Anytime this comes up, it's worth pointing out how deeply weird US unionization is compared to the broader world.
There is now a union ... just for Wizards of the Coast employees. UWOTC-CWA now has a monopoly on negotiating for WotC employees. Dues flow up to the CWA, but members don't necessarily get the benefit of bargaining industry-wide. There is also no choice within WotC for what union represents you.
It's still a deeply flawed relationship, especially compared to what a median European enjoys. It's not a simple "US companies bad - EU companies good" - the NLRA is in desperate need of reform by Congress and political actors across the US have stymied progress.
I’m familiar with sectoral bargaining in the abstract but wasn’t aware European workers had the ability to choose which union represented them in negotiations. How does that work in practice?
Not only in Europe, but in Canada too. Think of the union as a corpo offering bargaining and administrative services. Unions compete with each other for workforces. The typical case would be for a newly unionizing workforce needing to choose which union to join.
It is rare, but a workforce can even choose to move to a different union.
In countries where meta-strikes are legal, the unions cooperate on basic right, and strike together when needed. Such coordination is explicitly illegal in the US, and has been since the '30s (IIRC).
In a lot of countries, it's not much different than choosing a pension fund option. You join a job, you choose which union best represents you based on your industry/title/etc (if you are not already a member). If you are not happy with your current agreement, you choose a different union that promises better outcomes.
It's so much less extreme than US unionization. There's not much reason for hostility between business and unions - unions don't get these all or nothing powers like they do in the US.
US unionization tbh sounds a bit like works council election in Germany, as that happens per business / vendor etc and fe in case of delivery apps or Tesla, Amazon etc is met with hostility
Once a workplace is unionized in the US, members have no real say or transparency to the union negotiation process. The union reps do not even have to work at the facility (in many larger unions, they are professionals paid for by the union).
Elections are only union wide, not specific to the company. And there is not really any day-to-day advisory capacity. Unions reps only exist to enforce the contract as signed.
It is common for big workplaces to have multiple unions and essentially all unions are sectoral and role-specific rather than company specific.
Take the NHS; it will have to deal with ten plus separate unions - https://nhsunions.org/#about – of which the biggest powers are the British Medical Association and the Royal College of Nursing, but the cleaners are GMB or Unite and they're huge pan-working-class institutions.
Education has to deal with the NEU, the NASUWT, and the NAHT, each of which has a different political slant. Some unions in the UK have been historically rather centrist in their politics (a good example of that is Prospect, https://prospect.org.uk/about/, which is a roll-up of a number of scientific and finance unions), some are firebreathing communists, but all of them work across employers.
There's also no such thing as a closed shop in the UK – because there are much stronger worker protections, there's less of a need for one.
It depends heavily on the country but a worker at a company can pick a union to represent them. You might see a billboards saying join Union a or Union B. If you Union a is corrupt or screwing over one group of workers in favor of another group of worker, the laborers will just leave it and go to a different one.
This solves a lot of problems with us unions, where they have a state sanctioned Monopoly on the workers.
The classic example is unions are going for terms that screw over junior members but there are other perverse examples. At my friend's company the Union demanded that it be forced to return to office because the larger number of field technicians we're a voting majority of the union and angry they couldn't work from home.
> The classic example is unions are going for terms that screw over junior members but there are other perverse examples.'
The story I always think of is the Port of Portland shutting down was because the ILWU organized a $20 million dollar slowdown to punish the operator. The operator ended up pulling out of the city never to return, costing all the ILWU workers their jobs, as well as the city of Portland a few million a year in taxes.
The reason for the $20 million dollar slow down? The ILWU wanted to take two jobs away on the site from the IBEW!
On the otherhand, having a plethora of unions at a workplace weakens labor's bargaining power: A US union, by the nature of having a closed shop, has the power to destroy the business with a prolonged strike. Nobody wants that (capital's out their investment, labor's out their jobs), but it serves as the nuclear option from which the union's bargaining power is derived.
This makes US unions very all or nothing, and excessive demands from unions (particularly RE: pensions) have driven many businesses out of business and bankrupted many municipalities.
My understanding is German and Scandinavian unions are much more collaborative and are unlikely to force demands that bankrupt companies.
This is why unions have such a negative connotation in the US. A lot of people see municipal governments being held hostage by unions over pensions and early retirement, and union employees being so hard to fire that you end up with "rubber rooms" and end up associating unions with expensive enshittification of services.
It’s not “deeply weird” but was intentionally legislated to prevent labor from obtaining similar sectorial bargaining power and political influence as they had in Europe. Some entertainment industry unions had already achieved similar stature pre-WWII and were grandfathered in, but the US learned their lesson here and explicitly sought to atomize at the workplace level.
Hopefully they can push back against some of these collabs. I have yet to meet someone who is thrilled with playing a deck with Post Malone, TMNT, or The Walking Dead in it. The best you get is indifference.
I completely lost interest in Magic when they started churning out all the licensed crossovers. It feels like they really jumped the shark compared to how they used to be - they used to seemingly care deeply about the lore, gameplay, structure of releases etc whereas now it all just feels like a cash grab.
I feel that. I really do. But I also LOVED the Avatar crossover. To be fair, I haven't played any other ones, but this one played so well and seemed to be very well thought out. They really did the IP justice.
It's also probably worth pointing out that Lego was nearing bankruptcy and was saved by a ton of licensing (and Ninjago, to be fair). Fortunately, they've used that income stream to still consistently put out a lot of high quality first party sets. Hopefully WotC doesn't lose sight...
Final Fantasy, LOTR, Avatar, are some of the best selling sets in the history of Magic. As much as I don't like some of the spiderslop, there is no real argument against printing more of it. The Hobbit set is going to be a complete blowout success.
The argument is that cashing out now destroys the long-term viability of the game ... but WotC will learn that lesson in a few years when the Magic gravy train crashes.
How many more years do you want to wait? I own a store and we have not really seen any dip in attendance. There are definitely lots of older players churning, but lots of new ones being brought in as well. It's clear the game is being Commander-ified and lots of folks who were more interested in constructed / competitive Magic aren't happy, but it doesn't mean the game will die or anything like that.
yeah. scrolling this expansion list, you can see 2018 was really the last _block_ as we knew them: few sets labeled under a theme an author might write a book about
also shortly after we see new sets stopped getting their own wiki articles
Same here: I own (literally) 50 Commander decks ... and I stopped playing 100% as soon as Transformers and My Little Ponies became cards.
Magic will either become "generic TCG that's unrecognizable to the original" or it's going to pay a very painful long-term cost for their short-term gains.
The MLP cards aren’t legal in any format and Transformers, legal in commander yes, was a very small set.
You can’t deny the popularity of the Final fantasy set. Selling that well indicates a desire.
I don’t think the small secret lair releases deserve the hate.
Wizards is still committed to making in-universe sets. The first novel in years was just published with the release of strixhaven. Every in-universe set has come with a short-story/novella length addition on the official site.
FWIW, I don’t love the marvel collab and I don’t think it fits at all. But I’m sure someone does.
I think criticism should be focused on the actual design and mechanics of sets rather than the IP. Since Wizards is committed to both their own and others. The latest Marvel set for example enables way more infinite combos in standard and is an example power creep gone bad.
I suppose that’s fair. I also think it’s okay for a game that’s been around as long as magic has to change a bit. Maybe an agree to disagree situation.
As a counter-point, I was hanging out with my brother the other day, who has recently gotten into Magic the Gathering, and he was specifically talking about the TMNT collab as something he thought was neat (I wasn't aware of that specific collab until he mentioned it). I suspect that the collabs are actually making WotC a decent amount of money, because people who do not share your specific tastes are buying them.
Nobody doubts they are making money. It’s literally a nostalgia cash grab. The question is how much that money will cost WotC in reputational harm and loyal customers.
The average duration that anyone is actively playing a TCG is something like 2 years. There’s also way more players than ever. Most of the new players never engage in online community around their game.
So you may not hear a lot of excitement but that’s still the minority opinion. Universes Beyond sell like gangbusters.
I remember multiple players at my local’s prerelease for TMNT saying that was the most fun they’d had playing a prerelease in years. And none of these things have really sunk in the secondary market after they’ve gone out of print.
Heck my Warhammer 40K collector commander decks are up several hundred percent post release. And I’ve made a small fortune buying up all the things the online MTG community seems to hate…
There are ~25k total different MTG cards. Who cares if even 1k of them are for collabs (as long as they don't contain broken cards that end up in tournament play)?
Some folks really love the story of MtG. Think of it as if you were expected, as a dungeon master, to allow your players to be Spongebob. Some folks won’t care, others will have their experience ruined.
The sets also increase the number of legal cards you have to purchase to keep up with the meta.
Seems highly unlikely. Us unions Almost Never have input in product strategy and marketing decisions. That isn't part of their Union contract and they don't have a seat at the table of governance
(People might not know the inside joke here, namely that WotC has in the past sent the actual Pinkertons after some people suspected of leaking unreleased cards)
Worked in tech for a long time before I got to WOTC. Went through a lot of layoffs and short term executive decisions that invariably leave anyone without preferred stock out to dry. Wish I had a union then. Glad to have one now.
Edit: Words are my own. I am not a rep of WOTC or Hasbro.
Anytime this comes up, it's worth pointing out how deeply weird US unionization is compared to the broader world.
There is now a union ... just for Wizards of the Coast employees. UWOTC-CWA now has a monopoly on negotiating for WotC employees. Dues flow up to the CWA, but members don't necessarily get the benefit of bargaining industry-wide. There is also no choice within WotC for what union represents you.
It's still a deeply flawed relationship, especially compared to what a median European enjoys. It's not a simple "US companies bad - EU companies good" - the NLRA is in desperate need of reform by Congress and political actors across the US have stymied progress.
I’m familiar with sectoral bargaining in the abstract but wasn’t aware European workers had the ability to choose which union represented them in negotiations. How does that work in practice?
Not only in Europe, but in Canada too. Think of the union as a corpo offering bargaining and administrative services. Unions compete with each other for workforces. The typical case would be for a newly unionizing workforce needing to choose which union to join.
It is rare, but a workforce can even choose to move to a different union.
But without a monopsony how do these choose your own adventure unions have any real bargaining power?
In countries where meta-strikes are legal, the unions cooperate on basic right, and strike together when needed. Such coordination is explicitly illegal in the US, and has been since the '30s (IIRC).
It sounds like they'd at least have more power than a single-employer union, by virtue of being larger and having more resources.
I'd much rather run a factory where only 10% of my workers may strike than one where 90% may strike.
Depends on the country.
In a lot of countries, it's not much different than choosing a pension fund option. You join a job, you choose which union best represents you based on your industry/title/etc (if you are not already a member). If you are not happy with your current agreement, you choose a different union that promises better outcomes.
It's so much less extreme than US unionization. There's not much reason for hostility between business and unions - unions don't get these all or nothing powers like they do in the US.
US unionization tbh sounds a bit like works council election in Germany, as that happens per business / vendor etc and fe in case of delivery apps or Tesla, Amazon etc is met with hostility
Maybe if you squint a little.
Once a workplace is unionized in the US, members have no real say or transparency to the union negotiation process. The union reps do not even have to work at the facility (in many larger unions, they are professionals paid for by the union).
Elections are only union wide, not specific to the company. And there is not really any day-to-day advisory capacity. Unions reps only exist to enforce the contract as signed.
It is common for big workplaces to have multiple unions and essentially all unions are sectoral and role-specific rather than company specific.
Take the NHS; it will have to deal with ten plus separate unions - https://nhsunions.org/#about – of which the biggest powers are the British Medical Association and the Royal College of Nursing, but the cleaners are GMB or Unite and they're huge pan-working-class institutions.
Education has to deal with the NEU, the NASUWT, and the NAHT, each of which has a different political slant. Some unions in the UK have been historically rather centrist in their politics (a good example of that is Prospect, https://prospect.org.uk/about/, which is a roll-up of a number of scientific and finance unions), some are firebreathing communists, but all of them work across employers.
There's also no such thing as a closed shop in the UK – because there are much stronger worker protections, there's less of a need for one.
(I was, at one time, in a majority-UCU workplace; https://www.ucu.org.uk.)
There's also nothing stopping people being in multiple unions, a lot of IWW members are.
It depends heavily on the country but a worker at a company can pick a union to represent them. You might see a billboards saying join Union a or Union B. If you Union a is corrupt or screwing over one group of workers in favor of another group of worker, the laborers will just leave it and go to a different one.
This solves a lot of problems with us unions, where they have a state sanctioned Monopoly on the workers.
The classic example is unions are going for terms that screw over junior members but there are other perverse examples. At my friend's company the Union demanded that it be forced to return to office because the larger number of field technicians we're a voting majority of the union and angry they couldn't work from home.
> The classic example is unions are going for terms that screw over junior members but there are other perverse examples.'
The story I always think of is the Port of Portland shutting down was because the ILWU organized a $20 million dollar slowdown to punish the operator. The operator ended up pulling out of the city never to return, costing all the ILWU workers their jobs, as well as the city of Portland a few million a year in taxes.
The reason for the $20 million dollar slow down? The ILWU wanted to take two jobs away on the site from the IBEW!
On the otherhand, having a plethora of unions at a workplace weakens labor's bargaining power: A US union, by the nature of having a closed shop, has the power to destroy the business with a prolonged strike. Nobody wants that (capital's out their investment, labor's out their jobs), but it serves as the nuclear option from which the union's bargaining power is derived.
This makes US unions very all or nothing, and excessive demands from unions (particularly RE: pensions) have driven many businesses out of business and bankrupted many municipalities.
My understanding is German and Scandinavian unions are much more collaborative and are unlikely to force demands that bankrupt companies.
This is why unions have such a negative connotation in the US. A lot of people see municipal governments being held hostage by unions over pensions and early retirement, and union employees being so hard to fire that you end up with "rubber rooms" and end up associating unions with expensive enshittification of services.
It’s not “deeply weird” but was intentionally legislated to prevent labor from obtaining similar sectorial bargaining power and political influence as they had in Europe. Some entertainment industry unions had already achieved similar stature pre-WWII and were grandfathered in, but the US learned their lesson here and explicitly sought to atomize at the workplace level.
Hopefully they can push back against some of these collabs. I have yet to meet someone who is thrilled with playing a deck with Post Malone, TMNT, or The Walking Dead in it. The best you get is indifference.
I completely lost interest in Magic when they started churning out all the licensed crossovers. It feels like they really jumped the shark compared to how they used to be - they used to seemingly care deeply about the lore, gameplay, structure of releases etc whereas now it all just feels like a cash grab.
I feel that. I really do. But I also LOVED the Avatar crossover. To be fair, I haven't played any other ones, but this one played so well and seemed to be very well thought out. They really did the IP justice.
It's also probably worth pointing out that Lego was nearing bankruptcy and was saved by a ton of licensing (and Ninjago, to be fair). Fortunately, they've used that income stream to still consistently put out a lot of high quality first party sets. Hopefully WotC doesn't lose sight...
my favorite cEDH commander of recent memory is Aang at the Crossroads. Cast your commander, and roll the dice to see if you find the win.
Final Fantasy, LOTR, Avatar, are some of the best selling sets in the history of Magic. As much as I don't like some of the spiderslop, there is no real argument against printing more of it. The Hobbit set is going to be a complete blowout success.
The argument is that cashing out now destroys the long-term viability of the game ... but WotC will learn that lesson in a few years when the Magic gravy train crashes.
How many more years do you want to wait? I own a store and we have not really seen any dip in attendance. There are definitely lots of older players churning, but lots of new ones being brought in as well. It's clear the game is being Commander-ified and lots of folks who were more interested in constructed / competitive Magic aren't happy, but it doesn't mean the game will die or anything like that.
yeah. scrolling this expansion list, you can see 2018 was really the last _block_ as we knew them: few sets labeled under a theme an author might write a book about
also shortly after we see new sets stopped getting their own wiki articles
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Magic:_The_Gathering_s...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Magic:_The_Gathering_n...
There is a whole format of pre-2018 legacy due to how starkly game design changed that year.
Same here: I own (literally) 50 Commander decks ... and I stopped playing 100% as soon as Transformers and My Little Ponies became cards.
Magic will either become "generic TCG that's unrecognizable to the original" or it's going to pay a very painful long-term cost for their short-term gains.
I’m “uhm acshually”-ing a bit.
The MLP cards aren’t legal in any format and Transformers, legal in commander yes, was a very small set.
You can’t deny the popularity of the Final fantasy set. Selling that well indicates a desire.
I don’t think the small secret lair releases deserve the hate.
Wizards is still committed to making in-universe sets. The first novel in years was just published with the release of strixhaven. Every in-universe set has come with a short-story/novella length addition on the official site.
FWIW, I don’t love the marvel collab and I don’t think it fits at all. But I’m sure someone does.
I think criticism should be focused on the actual design and mechanics of sets rather than the IP. Since Wizards is committed to both their own and others. The latest Marvel set for example enables way more infinite combos in standard and is an example power creep gone bad.
Nobody playing commander ever made a stink about peoples alters at the table
People are trying to rationalize their behavior based on their hurt feelings
I think it's legit to criticize a game that was fantasy only (about MAGIC) for decades ... when it stopped being that.
I suppose that’s fair. I also think it’s okay for a game that’s been around as long as magic has to change a bit. Maybe an agree to disagree situation.
As a counter-point, I was hanging out with my brother the other day, who has recently gotten into Magic the Gathering, and he was specifically talking about the TMNT collab as something he thought was neat (I wasn't aware of that specific collab until he mentioned it). I suspect that the collabs are actually making WotC a decent amount of money, because people who do not share your specific tastes are buying them.
Nobody doubts they are making money. It’s literally a nostalgia cash grab. The question is how much that money will cost WotC in reputational harm and loyal customers.
Like secret lairs, they are trying to make products that some people will adore more than products everyone will like.
It's painfully obvious these decisions were not made by people who play Magic
The average duration that anyone is actively playing a TCG is something like 2 years. There’s also way more players than ever. Most of the new players never engage in online community around their game.
So you may not hear a lot of excitement but that’s still the minority opinion. Universes Beyond sell like gangbusters.
I remember multiple players at my local’s prerelease for TMNT saying that was the most fun they’d had playing a prerelease in years. And none of these things have really sunk in the secondary market after they’ve gone out of print.
Heck my Warhammer 40K collector commander decks are up several hundred percent post release. And I’ve made a small fortune buying up all the things the online MTG community seems to hate…
There are ~25k total different MTG cards. Who cares if even 1k of them are for collabs (as long as they don't contain broken cards that end up in tournament play)?
Some folks really love the story of MtG. Think of it as if you were expected, as a dungeon master, to allow your players to be Spongebob. Some folks won’t care, others will have their experience ruined.
The sets also increase the number of legal cards you have to purchase to keep up with the meta.
More than 50% of sets are now UB, and UB has been standard legal since ~mid 2025.
There's quite a few new cEDH staples from UB sets as well.
I don't think current WOTC actually cares if people play MTG at all, only if they continue buying cards. It has become a collectible more than a game
These collabs actively made me stop playing...
Seems highly unlikely. Us unions Almost Never have input in product strategy and marketing decisions. That isn't part of their Union contract and they don't have a seat at the table of governance
Those would be easy in comparison to the Marvel (Disney) ones. 6 expected sets !
Not to mention that it's the Arena workers, they are downstream of the card design process.
feels so gross
Any time you have a chance to unionize¹, do so.
¹ That's union-ize, not un-ionize.
Congrats to the Arena team
Pinkertons inbound
(People might not know the inside joke here, namely that WotC has in the past sent the actual Pinkertons after some people suspected of leaking unreleased cards)
Might also be a reference to the Homestead strike et al. Pinkertons were often employed as strikebreakers.
Worked in tech for a long time before I got to WOTC. Went through a lot of layoffs and short term executive decisions that invariably leave anyone without preferred stock out to dry. Wish I had a union then. Glad to have one now.
Edit: Words are my own. I am not a rep of WOTC or Hasbro.
Hasbro shouldn't have allowed this. Now it's time for a new company to take over the rights of making new MtG cards.
“Allowed” lol