MTG + Warhammer 40K Crossover – Questions & Answers
Wizards of the Coast is teaming up with Games Workshop to develop a 40k Magic Set. We had some questions and the answers came later.
In case you missed the news, it was confirmed by GW and WotC that yes, a Warhammer: 40,000 Magic set is in the works. When this announcement first hit the scene, there was a LOT of speculation as to what this actually means for both games and for both universes. Are Planeswalkers going to show up in the Imperium? Will the Tyranids have to deal with Slivers? How will the Orks of 40k treat the Goblins of Magic!?
Sure, some of those questions are a tad silly, but the point stands – how deep does this crossover go? We had some more questions and thankfully, WotC put out a bit more info on the set and their new branding.
Welcome To Universes Beyond
“Universes Beyond will act as a brand within Magic: The Gathering—existing in addition to and alongside our existing line of products.”
To denote this new brand of cards, they will have a special holofoil stamp that denotes them as Universes Beyond cards:
If you picked up The Walking Dead Secret Lair set, then this should look familiar. And yes, TWD set will retroactively be added to the Universes Beyond line of cards.
“Universes Beyond products will generally be sold in all Magic channels…”
Now, that doesn’t mean that all Universes Beyond cards will be exclusively released from the Secret Lair – in fact, these cards are planned to be released through the standard MTG channels. There may be more Secret Lair releases in the future that include Universes Beyond but it’s not strictly limited to that type of release.
“Universes Beyond cards will not be Standard legal.“
This is a BIG one. So MTG players, you can put the pitchforks down when you see a Space Marine show up on cardstock. Relax – they aren’t going to impact Standard play. They will, however, have a Commander Deck which was announced (so far) and so will Lord of the Rings. According to WotC “This is purely a cool thing we’re doing in addition to all the other cool things we’re already doing.” It’s for fun so try to have some fun with it.
“For now, we’re reserving the Universes Beyond branding for worlds outside those built by Wizards of the Coast. “
Since the worlds of 40k and LotR are clearly outside of the ones built by WotC, they will still be their own things. This is just a special place where those game worlds can crossover and have cards you can play MTG with.
“...fans who have seen us try out a variety of treatments for cards featuring characters from other universes might wonder if we’re utilizing the treatment from the Ikoria Godzilla cards—existing Magic cards skinned with the alternate universe—or the treatment used for The Walking Dead—alternate universe cards that stand on their own. The answer is “both,” but often we’ll default to letting these cards stand on their own.“
So yeah, you might see more cool reskinned cards from other pop culture icons show up. Again, it’s just a fun and cool thing WotC is doing with the cards.
We’ll have to see if this “doorway” is going to open up to other things in the future. Could we see the Guilds of Ravnica show up on a 40k tabletop? Probably not anytime soon. It’s a *tad* more complex develop an entirely new army for a tabletop game vs developing and printing out new cards for MTG. Could we see one-off minis in the future? Who knows! I’m not going to hold my breath but I’m also not going to count that idea out. For now, we’re just going to have to wait and see what this whole Universes Beyond set brings us in 2022.
See, crossing the streams can be fun! And sometimes worlding ending – but mostly fun!
