Wizards of the Coast's third party crossover deals previously wreaked havoc on the game's digital platform MTG Arena, when the company was forced to create alternate in-universe versions of every character from the MTG Spider-Man set.
While I personally had a lot of fun speculating about how Wizards would manage this feat and seeing the concepts the artists and designers came up with, the release seemed to be incredibly unpopular among the wider Magic: The Gathering playerbase.
Now it appears that licensing deals with other franchises are causing another complication for the game's online platform, as can be seen in a temporary tweak to MTG Arena Golden Packs.
These packs, awarded to players who buy 10 or more card packs from the online store, contain a selection of rare or mythic cards. Usually, you're guaranteed two cards from the latest set and the rest come from random Standard-legal releases.
But from today, November 18, until January 20 - which, if you check the MTG release schedule, is right when Lorwyn Eclipsed comes out - the system will be slightly different.
Now, out of a Golden Pack's six cards, four will draw from random Standard-legal MTG sets (including Through the Omenpaths), one will be guaranteed as an Omenpaths card, and only one will be from the Avatar The Last Airbender release.
What's more, the Golden Packs will not contain any Final Fantasy cards unless you've collected every single rare and mythic from Avatar, at which point Final Fantasy cards will start showing up again instead.
As I said, it's a very small change, one Wizards says is "due to various pieces of internal nonsense that we don't want to bore you with." It probably won't affect most people, but it is slightly frustrating for fans trying to collect Avatar cards or Final Fantasy cards and for those who would prefer to steer clear of Omenpaths.
Since Wizards isn't telling, we don't know why it's happened, but like most people, we're assuming it has something to do with WotC's deals with Nickelodeon and Square Enix. It's notable that for the next couple of months, you won't be able to get an Avatar card and a Final Fantasy card in the same pack. Perhaps someone was worried about brand confusion?
It's another of these teething problems that seem to only appear on MTG Arena because of the new Universes Beyond crossovers. It's certainly not as big of a deal as having to reskin two to three entire sets, though. Bring on Marvel, because given how badly the Spider-Man cards were received, I'm itching to see how WotC will change things up this time around.
We've reached out to Wizards for clarification on this story, and will update if we hear back.
If you've got a great Magic combo or decklist to share, we'd love to see it - come join the Wargamer Discord!