In a time where half of Magic: The Gathering’s sets are branching out to different worlds, it takes a lot to shock MTG fans. That said, some remarks made by Hasbro president Chris Cocks revealed something bizarre. According to a question answered at Hasbro’s 2024 Q4 Earnings Call, it appears that the Spider-Man Universes Beyond set will not have preconstructed Commander decks.
Commanderless Spider-Man
Revealed after answering a question this past Thursday, two shocking details were announced by Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks. The first was that early Final Fantasy preorders for bundles sold out in an hour. While hour-long sellouts aren’t an unusual thing in the MTG world, this currently suggests that Final Fantasy will be the best-selling MTG set ever. For reference, it took a week for the same Lord of the Rings preorders to sell out. It’s too early to say for sure, but this certainly reveals a monstrous demand for MTG Final Fantasy.
Chris Cocks has full confidence that MTG X Final Fantasy will perform well. He also thinks that MTG X Spider-Man will do the same, but a major difference was highlighted between the two products:
"And then Spider-Man, we feel that will do well. Now I think the important thing to note on Spider-Man is that it's a little bit of a different complexion of a set in terms of what's incorporated into it. Final Fantasy and Lord of the Rings had Commander decks, which usually constitute a fairly big hunk of a set's total volume. Spider-Man will be Standard only cards. There won't be any, kind of, precon decks, so that will make it a bit smaller."Chris Cocks
This is a very unusual decision for most MTG sets. For reference, MTG Foundations and Assassin’s Creed were the only non-reprint MTG sets recently to exclude Commander precons from their product lineup.
Considering that a massive part of Universes Beyond sets is to appeal to fans from other circles, it’s rather shocking for Spider-Man to follow suit. Commander is the most popular format for Magic: The Gathering, and not having an easy way for Spider-Man fans to get into the format feels like a misstep.
Since this is just a statement from Chris Cocks, it’s difficult to sort out all of the corner case scenarios. All we know is that there will be no Commander precon decks with the MTG X Spider-Man product.
Still A Long Way to Go
Unfortunately for Spider-Man fans out there, this is likely the last bit of news on the set that we’ll receive for some time. We still have Tarkir: Dragonstorm, Final Fantasy, and Edge of Eternities to go before Spider-Man is released. This means that we may not even begin to see cards for the set for another few months.
According to Magic’s official website, we still don’t have an official release date for the Spider-Man Universes Beyond crossover, but it is hitting shelves sometime this year.