MTG Avatar the Last Airbender is still months out, but Magic: The Gathering and Nickelodeon are already teasing another team-up with an announcement coming at a NY Comicon panel on October 10.
While a short blurb and the three WotC panelists are the only information we have to go off so far, internet sleuths have already used those scraps to cobble together a pretty compelling argument for why this is almost certainly a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Universes Beyond set.
Firstly, it's likely this is an MTG set rather than just a Secret Lair product. Even if it was possible for Wizards to stretch out a discussion of a batch of five or six cards for 60 interminably dull minutes, one of the panellists, Eric Engelhard, is a senior game designer in Magic's Set Design department, and has worked on releases such as Murders at Karlov Manor and Outlaws of Thunder Junction.
The really big clue, though, is Crystal Frasier's presence. Frasier has had a varied career as a freelance writer, game designer, and artist after leaving Paizo, but since the third panelist is art director, Stephanie Cheung, we can guess she's here for writer-ly or designer-y reasons.
For Wizards of the Coast, Frasier wrote the Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft sourcebook, but she doesn't have any Magic: The Gathering credits to her name just yet. However, she is a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles superfan! Her Wikipedia page references a ninja turtles collection and says her first RPG was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness. Her Paizo bio also references the turts.
Finally, and if this was the only clue I would dismiss it immediately, the way the blurb is written is very suspicious. "Get your exclusive first look at the next powerful team-up between Magic: The Gathering and Nickelodeon. It's going to be [redacted]!"
What synonym for 'great' would immediately give away the crossover and require redaction? How about 'radical'?
Of course, this could be totally wrong. Perhaps Wizards has a Dora the Explorer set coming out, or wants to show off its Paw Patrol playmats.
Whatever this announcement is, it's a disaster for my 2026 Universes Beyond predictions list, which did not include a single children's cartoon. Someone on the Wargamer Discord even suggested it might be Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but did I listen? (No.)