Hang out with a Magic: The Gathering fan for long enough, and you’ll likely hear them complain that their beloved card game has become the cardboard equivalent of Fortnite. What started in 2020 with a small Walking Dead crossover has become a dominant version of the game through the MTG sub-brand Universes Beyond. Earlier this year, Magic’s Final Fantasy crossover broke the company’s previous sales record in a single day, and we’re about to get back-to-back Universes Beyond sets featuring characters from Marvel’s Spider-Man and Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Clearly, Magic publisher Wizards of the Coast (and its parent company Hasbro) has no intention of changing course. So it’s interesting MTG’s head designer, Mark Rosewater, chose this week to finally admit not everyone loves Universes Beyond.
In his annual State of Design blog post, Rosewater runs through the lessons he learned from the last 12 months of Magic cards. When he reaches Final Fantasy, he includes a section titled: “There are ongoing complaints about Universes Beyond sets.”
Before we go any further, here’s the full text of this section:
As this is the only randomized Universes Beyond product I’m talking about today (I sadly didn’t have space to discuss Magic: The Gathering® – Assassin’s Creed®), I’m using this section to go over much of the feedback about Universes Beyond in general.
There are still players that don’t like that we’re doing Universes Beyond, although that sentiment continually shrinks over time. For example Magic: The Gathering—FINAL FANTASY is already the best-selling Magic set of all time and it just came out. Some players don’t mind Universes Beyond sets in general, but they feel at home in Magic‘s fantasy setting. Some players are unhappy that we’re including Universes Beyond sets in Standard. Some are unhappy that Universes Beyond booster packs cost more on average than Magic Multiverse booster packs.
Rosewater isn’t exactly admitting to any mistakes here. He sets up “ongoing complaints” as a straw man argument and then immediately knocks it down with the claim that the number of naysayers is shrinking with each new Universes Beyond set. However, Rosewater does go on to admit that the price of some of these sets is higher than normal sets, and that the decision to make crossover cards legal in all formats of the game means it’s now virtually impossible to ignore them.
Magic’s next Universes Beyond set will cross over into the Marvel universe
These are small admissions, and it’s unlikely Wizards will back down from Universes Beyond anytime soon. However, the fact that Rosewater is even willing to put those complaints into words feels like a small victory for the remaining complainers. Especially since he’s adamandly denied them in the past.
In a post on his personal Tumblr last November, Rosewater refuted similar claims, writing:
So, this idea that Universes Beyond is forsaking existing players for other groups is simply wrong. The reason Universes Beyond is so successful is because many longtime, invested, enfranchised Magic players enjoy it. I get that it might not be you, specifically, but it is a lot of your fellow “longtime players”.
The fact that, less than a year later, Rosewater is willing to admit some of these “ongoing complaints” are valid feels like a major shift. Again, this likely won’t mean Magic dials back the number of Universes Beyond sets released in 2026, but maybe if we’re lucky, they’ll stop charging players an arm and a leg to buy those new cards.
