What's been going on with MTG since Covid?

[Spiderman]

So.... as people might have guessed, COVID threw my attendence here for a loop. I was also separated at the time and didn't have a home computer and I hate looking at forums on my phone and once I started teleworking, work blocked all "non work" sites so I couldn't get on here from my work computer. So I pretty much gave up coming here. I got a home computer in 2021 but kind of felt I was away too much so.... never really came back to catch up on stuff.

I started playing D&D with my gf, my daughter, her fiance, and another daughter and we met at a card shop to play and saw all of the MTG stuff and memories came flooding back. Besides looking up card prices for the heck of it (like my Arabian Nights Library of Alexandria and Mox Diamond), I wondered how MTG was doing and was told that they've been licensing from other IPs and currently it's Fortnite. So I guess my question is, how is that all going? How has that kind of thing been received in the community? And now I saw Oversoul's post about Spidermen in a set so I guessed I missed out on those....

Also, I hope everyone has been doing well for all this time.

 

[Oversoul]

So.... as people might have guessed, COVID threw my attendence here for a loop. I was also separated at the time and didn't have a home computer and I hate looking at forums on my phone and once I started teleworking, work blocked all "non work" sites so I couldn't get on here from my work computer. So I pretty much gave up coming here. I got a home computer in 2021 but kind of felt I was away too much so.... never really came back to catch up on stuff.

Ah. I'd seen you popping up on the Fantasy Football threads enough that I figured maybe you were just lurking on the rest of the site. Welcome back?

I started playing D&D with my gf, my daughter, her fiance, and another daughter and we met at a card shop to play and saw all of the MTG stuff and memories came flooding back. Besides looking up card prices for the heck of it (like my Arabian Nights Library of Alexandria and Mox Diamond), I wondered how MTG was doing and was told that they've been licensing from other IPs and currently it's Fortnite. So I guess my question is, how is that all going? How has that kind of thing been received in the community? And now I saw Oversoul's post about Spidermen in a set so I guessed I missed out on those....

I guess I should say, as someone who has generally been rather vocally critical of what WotC call "Universes Beyond", that the community reception has been mixed. You've got folks who love it and ones who hate it, but there are also some more specific takes. Some players complained about the Fortnite stuff, but responded positively to the Lord of the Rings set. Some players are fine with Universes Beyond set releases, but vehemently opposed to mechanically unique Secret Lairs (WotC has done limited availability online sales of boxes containing a specific handful of new cards associated with some licensed intellectual property, with the assumption that once it was sold out, no one else could ever get those cards again). Some players don't mind Universes Beyond, but cried out about the change to make those sets Standard-legal.

It's complicated.

Also, I hope everyone has been doing well for all this time.

You too!

 

[Spiderman]

Ah. I'd seen you popping up on the Fantasy Football threads enough that I figured maybe you were just lurking on the rest of the site. Welcome back?

Well, I'm still really out of MTG that I just do the Fantasy Football now.

I guess I should say, as someone who has generally been rather vocally critical of what WotC call "Universes Beyond", that the community reception has been mixed. You've got folks who love it and ones who hate it, but there are also some more specific takes. Some players complained about the Fortnite stuff, but responded positively to the Lord of the Rings set. Some players are fine with Universes Beyond set releases, but vehemently opposed to mechanically unique Secret Lairs (WotC has done limited availability online sales of boxes containing a specific handful of new cards associated with some licensed intellectual property, with the assumption that once it was sold out, no one else could ever get those cards again). Some players don't mind Universes Beyond, but cried out about the change to make those sets Standard-legal.

It's complicated.

Universes Beyond, huh? Are they some "set" schedule, like one of those and two "others/original" or just the rage right now and all of them are UBs?

 

[Oversoul]

Universes Beyond, huh? Are they some "set" schedule, like one of those and two "others/original" or just the rage right now and all of them are UBs?

Originally, the Universes Beyond cards were only to show up in the "Secret Lair" product line (generally between 3 and 7 cards, which you order on a website and then get mailed to your house). But after a few of those they came up with three other models for Universes Beyond cards.

1. Commander preconstructed decks (Warmhammer 40K, Doctor Who, Fallout, released in 2022, 2023, and 2024 respectively).
2. Booster pack inserts in regular Standard sets (originally planned to be Hasbro properties, used with Transformers, but then licensed for Jurassic Park cards in The Lost Caverns of Ixalan before WotC apparently decided to move away from this model).
3. Full sets distributed in their own booster packs (Lord of the Rings, Assassin's Creed, Final Fantasy, Spider-Man, Avatar: the Last Airbender, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Marvel Super Heroes).

The release schedule question gets kind of complicated. The first change was that back in 2021, there was a Dungeons and Dragons set instead of the regular annual core set. But D&D was said to be different from Universes Beyond (because it's a WotC property), and the decision to retire the core set (again) was separate from this anyway). The following year, they did another D&D set, but it was Commander-focused and not Standard-legal, with the premise that the number of Standard-legal sets scheduled for each year was being lowered anyway. And then the year after that, they released a full Universes Beyond set as part of the release schedule, but it was made Modern-legal, still not Standard-legal. Last year it was the same deal. They had a full set release with booster packs and Modern-legal cards, but it was kept out of Standard.

2025 was the first year in which new Universes Beyond sets were formally added to the Standard release schedule. And originally it was supposed to be four traditional Standard sets and two Universes Beyond standard sets. That was the roadmap WotC presented just before the beginning of the year. And a lot of the players who didn't mind Universes Beyond or even actually like it as a concept were taken aback at the idea that Universes Beyond would take two of the spots for Standard-legal sets. But then design changes midway through the year resulted in the announcement that Spider-Man would be brought in as a Standard-legal set in 2025 and that Lorwyn Eclipsed would be pushed back to 2026 to make room for this change. When that happened, a lot of us who'd been vocally critical of Universes Beyond from the start mentioned the point that hey, this problem was exactly the sort of thing we were complaining would probably happen and now here it is, happening right in front of us.

The roadmap for 2026 is slated to have three traditional sets and four Universes Beyond sets.