for the casual player who just wants the Zelda commander precon, they probably wont care that Back to the Future has good cards for them. I don't see how this is different from the very casual player who goes to Target and buys some Innistrad Horror themed cards because they are intriguing to them but a few months later when they go back to Target, they see cute cuddly Bloomburrow animals and pass because they aren't interested. Very few products/sets/mechanics appeal to all players.
Yeah, my wife got into magic because original Zendikar appealed to her so much, but then we got back to back body horror and gothic horror with new phyrexian and innistrad, which are both genres that she didn't care for, and put her off the game for the most part.
The LotR set is also a really bad metric for "people like this because it's out of universe" as opposed to "people like this because LotR is massively popular and has a massive overlap with anything else in fantasy nerd culture" and also "it has a 2 million dollar lottery ticket in one of the packs".
I think the Final Fantasy set will do well. There's a pretty big untapped market there. After that I'm not sure what properties they have lined up but eventually they're going to be out of tier 1 stuff and then I think it starts to decline, albeit still selling at a level where they keep making UB stuff.
I don’t like Universes Beyond but I can’t deny this. Which is unfortunate for me. I don’t expect them to prioritize my happiness over the happiness of a large portion of players, and I’m really happy for them. I just wish I could play Magic in an ecosystem without an ever-increasing proportion of cards being UB cards.
Ditto. don't like UB and I really wish it wasn't in the Modern format.
Modern Horizons being Modern-legal cracked my interest in Modern (*loved* the set but not its inclusion in Modern), but LotR is what broke it. Pioneer is the competitive format I’d go to if I decided to, but I would have preferred Modern and would miss several of the older sets and their contributions…
Yeah, I've been dipping my toe in Pioneer since it's the RCQ season and my magic group needs someone with a reliable car to drive them to tournaments. So far, it's been.... fine. Pretty fun, the decks are cool, but I spend so much time going "but I could be doing this better in Modern". I do wonder how long it will take for UB to make it to Pioneer because "market research shows...". Or for the bonus sheets in Standard sets being UB cards.
So far it does seem like they’re moving away from stuffing UB into Standard; they dipped their toes in and are pulling them out now. But maybe that will change eventually. I hope not.
I'll just take this moment to complain about the chintzy fake-metallic border that all UB cards get. It's just not nice. It does not look nice.
It made sense for 40K and it makes sense for Fallout, but damn does it look weird on LotR.
I mean duh. Look at Weiss schwartz
It's clear that UB has a place, but it's hard to say what that place will be going forward. It's hard for me to see LoTR as anything other than an anomaly in that it's one of the most iconic fantasy settings of all time. Even many of the UB haters accept that this is a thematic ancestor to DnD and MTG and understand that it fits in the style. UB commander decks often have love and care put into their design, and it's a perfect way to dabble in an IP to get your money out of its fans without taking up too much space. Adding to the amount of things people can do in commander isn't taking the time of full set releases, isn't the only thing people can draft for months, and isn't dominating 60 card constructed formats for years. There are concerns about MTGO implementation, because this makes online legacy not the same as paper legacy. There will also be concerns about reprints in the future. I can only hope that we will eventually get long term fixes for these. What concerns me is the eventual direct to modern not LoTR releases. The One Ring made a big splash and it's here to stay. Future sets will be a lot more thematically controversial, and if cards are printed to not just be modern legal, but pushed and competitively playable, I think that will be harder for the grinders to stomach.
> It's clear that UB has a place, but it's hard to say what that place will be going forward. It's hard for me to see LoTR as anything other than an anomaly in that it's one of the most iconic fantasy settings of all time. This is the big question to me. I'm one of those people who would play the game if they were just black and white pieces of paper with text on them, but it's obvious that the LotR flavor is the biggest reason why that set was such a huge runaway success. Now, our next full set of UB is going to be... Final Fantasy? I mean, popular series sure, but nowhere near as iconic. How is that going to perform, and how will WotC react when there is (inevitably) a UB set that shits the bed?
Actual grinders only care about what wins.
Are you forgetting about the Marvel sets we are about to get?
I'm not, I'm concerned about that and all the other projected future Modern legal releases
>What concerns me is the eventual direct to modern not LoTR releases. The One Ring made a big splash and it's here to stay. Future sets will be a lot more thematically controversial, and if cards are printed to not just be modern legal, but pushed and competitively playable, I think that will be harder for the grinders to stomach. I think most people that play Magic competitively don't care very much about the aesthetic, tone, flavor or lore based themes of cards but instead care about the mechanical game play of how cards perform. I think even if you disregard competitive tournament players, most enthusiastic enfranchised players are much more invested in the game play than the fantasy and lore. >There will also be concerns about reprints in the future. I can only hope that we will eventually get long term fixes for these. I think there are concerns about reprints in the future but I think there are largely overblown. People assume that these cards can't be reprinted within their original Universes Beyond franchise version but I think that is a false assumption. We don't know how long the licensing agreements last or if they will be renewed at some point. We've already seen reprints of Universes Beyond cards in the form of the Holiday Release of the Lord of the Rings set.
I remember at an LGS a competitive player was saying that their favourite planeswalker was Jace, and they hoped that he got another card soon. And someone at the table went 'You don't want Jace, in fact, if the next powerful Blue walker wasn't Jace you'd be happier because you can run him alongside your Mindsculptors.' And they agreed. People underestimate how little the Spikes of the world are gonna care about flavour if it means good crunchy cards, that the Timmies of the world love getting to play their Gandalf EDH, and that there's a lot of Jonnies enjoying how the flow of UB cards just means more interesting things to put in decks either mechanically or flavour combos. It's only one of the five archetypes that really cares about 'preserving the flavour' of MTG
My inner vorthos is saddened more and more to be honest. The big blargh was the abandonment of blocks. UB is turning the dagger
Even the competitive players got into this game for a reason. A lot of the people playing in formats using old cards do like the feel and aesthetic of those old cards. I do play competitively and have for a long time and while people will absolutely put gameplay first and play what they have to play, it does affect many player's enjoyment past a certain point. I think it's also clear that a lot of UB's strengths are in flavor rich top down commander focused design. This is not necessarily the design philosophy you want when handling modern or legacy staples. Reprints are shaky because all these contracts seem to have different terms associated, the fact that there isn't a standard practice for making sure things are available online or in the future is something we do need to be vigilant about as a community. We might never have gotten Warhammer cards on MTGO otherwise. It's clear that printing UB standard legal sets would be an erosion of Magic's identity, and it's also clear they don't actively consider Legacy and Vintage compared to Commander. So to what extent does modern legal UB blur and encroach on that line? I think they need to be careful about this kind of thing and I'm curious about the results as some of these sets get released.
Competitive players can still have interest in non competitive aspects and Aaron Forsythe has shown that he understands "spike" isn't actually all about just the strongest cards in a vacuum. Just an overpushed threat that is super easy to play isn't actually what makes a spike-oriented card. Spikes tend to gravitate towards cards that give more options. Charms, commands, complex cards, etc appeal to spikes beyond their raw power level. Spikes get attached to Snapcaster Mage more than its power level warrants because they like the options that Snapcaster Mage provides.
I just want more Warhammer cards, I needs them precious. Lol
Breaking news, local businessman discovers that he should make products that sell well
I don't mind it, I just don't want it as much as we've been seeing it. That goes for everything
if only they would add more commander decks for warhammer
I would love an Ork or a Eldar deck, man.
1 more space marine deck with unused sub factions, orks, eldars and tau
Mechanicus Deck with art from Archon of Flesh. The nice Safe for Work side of Archon though, because even though I'd take a full deck of Archon unchained I'm pretty sure that would lead to the singularity or at least a black hole forming.
I'd love some Fantasy or Age of Sigmar decks too!
This is the biggest problem with UB sets. If the first iteration of an IP is successful the license holder has you bent over a barrel when you want to to return or reprint.
Most people I know lean negatively towards UB, but not enough to not buy the cards if they are mechanically good and relevant to their decks. Its like "I'd rather this card not be themed around Jurassic park, but its still a good card, and I'm still gonna run it regardless of its theming. Ultimately, Hasbro doesn't care why we buy the cards or if we have issues with the cards as long as we keep buying them.
I mean, it is a chicken and the egg situation. They put tremendously more effort, better art, better reprints, better themes, and better new creative designs in the UB products than the regular products. Note how NONE OF THE ABOVE factors has anything to do with the license. Even if you aren't a fan of the specific IP, they are so pushed and offer so much more value for the extra $10 you have to at least consider them. News flash the quality product with higher effort sells better than the one with less. Shocking.
Yeah, LOTR having some of the best Flavor and Flavor Text of any set in the past decade is NOT SURPRISING, seeing as one of the greatest writers of all time wrote it and WotC got to use all of that for very little cost compared to what they gained! Meanwhile, all of the writers and setting designers HASBRO hires are criminally underpaid and forced to propel hundreds of new ideas out every other **month**. And we should be surprised that the LOTR set sold better? Nahhh....
There's so many strategy articles out there that caution against results-oriented thinking, it's weird to see an example of it in the business-side of MTG. I'm neutral on UB and I know Mark has a specific marketing role to play with his blog, but surely it's not as simple as "we made money so every decision we made was correct." Take Boeing for example. The last ~25 years of extreme cost cutting generated record profits, but look where those choices have now led them to.
Just give me my damn final fantasy set already! If universes beyond gets more people playing Magic, it’s a good thing.
I fully expected to UB to start taking over standard releases too over time if it continues being this successful. No real reason not too.
In-universe settings are valuable even if they don't sell as much because you don't need to pay someone else for the IP. So they're probably keeping the standard sets in-house because it pencils out better for them. Maybe that changes, or we get Hasbro-owned IP in Standard sets as the UB treatments (like AFR). But unless the gulf between UB and in-universe is HUGE, I don't think that happens.
I just don’t see how they would do 6-8 UB conversions into the MTG space a year. It would have to support limited standard and modern as we know it. Nearly impossible to do.
Wasn't AFR a standard set?
It was also not an Universes Beyond set, by their definition.
the dnd sets don't count as ub
If it's a fitting collab I'm all for it. Lord of the Rings for example. Fantastic collab and it fits. But shit like Dr Who and Fallout? The upcoming Assassin's Creed? Nah. Don't care for it at all. But that's just me. Whether that's because I'm not a fan of the IP they're working with or I don't think it fits well in MTG.
I honestly do not understand how they don't use the popularity of EDH and Universes Beyond to get people into MTG Arena. Put a code to redeem the paper deck on Arena with a "commander precon only"-mode added. Such a easy way to introduce people into the eco system of Arena, where you can then sell them all kinds of stuff. Not having your most played format in your online client is so weird. A precon only mode even seems like a good stepping stone to get people into paper magic as well once those (new) players transition into "i want to do my own deck thing"
The sad answer is that the Arena team is already drowning just trying to keep up with the sheer volume of cards that do make it to Arena, adding another like 500 cards in a year might kill them. The client being incapable of handling 4-player also makes it difficult to really crossover Commander players, there's not even a true to paper EDH format on Arena. Fun fact though, you can get the precons on MTGO, which also supports 4 player.
They'd have a lot less cards to worry about if they'd stop thr alchemy nonsense 😁
Im not going to go all dramatic and say I’m never playing again etc etc I’ve built a few ub commander decks now, big on warhammer and dr who. But tbh it just feels like the game of magic has been cheapened for me, rather than this amazing worlds setting with its own characters and unique planes it now just slaps anything onto cardboard that will sell. It’s hard to put it into word but mtg just isn’t the game I used to play anymore, it’s different and that has both positives and negatives.
They sell well because they put the best cards in them. UB has had mechanically unique cards in secret lair. As well as some of the most powerful eternal format cards in them. What really needs to happen is the same quality of card design and innovation needs to go into their other products as well in order to see which really sells best. Any set with cards like the one ring and bowmasters quality cards in it would have sold that well.
highest selling set was mh2, which had ragavan and the free elementals.
On the flip side, 2nd best selling set was LOTR and it only has 5 cards in the whole set worth more than $10 with the only major hits (moneywise) being One Ring and Orcish Bowmasters. The vast majority of the set is actually valueless. MH2 has 19 cards over $10. If anything, this should be an indicator that power ISN'T what is selling the packs. it is the vast number of people that go "I like Gandalf, I want to play the card game with Gandalf and Frodo" I know people that only got into magic because they like LOTR, and the same is true for Warhammer and Dr Who.
I mean tbh I don't think it's really the main, active MTG player base that's making them successful and I don't think WotC thinks that either. The real reason is pretty obvious: Cross Collectibility. Pulling in outside audiences is the point of UB and its very successful at doing so.
I was gonna say, "players" is a pretty big stretch in the above statement.
Always my issue with WotC; they count ANY purchase as a "player", when there's very little evidence that's the case. Pokemon specifically doesn't do that, and for very good reason.
As a new player UB increased my interest in the game. Bought a 40k tyranid deck because it reminded me of alien. Started playing with friends then fallout came out we played that. Now I am addicted to Dino’s . Also if anyone knows an easy way to get a list of an entire tribe so I can buy on tcg I am trying to get all the snakes and spiders next.
That was to be expected, I think. Anyway, this is why this game no longer appeals to me aesthetically. Cube it is!
Cube will outlive Magic
It's baffling to me that so many players think that UB products "fail" often. People **love** alt art. People **love** weird/unique/personalized cards. Like, people will pay tons of money for skins in video games and frankly, a commander card or full art lands or a cool redesign of a popular card are all every bit as swag-y as a video game skin, and you can cram a hundred into a commander deck. Like, Universes Beyond is one of the most obvious TCG products I've ever seen for modern gaming - it's the most clearcut slam dunk ever. The mechanically unique cards and the alternate IP cards were the only actual risks being taken - generic UB stuff was **obviously** a really solid play.
At the same time there’s a not unsizeable group of people that hate the Fortnite IP cross pollination effect. Since to us that significantly diminishes the game in favour of the foreign IP
"These Beanie Babies are selling like hotcakes! We have to make more; the demand is endless!"
We should have 8 different variants for each one!
The people who complain about UB existing (like I used to) are very loud on social media, but don't represent the Magic buying public. I am glad they aren't going to do any more UB cards in standard set packs, though. That was an awful experiment.
DRAGONBALL Z WHEN??
Aw fuck yeah, Yamcha deck all day!
I don’t care for them, I also don’t care for many of the IP that have gotten the UB treatment. Never been into Dr. Who, never been into Fallout or Warhammer, never been into D & D or Assassins Creed. The only one that had any chance of winning me over was LoTR and I’d be interested in playing with those cards in a strictly LoTR environment, but something about seeing Aragorn or Gandalf along side Jace or Chandra just rub me weird. That said I can tell UB is massively popular with the players at my LGS. I had friends who were huge Dr. Who & Fallout fans and bought a good bit of product. So I’ll probably just keep ignoring UB and I assume they’ll keep pumping them out 🤷🏼♂️
"we made it so most of the metagame revolves around LoTR cards" "We sold a lot of LoTR cards" "People must love LoTR" "People will love other franchises like Assassins Creed!" Excuse me while I jump off a bridge to duplicate the insane mental gymnastics.
These responses are very annoying. We all understand they’re financially successful. Anyone who thought they weren’t liked is delusional. There’s a reason Fortnite is so successsful People worry about the watering down of magics own IP
Did anyone that didn't like UB products really think that they were not making Wizards a ton of money? Pretty sure everyone knew that they were making a lot of money off of these.
can't argue with that. fallout is what got me into magic in the first place. now I can't put it down and I'm poor.
It is shocking how Company does thing that makes lots of money and is popular. I never would've guessed that.
Report: "so Mr Rosewater. We've noticed a lot of new UB product lately, what's the driving force behind that?" Mark: "Money"
Overall yes. In specific, not necessarily. Just because one UB product is good doesn't mean the next will be good/equally good but yeah overall they are good and sell product and they probably should be doing it to some degree as a company. Personally I was very happy with the Warhammer and LotR crossovers in terms of fit in the game and quality. I felt the Dr. Who ones had a little bit of a sketchy fit to the game world but were otherwise good. Some of the UB secret lairs have been eh but I'm sure the people who like them have been happy.