The dust is settling from MagicCon Vegas 2024, where a lot of new and exciting information was dropped onto our laps like a land card for turn. While a lot of the reactions were focused on the new sets and new cards within, there were a few other announcements that raised some eyebrows for different reasons.
We sat down with two of the most recognizable members of Wizards Of The Coast's Magic: The Gathering team, communications director Blake Rasmussen and VP of Magic Design at Studio X Aaron Forsythe, about some of the biggest changes to how Magic will be delivered to the masses. The re-introduction of MSRP, major changes to Standard and other rotating formats, and the approach to designing multiple sets at once are all on the table during the discussion.
We'll have more from MagicCon Vegas 2024 in the coming days, including a deep dive into the new Foundations set launching later this month with three of the key team members who designed it.
(This interview was recorded, transcribed, and edited for clarity.)
MMORPG.com: Your panel had a ton of news, and I imagine you're very excited to finally get it all off your chest, as it was a lot to hold on to. Is the team going to start relying on this cadence – last year was at Gen Con, this year it's at MagicCon – where you have a big panel to reveal the next year or so worth of content and see how that works?
Blake Rasmussen: We've been doing some version of this for 5-6 years now, or something like that. The advent of MagicCon has really focused these announcements into the convention space, but we've been doing some sort of yearly announcement – some years it's been a pre-recorded video, some years it's been a panel. I expect that we'll continue doing things like this.
Now, of course, as you saw with this panel, we left one Universes Beyond set out, and I think what you're going to see is, like Spiderman at New York Comic Con, or like that unannounced set at the thing where it will be announced, we're probably going to tie those reveals more to events or places where fans of those worlds and characters will be. But we'll still have this yearly focus where we'll talk about all the things.
Aaron Forsythe: I don't schedule the stuff, but I will say I do like conventions being a place where we'll talk Magic for the first time, whether it be about the next set, next year, whatever, or give people things they've never seen before. That's part of the promise of coming to these, so we want to make sure we have something up our sleeve
We're bringing back MSRP for some of our products. The feedback was pretty clear from this change, but due to the logistics, it took some time. MSRP will not be defined for every product; however Play Booster packs and Commander decks will have an MSRP going forward. pic.twitter.com/wlANJ6JYbO
— Magic: The Gathering (@wizards_magic) October 25, 2024
MMORPG: One of the big announcements, or at least one of the most popular announcements, was MSRP. Did you expect that sort of public reaction?
Rasmussen: We thought it was either going to be what we got or crickets, where people just thought "ok, cool, next." We knew it was a good thing that people have been asking for and would be popular, and no one was going to say, "no, you shouldn't do that." The general response, we thought, would be a slam dunk, but wild applause was not expected.
Forsythe: The magnitude of it was shocking, to say the least.
MMORPG: The slide announcing MSRP during the panel had a particular phrasing: "MSRP returns for many products," not "all." Was there a reason for that?
Rasmussen: It's honestly just fine print. There are only two real exceptions:
- We will do MSRP for individual boosters, but not for a box. The math on the MSRP is just "the box is X times the MSRP of the booster," so we aren't going to list that, but it would be the same thing if we did.
- The other one is going to be pre-release packs, because those are not sold individually. They're part of an event at a store, which obviously depends on what additional cool stuff the store charges for. They'll be priced at what works for the individual store.
MMORPG: Another announcement which has proven to be more controversial was the new release schedule for Standard sets: Three sets within Magic's universe and three sets of Universes Beyond. Have you seen these reactions, and how do you respond?
Rasmussen: I've done some looking, yeah, and it's all about change. Here's the thing: Every time Magic goes through a significant change, there is some kind of resistance. And it's not to undercut what those people are thinking or feeling or anything like that; it is a significant change, and people are going to have a wide range of reactions, so we expected there would certainly be some people who didn't like this. But I think Aaron spoke to a lot of the reasons why.
Forsythe: We've put out six or more sets a year now for a while, right? The fact that we're doing them all into Standard and other formats, especially with the Universes Beyond, I think most people just didn't see this coming. However, looking at how people knew we were going to talk about Final Fantasy, and they knew we're talking about Spiderman, they were waiting to hear about Modern or the eternal formats; I don't think anyone predicted this is what we were going to do. So the reaction, to me, was mostly just like, "wow, we didn't see this coming, we don't know how to digest this."
Rasmussen: There's also a difference between the people who just read the headlines and the people who read more into it. Aaron wrote an article that we published on DailyMTG – and I'll use Reddit as an example – there were two threads about this topic. One was people reacting to the news immediately coming out of the panel, our tweet, and what people said about it. That one was really negative. Then, there was one that links to Aaron's article, where you see a lot more comments there along the lines of, "yeah, I don't necessarily like this, but I read the logic, and I would have done the same thing." I think once people dig into it, and they see why we're doing it and what it does, it makes a ton of sense.
There are always the emotional reactions and the logical reactions, but I think Aaron and the team have made all these changes for really good reasons that are going to be fantastic for the future of magic, and it's just adjusting to change; having that initial reaction, and then thinking about it more.
Forsythe: The line I use when thinking about why we did things is "we made these cool sets, let's just let people play them, and play them wherever." They're great Magic sets, and you'll have fun with them in whatever form you want.
There's a section of the audience that grew up with playing without Universes Beyond, with just our lore from top to bottom, and I can respect yearning for that. To them I'll say this: we're doing everything we can to elevate our own story. We want the world to experience our worlds and stories and characters, we think they're amazing. Once that happens, who knows what comes next, with the way Magic sets are designed, if you break through and have that cultural moment with entertainment beyond the usual terms of our teams.
In the meantime, it's incredible to work with all of these partners and be able to make their characters and their stories onto cards, and people have really enjoyed them, so we're going hard in multiple directions at once here, and it's not what we were doing ten years ago, it is different.
Related:
Magic the Gathering Showcases Its First Final Fantasy Cards, 2025 Plans In New Panel
MMORPG: How does the team handle this workload? Are there different teams split up to work on multiple sets, or does everyone on the team have a little piece of each set coming through the pipeline?
Forsythe: Sets are individually assigned to certain team members, but those team members can also be assigned more than one set. Each team works about ten hours a week on a certain set, over the course of two or years per set. As such, people are usually on two or three different teams – we have teams right now working on stuff through 2027, early exploratory stuff. There's probably a dozen teams going right now, especially when you consider things like Commander decks with a lot of these sets, which require their own testing process. It's a whirlwind, but we've staffed up so much over the last couple of years, we have 100+ people working on game design and art and whatnot.
MMORPG: Does the legality of these sets in different formats play a part in this multi-team approach to design?
Forsythe: That's a big part of it. People work on a set for three months will then go to another set and realize, "oh, we're doing this over here, we have something really similar" and that will require change. We want our sets to feel different, but also to play well together, and that cross-pollination really helps.
MMORPG: With such a heavy focus on Standard this year, at least in the panel, Innistrad Remastered is sitting on its own little island. What was the team's approach in pitching this to the masses, despite being the only set that won't be played in the majority of formats to release next year?
Forsythe: The set was made with fans of that setting in mind. We've made 7-8 sets that have originated there, with a few Innistrad-themed cards that have popped up in dribs and drabs elsewhere, so we get to go in and remix all of that content into something cool.
Design-wise, there's not much you get to change about cards that have already been made, as it's all just reprints, right? You can move things around a little bit – what rarity things are, whether a certain common is included or not – but you don't get to have the same level of fine control over a new set. We can't say things like "this creature might be a 4/4 today, let's make it a 5/4 tomorrow," we just don't get that kind of granular say. However, there are people who really loved these settings and want to go back, or there are some who haven't taken a trip here because they started recently or whatever, and this gives them a chance to sample it and check out some of the cooler cards, whether they were from the Innistrad block, a commander deck, or elsewhere.
For #MTGInnistrad, the headliner will be none other than Edgar Markov! pic.twitter.com/L8m54E0G1a
— Magic: The Gathering (@wizards_magic) October 25, 2024
MMORPG: Speaking of commander decks, Edgar Markov has been designated the first-ever Headliner of a set, a new feature beginning with Innistrad Remastered. What went into this new concept, and what made this set the place to debut it?
Rasmussen: We talked about this a bit in the panel, but I don't think we got this across as loudly as I would have liked. In this new Foundations era, we are doing a lot of simplifying and clarifying. I refer to the previous era as the Booster Fun era; we were trying a bunch of really cool stuff, throwing stuff at the walls and seeing what sticks. We've learned a lot from that, and now we can hone in and make these really cool experiences that we know people will like.
Part of the collectability side of things is really focusing on things that people can grab onto in every set: Headliner, Japan Showcase, Special Guests, these are all programs where people know they have their own flair and twists in each set, and they can look forward to those and how special they are.
Forsythe: Mark Higgins has been trying all kinds of stuff with collectability, but he would notice that whenever there was a single card that everyone was super jazzed about – Phyrexian Vorinclex or Sheoldred, Ancient Copper Dragon, The One Ring, etc. – the feeling was just so powerful, so why don't we just lean into it? We can do that with every set, we can pick "the card" and say "this is the thing the set is about," either story-wise or with a really sick reprint like Markov. This card has the coolest version, this card has the really rare version, so that when you do open it, you'll show your friends, you'll post on social media, and you'll create hype.
MMORPG: That's an easy sell for a set like Innistrad Remastered and a card like Edgar Markov, but you also announced the Headliner for the next set, Aetherdrift, which is an original design. Specifically, you focused on the grand prize of the race, the Aether Spark trophy. Is this your way of focusing on the lore of the set and what it's trying to present to the players?
Forsythe: With the Aether Spark, it's the thing everyone is trying to get in the race, it's the grand prize, so we mapped that to real life: It's the one card everyone will try to get when the set releases.
This is how The One Ring was in Lord Of The Rings, but also during the panel you saw the black hole card for Edge Of Eternities. That's a bit farther into the future, but that's going to be the Headliner for that set, and while it's not the "prize" like the Aether Spark, it is the "energy" of the story. This black hole plays a huge role in what's going on in that system, and there's going to be storytelling that will speak to the importance of that place.
MMORPG: If Headliner will appear in each set moving forward, this means there will be a Headliner for, say, Final Fantasy. How did you select that? How did you whittle down the list of characters, weapons, locations, etc. to come to the best choice?
Forsythe: Through long consultations with Square Enix [laughs]. We talked about how it has to be something awesome, but it also has to be a great card, and we finally came up with our decision.
MMORPG: Speaking of, we finally got our first glimpse into Final Fantasy during the panel. When designing this set, both from a game design and art perspective, did you try to get people who had a background in Final Fantasy, or did you choose established artists, give them a prompt or a character they may not be familiar with, and see what their approach would be?
Forsythe: We wanted people with background knowledge, definitely. We have a spreadsheet of all of our different artists and designers, and we sent them out a survey: What games, properties, etc. do you love? If we were going to make a set about something in pop culture, or a famous franchise, what would you like to view?
We get all of these answers back, and then we separate those who say Final Fantasy; it's a giant list of people who love it and are familiar with it. For the artists, their style has to match with Square Enix – they have a particular way they like to show their stuff – so they vetted the list and sent us their picks. The majority of the set was made by people who do know it and do love it, and have been waiting for the opportunity.
