MTG Salvation

2025 marks a lot of changes for Magic: The Gathering, and much of that is thanks to the shift of the Universes Beyond sets representing half of the Standard-legal products moving forward. With preorders going live for two sets featuring popular transmedia franchises, it's been revealed Magic players will be paying more for products in these sets than the comparable set in the Magic Multiverse. At MagicCon Chicago, MTG Salvation was given the opportunity to talk to members of the Magic team and asked them about the new world of Standard pricing and bringing in new players with Universes Beyond.

Universes Beyond’s most-recent introduction to Standard is keeping its premium price point, with the MSRP for Final Fantasy and Spider-Man Play Boosters locked in at $6.99 USD each. It’s a $1.50 upcharge over Aetherdrift and the upcoming Tarkir: Dragonstorm even though each of these sets are to be playable in Standard. It’s a dramatic shift in philosophy for pricing Magic: The Gathering’s sets focused on Magic’s introductory competitive constructed format.

In the past, a Universes Beyond set like The Lord of the Rings has released with a higher price point than Standard Play Boosters and was largely accepted thanks to its direct injection into higher-powered eternal constructed format legality. Whether you view this as an increase to the price of Standard, which in a way it is, the price for entry to Universes Beyond hasn’t changed at all.  According to Communications Director of Magic, Blake Rasmussen, at a roundtable on the first day of MagicCon Chicago, the difference in pricing between Magic IP and Universes Beyond is the new normal.

“All of our sets are, going forward, going to be legal and all formats. It's our goal to try to simplify our product line group to buy something legal and all formats upon release. So, we are going to have different pricing on Universes Beyond products and premium products, um, and as we want those to all be in Standard, some of the pricing is going to be different. That’s the way it is. For Foundations, we did lower the price point a little bit because we very intentionally wanted that to be an on-ramp for people and for it to be many people's first magic purchase, so that was why we lowered the MSRP on that.” 

Universes Beyond has undeniably been a driving force of bringing in new players to Magic in recent years. Lord of the Rings was, at least at one point, Magic’s best selling set, and the fervor for Final Fantasy cards is palpable. I followed up my previous question by mentioning that an inflated UB price point also increases the price of formats used to onboard new players such as Draft or Sealed and asked whether that’s something Wizards is concerned about or pays attention to. “We’re certainly aware of it and it's something we pay a lot of attention to, and again, that’s one of the reasons why we lowered the MSRP on Foundations because we’re aware of that. And we’re watching it, but we think these sets are amazingly crafted,” says Rasmussen. “Final Fantasy is going to blow people’s minds, and we think that they are going to enjoy it and find it worth it.” 

Wizards doesn’t seem too concerned with the higher price of Universes Beyond when it comes to being a barrier to new players. The company is aiming for the guest brand to be a big draw for fans of that property to buy cards and for specific products to act as inroads to playing Magic, such as Final Fantasy’s Starter Pack with decks representing Sephiroth and Cloud respectively. However, Wizards of the Coast’s product lineup for Universes Beyond may be different from set to set.

In another roundtable discussion, this time after his 20 Most Influential Card Designs panel, Head Designer of Magic, Mark Rosewater, spoke about how the company looks at each non-Magic property differently and determines what’s the best way to introduce fans to Magic based on the medium of that IP. “UB products based on games have a very different audience than UB that are based off of story,” explains Rosewater. “Lord of the Rings or Marvel or Avatar are a very different audience than Final Fantasy or Fallout or things in which you’re already a gamer and you’re already playing a very involved game.”

This malleability is in practice already with the announcement of the lack of Commander decks for Spider-Man, but the return of the multi-card Scene Box that was last seen with Lord of the Rings. We don’t know yet which permutation of products Avatar: The Last Airbender or which price point it will ultimately receive, but we’ll likely find out in a matter of months.