Answering questions on his blog on Monday, Magic: the Gathering‘s lead designer Mark Rosewater says that going forward, Universes Beyond will have equal billing with in-universe MTG stories – and half of all sets released each year will be Universes Beyond. 2026, with its four UB vs three in-universe set split was “not the new normal”, MaRo says, “future years are going to be three and three”.
Last week, Hasbro published its financial results for the first quarter of 2026, and CEO Chris Cocks discussed the factors affecting the balance of in-universe versus Universes Beyond sets. “Really, it’s kind of a combination of the creative inspiration of the Magic team, feedback from the audience, what’s available when, and just kind of the vagaries of release cadences”, says Cox. He adds that, if there’s a lot of excitement for the upcoming Magic the Gathering animated series on Netflix, the needle might swing more in the direction of in-universe Magic.
The financial results including record-breaking sales for the two in-universe MtG sets, Lorwyn Eclipsed and Secrets of Strixhaven. But CEO Chris Cocks called Universes Beyond “probably the most successful new player adoption initiative that we’ve ever done”, and stated that in just one quarter “we’ve done the third highest year ever of backlist sales” – powered, no doubt, by 2025’s Final Fantasy set, the best-selling set of all time.
Way back in 2024, I argued that MtG’s IP was peripheral to the game’s success (not, I hasten to add, a claim that the IP is bad or that liking it is dumb – if I’d been born in the US instead of UK, chances are good I would be a Vorthos instead of a Warhammer 40k fanatic). Hasbro seems to be banking on the game standing strong without an original IP if it’s willing to dilute it by 50%.
My concern for a Universe’s Beyond-reliant business strategy is how volatile the fan reaction to UB sets seems to be. UB has generated both MTG’s best-selling products, in the mighty Lord of the Rings and Final Fantasy, and some of its worst-selling, with the Assassin’s Creed ‘Beyond Boosters’ and Marvel’s Spider-Man. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sold very well to distributors but, anecdotally, has rotted on store shelves – Hasbro’s Q1 report is upbeat on it, but perhaps retail capital is trapped in unsalable products which will suppress future demand.
Yet it’s worth noting that the failed UB sets were all bad sets from a gameplay perspective; their IP may have nothing to do with their sales failures. Assassin’s Creed was sold in undraftable five-card packs that players and collectors alike hated, and though it was legal in Modern it was largely irrelevant to the format. Spider-Man and TMNT were both conceived of as Beyond Booster sets; when the unpopularity of the format became clear the designers pivoted them into draftable Standard sets, resulting in poor draft environments and – in the case of Spider-Man – hardly any Standard relevant cards.
Yahoo Finance has a complete transcript of the Hasbro Q1 report. Are you braced for a UB future? Or are you sticking to Pre-Modern and other fan-formats that reject it? Let us know in the Wargamer Discord community!
Source: Wargamer
