Is Universes Beyond in Standard Actually a Good Move?

Is Universes Beyond in Standard Actually a Good Move?

Kristen GregoryCommunity, Design, Standard

The announcement that Universes Beyond sets will be legal in all formats – including Standard – beginning with new sets in 2025 came as something of a shock to the Magic community. Is it actually a good move?

You might have been lucky enough to attend MagicCon Vegas this weekend. You might also, like me, have been at home, refreshing your news feed to check out the news about previews for upcoming Magic sets. The sad delay of the return to Lorwyn notwithstanding, the most frustrating news to many hardcore fans of the Magic universe was that Universes Beyond was about to become Standard legal in 2025.

UNIVERSES BEYOND CARING?

It’s hard to know what was the more monumental news – Standard Legal UB, or the fact they’re committing to a 50/50 split of UB and Magic IP sets. I think the two announcements are hard to separate, and both speak to the direction of the corporate entity that is Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro. 

It’s very easy to be cynical about this kind of announcement, especially when the announcement itself was delivered aping the style of Marvel Multiverse plans of years past. I think the presentation style hearkening back to the Marvel timeline up to – and exceeding – Endgame is actually rather unfortunate imagery, as it only magnifies the existing exhaustion people feel about “too much of a good a thing” – which is a nice way of summing up the culture industry’s relentless push for nostalgia through iconography and meme, at the cost of real storytelling and creativity. 

It’s almost amusing, then, to see the continued push into marketing Japanese alternate art as a selling point for sets further into Magic’s future. Like many treatments and styles before it, it is beginning to lose the luster, even despite phenomenal and exciting art. While I’m sure to some it can be argued as a further push to market the game more in Japan, it’s also another example of the game picking up something people love in the West and force-feeding it until it loses that “special” feeling

So, before we can evaluate whether Universes Beyond in Standard legal sets is a good thing or not, I think we first need to ask the question of whether people actually like Universes Beyond.

DO PEOPLE ACTUALLY LIKE UNIVERSES BEYOND?

If you ask Wizards, then the answer is a resounding yes. Just look at the spreadsheets!

Data is just data at the end of the day, and it will always be spun by whomever has access to it, to suit whatever argument or agenda is being pushed. So, while we could look at the data that UB sets sell like hotcakes, we need to look at that with a critical eye. Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth may be the best-selling set ever, but it also had a 1 of 1 The One Ring lottery card, a series of other lottery cards, and one of the best-loved IPs in history to draw from. On top of that, it’s largely in keeping with the general vibe of Magic: historical fantasy. 

UB does seem to be pretty popular, though. 

Why are we making more Universes Beyond? Because the players are saying loudly that they want it to be part of the game. The best selling Secret Lairs of all time are Universes Beyond. The best selling Commander decks of all time are Universes Beyond. The best selling large booster release of all time is Universes Beyond. It’s not “sets” because we’ve only ever released one.

Blogatog, by Mark Rosewater

Sales and market research, it seems, show that UB are beyond popular. I mean, is it surprising that sales are up when selling products featuring other IPs? You just have to look at how many *shudders* FunkoPops are sold and gifted to unwilling victims to know that crossover products make money. People will buy them for the fan in their life, or, like Wizards actually hope, will try Magic out, and stay around.

It’s no secret that modern capitalism favors exponential growth, and one facet of this style of capitalism is indeed to capture new users, as opposed to retaining the loyalty of existing ones. It happens with everything from IP providers to videogames, and card games aren’t necessarily immune to this approach. It’s ultimately an unsustainable approach if those new users can’t be converted, but that’s of little concern to suits, and, I want to argue, little concern to the people directly designing the cards and figuring out how to keep Wizards in the black. 

Overwhelmingly the people designing the cards are designing them to be cool, and to appeal not only to fans of whatever UB property, but also to themselves. We all know how much of a Doctor Who nut Gavin Verhey is, and it’s similar in the rest of the company. Everyone loves something

Do people like Universes Beyond? Yes, they do. But I think it’s less of a straightforward yes, and more of a “yes, as long as it fits the arbitrary parameters of appealing to me, not being an intellectual property I don’t enjoy, and ultimately being a well delivered product”. 

ARE ALL UNIVERSES BEYOND IDEAS EQUAL?

One UB isn’t more equal than another, is it?

Well, kinda. I know I’m not the only one to laugh at the thought of a deck full of Ians, but there are now enough cards with modern names to build something entirely “normal” sounding that doesn’t fit Magic’s fantasy vibe at all. It’s the reason for the Tiffany Problem, wherein the name Tiffany can’t be used in historical fiction or indeed in citing historical fact because the name Tiffany seems anachronistic, despite being a name as early as 1200, and popular in the 1600s. 

Donna Noble | Ian Malcolm, Chaotician | Simon, Wild Magic Sorcerer

So, when you could have a deck filled with Donna, Danny, Graham, Ian, Bill, Amy, and Susan, assembled to fight off Valgavoth, Atraxa, and Aurelia, Exemplar of Justice? Well, it certainly feels anachronistic, despite that not being the correct term for the situation it creates.

Players prefer settings like Tales of Middle-earth or Assassin’s Creed (Desmond-modern-day-stuff excluded) to stuff like Fortnite or Ghostbusters, because they fit with the vibe of the game. Arguments in the past against sets like Warhammer 40,000 or Fallout have been largely based on the high-tech setting, but when you compare it to the Brothers War, and MTG’s history of using steampunk and aetherpunk, they don’t feel a million miles apart. It’s all relative, right? Final Fantasy feels better than f****** Spongebob

SOME MAGIC SETS DON’T FIT EITHER

Way back in the beginning of 2022, I wrote about how NEO was basically the first Universes Beyond set. It’s a great article, by the way, and you should check it out. 

What I want to emphasize here is how while some UB properties fit the idea of “Magic” (whatever that is) better, a lot of Magic sets don’t even really fit with Magic. As someone who has never played a Final Fantasy, I can still vibe with it way more than a set like Outlaws of Thunder Junction, or Aetherdrift, or Murders at Karlov Manor

Why even is that? Well, I think it has a lot to do with the fact that recent Magic sets feel like whistle-stop nostalgia tours. They nod at the things we know and like, and never stop to tell a deeper story. They’re just a collection of tropes, a “beach episode”, and ultimately feel pretty uninspired. That’s why as someone who has never played FF, I can vibe with it. It has a story, it has interesting designs, and it feels fresh and interesting (to me, at least). I don’t love the push into UB, but speaking as someone who has never enjoyed that IP, I can still see myself picking up some cards and enjoying them.

The same can’t be said for whatever hats our Magic protagonists are wearing this week – detective fedoras, cowboy hats, or as animals in Bloomburrow. It just doesn’t do it for me. I want more stories and lore about the rich universe Wizards has created.

We kinda come full circle with this and the news that Wizards are committing to a 50/50 split – and now you can see why I said it felt tied to the idea of UB in Standard in the first instance. With the push on this much UB, the original Magic IP is starting to feel a bit watered-down, a bit pushed to the side. I mean, the Lorwyn set was literally pushed to the side, into the next year. 

While I hope this is in response to the trope-ification of recent sets and a redoubled effort to make it a good™ Magic set, it still stings. 

IS UNIVERSES BEYOND IN STANDARD A GOOD THING?

For execs and the bottom line? Undoubtedly. But that’s not really news. It’ll draw in more new players, and increase sales in the short term, that’s for sure.

But what about how this impacts Standard? Well, once upon a time, I think UB should really have lived primarily in Commander. It felt very Commander in concept, and as a format, Commander was best placed to take in the disparate ideas, as it itself is a format of disparate ideas.

The cat is out of the proverbial bag now, though, and I hope we never have that cat out of the bag and in a hat. Dubious crossovers aside, the fact that Modern has to incorporate UB means that Standard doing the same isn’t that much of a stretch. Indeed, Mark Rosewater argues that having players on-ramp into Standard makes more sense.

Players who were entering through Universes Beyond (and there are a lot of them – it’s a primary strength of UB sets) that wanted to play competitively were thrown into Modern. That’s just a bad entry ramp into tournament Magic, and it was a common complaint we were getting from newer players… we need to have a “softer” landing spot, and we believe that is Standard. Note this is in addition to a lot of other work we are doing to return Standard to prominence.

Mark Rosewater, Blogatog

So, another reason it makes sense from a corporate point of view, in a way, but also one that makes sense just generally, if you ask me. Now, if you really were to ask me, then the ultimate reason to make UB sets Standard legal isn’t money, or new-player retention… but to reduce pushed design mistakes.

The One Ring and Orcish Bowmasters have dominated Modern, and much like other straight-to-Modern cards, they’ve ended up warping the format in such a way that Modern doesn’t feel as great to play as it used to. If cards are designed through the Standard lens, there are less opportunities for overpowered, format-warping cards, and fewer cards that demand a reprint.

I see this is an absolute win for Wizards on multiple levels, but also for the players. It feels like a pivot that makes sense structurally and for the health of the game, even if it’s a pivot that I don’t love, because I love Magic

It seems that this is supported by Mark’s other words, in which he expresses that “straight to modern sets were speeding up the flux in Modern”. In his blog post, he also admits that experience in designing straight-to-Modern cards isn’t as good as for Standard, and that this change is made to address that. I think you could be cynical about these words, and argue that it’s making up a narrative to fit the (corporate) conclusion, but I think that’s taking Mark in bad faith. I think ultimately the worst part of all this is that there are going to be as many as six Standard sets in a year. That’s way too many.

So, let’s talk Universes Beyond. The reason we tried it in the first place was because we had data that made us think players would like it. That’s what R&D does. We extrapolate based on player feedback and try new things.

The players will embrace or reject it. If they embrace it, we’ll make more. If they reject it, we make less of it. If they reject strongly, we might never make it again. Look at March of the Machine: Aftermath. The players hated it, and we excised it from our future plans (surprisingly quickly, by the way).

Mark Rosewater, Blogatog

Wizards has shown time and time again that it’s willing to try new things, and change course based on feedback. If you look at that history and track record, it does feel like Wizards do pivot and respond – it’s just often not as quick as we’d like them to, given the cycles of product design. 

END STEP

As much as I recoil at the idea of Magic becoming like other TCGs that mash-up IPs, the reality is that this is the world we live in. Things change, and a 30 year old TCG has to change to keep fresh. For every weird and dissonant IP being added to the game, there’s also some really disappointing Magic sets that feature the original IP.

My hope for the future is that we get more effort put into actual Magic IP, and that the stellar card designs featured in many UB sets continue. Because let’s be honest, the actual card designs are often really good. The cynic in me does find it frustrating that many of the “good” designs are earmarked for UB, but it’s a hill I’m not willing to die on.

That hill is reserved for the absorbent yellow and porous son of a gun coming to Secret Lair. Thanks, I hate it.