5 ms·
United Wizards of the Coast recognized by NLRB
- protocolture 3mo agoPinkertons inbound
- Avicebron 3mo agoHopefully 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.
- sevenzero 3mo agoThese collabs actively made me stop playing...
- BlueTemplar 3mo agoThose 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.
- p1necone 3mo agoI 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.
- kayson 3mo agoI 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...
- dimitrios1 3mo agomy 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.
- cloudking 3mo agoIt's painfully obvious these decisions were not made by people who play Magic
- hungryhobbit 3mo agoSame 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.
- josh_p 3mo agoI’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.
- hungryhobbit 3mo agoI think it's legit to criticize a game that was fantasy only (about MAGIC) for decades ... when it stopped being that.
- josh_p 3mo agoI 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.
- Ferret7446 3mo agoA setting with planeswalkers is just asking for random "in universe" collabs. Same disease as multiverses. Note to writers: yes, adding multi dimension shenanigans keeps your options open, but remember that limitation breeds creativity.
- bluefirebrand 3mo agoI 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
- Ekaros 3mo agoIt is just weird how much of it is treated as investment in medium term or simply gambling. Well gambling has always been part in sense. But now for purely monetary gain. Well in current financial market maybe it works, but still feels just so weird.
- s1artibartfast 3mo agoSeems 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
- pwillia7 3mo agofeels so gross
- JuniperMesos 3mo agoAs 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.
- mulmen 3mo agoNobody 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.
- grimgrin 3mo agoyeah. 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_sets#Expansion_sets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Magic:_The_Gathering_s... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Magic:_The_Gathering_novels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Magic:_The_Gathering_n...
- __turbobrew__ 3mo agoThere is a whole format of pre-2018 legacy due to how starkly game design changed that year.
- grimgrin 3mo agoto verify, you're talking about https://prefiremagic.com/ https://prefiremagic.com/ aye? cool, was only familiar with predh, which scryfall also filters on https://scryfall.com/search?q=f%3Apredh+is%3Acommander&unique=cards&as=grid&order=name https://scryfall.com/search?q=f%3Apredh+is%3Acommander&uniqu...
- __turbobrew__ 3mo agoI was specifically talking about PreWar Legacy (pre war of the spark), but PreFire Modern looks similar.
- hobofan 3mo agoThere 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)?
- dimitrios1 3mo agoMore 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.
- mathgeek 3mo agoSome 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.
- FanaHOVA 3mo agoFinal 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.
- hungryhobbit 3mo agoThe 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.
- FanaHOVA 3mo agoHow 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.
- wocram 3mo agoLike secret lairs, they are trying to make products that some people will adore more than products everyone will like.
- busterarm 3mo agoThe 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…
- petarb 3mo agoCongrats to the Arena team
- d4mi3n 3mo agoWorked 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.
- busterarm 3mo agoDid you not know what you were getting into? Most folks I know in Seattle have pretty commonly talked about wotc being an absolutely abysmal company to work for going all the way back to the early 00s. The only reason to be there was for the love and the buying access/perks. That access & perks are long gone. Had a friend whose dream job was to work on D&D. He's got a fairly high profile in the TTRPG space and developed one major product/book release for D&D. The experience spun him out of Hasbro and the TTRPG industry entirely.
- d4mi3n 3mo agoI knew the publishing and game industry weren’t known for good treatment of their labor, but WOTC had a fair reputation in that regard. This has apparently degraded prior to my joining the company and has continued to do so. A big motivator for organizing for many was the steady erosion of pay, benefits, and the lauded perks despite a workload that has and continues to grow tremendously.
- legitster 3mo agoAnytime 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.
- derektank 3mo agoI’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?
- sockbot 3mo agoNot 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.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- jgalt212 3mo agoBut without a monopsony how do these choose your own adventure unions have any real bargaining power?
- reverius42 3mo agoIt sounds like they'd at least have more power than a single-employer union, by virtue of being larger and having more resources.
- CapitalistCartr 3mo agoAny time you have a chance to unionize¹, do so. ¹ That's union-ize, not un-ionize.
- focusgroup0 3mo ago[dead]
- robmn 3mo ago[flagged]
- charcircuit 3mo ago[flagged]
- cwillu 3mo ago“Allowed” lol
- triceratops 3mo agoWhy do you care if the workers who make your cards are unionized or not?
- charcircuit 3mo agoIdeologies spread like viruses. If you don't keep them contained, they will spread.
- triceratops 3mo agoIt's free speech.