Rolling for Initiative is a weekly column by Scott Thorne, PhD, owner of Castle Perilous Games & Books in Carbondale, Illinois and instructor in marketing at Southeast Missouri State University. This week, Thorne takes a look at the new Magic: The Gathering sets announced on Friday (see “2026 Magic the Gathering Line Up“).
It looks as if someone at Wizards of the Coast saw the money flowing in from Universes Beyond releases, especially Final Fantasy, and thought to themselves: “Give me some more of that.” Seven sets are releasing in 2026, and four of them are Universes Beyond sets? By my math that is less than two months between sets. Granted, WotC has previously said that it will cut back to six sets per year in 2027.
By my count, Marvel’s Spider-Man has 193 unique Standard-legal cards in the set. If those numbers stay consistent, we can expect 1,300 to 2,000 more cards added to Standard next year. That is quite a bit of material for the format to absorb.
Of the sets, most stores are seeing quite a bit of player interest in Lorwyn Eclipsed; WotC requested that stores get in initial allocation requests for the set by late September and Southern Hobby has already closed orders for it. Comments from our Magic players have been uniformly positive. Not so for Reality Fracture, which I find rather surprising due to the demand we saw for Edge of Eternities. Of course, I saw a lot of poo-pooing of Edge of Eternities prior to the set’s release and we have customers coming in regularly looking to see if a restock has arrived. Secrets of Strixhaven has been received with general indifference and little comment.
Based on the sales of Spider-Man* (see “Rolling – Fun Weekend“), I have low expectations for the Universes Beyond Marvel Super Heroes set. The only thing we and most other retailers have seen sell out from the Spider-Man set has been the Scene boxes and that is because (due to the extremely slow sales of Lord of the Rings Scene Boxes), most stores ordered very conservatively on them, figuring it better to forego possible sales rather than have them languishing on the shelf months later.
Superhero-themed TCGs have a bad track record as far as longevity and the industry is littered with failed ones (X-Men, Power Cardz, Super Deck, original Overpower, and Vs. come to mind) and stores are seeing that with the comparatively slow sales of Spider-Man. I expect a significant cutback in orders for the Marvel Super Heroes set.
Based on LotR set sales, The Hobbit-themed set should do well, especially if they put another serialized One Ring in the set. The amount of PR generated by the last one was amazing.
On Star Trek, I am seeing some interest among Trek fans online, but there has not been a successful Star Trek TCG on the market in over 20 years; so I will wait and see on that one. We still have a full year to gauge customer interest on it.
The one I view with trepidation is the set due to be announced on October 10, 2025. WotC has touted broadly the company’s partnership with Nickelodeon, so I would bet heavily on a Nickelodeon property. Since we have Avatar releasing this year (concurrently with more Final Fantasy product I might point out), my money is on those “heroes in a half shell,” the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It is a popular IP and has a rich character history from which to draw. Good fit for Magic, though? That seems a major complaint with Spider-Man. We shall see.
Comments? Unwanted Spider-Man Scene Boxes? Send them to castleperilousgames@gmail.com.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
Source: ICv2
