To put it lightly, a lot of MTG players don’t exactly love Universes Beyond. This was the case when the product line was first conceived, and its introduction to Standard hasn’t made things better. Currently, frustrations are at a tipping point following the release of the MTG Spider Man player survey, which has brought out countless complaints.
For the most part, these complaints are all things we’ve heard before at this point. The flavor disconnect, small set size, and general anti-Universes Beyond sentiment are each broken records. Thankfully, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles set has given up something new to complain about, hooray!
Only Sometimes Aliens
During the New York Comic Con first look at the MTG TMNT set, we got to see Krang, Master Mind. As MTG cards go, Krang looks like an absolute monster that’s bound to see play in Affinity shells. In Standard and potentially in Modern, there’s a good chance this card will be a big deal.
Frustrating as it can be, power creep isn’t anything new in MTG, and, if anything, it’s intrinsically part of the game. The Utrom creature type, however, is definitely new and a seemingly odd choice by Wizards of the Coast. While this creature type makes sense within the context of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, it’s very frustrating in MTG.
Even if we get a handful of Utroms in the MTG TMNT set, these cards will have fairly limited synergy. With only 190 cards in the entire set, we’ll be lucky to get a handful of Utroms, which certainly isn’t enough for Commander. A TMNT villain deck might be possible, sure, but MTG has a long history of building around creature types.
Annoyingly, the perfect creature type for Krang, Master Mind already exists: Alien. First used in Unfinity, this type has appeared on 33 Commander legal cards thanks to Doctor Who and Final Fantasy. While there’s not much Typal support for this archetype, outside of Gallifrey Council Chamber, this archetype could easily grow over time.
Sadly, even though Utroms are aliens within the TMNT universe, Wizards made Krang, Master Mind an Utrom Warrior instead. In theory, Wizards could have tacked on the Alien type too, but that likely would have pushed things too far. The TMNT MTG set does have some insanely long type lines, but Wizards does sadly have a limit.
To Villain or Not to Villain
Currently, The Reality Chip has the longest type line in all of MTG, at 49 characters. Even if we round up to 50, this character limit doesn’t leave much room. Just the words “Legendary Creature” take up 18 characters, so there’s only so much space for synergy. Some cards, like Leonardo, Sewer Samurai still manage to push things to the extreme, though, with four distinct creature types.
Unfortunately, Super Shredder doesn’t get the same treatment. This iconic series antagonist is only a Mutant Ninja Human. Six months ago, this type line would have been perfectly fine, but MTG Spider Man introduced the Villain type. Naturally, it would make sense that Super Shredder should have this extra type, especially since it’d fit under the 50-character limit.
Despite technically fitting, according to MTG’s Head Designer, Mark Rosewater, this would have been too much. Speaking on Blogatog, Rosewater recently stated that the TMNT set is “already overtaxed with creature keywords,” so the design team played it safe. While this is technically helpful from a complexity standpoint, flavor-wise, it really doesn’t make sense.
At his core, Shredder is a villain, just as Krang is, so they should have the creature type. The fact that they don’t shows a major problem with consistency within MTG, and especially Universes Beyond. Annoyingly, it goes far beyond the Villain creature type and the Typal decks it could facilitate.
For better or worse, some creature types in MTG are simply too generic for their own good. The Hero and Villain types feel like the epitome of this, as they can be applied to most, if not all, legendary creatures. Unfortunately, there’s not really a right answer to when these specific creature types should be used, and that’s not a new problem.
Less Is More
If Wizards reworked the card frame to increase the type line limit, things would quickly get out of hand. Slapping Hero or Villain onto any new legendary creature could easily open up balancing issues that restrict design space. The same could happen to Alien, eventually, if the creature type is used liberally and receives support.
Beyond Hero or Villain, there are plenty of other generic types that could be added to tons of creatures. Ally, Beast, Citizen, Employee, Peasant, Performer, Warrior, and plenty more could all go on a vast array of creatures. Beast, especially, could basically go on any animal if Wizards really wanted to break things.
For better or worse, break things is exactly what an update like this would do. Wizard already has to carefully control what lords and synergistic engines get released, and a mass creature type update would crash that system. Not only would this be a nightmare for designing new cards, but the errata it would mandate would cause immense confusion.
That said, adding extra creature types to MTG cards wouldn’t be entirely bad news. In some instances, it does seem sensible to grant certain creatures additional types for added flavor. Baloth, for instance, could easily get their own type to go along with Beast, and Edge of Eternities’ Drix could have easily been Aliens too.
In these instances, extra creature types seem like a positive, but even these open up the can of worms. Sadly, this likely means Wizards will keep creature types fairly restricted going forward. That will be the case for Magic Multiverse sets, at least.
Obeying the Owner
While Wizards of the Coast has control over the Magic Multiverse, they’re not entirely in charge of Universes Beyond. Despite designing the cards and having 32 years of history to manage, IP holders can still exert control. We saw this recently, in fact, with the MTG TMNT set, on Krang, Master Mind, no less.
While we didn’t name names, recently, on Blogatog, Mark Rosewater essentially confirmed Nickelodeon’s oversight stopped Krang from being an Alien. Realistically, this is hardly the most game-breaking change in Magic, even if it does add another effectively useless creature type. While frustrating, even useless, flavorful types like Qu don’t need to be supported, since MTG has so much synergy already.
Even with that in mind, it’s hard not to see how the parasitic Universes Beyond creature types aren’t great for long-term play. Due to set size, they often force five-color Commanders into existence, which ultimately stifles creativity somewhat. All that said, it’s unlikely Wizards of the Coast can do anything about this.
Because IP holders have a certain amount of control over Universes Beyond sets, there’s no escaping these new, unique, or even generic creature types. Hopefully, when new types do inevitably get created, Wizards will find sensible places to use them.
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