As the Pro Tour for Murders at Karlov Manor rages this weekend, Wizards of the Coast continues to try and cast a wider net into the world, as their latest sets for their flagship card game Magic the Gathering, have been revealed and it looks like they’re doubling down on various crossovers with other popular IPs. As we reported last year, one of their crossover sets will be with the ever popular Fallout series from Bethesda, but alongside the post-apocalyptic setting will be the Assassin’s Creed series from Ubisoft. These announcements, alongside the announcement of future sets, may breathe some further life into the classic TCG.
Both the Assassin’s Creed and Fallout sets will be crossover sets that mainly feature reprints of older cards with a new sheen featuring names and artworks of their respective series. A standout for me would be the Puresteel Paladin taking the form of a Brotherhood of Steel paladin, the equipment centric card being a great fit for the tech hoarding faction, though other familiar faces such as Sarah Lyons, The Master, and cyber dog Rex show up. The Fallout sets specifically will only be sold through MagicSecretLair.com, and they’re a limited print run: Secret Lair × Fallout®: Vault Boy; Secret Lair × Fallout®: Points of Interest; and Secret Lair × Fallout®: S.P.E.C.I.A.L. come in regular ($29.99) and foil editions ($39.99), again at MagicSecretLair.com if that tickles your fancy.
The Assassin’s Creed crossover features much of the same conceptually, as many of the familiar names and faces from the history spanning series show up for their Magic set, such as Ezio and Altair, with their own original mechanics revolving around the “assassin” creature type.
Though that’s not the only thing Magic has featured this weekend. They’ve also announced future traditional Magic sets in Bloomburrow, a plane which features animal characters and no humans in what’s undoubtedly a callback to Magic’s Lorwyn set. They’ve also announced Outlaws of Thunder Junction, a wild west inspired set featuring the infamous Oko making his return. Hopefully he doesn’t break the game again!
Speaking of breaking the game, the final announcement is a pretty big one: Modern Horizons 3. The first two Modern Horizon sets aren’t looked at too fondly by Magic players, but Wizards has a chance to really redeem the brand name here, bringing back classic Magic creatures in the Eldrazi, specifically a new Emrakul, as well as reprinting the fetch lands and busted card Solitude, which will be sure to ease some of the strain on Magic players’ wallets.
It’s sure to be an exciting 2024 for Magic the Gathering, and Wizards seems to be redoubling their efforts both to appeal to a new more casual crowd with these crossovers, as well as appealing to their competitive players with impressive coverage for the Pro Tour this weekend alongside a new Modern Horizons set. If you want to dip your toes into Magic but don’t want to make a big financial decision quite yet, then be sure to try Magic the Gathering Arena on PC for free, also available on Steam.