In my recent article, I went over WotC’s obsession with the money-printing “Universes Beyond” sets. The Final Fantasy and Lord of the Rings sets alone have made the company millions and brought excitement and new faces to the game. There’s only one problem, at least for WotC, and that’s demand. With the plethora of extremely sought-after products, WotC continues to run into a production problem; they don’t have enough cardboard crack for anyone. The problem for their consumers? Product exhaustion.
Undying Supply Issues
Your friendly local game store (FLGS) is continually getting a lot less product than they ordered. I mentioned the secondary market in my last article briefly, but these issues are the heart of the toxicity that plagues it. High demand, distribution changes, friction in the supply chain, and overarching Hasbro company policy are our main villains in this story. If you ask your FLGS, it’s actually a plot to boost demand and profitability, but WotC doesn’t get a kickback from the secondary market, so that one will stay a grand conspiracy—for now.
The GOAT is Just Like Us
In 2024, the legend himself, Head Designer Mark Rosewater, acknowledged “product exhaustion” plaguing players. Their solution was to drop the total number of sets per year from nine to seven. However, despite these recent efforts, players and retailers alike are still reporting supply issues. Dropping a couple of sets is fine, especially re-release sets such as Innistrad Remastered, but the real exhaustion comes from WotC’s constant barrage of non-Standard legal products.
How Do I Hold All These Cards?
I’ve previously discussed my least favorite WotC product: Secret Lairs. As of the writing of this article, there are thirty-three Secret Lairs released this year. Each of these ranges from $50 to over $200. Some contain new cards that you can only get from that drop (initially), while most give you somewhere between 10 and 30 cards of varying values. If you’re a collector, my wallet hurts for you. If you’re a casual player, you are going to be extremely confused when a five-thousand-dollar Commander deck player drops a “Deadpool Trading Card” on you to steal your card text. Did that sentence confuse you? Don’t worry, it confused me too—and I’m a twenty-plus-year degenerate veteran.
Well, that was a downer, but let’s talk about my favorite format: Commander! If you play Commander, especially if you like the Preconstructed decks (PreCons) that are released alongside each set, you only have to shell out fifty bucks per deck! There are only around thirteen decks released this year, each with their own unique cards you can only get from those decks. How many products are we at now? Fifty-three? With Q4 just around the corner, we might hit sixty-nine! (Nice)
Are all of these really problems, though? Can you have “too much” of a nice thing? Yes, we’re talking about product exhaustion. Unfortunately for me, someone far removed from both primary and secondary markets, a plethora of semi-decent content is not a great thing. Printing inconsistencies (misprints) have become increasingly more frequent as the great content wheel churns out our paper sausage. I mentioned a noticeable dip in design quality previously when I talked about legendary creature design, and it’s unfortunately gotten worse.
The Digital Multiverse and Future Sights
With the upcoming release of the Spider-Man Universes Beyond set, WotC has run into a major problem. If you keep up with Marvel, Disney, and Sony licensing drama (very interesting, I know), you’ll know that Spider-Man has been a golden goose that everyone wants to carve from. The physical release of the set doesn’t have many issues, besides many mediocre card designs that are just previous mechanics tacked on at random, but the digital release is unique. Simply put, there isn’t one. If you play online, you will not be able to slot your favorite webslingers of the Spider-Verse into your decks. However, you will be able to slide mechanically identical cards into your deck with the digital release of “Through the Omenpaths.” WotC, due to competing digital TCGs that feature Marvel characters, has had to take every Spider-Man card and remake them for the online space. New art, new names, but otherwise identical. Chances are this won’t be the last time we see this happen since we have confirmed Marvel Universes Beyond sets coming next year, which will run into the same issues.
With new art and new names comes a couple of problems. First and foremost is the allocation of design resources that will need to be expended each time this happens. Secondly is the confusion among players. The Professor of Tolarian Community College YouTube fame described this problem many moons ago, and I highly suggest you check it out if you want a full breakdown of why having two versions of the same card within different spaces is a bad time, especially for the casual player.
So I agree with the broader Magic community and Mark Rosewater, the GOAT; less product=less product exhaustion. When it comes to cards that will live within MTG forever, please, quality over quantity. The community has proven that: if you print it, they will come (and then buy it all).
