(Bloomberg) -- Hasbro Inc.’s popular trading card game Magic: The Gathering is taking a radical departure from its fantasy roots with an upcoming set of cards based on Walt Disney Co.’s Marvel superheroes.
The first installment of Magic’s multiyear deal with Disney will forgo the traditional dragons and wizards for characters like Iron Man, Captain America and Black Panther. At New York Comic Con on Friday, the company revealed the initial set of cards will be followed in 2025 by a full set inspired by Spider-Man.
Collaborations between the Hasbro game and other brands, including The Lord of the Rings, initially divided longtime fans. Many shared concerns on social media that the company was undermining Magic’s own lore in a cash grab. Others feared the new branded cards would muddy the highly strategic gameplay of Magic.
“Think of Magic as a canvas,” Ken Troop, the global play leader for Magic, said in an interview in Hasbro’s New York office. “Magic IP is one of the things we can put on that canvas, but we can put other things on it.”
These collaborations, called Universes Beyond, are intended to bring in new players. Fifty million people play the 31-year-old game, in which players battle using decks of cards featuring various spells and monsters. It’s grown each of the last six years, and in 2022, crossed $1 billion in revenue. Lord of the Rings cards were its second ever to surpass $200 million in lifetime revenue. They were also the fastest and highest-selling, according to a spokesperson for Pawtucket, Rhode Island-based Hasbro.
People intimidated by the card game’s complicated ins and outs might be coaxed to buy if they’re based on familiar characters like X-Men, another Marvel property, according to Rebecca Shepard, vice president of the Magic franchise. Shepard, who’s “not a big Magic player,” said that Marvel would have enticed her to take up the game as a kid.
“It gives you the opportunity to play your favorite mechanics, or whatever it is that draws you to Magic, but with a slightly different character experience,” she said.
Potential players have tended to come aboard when it’s their favorite franchise’s turn for the Magic treatment, she said. A number of large brands have approached Hasbro to collaborate, but the company has shot them down if “we don’t authentically play the game, read the book or watch the movie,” Shepard said.
The Marvel cards announced Friday will complement Magic’s beginner-friendly format, called Commander. It’s a casual way to play the game involving decks of 100 cards and several opponents. Data shows Commander players are also more likely to engage in Magic’s story and characters, Troop said. Right now, there is no official video-game version of Commander, but there “could be” in the future, he said.
In recent weeks, controversy over Commander has roiled fans as well as Magic’s maker, Hasbro’s Wizards of the Coast. People who had spent hundreds or thousands of dollars for powerful cards in secondary markets were shocked to learn some had been banned. Commander was governed by a community of volunteer fans, but the group dissolved in late September following harassment and death threats. Wizards of the Coast now controls Magic’s most-popular format. It has retained the bans for now, but they are under review.
“We were very comfortable with the world as it existed,” Troop said of the move. “It was a really difficult situation.”
Ahead of the bans, Wizards of the Coast gave the committee its views on what the ramifications and blowback might be. “In the beginning, we would probably have had a different point of view on some of these things,” Troop said. Now, Wizards of the Coast is investing in more resources to manage work formerly done by the volunteers.
In addition to the new cards, Magic’s own brand is coming to a new format, too: television. An upcoming Netflix show, Magic: The Gathering, will test whether Magic’s lore can exist separately from the trading card game. It’s also not a sure bet that watchers will turn into players.
“If I follow the Magic IP, the chances that I’m going to necessarily also love a trading card game are not necessarily high,” Troop said. Asked how the show will contribute revenue, he said, “I don’t want to be too flippant about it, but Magic is pretty good at finding a way to make money out of the joy of Magic.”
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