Tales of the success of Magic: the Gathering’s Closing Fantasy set might sound enormously exaggerated, however they don’t seem to be. It was the fastest-selling Magic enlargement ever, to the purpose that distributors and retailers skilled important product shortages.
To wit: A Closing Fantasy collector booster presently sells for over $120 at tgcplayer.com, and a collector field goes for over $1,300. These resale costs pale compared to the information that dropped some days in the past from Hasbro’s Q2 monetary outcomes: Magic: the Gathering – Closing Fantasy produced over $200 million in income in simply at some point, the proprietor of Wizards of the Coast stated. The file was beforehand held by The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Center-earth set, which took six months to succeed in that quantity.
Magic’s Universes Past sequence, which mixes the gameplay of the favored buying and selling card sport with well-known properties, has been controversial from its onset, however nobody can query its monetary success. First launched by Secret Lair drops and Commander-specific merchandise, Universes Past absolutely bloomed in 2022 with The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Center-earth, which was designed for Restricted play and to be included within the Trendy Constructed format. This set was extensively thought-about to be MTG’s best-selling thus far, with Hasbro CEO Chris Cox stating in 2023 that the $200 million in income over six months that the Lord of the Rings set introduced was roughly double what different high-performing units had generated up to now.
Cox talked about LotR once more within the 2025 investor Q&A throughout the earnings name. He stated it’s simple to know why a Lord of the Rings set carried out so nicely, as “it’s form of the granddaddy of fantasy. It invented the style, main books, main films, main animation and video games.” The MTG set additionally nailed the tone of the unique story and setting, not least due to its masterful artwork path.
Magic: The Gathering—Closing Fantasy blew that out of the water, incomes in at some point what The Lord of the Rings earned in six months. Cox made an incredible evaluation of the success of the set when he stated throughout the Q&A that “the overlap of fan bases was stronger.” Being a franchise born from gaming, Closing Fantasy has extra enchantment to TCG gamers, however that can not be the one rationalization.
Picture: Wizards of the Coast/Amazon
Clearly, for the success of a Universes Past set, it’s paramount to seek out “the correct IPs which are nice adjacencies to what Magic followers would possibly enchantment to or what Magic would possibly enchantment to a different fan base,” as Cox stated. Nonetheless, a part of that success, in Closing Fantasy’s case, can also be as a consequence of Wizards of the Coast absolutely committing to creating a Universes Past set “good” when it comes to creativity and mechanics. Similar to with LotR, gamers can actually “really feel” the world of Closing Fantasy after they have a look at, or play with, the playing cards from Closing Fantasy. It was an absolute house run, little doubt, but it surely additionally set a reasonably excessive bar for the upcoming Universes Past set, Marvel’s Spider-Man.
In concept, Spider-Man is a much more mainstream IP than Closing Fantasy. Spider-Man is a popular culture icon, however that received’t essentially translate into record-breaking gross sales for a Magic set. The overlap of fan bases appears lots much less doubtless right here, as Spider-Man followers usually are not essentially avid gamers, not like Closing Fantasy followers. It is going to be as much as Wizards to ship a product that’s on the identical degree as Lord of the Rings and Closing Fantasy. (As a long-time Spidey fan, I’m able to burn my hard-earned cash on this, however provided that it offers me the identical feeling of stepping right into a world I already love that the opposite two profitable units achieved.)
The Lord of the Rings is the labor of a single man, and Tolkien’s fingerprints are clearly seen in each web page, scene, and character. The Closing Fantasy video games all have totally different settings and characters, however the franchise efficiently managed to keep up a unifying fashion — and Magic enlisting iconic artist Yoshitaka Amano to design a few of the Closing Fantasy playing cards absolutely helped in promoting that. Spider-Man, however, has been drawn by lots of of artists; his phrases and its characters are the results of simply as many writers. That feeling of recognition and rightfulness that led to the success of Lord of the Rings and Closing Fantasy received’t essentially be there when a Spidey fan seems to be at a card from Marvel’s Spider-Man.
Nonetheless, the set is simply behind the nook, and with Wizards’ packed Magic: the Gathering launch schedule — means too quick, should you ask me — spoilers will emerge quickly. I hope that Marvel’s Spider-Man will likely be one other success, but it surely’s going to be very exhausting to succeed in the unimaginable benchmark set by Magic: The Gathering—Closing Fantasy.