WOTC Announces ‘Rings of Power’ Set is Ready to Print; Just Waiting for Show’s Cancellation

Amsterdam, Netherlands–We here at The Herald have a powerful drive to cover breaking Magic: the Gathering news as soon as it is released to the public. We also have a corporate expense card we regularly charge to attend events under the guise of providing ‘necessary journalistic coverage’. As such, we attended MagicCon Amsterdam earlier this month to uncover the truth about the roadmap for the future of Magic and also get the boss off our back for all of these supplemental travel expenditures that were for completely normal, necessary, and not-worth-auditing business things like coffee and hotel rooms and stuff.

Unfortunately, we missed the entire 2027 preview panel regarding the upcoming Universes Within sets due to a scheduling conflict with our Mystery Booster 2 Unknown event hosted by Gavin Verhey. We heard something about big monsters and maybe something about water and also Africa? We’re pretty sure we didn’t miss much, but as it would turn out fortune was shining on our journalistic endeavors regardless as we sat down for the first round of the event and looked across the table at our opponent: Magic’s VP of Design Aaron Forsythe. 

He graciously took the time to answer a few of our questions during the spellslinging.

Commander’s Herald: “We’re hearing shouts from the other room vaguely about the upcoming sets based on Magic IP. Is there anything you can tell us about the Universes Beyond sets headed our way in 2027?”

Aaron Forsythe: “There’s not a lot I can say at this time, but you can look forward to some very exciting previews soon regarding the UB sets coming out later this year.”

CH: “So about those sets… we’ve been seeing a lot of excitement about The Hobbit and maybe a bit of skepticism about some of the early Star Trek previews. Is the company at all worried about running out of IP that appeals to the average Magic player’s sensibilities of what is appropriate for a fantasy card game?”

AF: “Not really. What it really comes down to is the balance, right? Spider-man and now Marvel Superheroes are our bestselling sets to date. Ninja Turtles and Avatar might have missed the mark a little, but we predict The Hobbit will likewise be a hit. Maybe Star Trek doesn’t do as well, maybe it does, but either way it should help broaden players’ ideas about what fantasy can look like in Magic. And if it doesn’t, there’s plenty more Tolkien in store too.”

CH: “More Tolkien? What do you folks plan on doing, making a set on The Silmarillion? Unfinished Tales? Shadow of Mordor?”

AF: “Oh, I probably shouldn’t have let that slip. Whatever, it’s probably fine. No, we don’t have anything in the works for any of those, we were thinking more recent than any of that, something essentially contemporary.”

We sat thinking about this for a while as the once-Team-World-Champion began shuffling Gunk cards into our library, but we were struggling to come up with any more recent Tolkien properties. After a few moments, we chimed back in.

CH: “Wait, are you making a set about the Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria video game? The only other real options would be Tales of the Shire: A The Lord of The Rings Game or The Lord of the Rings: Golem, which both seem like poor choices for a narrative set. We can’t think of a single other culturally relevant piece of officially-licensed Tolkien IP currently being produced.”

AF: “It’s incredibly reassuring to hear you say that. No, it isn’t any of those. It’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. The Amazon Prime Video series. The one that always shows up in the recommended section after you finish watching Fallout or The Boys.”

CH: “Oh. We had forgotten about that. Isn’t that show kind of a flop? Doesn’t it cost like $60 million per episode and return almost no increase in subscriptions for the platform? Is it a smart decision to start making a set about a show that is on such shaky financial footing?”

AF: “Slow your roll, guys. We are professionals; we have been making Universes Beyond products for almost six years now. We know what we are doing and we are very careful and intentional about which properties we choose to include in our product releases. Also, the set is already made.”

CH: “What do you mean the set is made? If it’s done, doesn’t it make the most sense to release it now while the show has the most cultural cache?”

AF: “No. Like I said, we’ve been doing this for a while. We know how to optimize a release schedule. When we first started Universes Beyond with Secret Lair: The Walking Dead, we intentionally did so about 5 years after the series’ peak popularity. With this upcoming Hobbit set, we’re looking at about 12 years after the last movie was made. Star Trek? God, can you think of the last time there was a good Star Trek? I can’t. This is all intentional, the one time we tried to release something at the top of the zeitgeist was Battle for Baldur’s Gate and what happened? We jumped the gun and it was a mess.”

CH: “So is it just the case that nostalgia drives sales better than hype?”

AF: “On the consumer end, sure. But there is something much, much more important at play here than the consumer: winning. That’s what went wrong with Baldur’s Gate, our set flopped and then their game became a massive hit. I don’t care how much money that made the D&D portion of Wizards; it made us here at Magic look like losers. I refuse to be a loser.”

Forsythe accidentally jostles the table as he speaks. His library falls on the ground, but he hastily and smoothly shuffles it back up and puts it onto the table. It looks a bit thicker than before and some of the cards seem slightly more worn than others. He continues.

AF: “Furthermore, it risks making a promise to future partners that we can’t keep. Y’see, we don’t want to give our brand partners the expectation that our product release will do anything to help sell or promote their properties. Their properties are here to sell and promote Magic. The suits can say what they want about ‘mutually beneficial agreements’, but ultimately there is a winner from the deal, and a loser from the deal. It’s my job to make sure we are the winners, and that means waiting for their property to fall off before I release a set featuring it. In Rings of Power‘s case, that means I’m waiting for that inevitable cancellation, baby.”

CH: “Well, that might be a pretty long while from now, no? It looks like the show is about to premier its third season and all of the signs point to a fourth season on the horizon.”

AF: “When we first heard about the show, we began work on the set immediately, well before we even secured the rights. We knew it was the perfect mix we needed to eventually make bank on a set: a setting and characters so old only your dad knows them, enough woke representation to make conservatives mad and drive engagement, and absolutely no potential to be profitable on its own merits. By the time the first season wrapped up and Amazon executives were angling to slash costs on the platform, we were salivating. We were sure we could expect a timely release by 2028 at the latest.”

Forsythe pauses as he takes his turn. He has a very lucky turn of playing 3 Mox Jets and a Tendrils of Agony. We weren’t aware those cards were in Mystery Booster 2. He continues again.

AF: “But then we heard about the steep price Jeff Bezos had paid for this little passion project, agreeing to pay out the Tolkien estate tens of millions of dollars if the series is cancelled early, and we were pretty concerned that the series might actually go the distance. Or God forbid, spawn a spin-off or two. We almost scrapped all of development and cut out losses.”

Forsythe offers the handshake after he casts a Contract From Below and finds another Tendrils, finishing us off. We oblige. As he stands up to move to his round 2 opponent, he quickly finishes his thought.

AF: “But just this week we heard that Simon Pegg had been cast to voice a balrog. That helped us calm down. Seems like everything is back on track after all.”