The Growing Problem With Universes Beyond
Magic’s 2026 lineup is set to be unlike anything else we’ve ever seen, and not just because the year has a whopping seven sets packed into it. This is Magic’s first majority-Universes Beyond year, complete with returns to Marvel and Middle-earth, as well as sci-fi voyages courtesy of Star Trek and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
This raises the question: With so much Universes Beyond flooding the mainline Magic experience, how is Magic going to handle the inevitable draw to reprint things from beyond its own intellectual property?
Part One: The Spider-Man Problem
Magic’s crossover with
All this to say, Magic got the rights to Spider-Man in one very specific situation (the initial launch of the paper set), which doesn’t bode particularly well for future reprint hopes of key cards down the line. Fortunately, the set wasn’t full of long-term Magic staples save for maybe
Part Two: Past Solutions
Historically, Magic’s solution for the Universes Beyond licensing problem was the Universes Within system. Reskin the card in Magic lore, then launch it alongside a new release’s Set Booster product as a hit from the List slot.
This accomplished its main goal – reprinting mechanically unique Universes Beyond cards at-scale – fairly well, but only because the size of the task worked out in Universes Within’s favor. For each iteration of the reprints, be it in
Similarly, this small reprint captured a much larger portion of the overall population of the mechanically unique Universes Beyond cards than would otherwise be let on. Magic hadn’t gone-throttle on full Universes Beyond releases by this point (at least, in so far as draftable Standard sets were concerned), meaning that the pool of cards from which reprints were to be selected was much smaller.
All in all, Universes Within was able to keep up because Universes Beyond was a much smaller part of Magic at the time. Now, however, it’s just as much of Magic as the in-house expansions are.
Part Three: Where We Are Now
The mechanically unique cards from Universes Beyond can be grouped into two fundamental categories: those that are mechanically tied to an out-of-house property in a way which is inseparable from their text box (cards like the
Looking at the Universes Beyond contingent through this perspective, the reprint problem thankfully scales down in size – albeit only moderately. Many key constructed-playable Universes Beyond cards are just inconspicuous enough that a reprint in a normal Magic product is pretty plausible.
Unfortunately, the most popular – and thus most expensive – Universes Beyond cards are almost always prominently linked to the lore of their worlds. There’s no mistaking The One Ring as being from anything other than Middle-earth, and
So, while some cards which debuted in Universes Beyond sets are readily within the reprint sights of Wizards of the Coast, they likely aren’t the ones that most players are hoping for.
Wrapping Up
It’s wrong to say that Magic’s growing population of Universes Beyond cards are completely beyond the possibility of a reasonable reprint. We’ve already seen them be reprinted both via in-house lore and as subsequent reskins using additional Universes Beyond IP (I’m looking at you,
However, many of the best Universes Beyond cards are going to take more effort to reprint than the average card, and that small barrier is likely enough to push their eventual reprints far off into the horizon. Until then, they’ll just keep creeping upwards in value, setting themselves apart as Magic’s trickier, softer, psudo-Reserved List policy.
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Harvey McGuinness
Harvey McGuinness is a student at Johns Hopkins University who has been playing Magic since the release of Return to Ravnica. After spending a few years in the Legacy arena bouncing between Miracles and other blue-white control shells, he now spends his time enjoying Magic through CEDH games and understanding the finance perspective. He also writes for the Commander's Herald.