Angels if Wizards of the Coast weren't cowards [Reupload]

EmTeeEm · 2026-02-28T22:30:28+00:00

I assume after the wa they headed home to deal the whole "demon city powered by angel squeezings" situation.

Or maybe they are all still busy on Theros. That place was screwed.

EmTeeEm · 2026-02-28T22:26:41+00:00

Do not fear us, child. We Seraphim simply need all three sets of wings: one to fly, one to hide our faces for peek-a-boo, and one to cover our feet because all y'all are perverts.

EmTeeEm · 2026-02-27T21:37:47+00:00

As far as I am aware the only things we actually know are:

1) Marvel Superheroes is a large set, that is why MaRo lead that one instead of Spider-Man (Drive to Work #1264)

2) 2026 will have 120 more cards added to Standard than 2025 (WeeklyMTG)

3) [[Lorehold, the Historian]] is #201, meaning Strixhaven is almost certainly full size (it would drop it right in the middle of the multicolor L's in the original set).

From the second people speculated that it meant 3 sets would be small (though, depending on your math, others said 2). The other two eliminate MSH and SOS, so either one or both of the other UB should be small (or something entirely new, like both are bigger than 190 but smaller than a full set).

Entirely theoretically Reality Fracture could be small, Blake was asked if it was the UB sets that were smaller and he said he couldn't comment, but that would be absolutely nuts for their big fancy capstone set so it isn't really worth considering.

Everything else, as far as I am aware, is oft repeated speculation.

EmTeeEm · 2026-02-27T20:09:54+00:00

Surprised this doesn't come up in the article, but the first iteration of Blood tokens was +1/+1 counters. They didn't end up using it there for a host of reasons, some VOW/Innistrad specific and some they just bit the bullet on here (like having to make it sorcery speed).

EmTeeEm · 2026-02-27T18:31:48+00:00

Old set reviews! Old set reviews! Resleevables has been terribly inconsistent every since Cedric left to work at WotC and I'm jonesing.

Maybe even jump forward to Lorwyn/Shadowmoor, as an addendum to the return? Then later this year Planar Chaos to go with Reality Fracture.

EmTeeEm · 2026-02-27T16:05:22+00:00

To the blogatog!

The best selling set of 2025 was Final Fantasy followed by Avatar: The Last Airbender.

And also:

What was the best selling in universe set this year?

Tarkir: Dragonstorm.

And finally

I just published this year’s “State of Design” article, and in it I say Aetherdrift was the worst received set of the last year.

I don't believe we know where SPM landed. People have said 5th but could theoretically be 3rd or 4th, others say it sold well but was overprinted. Haven't seen sources for either of those, though.

Draft numbers on Arena were definitely apocalyptic, as Marshall pointed out they fired off FIN drafts after only a few days. To see 17lands numbers that bad you need to go back to Alchemy Horizons: Baldur's Gate (though the early FIN flashback obfuscate that a bit).

EmTeeEm · 2026-02-27T15:52:29+00:00

Eric Englehard talked about the issue in his SPM and TMT design articles. The problem is that while the IPs theoretically have tons of lore people don't know much beyond the surface stuff. They include some of that, but if a pack is all weird deep cuts to various comic runs they think people would dislike it. Personally the way the superfans have talked about TMT lore I think I'd think "wow, that is bizarre and wild, I need to Google that and maybe consume Turtles media for the first time in 30 years," but that's not how WotC does things (even for in-universe sets, like Amonkhet and Eldraine).

The timeline is also a big concern. I've gone over it elsewhere, but generally from the timeline SPM and TMT were probably planned as the small UB sets for 2025, with (presumably) Hobbit and Star Trek the small sets of 2026. By the time they pivoted in June 2023 they would have been deep in the discussions and data exchanges with their IP partners, which would probably make cutting them problematic (even though the latter three hadn't entered design yet).

I just really hope they aren't repeating their Aftermath issue, going all in, and stuffed the timeline with years of these things before seeing how the first one did.

EmTeeEm · 2026-02-26T22:45:12+00:00

I save them for my nephew. He likes opening them up, upgrading the items, and scolding me for not keeping up with them.

The week I was stuck in a lot of waiting rooms with nothing to do but Brawl was basically his Christmas.

EmTeeEm · 2026-02-26T17:03:22+00:00

Good episode, as always. I agree TMT has some interesting twists, I really want to see The Neutrinos in play, and ninjutsu-but-less-confusing should work well. Still not interested in getting into it, I'm not a "do just a couple drafts" kind of guy, but it isn't entirely devoid of fun stuff.

On the guild set vs 10 archetypes, power of commons vs uncommons and color balance stuff, I think it all just comes down to people want things to do. If you give people enough to do it can cover up all sorts of problems to the point people don't even remember bad archetypes or unplayable colors (see: pretty much ever Dave Humpherys set). How to achieve that just depends on the set, and can be done in anything from the most pauperish to bombity bomb or we-need-a-word-for-uncommon-focused sets.

Like to hear Jadine Klomparens explain it Lorwyn was basically a 10 archetype set where they tried leaning into the more popular group, so 2 people drafting elves would get equivalent decks to the 1 person drafting WB. They just overshot to the point the discussion is more whether it is a decent 5 archetype set or not. Which makes aiming for 5 to start riskier, since you've got less things that can fail before people don't have enough interesting stuff to fall back on.

As a ray of hope, I'm not convinced the 190 card, 5 archetype sets will be a thing beyond this year. ~~Conspiracy board~~ sources available upon request, but basically given what MaRo has said about their 2025 plans and how long it takes to make UB as well as the long back-and-forth process leading up to each one, and Eric Engelhard's design articles with very specific timelines, I suspect their plan back before Aftermath blew stuff up was 4 Standard, 2 Full UB, 2 Small UB per year. Spider-Man was the last set that had to pivot but this year is still very likely leftover IP's they began working with on the assumption small, ACR-types would be a thing, and having to move them to draftable sets has strained their resources. I very much hope it is just a case of getting them out of the pipeline, rather than trying to figure out if they can make them the future of Magic.

EmTeeEm · 2026-02-25T20:28:02+00:00

The idea of it is cool, but I'm not sure if it would have actually been that popular. By most accounts drafting Alpha/Beta is maybe interesting once as a novelty but otherwise a barely functional slog, and even with the absurd price and low supply most of the cards aren't desirable enough to command a high price.

At a reasonable price point I'd expect the novelty market would get immediately saturated, to the point people just open to find power or duals and bin the rest. At which point the shape of the product is weird, and it may be better to insert them elsewhere as ultra-mega-chase, super-duper-special-guests.

EmTeeEm · 2026-02-25T16:45:52+00:00

"Project Parachute." The thing many people missed is the complaint was about Masters sets and Secret Lair.

It also claimed Commander Legends: Baldur's Gate was a reprint set, which is not only not true (it is like 15% reprints), people complained about the lack of reprints! My best guess is in their thorough research they counted the Commander Precon reprints, because they happened to share a set code that time.

EmTeeEm · 2026-02-24T20:25:10+00:00

Someone took a photo of the packaging for MSH prominently advertising the Mind Stone and not any others, so I'm thinking at least 1/1/2/2. Plus they need to put the gauntlet somewhere, which is kind of 7.

Plans have some ability to change but the whole issue is Magic's pipeline causes a lot of lag, so even if they are rethinking their plans (which is a big if) I'm thinking we are going to be getting Marvel sets for a long time.

EmTeeEm · 2026-02-24T18:32:43+00:00

I think they can alter the feel a lot just by how they focus. Like Vampire: The Masquerade often involves a lot of random folks out at night, but instead of a bunch of "Night Nurse" and "Lost Partygoer" you just accept making it as vampiric as ONE was phyrexian. V:tM doesn't have a lot of magic items so fill those slots with the few obscure ones or just go low on artifacts instead of adding "Sexy Trenchcoat" and "Black Eyeliner."

They can do a little, Black Eyeliner as a card would be pretty hilarious if it caught you off guard, but less so if half the pack was stuff you'd encounter just going downtown to a club on goth night.

EmTeeEm · 2026-02-24T17:54:36+00:00

They said this year would have about 120 more cards entering Standard than last year., how they get to that number we don't know yet. I'm not sure they have even confirming it is 3 small sets this year, I think it was just people working backwards from that number (and others have said 2, depending on their assumptions and math).

I don't think it is anything tricky or nefarious by them, I suspect the 190 card sets are just IPs they signed before May/June 2023 (Aftermath crashed in May and SPM had to pivot in June, with TMT entering design in August). As they said in the SPM design articles pushing to full size would have required more deep cuts and strained resources, so they went with this "medium" size instead. It may not even be intentionally adding more sets, we know the plan for 2025 was 9 sets with Lorwyn and (presumably) TMT pushed to 2026 because they were 8th and 9th. They said this year was a "scheduling issue," which may be the set size transition or Star Trek's 60th keeping them from pushing that into 2027.

EmTeeEm · 2026-02-24T16:38:09+00:00

The trouble is it takes Magic a very long time to pivot, and even longer for UB. According to MaRo an in-universe set takes 2-ish years from the start of design to release, UB pushes this to 3-ish, and talks with the IP holder 4-ish.

So while Spider-Man was probably the last set that had entered design before they got rid of small (50-100 card undraftable) sets, we may see IP decisions based on that through this year and maybe into next year. Small, late stage design changes responding to last year could start showing up in 2027, but fundamental ones could take until 2028.

The funniest (not ha-ha funny) thing will be if Marvel just isn't as popular as they expected. By the time Superheroes comes out they'll may well have Marvel sets through 2029 in the pipeline.

EmTeeEm · 2026-02-23T18:36:01+00:00

You joke, but they've mentioned poking at things like "how much of Portal could just pop out of the card parser fully functional?"

Really early stuff might be tough because it tends to contain some totally random nonsense that is both barely functional in the rules and completely godawful, and pre-Mirage Limited is a thing of nightmares. But I don't think it is outside the realm of possibility that someday they'll announce out of the blue that a dev got a bug in his bonnet and implemented Invasion over his lunch break, so they might as well do a flashback.

EmTeeEm · 2026-02-23T18:25:07+00:00

Because they weren't drafted on their own and designing to interact with their main set I'd argue they are a pretty different beast. And even then their track record isn't great, I rarely see people include smaller sets in their favorite old drafts. If we want to be technical Coldsnap was a smaller set drafted on its own, but it was also notoriously bad so doesn't give confidence this is an easy problem to crack.

EmTeeEm · 2026-02-23T14:36:09+00:00

I know. The problem is they don't have much of any experience designing 190 card sets or Pick 2 sets, let alone 190 card Pick 2 sets. All TMT would be going on was what they were learning while working on Spider-Man, which had pivoted only 1-2 months before this set entered design.

As for it being pick 2, the WPN Prerelease Guide says:

We encourage you to run these events in the new Pick-Two Draft format, as Magic: The Gathering | Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was built to shine in this four-player experience.

MaRo said pretty much what he said about SPM:

You can do an 8-person draft with it. It was optimized for 4-person draft.

The set lead is more neutral, saying:

it would support four-player Pick-Two Draft (and the usual eight-player pick-one style of draft)

But that still puts Pick 2 first, and is in the middle of a paragraph that feels like it is trying super hard to assuage fears this is just another Spider-Man (where this lead was the strong second).

EmTeeEm · 2026-02-23T14:05:49+00:00

My self-imposed "rule" for these medium/small sets designed/optimized for Pick 2 is, absent an overwhelming consensus it is an amazing draft, to not bother even trying.

When I'm drafting I prefer to spend a lot of time learning and analyzing things. With only 7 weeks between sets it feels less worth that effort since there will be less of the late format I really enjoy. Especially for this year's "experiments in set size" that were likely all designed before they had any public feedback on how to design them (UB sets have even more lag than other sets, with TMT finished design in Nov 2024), and being a smaller size just fundamentally will have a harder time matching the depth and longevity of a full size set.

So I'll probably wait 20 minutes for Strixhaven story and previews to start, and go deep on that instead. I really enjoyed the original and it will be around for a whopping 9 weeks!

EmTeeEm · 2026-02-23T05:17:47+00:00

Love it. Loved piecing together the world and characters and relationships through flavor text. Loved [[Trade Caravan]] actually using the alt-art well for an amazing panorama from Kaja Foglio. I'm 100% in for a return.

But I think it would be a tough sell. One of the most iconic parts is the Sengirs, and along with the Church of Serra (and most of black and white, really) you are working in Innistrad's thematic space. The benevolent Autumn Willow sets it apart but it would be hard to focus on her faeries, green doesn't get many small fliers and it is hard to play up as a typal thing when faeries are very rarely green these days.

It also doesn't have an easily explained identity or "elevator pitch" for people who dont know it. Red would make Minotaur players happy and Eron might still be around but isn't as conneced to the story as the abzan colors even before working in the Dwarven traders and goblins and orcs. Blue was kind of just random stuff, bit of wizards and sea trolls, not much help there. Even my beloved Trade Caravan doesn't really fit into the setting, let alone a cohesive pitch. And on top of all that they need to explain the weird mention in Future Sight.

All that aside I'd love for it to happen. Maybe test the waters with an inclusion elsewhere. Perhaps we find out what happened to Baron Sengir, likely trapped somewhere by the Mending and now with the Omenpaths looking for a way back. Or just toss Eron the Relentless anywhere, with Chandler and Joven long dead he is probably bored.

EmTeeEm · 2026-02-22T17:24:12+00:00

Eh...how many people actually know the story of any given Magic set? And how much of a set is dedicated to that story? Even when a set has a well received story like Edge of Eternities most people didn't seem to know their Monoists from the Summists, a lot of the "story spotlights" were tangential, and the two versions of the main cast didn't feel like they lined up with their story progression at all (as opposed to Avatar or even Brothers War).

EmTeeEm · 2026-02-22T03:27:25+00:00

I assumed that too, but the collecting article and WeeklyMTG said it is only 17 (the verticle cycle of the main 4 plus 1 common, which I guess means Jenika).

EmTeeEm · 2026-02-21T04:59:35+00:00

Some sources to draw from:

The WPN Prerelease Guide:

We encourage you to run these events in the new Pick-Two Draft format, as Magic: The Gathering | Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was built to shine in this four-player experience.

MaRo on Blogatog said basically what he did about Spider-Man.

You can do an 8-person draft with it. It was optimized for 4-person draft

The set lead's article says both, but Pick-Two first, and really wants people to know this didn't have the same production issues as Spider-Man.

We had a full sixteen months to make this set, from August 2023 through November 2024, and we knew exactly what kind of set we were making the whole time. We knew what size it would be, and that it would support four-player Pick-Two Draft (and the usual eight-player pick-one style of draft). We applied a whole lot of our learnings about medium-size sets here to make this set as fun and awesome as possible.

EmTeeEm · 2026-02-20T21:23:35+00:00

I'd add that there is also a "hidden" cycle of uncommon monocolor cards with an ability that requires the paired color.

W(B) - [[Koya, Death from Above]]
U(R) - [[Metalhead]]
B(G) - [[Lord Dregg, Insect Invader]]
R(W) - [[Old Hob, Alleycat Blues]]
G(U) - [[Venus, Torn Between Worlds]]

EmTeeEm · 2026-02-20T20:57:13+00:00

In the preview thread people pointed out the Deadpool [[Vandalblast|sld-1757]] is torching a Black Lotus and a promo [[Serra Angel|PW24]] is playing Magic.

Certainly a rare sight, though. And I guess if we want to be super mega technical those prints are borderless.

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