There have been virtually no Universes Beyond cards reprinted since Wizards launched the product line in 2020. Coming up on six years later, could the first chance for meaningful reprints be on the horizon? Or will The Hobbit quash hopes of reprints in the foreseeable future?
UNIVERSES BEYOND HAS A REPRINT PROBLEM
Fifty… Eighty… over One-Hundred dollars. That’s the market rate for The Soul Stone, The Fourteenth Doctor or Jaws, Relentless Predator right now. Universes Beyond is popular enough that when there’s low supply of mechanically unique cards, those prices tend to go up. Usually, when cards go up in price, they eventually see a reprint, which can help to make the card more available. That’s not the case though with UB, aside from a few edge cases.
So far, reprints of Universes Beyond products have been scarce. We got “Universes Within” reprints of The Walking Dead, Street Fighter and Stranger Things, printed as legends of Innistrad and Dominaria.
Oh, and we also got reskinned versions of the Dungeons & Dragons Movie characters, which – in my opinion – is the funniest choice of what to reskin for Magic, seeing as how the Baldur’s Gate and Adventures in the Forgotten Realms cards fit right in to Magic’s general vibe, much better than other IPs.
Other than these reskins – which Greymond/Rick aside, don’t cost that much anyway – it’s been all quiet on the reprint front for Universes Beyond for a while now. This is more or less down to the specific contracts that Wizards signed with the owners of each IP, and it’s the kind of knowledge that only Wizards and their partners are party to. Will there be reprints eventually, or are these mechanically unique cards available in a flash-in-the-pan FOMO kind of way?
Speculation abounds, and were I a betting woman, I would likely bet on a “universes within” product way down the road. The only issue being that it feels like we aren’t very far down that metaphorical road just yet.
Enter The Hobbit.
THE HOBBIT IS THE FIRST CHANCE FOR LITERAL UNIVERSES BEYOND REPRINTS
While we can speculate on what eventual reprints might look like for all of the different IPs under the UB banner – like whether there’d be a jumbo “masters” style set with like-for-like reprints, or whether they’d be reskins – we can say for certain that the upcoming Hobbit set is the first time that popular UB cards might be reprinted as-is without needing an excuse or a rework.
Let’s get one thing out of the way though – unless there’s some kind of bonus sheet deal, reprinting events, items or characters specific to Lord of the Rings is not looking likely. The demand for Last March of the Ents, Palantir of Orthanc and Lotho, Corrupt Shirriff might well go unmet.
On the flipside, it’s the most iconic and in demand cards that stand to see the highest chance of a reprinting. Despite being banned in Modern, The One Ring is still a crazy popular card, and one that most players want in their collections – whether for Cube, Legacy, Vintage or Commander. It does have some presence in The Hobbit, though we don’t know exactly what this magic ring is at that point. For that reason, another version of it might stand a better chance at a reprint…
Orcish Bowmasters, on the other hand, is a lot more generic. So generic, in fact, that folks have already speculated that such a generic name was chosen on purpose, to increase the ease of reprinting it. Currently seeing a lot of play in Commander, cEDH, Modern and Legacy, Orcish Bowmasters is in very high demand, and a reprint would be great to see. Bilbo’s journey has him encounter far more Goblins than Orcs, but the terms are used interchangeably but all but the most ardent of Tolkien fans.
It’s a somewhat similar story for Delighted Halfling. The Hobbit might well be about just one Hobbit primarily, but there’s a good chance a Delighted Halfling reprint might end up in there somewhere – whether that’s an easter egg nod to a younger Lobelia Sackville-Baggins eyeing up Bilbo’s estate, or a friend of the protagonist being relieved to see him return home. This mana dork sees extensive play in multiple formats.
EASY CARDS TO REPRINT
Potential artifacts that might make it into a Hobbit set include Bilbo’s Ring (which we’d argue has a higher chance of seeing a reprint than The One Ring, as disappointing as that would be), and Mithril Coat, the gift Bilbo receives from Thorin II – and later wears during the Battle of the Five Armies.
Artifacts are perhaps the easiest includes here, with both Sting and Glamdring (along with Orcrist) being found in a troll hoard by Thorin and Company during the events of The Hobbit.
Tales of Middle-earth has a number of more generically named popular cards that could easily be reprinted, too. Raise the Palisade is an excellent typal support spell, and a reprint with Thorin and Company shutting themselves into the Lonely Mountain is a bit of a gimme; Taunt from the Rampart, too, is ideal for capturing the prelude to the Battle of the Five Armies. There’s also Warg Rider, which is one of the most in-demand support cards for Amass and Sauron decks.
END STEP
There are a good number of Tales of Middle-earth cards that are popular enough to demand reprints – and a good number of those can be dropped into The Hobbit set without much over-engineering to make them fit.
It very much feels like The Hobbit will set a precedent in regards to Universes Beyond reprints. It’s the perfect opportunity to show whether Wizards will consider short-term reprints, or whether whatever contracts were signed might well mean we won’t get reprints for a long time… if at all.
Kristen is Card Kingdom’s Head Writer and a member of the Commander Format Panel. Formerly a competitive Pokémon TCG grinder, she has been playing Magic since Shadows Over Innistrad, which in her opinion, was a great set to start with. When she’s not taking names with Equipment and Aggro strategies in Commander, she loves to play any form of Limited.