Nowadays, Wizards of the Coast makes a lot of Magic: The Gathering cards. So far, in 2025 alone, Wizards have already spoiled over 1,500 new cards. Considering two full sets are due to release before the year is over, this number may surpass 2,000 before the year’s end. Beyond just creating tons of new cards, this year has also introduced a fair few new creature types.
Throughout 2025, Wizards has revealed and released eleven brand new creature and/or artifact types. For better or worse, the majority of these have stemmed from Universes Beyond releases. Playing into the flavor and iconic characters of these sets, it makes sense that Wizards would give them special attention. That said, not all cards are made equal.
Despite creating a plethora of new types this year, Wizards of the Coast hasn’t gone all out. This unusual discrepancy has recently caught the ire of MTG players who have understandably been left confused.
Celebrating the Icons
While Aetherdrift did give us Magic’s first Seal in Howler’s Heavy, Universes Beyond is definitely fueling 2025’s Innovation. Final Fantasy gave us new types of Moogle and Qu, while Marvel’s Spider-Man brought back the Hero and Villain types, alongside creating Infinite and Stone too. As if that weren’t enough, early Avatar: The Last Airbender spoilers have revealed Magic’s first Bison and Lemur creatures.
As you might expect, each of these types is used to celebrate the iconic elements of the franchises that Magic is crossing over with. If Appa and Momo didn’t have the Bison and Lemur types, respectively, it’d just feel weird. Thanks to this, Wizards is definitely pushing the boat out when it comes to creature types, but not every card is so lucky.
Recently, on Reddit, AporiaParadox highlighted how Aardvark Sloth isn’t an Aardvark. While this definitely isn’t new for MTG, recent trends do make this omission stand out more. As AporiaParadox notes, we’ve now got unique Echidnas, Lobsters, Skunks, Llamas, Kangaroos, yet there’s no love for Aardvarks.
While this decision is bizarre, some MTG players were quick to raise relevant points. While some creature types are too iconic to ignore, Aardvarks are hardly integral to a set’s lore. On top of this, as Infinite_Bananas comments, this hypothetical type likely didn’t meet the “threshold of being likely enough to be used again.”
As much as they add to flavor, more creature types aren’t necessarily a good thing. Not only can unique types set up expectations for more support in the future, but it can also cause bizarre anti-synergy.
A Beastly Problem
While Wizards has been moving away from it slightly, the Beast creature type still exists as a catch-all term. For one-off creatures like Aardvark Sloth, calling it a Beast is kind of fitting, but it does get weirder the longer it’s used. This problem is especially apparent on Magic’s Baloths, which continue to just be Beasts.
Despite getting Frenzied Baloth and Baloth Prime in Edge of Eternities, Wizards didn’t choose to create a Baloth type alongside a healthy errata. While there’s little doubt this would have been flavorful, it would cripple their support. Right now, Beast Typal is a surprisingly well-supported archetype, thanks to cards like Slinza and Woodland Liege.
By making Baloths a brand new type, they’d quickly become nigh-unplayable in Commander typal decks. The same would be true for Aardvark Sloth, which would be essentially useless all on its lonesome. At least by being a Beast, there’s a non-zero chance this card could see play in a typal deck.
Sadly, there’s no easy solution to this problem as MTG cards can only have so much text. Ideally, making Aardvark Sloth an Aardvark Sloth Beast would tick all the boxes; it’d set a dangerous precedent. Wizards have to draw the line somewhere, after all, both for balance and collation reasons.
Consistent Inconsistency
“Depending on daily astrological readings and weather patterns, WotC is variably trying to limit the number of creature types for balance or increase the number of creature types for flavor.
The number of creature types will steadily increase over time until WotC decides to re-type all the oddball creatures. At which point WotC will swear they will never do that again. Then the number of creature types will steadily increase over time….”
da_chicken
While it’s by no means the end of the world, the main problem is inconsistency. While some creature types, like Cephalids (RIP), are merged into being Octopi, other brand-new, unsupported types are being created. This makes it feel like there’s little rhyme or reason as to what does and doesn’t get new, unique types.
Potentially, Universes Beyond may both be pushing and stifling creativity in this regard. With Moogle, Qu, Hero, Villain, Infinity, Stone, Bison, and Lemur all being created for UB this year, there might not be room for anything else. Sadly, this trend may well continue into the future since we’ve got three Universes Beyond sets per year for the foreseeable future.
Admittedly, while Wizards is favoring Universes Beyond when it comes to new creature types, new in-universe types do get created. Drix, for example, was created for Edge of Eternities alongside Spacecraft. With this in mind, it seems Wizards is definitely able to create new types when the need arises.
Ultimately, at this point, we can only wait and see what the future holds for Magic and its many creature types. Wizards’ design philosophy on this element seems to be highly variable, so who knows what will and won’t get types. Looking ahead, we can only hope that Kithkin actually stay as Kithkin once Lorwyn Eclipsed rolls around.
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