Half of all Standard Magic: The Gathering sets going forward will be sold at a higher price, the game’s head designer Mark Rosewater confirmed on his Tumblr blog last night.
When a commenter asked if MTG Final Fantasy booster packs were supposed to be the same price as MTG Aetherdrift, Rosewater responded that they were not, explaining that “Universes Beyond boosters normally have a higher MRSP”.
While presented as a continuation of what came before, the problem is that previous Universes Beyond Magic: The Gathering sets were for older formats, not Standard.
Standard, hypothetically the entry point for Magic: The Gathering players (this was, in fact, one of the justifications for making UB sets Standard-legal in the first place) has traditionally been the cheapest product in Wizards of the Coast’s roster, while packs of cards meant for Modern or Commander have commanded (hah) a higher price.
But it seems that’s no longer the case if, as Rosewater has stated here, UB boosters will continue to be sold at a premium. Since half of all Standard sets on the MTG release schedule for 2025 are Universes Beyond crossovers (with Final Fantasy, Spiderman, and Avatar: The Last Airbender) that means playing paper Standard is going to be considerably costlier going forward.
It’s also bad news for players who like clubbing together for drafts. Whereas previously you were guaranteed four sets per year at a Standard price point to choose between, you’ll now only have three at this lower cost.
We had suspicions that this might be coming when we saw the high preorder prices for Final Fantasy products on Amazon. But we didn’t know until now whether those costs were final, or whether Final Fantasy would be an outlier with its pricing.
But apparently not. It seems like, because Universes Beyond cost more to make (due to licensing fees), Wizards is opting to push those costs onto its consumer base.
It’s obviously disappointing news, and the reaction online has been angry. But, as some commenters have already pointed out resignedly, it’s probably not going to make much of a dent in UB sales.
Partly that’s because Magic fans are only a portion of the target audience for a Universes Beyond set. What Wizards loses in buyers who don’t care for tie-in sets and don’t want to pay top dollar for a Standard product, it will likely gain in fans of the UB property, who perhaps never considered buying a booster before.
Case in point: those Final Fantasy preorders, expensive though they were, sold out almost immediately.
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Source: Wargamer
