For the first time ever, I am finally feeling what everyone else has been feeling for a while. I am overwhelmed with the number of Magic products releasing. Prior I would just ignore products that weren't interesting and skip them, but I never felt lost. Normally when I checked back in I'd normally just miss a set and could catch up on the game fairly easily. Nowadays, I don't know what is going on.
When I first saw the announcement at Magic Con Final Fantasy, I already knew it was going to be a disaster. Two things stood out to me with that 2026 announcement: the number of sets and what kind of sets.
First off, seven sets is insane when you know the history. Historically, players were only getting 4 set releases a year. Then around the last decade, WotC decided to add another set switching between new cards and a reprint set. This was cool as reprint set were wanted to meet the demands of a growing game. It was easy to not want to cards if you already had them. When it came to the new sets, they were experimental and the cards didn't impact modern or standard, making them an easy skip. Eventually they started releasing both a reprint set and a supplemental set. For anyone with low impulses, this is when they started feeling it. Everyone else chose one or the other or skipped both entirely. It pretty much stayed like this, but they kept creeping in more and more supplemental products like Secret Lairs and Signature Spellbooks. In fact, WotC is still creeping in a ton of Secret Lairs still as I am writing this.
Seven releases each containing new cards presents a lot of problems. What I'm feeling the most is the time between releases. By the time the hype around a set wears down and begins cooling off, it's already prerelease weekend for the next set. Taking a month or two away from the game is now already enough to have you two sets behind. This also means that standard is significantly denser than it was intended. Even with the longer rotation window, the new cards can cause a "rotation" to happen in a fashion similar to modern. This is not how I want to engage with standard when the normal rotation and banlist are enough.
Moving to that second point, majority of the new sets for 2026 are Universes Beyond. This is absurd. Universe Beyond sets should not take prominence over actual Magic sets. The main stars of Magic the Gathering should be Magic the Gathering characters, not the guest characters. Again all of these will be standard legal and with standard and draft being the flagship format for competitive play, it has already been a disaster. Spiderman already proved it with how it was handled. They couldn't feature its own draft for its own Pro Tour, Pro Tour Spiderman, and Magic Arena had to come up with an entirely in universe alternate set because of legal disputes.
With the in universe sets, they have better control of the flavor of the world and its aesthetic. I bought into Bloomburrow and Thunder Junction because they just looked really cool and were in a cool world. When it comes to Universes beyond sets it all relies on my affinity with the IPs. Aside from Final Fantasy and LotR, I do not care about these sets and feel like they're making Magic less Magic. I would much rather prefer sets inspired by other IPs and have the "alternate skins" as collector cards. They already proved that it can work with Strixhaven. Universes Beyond can still exist, but I want a reduced presence. I am probably going to skip all of them from this year including The Hobbit.
WotC really needs to scale back the sets released per year. 7 direct to standard sets per year makes me not want to play standard even on MTGA. I've been burntout for sometime and watching my decks get invalidated every month makes me not want to invest my time in the format. The faster pace makes it difficult for my funds to replenish by the next set. Some of you may have already noticed that there's no set review for Spiderman or Avatar. There never will be. In fact, I haven't even looked at the sets. I am probably going to skip all of them from this year including The Hobbit. My money is limited and none of these sets are cool enough for me.
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