According to Hasbro CEO Chris Cox, The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth set for Magic: the meeting the game and toy company earned about $200 million in six months – about double the revenue generated by its other historically high-performing trading card sets. That’s why he announced to investors in 2023 that he wants to have two similarly high-performing sets every year in the future. Today, that production pipeline is coming into clearer focus, heralded by the announcement of a set of Spider-Man themed cards in 2025. It appears that the Universes Beyond initiative, which licenses to third-party franchises the world of Magicreally paying off. But according to Aaron Forsythe, vice president of design for Wizards of the Coast, timing and transparency will be key going forward.
For an indication of the potential pitfalls of working with third-party partners, look no further than another of the 800-pound gorillas of tabletop gaming, Games Workshop. It announced the launch of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine – The Board Game in May 2023. Six months later, Space Marine 2 publisher Focus Entertainment announced that the video game it was based on would be delayed by almost a full year. When the digital incarnation of Captain Titus received rave reviews last month, Space Marine – The Board Game had already been marked as clearance.
It turns out something similar happened to Magic‘s latest collaboration with Larian Studio.
“When things don’t go well, like at launch Battle for Baldur’s Gate a year earlier Baldur’s Gate 3 comes out of the beta, you know there’s a little misalignment,” Forsythe said. Working with Marvel was different than working with Larian, but there is still a lot that remains unsaid between the two companies.
“They’ve shared with us what they can,” Forsythe said. “They’ve given us some peaks behind the scenes so we can plan accordingly. We will still be surprised by a lot of things that happen, but yes, they want us to feel relevant and we certainly do that.”
Of course, even if communication between partners isn’t perfect, good things can still happen. That was true Magic‘s other recent success: the Fallout-themed Commander decks, which were recently named the most successful Commander products ever. Turns out the timing of the release was just a happy accident.
“When we do it right,” Forsythe said, “like when we released our Fallout decks when the Fallout TV show came out – which was absolutely coincidental and not really planned, just amazingly coincidental – it works out great for both parties. (…) Both sides want it to feel like it’s all intentional and pointing in the same direction. But we both have our secrets to keep and can’t risk the whole ship on any partnership. So I think you’ll see that it works pretty well.
Expect more details on additional Universes Beyond sets in the future, including a highly anticipated collaboration with Square Enix’s Final Fantasy franchise.