Marveling at the Madness

Skeletal Grimace card art. Yes, it's gross.

Magic players were greeted with an interesting announcement earlier this week: Wizards is teaming with Marvel to produce a Magic: the Gathering expansion. Though no other details were revealed, that alone was enough to elicit strong reactions.

I initially wrote "shocking" in place of "interesting" above, but as I reflect on this, it shouldn't come as a surprise. Back in June, I wrote about Magic 'colliding' with The Lord of the Rings. Since 2021, we have now had Magic sets (or commander decks) focusing on:

- Dungeons & Dragons (both Adventures in Forgotten Realms and Baldur's Gate)

- The Lord of the Rings

- Warhammer 40K (Commander decks only)

- Dr. Who (just released; Commander decks and collector booster packs only)

And soon to come are:

- Fallout (March 2024)

- Assassin's Creed (July 2024)

- Final Fantasy (2025)

- Marvel (unknown release date)

Wowza. That Universes Beyond announcement in 2021 was no joke.

How do we react to all of this? 

On the one hand, it feels fun. Magic's well-established rules and structure should be able to 'port over' to many franchises. There are many board games today that do something similar; they have an initial release, then do variants based on various Intellectual Properities (IPs). In that sense, Magic is simply continuing a trend.

On the other hand, it feels weird. Marvel in particular strays far from the game's high fantasy roots. A Spider-man deck? Hmmmm.

I'm still processing the news, but I have a slight feeling of dread. Any energy Magic pours into Universes Beyond means less energy spent on new original worlds and sets. And, of course, I would expect the product cost to keep rising, as leveraging other IPs are not cheap. We shall see how this goes.

For now, happy Halloween, and enjoy one person's thoughts on creepy Magic cards.