After journeying through Middle-earth and taking a spin in the TARDIS, Magic: The Gathering is turning its sights to the Marvel Comics multiverse, bringing the House of M’s iconic roster to its Universes Beyond line in 2025.
The collaboration is the biggest and most ambitious announcement for the product line to date—a multi-year, multi-set deal above and beyond the team-ups the game has already released with the Tolkien Legendarium, Doctor Who, and soon, Fallout.
Hasbro, parent company of Magic publisher Wizards of the Coast, announced the deal with Marvel today as “an expansion of [their] long-standing relationship.” The collaboration will kick off with the “first tentpole Magic set based on Marvel’s fan-favourite characters and epic stories,” launching worldwide in 2025.
“Trading cards have always been a part of Marvel’s DNA, so this collaboration takes that experience to a whole new level.”
– Dan Buckley, President of Marvel Comics and Franchise
For now, details on the actual product offerings are slim, but this team-up sounds larger than other Universes Beyond products to date. While these have constituted anything from small batches of limited-printing Secret Lair cards to full-blown sets like this summer’s Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-Earth, Marvel will be the first to receive multiple sets.
Universes Beyond products seek to blend the lore and characters of the partner franchise—like The Walking Dead or Warhammer 40,000—with the medium-defining game design and mechanics of Magic: The Gathering, the world’s premiere trading card game.
Hasbro is a longtime collaborator with the comic publisher, having manufactured the Marvel Legends toy line since 2006, alongside countless other products. Given that, it makes perfect sense that their tabletop division, Wizards of the Coast, would be entrusted to translate its iconic characters into a new trading card game format—much like when it crossed over with Wizards’ “other” big game, Dungeons & Dragons.
Magic: The Gathering is also set to produce another “tentpole” Universes Beyond set based on the Final Fantasy video game series in 2025, alongside new sets based on its original locales of Tarkir and Lorwyn, so it will be interesting to see where this collaboration falls on the TCG’s already packed calendar.
Judging by the care Wizards of the Coast has shown for the franchises covered in the Universes Beyond so far, fans can rest assured that their favourite superheroes are in good hands. As for what Marvel characters will be explored in the initial set, Gambit has to be a dead-ringer for inclusion, right?
If this announcement has your spider-senses tingling, you can hold yourself over in the meantime with Marvel Snap, the popular game which is currently observing its first anniversary, or start learning how to play Magic: The Gathering with Magic Arena—both games currently available for free on mobile and PC.
