players

As I entered Wizards of the Coast’s Seattle headquarters, I was greeted not only by the Wizards’ team, but by an astoundingly large statue of a magnificent copper dragon. The statue, of course, was none other than the beloved beast Mitzy, one of Magic: The Gathering’s iconic mascots. After spending a sufficiently long amount of time gazing at both Mitzy and a wall covered in unopened booster packs, a surreal catalog of Magic’s three decades of history, I was led to the studio’s dining hall. Yet to call that room a dining hall feels almost inaccurate, as the majority of what graced those tabletops was–you guessed it–Magic cards.

Throughout the day, I watched as folks rummaged through their bags for cards, or sauntered over to dig through the studio’s boxes of bulk, then holed up at a table for a game or three. And while most of the folks I saw playing were, like me, giddy members of the press, it was plain to see that this level of excitement–this enthusiasm for play–was not an incidental or momentary thing, but rather a part of the studio’s culture.

It’s invigorating, finding yourself around people who make something you care deeply about and discovering their love for that creation is as genuine as you’d hoped it was–that there is a palpable reverence for it. And yet, something bit at me as we delved into conversations about the main reason I had come to the studio: Magic: The Gathering’s Spider-Man collaboration.

Here I was, among the minds who helped build my favorite planes and stories–among images and statues of Liliana Vess, Chandra Nalaar, and Shivan dragons–and yet, discussions were largely about Spider-Man. And I get it. It makes perfect sense to want to discuss your show-stopping collaboration with Marvel that is, as of today, officially released. At the same time, what about, well, Magic?

Spider-Man swings through the air in an illustration by artist Javier Charro

I’ll admit that some of my feeling this way comes from my own growing hesitations toward Universes Beyond–the side of Magic: The Gathering in which various properties (like Final Fantasy, Fallout, Assassin’s Creed, Doctor Who, and Spider-Man, to name a few) are turned into Magic cards. In 2025, three of the seven sets scheduled for release are Universes Beyond sets. And while there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, their presence has certainly led to some tension in the community, with some levying complaints about being priced out of the hobby by collectors and others expressing frustration over the way that some original sets–like Tarkir: Dragonstorm and Edge of Eternities–have been overshadowed.

Magic: The Gathering head designer Mark Rosewater, lead designer Cory Bowen, and senior art director Sarah Wassell were all receptive when it came to answering questions regarding these issues. But beyond that, they also reassured me that Universes Beyond–the upcoming Spider-Man set included–are labors of love, and serve as a way for them to express their deep appreciation for fandoms outside of Magic: The Gathering, while also trying to grow and appease their own widespread community. Though it remains to be seen how Magic: The Gathering will change in the coming years, the following conversation reaffirmed that passion for the game and flexibility are leading the charge.

While Universes Beyond sets seem to be doing well commercially, it feels safe to say that there has been some criticism leveled against how often these sets are appearing. Does the team find this to be a legitimate issue? Are there plans to address this going forward?

Rosewater: Essentially, the way we function in Magic–and this has been true since Magic’s beginning–is we try something new to see what the players like. If the players like something, we make more of it. If they don’t like it, we make less of it. That’s the nature of how we make Magic since Magic began.

Universes Beyond was the same thing. When we tried originally, we did a little bit of it to see what people liked. They liked it, so we did a little bit more. The reason there’s so much Universes Beyond is because the players are overwhelmingly excited by it. Final Fantasy, which came out earlier in the year, is the best-selling set of all time. It defeated the previous best-selling set of all time, which was the Lord of the Rings.

We provide what the player base wants. The fact that the Universes Beyond sets are doing well says there’s an audience–that people are excited by this. We’re just meeting the needs of the players. If the players weren’t excited, if they weren’t happy, if they weren’t buying lots of it, we wouldn’t make lots of it. But that’s not what’s happening, so that is why we’re doing more.

Wassell: Another thing, too, is that Magic is a physical thing. This is an analog process. The cards are made by big, loud, noisy machines and it’s a little bit hard to pivot really quickly on things when something’s already at a certain point in production.

Cory Bowen: But we’re always using feedback. We’re always going to keep doing what people want. Right now, people want Universes Beyond, people want magical worlds, and we’re going to keep doing that as long as they want them. And we’re going to react as quickly as our printing process allows.

I would guess too, with utilizing intellectual properties, that creating Universes Beyond sets is an extremely lengthy process. I remember talking to folks about the Final Fantasy set and hearing it took over five years to realize. Once that’s started, you are on that course. Does this incentivize you to lean more into Secret Lair or other avenues rather than keeping Universes Beyond at the current size?

Rosewater: When we look at properties, Magic has a lot of different options. There’s a large set, there’s Secret Lair, and then there’s things in between. We’ve done Commander Decks. We try to establish what size the property is, then what’s the best way to make Magic with that.

Some things make perfect sense as a small number of cards in a Secret Lair. Some are an entire set. And for some, like Marvel, one set is not enough. They have so much material that it’s multiple sets. We are very flexible to try to meet the demands of the property. But as you can see, we’ve been interacting with lots and lots of properties.

Do you find it at all limiting to work within the confines of an IP or the real world?

Bowen: There’s a lot of fun with it. There’s freedom in making stuff up, but there’s real fun in taking stuff that people know and trying to express it through Magic. I love City Pigeon. I think City Pigeon is emblematic of the most fun I’ve had making this set.

Rosewater: In general, I like doing things that I don’t always do just because it changes things up. It was fun to have a set where there’s a real world to compare it to. I like bouncing back and forth. I wouldn’t always want to do that, but it was very refreshing when that’s not what we normally do.

When I think of artists who’ve helped shape pop culture, I think of Kirby, McFarlane, Romita Sr., and other iconic comic book illustrators. What was it like getting to use the moments they created and their illustrations?

Wassell: It was mind-blowing. Getting to have their names on a Magic card, getting to look at their work up close and trying to figure out how to honor it and yet adapt it for a new use … I think it really gave us all a feeling of responsibility. With great art comes great responsibility. We were so excited to use it and to work with it, but we also really wanted to make sure that we were honoring it.

Rosewater: One of the neat things about Universes Beyond is that, eventually, we get to what I call your passion property; that property that means something to you. It affected you as you grew up, and it’s something that defines who you are as a person. I grew up reading comics. I mean, I wear superhero shirts constantly. It’s a big part of my identity. So the chance to finally get to make these cards, and to make them for people who like me? It’s just been lots and lots of fun–endlessly fun. I could go through Spider-Man and make notes on it to the end of time just because it’s so much fun to ask ourselves, “Can we capture those little tiny moments?”

I remember I was doing flavor text and one of the cards talked about how Spider-Man’s web dissolves in 30 minutes. And I’m like, “No, no. Actually … ” And we changed it. It maps in the comics how long it takes Spider-Man’s spider webs to dissolve. I care and I know the people that will care. So we want to put that time and energy into making sure that we’re making the best possible Magic set, but also the best possible Spider-Man set for all the Spider-Man fans.

The cards Savage Beating, Peter Parker, and Ponder, all which feature artwork from iconic comic artists.

How was it melding together the artists that you commissioned for original pieces for the set, and these pre-established works? Was there an effort to keep things in line with the tone of these previous artists or were you more adventurous with it?

Wassell: One of the things we were excited to do–and how we approached this from the beginning from a visual perspective–was with respect to comic books’ very distinct visual eras. We went into the project with that in mind. We were very deliberate about, “Okay, now we’re going really into the Golden Era,” “Oh, now we’re going to go into the Dark Ages,” or “Now we’re going to work with someone who’s making really exciting Marvel art now–how does that look different from the way it used to look?” We were pretty deliberate about where we deployed those visual styles.

While Spider-Man does have more fantastical elements, and other sets, like Doctor Who, have had some more grounded elements–funny as it is to call Doctor Who “grounded”–I feel like this is the first one that is very realistic. It largely has a New York setting, for example. What were the challenges in making cards that are set inside what is essentially a different version of our universe, and making them feel at home among these other planes?

Bowen: Design-wise, it’s challenging. There’s a few things that were easier. It’s easy to make a bird in Magic, so the pigeon was easy. We have food tokens, so it was easy to make food stuff that happens to resonate. But Taxi Driver being a creature … it’s a little bit of an odd concept.

It seems challenging, but doing vehicles, food, locations with lands, and certain creatures … it sounds difficult but the more you do, the more that Magic actually has the language to express those things. I think it was almost easier to express [all of that] design-wise than it was to do Spider-Man stuff. Spider-Man punching or doing his flips or whatever, those were harder to express with language. But with the environment stuff, Magic just actually has a bunch of tools to express the world because its best quality is world-building.

Rosewater: Magic is 32 years old this year, and because we’ve been making the game for 32 years, we have a lot of tools. Really it’s just a matter of adapting the tools for whatever world we’re doing. We’re constantly making new worlds. This was a little different, you’re right. This was more “Our World” than most Magic sets tend to be, but we do have the tools to capture it. It just feels a little bit different because Magic tends to be more fantastical. A hot dog card is a little less fantastical than the average thing we do.

Wassell: There were moments that were a little bit easier in that way, though. I’ve been to New York City. I know things about it. So when we’re doing a card that has a bodega on it, or there’s a scene with the back of a rental truck in it, those are those moments where, when we get the sketch in from the artist and the rental truck is all clean on the back, I can be like, “There’s no way that truck would be untapped in New York, driving on those city streets.” Those moments are, to me, the most fun–when we get into the world building of the in-world experience of these objects, vehicles, animals … stuff like that.

Bowen: Those details help a lot to immerse you in this world. This world is New York, and there’s a lot to love about New York. We’re immersing you in it in a similar way that we immerse you into a new plane we’ve created.

Rosewater: The big difference is, let’s say we make a brand-new plane, we can do whatever we want. I mean, we’re making the world, so we can make choices that we think makes the world make sense. No one’s going to say, “Oh no, that’s not how that looks in that world.” Because nobody knows that. But in New York, you have the sense that you know what it should look like. That’s probably the trickier thing, we’re used to making our own worlds so no one can question, “Hey, that’s not how it looked.” We don’t get to make up New York. New York is New York.

The Soul Stone, Spectacular Spider-Man variants, and the set’s comic book cover-inspired full-art cards are among the most sought after.

How was it designing mechanics that are based on superheroes? These are inherently overpowered characters, and I’m sure you want these figures to be extremely powerful. At the same time, I’m sure you don’t want them to be game-breaking and overly powerful. How do you tread that?

Bowen: Magic gives a lot of room for both really abstract expression and really specific expression. Yes, these characters are larger-than-life, but we do need them to play well. Gameplay ultimately is the king here, and not every Spidey character is going to be a 10/10 or an 8/8, if that’s the proportional strength of a Spider. They all need to play well in the environments.

Things like rarity are a really good way to express that these are the Spider-characters we think are really cool. Like, Cosmic Spider-Man’s got to be a mythic–he just feels like he has a step above. And there’s a relative expression among the spider-characters.

Is it a little weird that a taxi driver and Spider-Man can take each other out in combat? It’s a little weird, but again, Magic is an abstract game. Fifteen squirrels can kill an Elder God. There’s a little bit of suspension of disbelief, which helps out a lot.

Rosewater: When you’re making Magic cards, mostly what you want to do is make exciting things that do something. Marvel is about superheroes and supervillains with magical powers, and costumes that are designed to look really cool when you see them. Marvel has actually been perfect for making just really awesome Magic cards. They do fantastical things, and fantastical things make fun cards.

Last year, Wizards of the Coast announced the return of MSRP, and I know people were super excited about it. But obviously that is a suggested price, not an enforced price. Since then, however, prices have never been as high as they are now, which seems a result of the increase of Universes Beyond production. Do you have any plans on addressing these issues, or is that something that’s more out of your hands?

Rosewater: As you said, we have no control. That’s how capitalism works. People can charge whatever they want, so it’s a tricky question. It’s just outside of our control.

Bowen: People in this room are not in the conversations of pricing, I’ll say that.

This interview has been lightly edited for brevity, clarity, and readability.

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