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Tag: Wizards of the Coast

  • ‘Fallout’ Returns to ‘Magic: The Gathering’ and Secret Lair

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    Season two of Fallout may be almost over, but the tie-ins keep on a-coming via Magic: The Gathering’s Secret Lair line.

    Earlier this week, Wizards of the Coast announced four new drops spanning “the Fallout world…in one unmistakably irradiated lineup.” One drop, “Beyond Vault 33,” has characters from the show—the core trio of Lucy, Maximus, and Ghoul—making their Magic debut, complete with “new-to-Magic” designs. Other drops have cards focused on dogs, the irradiated wasteland, and New Vegas. Similar to the Monster Hunter collab, some cards are reskins of pre-established ones: “Mesmeric Orb” is here reflavored as “Mothman Egg,” “Yoshimaru, Ever Faithful” is “Dogmeat, Constant Companion,” and so on.

    Non-foil packs for “Beyond Vault 33” will run $40, and the foil version will be $50. Non-foils for “Greet the Dog,” “Rad,” and “Welcome to New Vegas” are $30 each, and their foil versions are $40.

    This marks the second time the RPG franchise has been part of Magic: in 2024, Wizards released a quartet of Commander decks based specifically on the games, as part of a larger collaboration with major gaming series like Final Fantasy and Assassin’s Creed. No word yet on if Magic will double dip on Creed when that live-action show eventually arrives, but depending on this upcoming Fallout drop fares, that might be in the cards.

    Fallout will come to Secret Lair on Monday, January 26, with  a pre-queue opening up at 8 AM PT, an hour before sales go live.

    Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

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    Justin Carter

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  • Don’t count on Baldur’s Gate 3 coming to Switch 2, as least for now

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    Nintendo Switch 2 owners can forget about seeing Baldur’s Gate 3 in the Nintendo Store, at least as of now. In a Reddit AMA, Larian Studio’s CEO, Swen Vicke, said that the team would have loved to bring the title to Switch 2, but “it wasn’t our decision to make.”

    As cryptic as that may sound, Vicke’s response hints that either Wizards of the Coast, which owns the Dungeons and Dragons IP that Baldur’s Gate 3 is set in, or Nintendo is behind the lack of a port. When it comes to Wizards of the Coast, rumors have circulated that the game studio and Wizards of the Coast may have a strained relationship. On the other hand, Larian Studios’ technical director, Bert van Semmertier, revealed in a response to another AMA question that the studio just released Divinity: Original Sin 2 on the Switch 2, adding that “we love the platform and we will certainly consider Switch 2 for the next Divinity game.”

    There’s still a chance that Wizards of the Coast decides to hire another studio to pursue a port in the future, but there’s been no indication yet. As for why Larian Studios won’t be behind a potential Switch 2 port, the developer said in a statement last year that it would no longer develop any major content updates or expansions for Baldur’s Gate 3, nor work on a sequel.

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    Jackson Chen

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  • ‘Magic: The Gathering’ Is Scrapping Its ‘Monster Hunter’ Crossover and Starting Over

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    It’s been a good year as far as Wizards of the Coast is concerned when it comes to Magic: The Gathering and its “Universes Beyond” collaborations. Final Fantasy made a ton of money, plenty more themed sets are on the way, and people have started to slowly but surely accept more and more that the crossover sets are part of the game’s future. So it’s probably not great then that the company has had to publicly and embarrassingly pull the plug on one of its latest collaborations and try to do better.

    That’s exactly what’s happening with the upcoming Monster Hunter card set being crafted for Secret Lair, Wizards of the Coast’s limited-time special release store. Revealed just weeks ago after an early press release published by Wizards leaked the collaboration’s existence, the set is now being pulled from its planned December 1 release.

    “Like many of you, we’re big fans of Monster Hunter. It’s why we put this Superdrop together,” a statement published on the official Magic: The Gathering website reads in part. “But in our excitement, we missed the mark on elements like card selection and faithfully integrating the world and mechanics of Monster Hunter. As a result, the overall construction of this Superdrop is not up to the standard you have come to expect.”

    “Pulling Superdrops back isn’t something we’re going to do very often, but we’re committed to doing better,” the statement continues. “Capcom is on board for us to take another swing at this Superdrop as well.”

    Ever since the collaboration’s accidental reveal, Magic players and Monster Hunter fans alike have criticized Wizard’s choices for cards used to receive the Monster Hunter art, both representing a swath of Magic cards that usually don’t command the value that cards usually selected for superdrops (which themselves can cost $30-40 or more, depending on size and scope), and cards that didn’t seem to fit with the flavoring they were being designated with—such as creatures over pieces of gear from the game being used to represent artifact cards, or certain cards from Magic‘s color wheel, and the usual elemental archetypes they represent, not being reflected in the Monster Hunter beasts they’re reskinned as.

    It further didn’t help that several cards included spelling errors, notably the Champion of Lambholt reskin, “Champion of Kotoko,” a misspelling of “Kokoto,” the village that serves as the main hub of the original Monster Hunter as well as Monster Hunter Freedom.

    If Magic fans have been at least willing to accept Universes Beyond when it meant both flavorful theming of whatever license was being used and mechanically exciting cards, the Monster Hunter superdrop represented players’ worst fears about it: awkward, clumsy tie-ins that served neither fans of the crossover nor players of Magic. At least this time, Wizards of the Coast agreed—but as it begins to make Universes Beyond even more present in the cycle of Magic releases, a mishap like this one is only going to make Magic players less receptive.

    Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

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    James Whitbrook

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  • ‘Monster Hunter’ is Dropping Into ‘Magic: The Gathering’

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    ‘Magic: The Gathering’ has been snatching up plenty of IP for Secret Lair, so it’s latest catch is the hit ‘Monster Hunter’ games.

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    Justin Carter

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  • Wizards of the Coast Is Bringing the Original Creators of ‘Dragonlance’ Back

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    While Dragonlance has endured as one of the most beloved worlds created for the D&D universe, with dozens upon dozens of novels fleshing out Krynn ever since Margaret Weis and Laura and Tracy Hickman kicked off the setting 41 years ago. But in D&D‘s modern era, it’s been more of the Dragonlance novels that have thrived rather than as an officially supported tabletop setting. Now, that might be about to change.

    Late yesterday (via Polygon), Dan Ayoub—Wizards of the Coast’s latest head of the D&D franchise after series stalwarts, creative director Chris Perkins and game director Jeremy Crawford, retired and left for Critical Role’s Darrington Press imprint—shared a picture of himself with Weis and the Hickmans, alongside actor and D&D enthusiast (and perhaps even more particularly pertinent here, Dragonlance enthusiast) Joe Manganiello, at the tabletop game’s offices.

    “When I took over D&D, I had some very specific folks I wanted to bring back to the Table,” Ayoub said. “Today, I had the honor of welcoming these folks back home. Amazing things ahead.”

    Although Ayoub didn’t specifically announce anything, bringing together the Hickmans and Weis and putting Manganiello there in a literal Dragonlance shirt (he also previously worked with the trio on an attempted Dragonlance TV project but confirmed it was dead last year) seems to be heavily implying that the setting will be brought to the fore again as the tabletop game carries on its latest revised iteration. Although Dragonlance has been a staple of the D&D tabletop game as much as it provided the foundational work for D&D novels when the setting was introduced in 1984, the 5th edition of Dungeons & Dragons only released a single module (and an accompanying tabletop skirmish miniatures game) for the setting, Shadow of the Dragon Queen, in 2022.

    We currently don’t know what Wizards of the Coast’s plans may be—it might not be for D&D tabletop specifically, but other tie-in Dragonlance projects; it could, somehow, even be unrelated to the setting, and the creators of Dragonlance, alongside a famous fan of Dragonlance, are simply doing something else with the company entirely. But the odds on a return to Krynn in some format seem worth rolling the dice on at this point.

    Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

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    James Whitbrook

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  • ‘Payday’ Dev Starbreeze Kills Co-Op ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ Game

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    After the success of Baldur’s Gate 3, there’s been talk of Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast releasing more games based on Dungeons & Dragons. Bad news for fans looking forward to that: one of them, a title codenamed “Project Baxter,” has been fully canceled.

    The title was in development over at Swedish developer Starbreeze, best known for the Payday franchise and 2012’s Syndicate. In a recent announcement, CEO Adolf Kristjansson said the “difficult but necessary decision” came as the studio is prioritizing a full revamp of its co-op heist franchise Payday. As such, “Baxter” development has been ended, and some of its assigned developers will be “redeployed across Starbreeze’s projects.” Others will be let go and given help by Starbreeze to find employment elsewhere.

    “Baxter” was first announced in 2023, with Starbreeze at the time stating it’d feature “signature cornerstones” of its prior works like a live-service model and cooperative play. While the studio’s been quiet on it since then, the game would’ve released sometime in 2026 for “all major platforms.” Around this time in 2024, Starbreeze showed off concept art with a tease that it would show more in the near future.

    Dungeons & Dragons is no stranger to live-service games: before Baldur’s Gate 3, there was a co-op-focused reboot of Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance in 2021, and its online servers shut down this past February. Wizards of the Coast, which owns D&D, also cancelled five unannounced games prior to Baldur’s release, some of which were likely D&D games. At the time of writing, a single-player action game from Giant Skull set in the D&D universe—and led by Star Wars: Jedi director Stig Asmussen—remains in development.

    Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

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    Justin Carter

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  • ‘Magic: The Gathering’ Gets New ‘Final Fantasy,’ PlayStation Cards

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    Wizards of the Coast is far from done with its crossover decks for Magic: The Gathering. After Final Fantasy and Spider-Man this year, coming up next is more Final Fantasy and PlayStation, of all things.

    During a Friday panel at MagicCon Atlanta, the company revealed a new suite of Final Fantasy cards and products. On Friday, December 5, new Scene Boxes, the Chocobo Bundle, and the Final Fantasy VII Commander Deck will be available at retailers. Scene and Chocobo boxes will come with different amounts of Play Boosters—three boosters for Scene Boxes, and 10 for Chocobo—plus a number of cards in different formats like track foil, foil borderless, and non-foil. Scene Boxes, which have “Children of Fate,” “Garland at the Chaos Shrine,” and “Camp Comrades” cover art (covering Final Fantasy VIII, the original Final Fantasy, and Final Fantasy XV, respectively), come with a display easel to pose the art cards, while Chocobo bundles feature a themed click wheel to track your life value in a game, as well as the chance to get special Chocobo-themed alternate art cards of cards from across the Final Fantasy set.

    Meanwhile, the Final Fantasy VII Commander Deck features a new “Cloud, Midgard Mercenary” promo card depicting the original Final Fantasy VII promo art of Cloud in Midgar in a traditional foil format, as well as a download code for the original Final Fantasy VII. Otherwise, it’s mechanically identical to the original version of the card.

    Before the new FF7 release, Magic: The Gathering is dipping into PlayStation with a Secret Lair collaboration featuring unique cards themed around the console’s big current franchises like Horizon, God of War, and The Last of Us. Of those, Naughty Dog’s got the most—the majority of its cards focus on The Last of Us, and one is for Uncharted—while God of War has three to its name, and Horizon and Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Tsushima have one each. The drops will be available in foil and non-foil variants.

    The Secret Lair x PlayStation collaboration launches October 27, and the new Final Fantasy packs on December 5. Next up for Magic: The Gathering in 2026? More Marvel and Star Trek.

    Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

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    Justin Carter

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  • The New ‘Magic: The Gathering’ Draft May Bring More Crossover Sets

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    Spider-Man has just come to Magic: The Gathering, but the card game already has other crossovers planned, and different ways to implement them.

    Just before the latest Universes Beyond set came to shelves, Magic senior game designer Corey Bowen broke down the new Pick Two Draft, a four-person format (as opposed to the standard eight) which sees players take two cards from their Play Boosters and pass them to their left and right. Bowen explained the developers chose this new way to play as away to help casual players coming into Magic and those linking up in four-person groups. But it also has the added bonus of facilitating smaller Universes Beyond sets in the future.

    “How could we represent an amazing corner of the Marvel Universe without trying to fill over 300 card concepts?” wrote Bowen. “If we were focusing only on Spider-Man, there are tons of great stories, characters, and depth, but not enough to meet the demanding threshold of a full Magic set. We also believed solving this problem now would allow us to consider more partnerships that may not to fill the shoes of a full Magic set.”

    That Bowen calls out “more partnerships” as a reason for Pick Two is interesting, since Magic: The Gathering has been pushing Universes Beyond collaborations hard in recent years with full sets based on major IP like Final Fantasy and Doctor Who. Days ago, we also learned New York Comic-Con will have a panel announcing a new team-up between Magic and Nicklodeon, its third following ones between Spongebob Squarepants (for Secret Lair) and Avatar: The Last Airbender. Not every Nick IP is as big now as they were back in the day (or are that deep), potentially providing a perfect use case for Pick Two.

    The Nickelodeon x Magic panel will be held on October 10, where we’ll find out what it is and just how big. And if it’s not this that gets the Pick Two treatment, we’ll eventually learn what Universes Beyond crossover it’ll be.

    Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

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    Justin Carter

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  • ‘Magic’ Weaves New Mechanics and Cards for Spider-Man Set

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    Less than a month out from Magic: The Gathering’s Spider-Man set, Wizards of the Coast has given it a full unveiling with reveals of more cards and gameplay mechanics for its crossover with Marvel’s webhead and friends.

    Wizards previously revealed a selection of cards at San Diego Comic-Con back in July. Like those, this new selection sports some amazing art from the company’s internal artists and creatives who’ve previously drawn Spider-Man over the character’s decades-long history, which is on full display here, referencing classic events like the Clone Saga and Kraven’s Last Hunt to more recent turns like Venom becoming the King in Black and Peter and Miles as a dynamic duo in Insomniac’s game trilogy.

    Gameplay-wise, the Web-slinging ability works as an alternative cost to spellcasting, and lets players play the listed cost instead of mana, and return a tapped creature they control back to their hand. (Can’t web-sling if you don’t have a creature to control!) Villain cards have a similar version of this with Mayhem, which lets players cast a card from their graveyard for an alternative cost if it was discarded that turn, and it doesn’t change when spellcasting.

    Additionally, Spider-Man sets will include one of three different Soul Stone cards with its mana ability instantly available. The next ability lets players harness the Stone to trigger its Infinity ability at the start of their upkeeps. The other Infinity Stones aren’t mentioned in Wizards’ writeup, so they may appear in later crossover sets it’s doing with Marvel. But first, we’ve got the Spider-Man set, which is due to hit shelves on September 26.

    Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

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    Justin Carter

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  • D&D Books Are About To Get More Expensive

    D&D Books Are About To Get More Expensive

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    You technically don’t need to spend a whole lot of money to play Dungeons & Dragons or other tabletop roleplaying games. But like most hobbies, the game is more than happy to welcome your investment with endless maps, minis, countless dice, and, of course, rulebooks to purchase. Now, it seems, the game is going to get a bit pricer following news from Wizards of the Coast that new D&D rulebooks will see a 20 percent price hike moving forward.

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    Rulebooks are the bible of any tabletop roleplaying game, providing players and game masters with all necessary math, descriptions of game systems, and sometimes even critical lore information depending on the kind of book. Since the current, fifth edition, of Dungeons & Dragons, physical books, like the three core ones essential for a group to play (Dungeon Masters Guide, Player’s Handbook, and Monster Manual), have retailed for $49.95 each in the United States. Additional D&D-brand books of similar scope sold for the same price (others have sold for less depending on the amount of content). Wizards of the Coast is now signaling that the rising costs of book production will bring the price of physical copies up to $59.95 for new books. Digital content and previously published material is said to remain unaffected by the new price.

    According to IGN, Wizards of the Coast specified the price hike will first hit the upcoming Bigsby Presents: Glory to the Giants followed by the Planescape supplement due out on October 17 of 2023. The October release will refresh a beloved campaign setting many might know from the PC game, Planescape: Torment, which featured interdimensional magic, along with dark, strange, and surrealist motifs in its art and stories.

    Kotaku reached out to Wizards of the Coast for comment.

    This price hike follows some turbulent times for the D&D publisher. Earlier in 2023, Wizards of the Coast rolled a critical fail with restrictive, proposed changes to its longstanding open license ahead of the upcoming revision of the core rules. Unchecked, those changes would have dramatically constrained the freedom for third party publishers to create compatible rulebooks with the game (something that has been a core part of the industry since the early 2000s).

    It is rare that everyone at a game of D&D has all the books. Typically, the dungeon master will purchase the most rules as they’re the ones adjudicating everything; that’s an issue Wizards of the Coast has highlighted as a sore spot for them, expressing a desire in 2022 to try and find more ways to monetize the hobby, hoping to generate “the type of recurrent spending you see in .”

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    Claire Jackson

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