Looking Ahead

Arcane Teachings card art

Happy New Year! What will 2025 bring in Magic, both corporately and personally?

Corporately

Wizards intends to continue its release pace, with seven sets in 2025. 

image from the official site

Not shown (for some reason) is the very first 2025 release, Innistrad Remastered. That means the total list is:

- Innistrad Remastered (compilation set)

- Aetherdrift (in-world set)

- Tarkir: Dragonstorm (in-world set)

- Final Fantasy (universes beyond set)

- Edge of Eternities (in-world set)

- Spider-man (universes beyond set)

- [not yet announced] (universes beyond set)

From the above, it is obvious (and the official site spells this out more) that in-world Magic sets (meaning those that take place in the existing Magic intellectual property, with familiar characters/etc. unique to that) are a diminishing focus of Wizards as Universes Beyond (UB) sets (meaning those that leverage other intellectual properties) are taking center stage: three of the final four 2025 sets will be UB. And they will be Standard legal, per the same site (previous UB releases were legal in Modern but not Standard). That has big ramifications.

Incorporating UB sets into Magic's Standard rotation means we are going to see all sorts of weird mashups ("I block Spider-man with my Grizzly Bears"). I understand why Wizards is doing this: if they are going to release three UB sets per year, they should make them legal in Standard, the second-most popular format behind Commander. But how strange . . . the game feels less like traditional Magic all the time.

Another change is to Standard rotation; that happens this year on 1 August, but then will not happen in 2026 as they align rotation to the new year (so 1 January 2027). Wizards continues to change things around; it is hard to follow.

Finally, I heard Wizards is aware of product fatigue . . . years of blistering release pace (not just full sets, but other products not listed above) is wearying players and (probably) impacting their bottom line. So maybe they will slow down in 2025/2026? I hope so.

Personally

I want to do a few things:

- Play more. All formats (casual, standard, commander, cube, sealed, pauper, etc.).

- Build more 'home brews'. I realized last year that the preconstructed commander decks are often too wordy/complex for me and I like this game at its core: the core sets with (generally) simpler wording and interactions. It is easy to build and play decks like that . . . and more fun.

- Buy less. Very few of the year's stated releases intrigue me. Thankfully. I may buy a few singles from Innistrad Remastered, but otherwise stay out of the collecting game. And my wallet needs that.

- Minimize my collection more. Last year, I got rid of 5K cards. This year, I aim for 2-3K. 

To 2025!