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Magic: The Gathering head designer Mark Rosewater has caused a stir with his claim that fully half of MTG sets going forward would be Universes Beyond crossovers like Spider-Man or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
As you might expect from a community that has… mixed feelings about Universes Beyond to begin with (there's been a lot of debate about their increased frequency and how they don't always 'fit' with the high fantasy style of MTG), that's gone down about as well as you'd expect. It's also stirred up an interesting discussion amongst fans of the best card games. How much Magic: The Gathering is too much?
In response on Tumblr to a fan who was despondent at Universes Beyond overtaking original Magic IP to become "the new normal," Rosewater replied that "It is *not* the new normal. 2026 is the outlier. Future years are going to be three and three." This means we can expect a crossover for every original MTG set going forward, so seeing Optimus Prime beating up Gollum while Captain Kirk rides a dinosaur feels as though it's gonna become far more common in the days to come. However, that's not the only thing causing consternation community-wide. Many on reddit are arguing that a new set every other month or so is excessive, leaving too little time to enjoy them before the next drop arrives.
"6 sets a year is too many period," writes Stein112 in a comment with 1.7K upvotes. Daredrummer follows this up by observing that "A new set coming out every 3 months is not something I am interested in. That might be an unpopular opinion, but at that rate it feels like you barely settle in and get used to the cards before another entire set is out. It's just too much imo."
Now that MTG Secrets of Strixhaven is wrapping up, next to bat is MTG Marvel Super Heroes (AKA the Avengers set). It launches in June and is available to pre-order via Amazon.
This line of thinking seems to have struck a cord, and there's a lot of debate over the ideal drop rate. Personally, I'm with Daredrummer. While I'm not crazy about the influx of crossovers (I prefer MTG's original worlds and don't think these mash-ups are always a good fit for its style of play), I could cope with their prevalence if it didn't feel like we were trapped on a treadmill at two-times speed. Just as you get your head around the meta, a whole new wave of cards comes in to upset the whole applecart.
The same is true about value. It's disheartening to buy a Commander deck or Booster Box only to find that it's been dropped in favor of the next shiny 'thing' a couple of months later. This speaks to Magic's accessibility problem. In my experience, it's not just the rules of MTG that are overwhelming; it's the blistering rate of change. Today's expertise could be near-useless tomorrow.
What do you think? How many sets would you like to see each year?
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