Magic Explores Middle-earth, Warhammer 40K & Doctor Who
August 23, 2022 by brennon
Wizards Of The Coast and the Magic: The Gathering crew talked more about what's coming to the Universes Beyond range over the next year or so. They are going to be visiting Middle-earth, the grimdark future of Warhammer 40,000 (as we know) and also the universe of Doctor Who.
Gandalf // Magic: The Gathering
Firstly, we turn our attention to The Lord Of The Rings: Tales Of Middle-earth. Their aim is to create a diverse and interesting cast of characters for you to use in your games of Magic alongside familiar locations, items, monsters and even more fearsome foes.
Balrog // Magic: The Gathering
The team are aiming to latch onto the familiar whilst also doing something new with their artwork, allowing their artists to have some fun. It's always nice seeing how different people interpret the various characters and stories of Tolkien's Middle-earth.
One of the coolest ideas they are bringing to the collection is their big borderless scene cards. These all come together to show off a full-on battle scene in your collection. Feels a bit like collecting stickers for a sticker book.
Battle Of Pelennor Fields // Magic: The Gathering
The Lord Of The Rings: Tales Of Middle-earth will be available as four Commander decks allowing you to get stuck right in with your games. There will also be Secret Lair releases for The Lord Of The Rings if that floats your boat. Tales Of Middle-earth will be released in mid-2023.
Enter The Grimdark Of Warhammer 40,000
We already know quite a lot about Warhammer 40,000 and how that is going to be folded into Magic: The Gathering.
Inquisitor // Magic: The Gathering
You can get a look at the different Commander decks that they have been working on in some of our past stories here OnTableTop. The Necrons, Imperium, Chaos and Tyranids are going to be leading the way.
Necron // Magic: The Gathering
Much like with the other Universes Beyond collections, there will be Secret Lair drops alongside the Commander Decks. The decks themselves are going to be made available for everyone on the 7th October 2022 despite a minor delay.
Secret Lair options have been announced as Orks as well as Age Of Sigmar and Blood Bowl.
Explore Time & Space With Doctor Who!
Travels through time and space are also on the cards for Magic: The Gathering.
Eleventh Doctor // Magic: The Gathering
Again, there are going to be four Commander decks that will be coming out to support those Whovians who want to play out the Doctor's adventures on the tabletop. You will also find Collector Boosters and Secret Lair options here too.
The Doctors // Magic: The Gathering
Art and ideas will be taken from across the full sixty-year spectrum of Doctor Who, allowing you to create decks that are tied to your favourite time traveller. I am certainly liking the artwork that they have been showing off.
As a Middle-earth fan, I am most excited to see what they do there but I am equally tempted by Warhammer 40,000 as well. With the Commander Decks being the main port of call for all of these Universes Beyond releases, it seems like they have at least made it easy to just snap up a set and dive in. Much easier than having to scrounge and pilfer for cards!
Are you tempted by these new sets?
"...four Commander decks that will be coming out to support those Whovians who want to play out The Doctor's adventures on the tabletop"
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Yo dawg, I’ve heard you like overpriced IPs in your hobby so we put some overpriced IPs in your overpriced IP XD
It’s feels a bit silly. This kind of crossover worked with Munchkin because Munchkin itself is silly. But this? Weird.
Zactly. This is like the time I took an old VW bus and turned it into a Hot Tub Time Machine with a Tropical Fish Fusion Tank. Yeah, all that – in a bus. Wicked right? No. It’s not.
Once Hasbro realized Magic and D&D were comprising basically all of their profit, the beancounters cast the Eye Of Sauron towards them and said, “How can we squeeze even more $$$ out of this endeavor?” Thus why Magic has approximately eleventy billion sets released per year now, and why we apparently need everything from Walking Dead to Stranger Things to Fortnite to LotR to 40k to Doctor Who crammed in there. Any IP integrity Magic had on its own is long gone, now it’s just a sad race to separate enthusiasts from their cash.
I think the Dr Who game may be worth checking out.
They are Race Swapping Aragon from Lord of the Rings.
Its laughable.
No respect for literature or source material.
So an overpriced IP is now integrating two dying IPs and one circling-the-drain IP for…why exactly? Even for MTG, this feels kind of pointless apart from trying to appeal to other fanbases that wanted nothing to do with Magic in the first place.
Big deal. Miniature games already exploited these IP’s. Er… did it first. (;
But if it gets more people into the hobby, sounds fine to me. Or, particularly if these cards are tournament legal, regular Magic players can get back or make money when the cards go OOP. There *is* enough IP merch that you have to get this stuff.
We already knew about 40k and LotR crossovers in MtG but Doctor Who one was huge surprise. I doubt anyone expected them to add Doctor Who to MtG. Especially when they already had character who was pretty much The Doctor. That being Teferi.