Another employee-exclusive MTG card was revealed on December 20, this time by former Wizards of the Coast game designer Jacob Mooney. Instead of receiving the card, Mooney helped design ‘Wizard from Beyond’, the card that would be gifted to members of the D&D Beyond team. It comes with an interesting ability that lets any creature in your Magic: The Gathering deck become your Commander.
Wizard from Beyond costs one of every MTG color to cast. It’s a background enchantment that comes with the ‘Create a Character’ ability – this is what lets any creature in your MTG Commander deck become your next MTG Commander.
Wizard from Beyond also turns your Commander creatures into Clerics, Rogues, Warriors, and Wizards in addition to their other types. This selection of DnD classes means you automatically have a full party. As long as you have a full party, Wizard from Beyond triggers the abilities of creatures you control for an additional time.
In a Twitter thread from Wednesday, Mooney explains “The name was originally going to be just ‘Wizards of the Coast’”. This was reportedly to represent the DnD Beyond acquisition that occurred in 2022.
“The idea here being that this card represents the D&D Beyond team becoming WotC employees”, Mooney says. “With a concept like that, we wanted the abilities to be pretty broad, and pretty loudly D&D focused.”
The art for Wizard from Beyond was designed by Nestor Ossandón, whose work in an upcoming DnD book recently made headlines when fans accused it of being AI-generated. Wizards of the Coast responded to the AI art accusation on Wednesday, and Ossandón himself shared work-in-progress images to refute the claim.
Heroes of the Realm cards are gifted to Wizards of the Coast employees as a thank-you for their work. The concept was first introduced by now-Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks in 2016. While most MTG formats ban these cards, it’s been ruled that the person originally gifted the card is allowed to play it in Commander games.
Several other Heroes of the Realm cards have been spotted recently. These include ‘Heroes of Kamigawa’ and ‘Elusen, the Giving’, new angel and planeswalker MTG cards with highly unusual abilities.
Wizards’ WPN admin specialist Alexander Smith also revealed a card he received on December 19. ‘Svega, the Unconventional’ (see above) is a legendary planeswalker with landfall and two loyalty abilities. One allows you to create a 1/1 Attendee creature token of all colors for each planeswalker type you control, and the other lets you choose a certain MTG planeswalker card to copy for free.
In more recent Wizards of the Coast news, 1,100 Hasbro layoffs were announced ahead of Christmas. We also know what MTG sets to expect from next year’s MTG release schedule. For more trading card game info, here’s the latest on MTG Arena codes and MTG Arena decks.