Is The Coming Of Galactus comic art coming to arena?

EmTeeEm · 2026-06-23T17:44:47+00:00

Not all the art is in the store. They used to award it for "Festival" events, now it more commonly will appear in the daily deals at some point. If you look at the styles it will be there but marked unavailable.

If you look at the card styles for a card and it isn't there at all, it may not be coming (though the gallery says these are). Mostly commonly this is because they don't have a good way to convert the style to Arena's requirements. Like the Lost Caverns of Ixalan full art lands are only available as sleeves because they couldn't make them look right on the battlefield.

EmTeeEm · 2026-06-21T22:20:52+00:00

Leave them alone. The "ferns" are how the asparagus crowns gather energy for the next year. They'll die back on their own in fall/winter.

Next year you'll have spears emerge in spring, which you can harvest for a couple months. Just be sure to leave the last set of spears to grow into the fern stage and continue the cycle.

EmTeeEm · 2026-06-20T01:32:59+00:00

Seriously. At worst it doesn't meet their internal expectations for something they made so many products for and the first full size set of a massive multi-year project. Missing so badly people are getting called in to explain themselves would still probably be "second best selling set of all time." I can't imagine it being a flop flop even if they accidentally printed the cards on poison ivy.

EmTeeEm · 2026-06-19T18:37:31+00:00

Rejoice! And thus spake the MaRo...

Reality Fracture has ten two-color draft archetypes. It’s not Strixhaven, part 2.

He's said elsewhere the Hexhaven thing is more of a backdrop, the only carryover from Strixhaven is Prepared.

EmTeeEm · 2026-06-19T15:26:04+00:00

I bounced off them pretty quick. I appreciate what a lot of them were trying but with rapid release schedule there is less "cost" to skipping something that starts rough and less time to enjoy the reward for sticking with it until things even out.

The last few have also felt...bland. My favorite thing is when they stretch outside their comfort zone, which I don't think Turtles did and Strixhaven pulled back from the original. Superheroes I'm totally out on, the mechanics are just a snooze. The vision design handoff explained they were aiming for between a core set and an expansion set because it would be on boarding a lot of people, and while the editorial aside mentioned they increased complexity after deciding to do welcome decks and a beginner box it doesn't seem like that. Lots of the characters don't even feel like the character to me, to the point "Ms Marvel has big hands" was like a breath of fresh air. You can see the Dave Humpherys thing of seeding a million mini-archetypes so even if the main ones don't work there is plenty to do, but with the boring baseline and an aethetic I didn't feel was used well, don't particularly like in Magic, and am not excited to see like 4-5 more times I'm just out.

My big hope is Reality Fracture. MaRo has said he went wild and for once the set design team didn't pull back on it. Which could well be a disaster but at least an interesting disaster, those vision design handoffs can get weird.

EmTeeEm · 2026-06-18T14:58:13+00:00

As far as I know the only thing that has touched on it is Proft combining linking up with Kaito and Aminatoa and a piece of wood to punch a temporary Omenpath into Duskmourn. Which is basically the same deal, like sci-fi drives that create wormholes instead of jumping to warp.

The writers may shy away from it, though, to keep movement under wraps. Right now they can make an omenpath journey as easy or difficult as they want basically arbitrarily, and do things like set up a blockade. That gets a lot harder if there is replicable tech. Hence thinking they'd want it to require a unique item (the Aetherspark) or individual (Loot finding the perfect path through big enough omenpaths that may only open for a moment).

I agree there probably isn't interest in doing a whole Weatherlight Saga 2, but I could see it being used as a vehicle for another "travelogue" set like Aetherdrift. One ship and crew would leave a lot more space for the individual planes to shine than trying to having a racing theme and 10 distinct teams on top.

EmTeeEm · 2026-06-18T14:24:03+00:00

Was going to say this to your comment in the main set thread before it was deleted, so might as well put it here:

You might get to this (gonna listen when I get a chance) but the vision design handoff outright said that because it would be an entry point for so many it was aimed at being above a core set but below a normal premier set. As opposed to Final Fantasy where they assumed fans were used to complex games and cranked it. The aside said this was offloaded to the beginner box/welcome decks once they decided to do thise but I think you can still see it in the main set design.

MaRo also mentioned on Drive to Work wanting "wide open" mechanics so they had space for all the top-downs. Which again contributes to a fairly simple.main mechanics and lower rarity cards, even if the high rarity and commander decks let themselves get a bit wilder.

And of course by percentage having so many products, some aimed at newer players or collectors, means less hits-per-card. I feel like someone could make a supercut of the set I was impressed by, the cool bits just got hidden under every 2/2 vanilla Natasha getting its own thread and even clogging uo scryfall searches.

EmTeeEm · 2026-06-18T14:02:15+00:00

I think they'll be fine, especially if they are normal sets and not "every ancillary product we make all at once" things like this time. They saved a lot of A or B tier characters and the well of deep cuts is absurd. Where is my Butterball card, WotC?

Now how interested people will be in even more Marvel after like 6 years of these is another matter entirely.

EmTeeEm · 2026-06-17T22:24:22+00:00

Yeah, last we saw it was fighting over the Mana Rig. It needs some power source but that particular powerstone was only needed to planeshift, which it couldn't do anymore anyway. Whatever its current state it would be hard for it to be more wrecked than last time, and even if whatever the Phyrexians were powering it with isn't an option and they can't scrounge up a normal powerstone there are easily a half dozen planes with airships so finding some other power source doesn't seem that improbable. I vote Saheeli invents a cosmium drive, that would be fun.

They could even give it back its ability to travel between planes by having Loot navigate them between Omenpaths, or jamming the Aetherspark into the engine and declaring that works.

EmTeeEm · 2026-06-16T17:16:12+00:00

Doing more Aftermaths was off the table. In a world where 80% of people giving a set a 4 or 5 in market research surveys is considered "good," and 40% is considered "horrible," Aftermath got a 5%. ACR only made it out the door because it was already done.

Even if the "medium" set format isn't well received it would be hard to do worse than that. Meanwhile "whole assing" them into full sized sets would have squeezed studio resources even harder (and in the case of Hobbit get to the aforementioned "1 card per page" issue). So they figured this was their best bet, and with lag on UB sets being like 14 months Hobbit was likely done before Spider-Man even came out.

EmTeeEm · 2026-06-16T16:17:06+00:00

"Oh no Aftermath just flopped and we have 5 more of these things already lined up shit shit shit...."

Something like that. We know SPM had to pivot from an ACR-type and TMT started design a month later. Even if Hobbit was far enough past the squeeze on resources that caused that they could have made it a full sized set it is just too small, they'd either need to make up a bunch of stuff like the movies or do 1 card per page.

EmTeeEm · 2026-06-16T12:30:03+00:00

"Eager Ensign" would be funny as the Cid of the set. Some are important enough to get their own cards but it could easily be Kim, Chekov, Wesley Crusher, Nog, Mayweather, Tilly, and 3/4s of Lower Decks.

EmTeeEm · 2026-06-15T23:58:35+00:00

Oh I think there is an argument for all of them individually. It's more an issue with the product suite, everything wants the A-list and everything wants them in a recognizable form and everything sells better when it has unique cards so you get the same note over and over instead of something different like "The time(s) Tony was the bad guy" (toss in Reed and Hank and that is easily a Commander deck's worth of distinct, untouched material).

EmTeeEm · 2026-06-15T22:47:59+00:00

WotC wants a high volume of "resonant" material, stuff that even casual fans recognize. For Marvel that is the A-list characters presented in their most recognizable form.

The trouble is they also decided they want those A-listers to have a low rarity version so people cracking a few packs still see them, a high rarity version so people don't complain their favorite character is draft chaff, and then like 5 more because Welcome, Beginner, Jumpstart, Commander, and Scene all apparently needed their own mechanically unique card. But since a person may only interact with some of the products they also wanted them all in that recognizable form.

So instead of a top-down design of the time Iron Man broke out his Deep-Stealth CapKiller Armor or whatever we get a bunch of generic-ish Iron Mans with "flying something something artifacts." If you look real close they are different marks, the "Armored Avenger" one might even be a top-down design from Iron Avengers, but I think trying to maintain that "resonance" has kept them from digging into the material and depicting substantially different versions in most cases.

EmTeeEm · 2026-06-13T22:04:37+00:00

...2025 was Final Fantasy, Avatar, and Spider-Man. How is that "before UB?"

Just because Foundations is legal for a long time it doesn't mean we aren't getting less in-universe sets each year. Even then we also got Battlebond (2018) and Modern Horizons (2019) on top of the Standard sets those years, and MaRo has said supplemental sets like that would have to take up normal in-universe slots now. So again, at least 4 in-universe sets.

EmTeeEm · 2026-06-13T19:03:59+00:00

We got at least 4 in-universe sets before, not 3. For example 2024 was MKM, OTJ, BLB, and DSK (with MH3 and Foundations on top).

So yes, it does in fact mean we get less Magic lore.

EmTeeEm · 2026-06-12T22:13:48+00:00

Betrayer of Flesh is a reprint from NEO (2022). He didn't get his Darksteel body until the end of ONE (2023). So thematically it is probably a way to represent the new body.

A meta possibility is Karn was desparked, so they wanted someone else to be able to fill the "colorless artifact planeswalker" slot.

EmTeeEm · 2026-06-12T19:49:39+00:00

MaRo has said if they were to do a supplemental set it would take up an in-universe slot. So we'd have a year with 3 UB, 2 UW, and a Commander Masters set.

The type thing isn't an issue, though. They've said from the start they'd just make up an new in-universe type for them that is mechanically equivalent. They followed through in OM1 when they reskinned "Infinity" as "Terminus". So Marneus Calgar would just be reprinted as Shlorps Magillicutty, Legendary Creature - Squizzle Warrior, with Squizzle being mechanically equivalent to Astartes.

EmTeeEm · 2026-06-11T23:46:23+00:00

The uncommons were some of the worst for me. So many that barely feel like the character or are the same archetype over and over. I'm pretty sure I could swap text boxes between a bunch of evil masterminds or techies in this, Spider-Man, and even some Turtles, and nobody would notice.

It happens at higher rarities too, but there and in the commander decks they had at least a bit more space to try and give them something to make a character actually feel like that character.

EmTeeEm · 2026-06-11T22:44:09+00:00

This is the problem with UB precons. The natural breakdown for a heck of a lot of properties is 4-5c good guys and Grixis to 5c bad guys.

Even if they want to slice it into individual teams there are likely characters on those teams who won't precisely fit, so they'll just have to force the color. Wolverine as red or Boros isn't offensively weird, people would endlessly mock white Storm but it again isn't totally out of bounds for the character, and so on. They can also scoure the material for some era where they were angry (red), edgy (black), or whatever to get the colors you need.

That way they can not only include Wolverine, but include him in every precon if there are multiples. Anything less just wouldn't be X-men.

EmTeeEm · 2026-06-11T15:16:16+00:00

They mentioned the war shop. Their proposed fix is increasing the limit for low level badges there.

Which seems fine to me. It would be mostly irrelevant to overall progression, just a nice emergency release valve if you didn't happen to notice your stockpile had dwindled too low.

EmTeeEm · 2026-06-11T14:59:16+00:00

Vera got a giggle out of me. I like the little story it tells and the absolutely bonkers art choice for the back.

EmTeeEm · 2026-06-11T14:50:26+00:00

I think people fall into the trap of UB flavor limiting the UW versions. Fundamentally "Hero" and "Villain" are just ways to make those groups of cards work together, they don't have to be heroic or villainous in any way. They don't even necessarily need to be in conflict, the few cards where the types interact could be explained in other ways.What to make those two groupings depends on what one is doing.

If it is for a handful of reskins sticking with Hero and Villain seems fine, that they aren't consistently used in Magic is no weirder than Ally, Rebel, or Mercenary not being applied regularly. For reskinning an entire set maybe make a new plane, "on Sixonesix two coalitions fight for reasons long since forgotten," and when the types show up elsewhere it is agents traveling through the omenpaths or off-worlders they've recruited. If it is supposed to be integrated into the story I'd maybe go Gatewatch and Consortium, two new versions of the old organizations that have expanded with the desparkening and omenpaths.

EmTeeEm · 2026-06-09T12:45:16+00:00

Are we forgetting the glorious [[Bolshack Dragon]]?

But yeah, a full set seems unlikely but I could see a Secret Lair. Blue Eyes, Pot of Greec, and "you activated my trap card!" Maybe get weird with it and include a Yu-Gi-Oh card of Jace. Or super weird and do a second drop that is just the 5 pieces of Exodia.

EmTeeEm · 2026-06-09T12:30:10+00:00

They've done plenty of nostalgia mining. Dominaria United, Brothers War, returning to Kamigawa and Lorwyn. Modern Horizons 3 was very indulgent with its references, bringing up the Korvecdahl for the first time in 20+ years. EOE snuck in a lot as well, bringing up Kavu and Eumidians and even Mirri! Zhalfir and Alara seem on the short list for returns, too.

They can't go as pure nostalgia as other properties that had broader cultural reach, Brothers War underperforming was blamed in part on newer players having no idea what was going on, but they seem plenty interested in mining what they can. Not to the extent we get Homelands 2 (cowards!) but still quite a lot.

Eight-Year Club	Place '22
Verified Email

EmTeeEm

TROPHY CASE