Popverse's top stories

• What Critical Role's Liam O'Brien imagined for the Vox Machina 'Deathwalker's Ward' armor is not what the costume ended up looking like
• Simon Kinberg on writing X-Men movies, producing Glenn Powell's The Running Man remake, and co-creating Star Wars Rebels [Popversations]
• DC Comics, Matt Dinnamin, Kickstarter, Jim Butcher, Warner Bros. Animation & more are part of NYCC 2025 Professional Programming line-up

Sure, Magic: The Gathering releases a lot of sets each year, but there is an astonishing amount of thought that goes into the design and mechanics of each release. Over time, MTG has expanded from fantasy-themed sets into other genres like horror and sci-fi. There's a spirit of reinvention within Magic that I find fascinating to follow. 

When it came to designing the upcoming Edge of Eternities set, which has a space opera theme, head game designer Mark Rosewater explained that his team were hoping to develop an element that captured the sheer vastness of a classic space sci-fi story. "The stories are about huge spaceships and giant planets. How could we capture those things in card form? Vision Design spent a lot of time on the problem and came up with a solution called cosmic cards," Rosewater wrote on Magic's official site. "Cosmic was a supertype that could go on various permanent cards. It was represented by a giant card. We had done it for the Transformers Trading Card Game and wanted to bring it to Magic. The idea was that the set's boosters would be larger than normal and each include one cosmic card."

Booster packs that are larger than normal? Sounds interesting.

However, Edge of Eternities was not fated to have extra big cards, sadly: "But many months into set design, we learned that these giant cards weren't feasible. Because we produce so many cards for each Magic set, there are limitations that smaller games don't have. So, Set Design needed a new way to depict space opera scope in the set. They'd have to find another answer," Rosewater wrote. 

We can imagine that, on a manufacturing level, making booster packs for one specific set like Edge of Eternities that are bigger than your standard Magic booster pack would come at an additional cost. That said, you can't blame the designers at MTG for being short on creativity. Maybe one of these days we'll finally get giant cards in Magic, but I won't be holding my breath. 

The gaming industry has come a long way since Pong blew all our minds in the 70s. We've got everything you need to know about the next big thing in games. Of course, Grand Theft Auto VI is going to be the big game of 2026, but there are plenty of other games coming out between now and then. Here is our starter guide for every gamer:

• All upcoming games in 2025 and beyond
• Gamify My Life, our weekly gaming column designed
• Popverse Picks: The best Assassin's Creed protagonists
• How to play every GTA game in order
• Why the GTA 6 budget isn't as crazy as you think
• The Magic: The Gathering x Spider-Man crossover set wouldn't exist without the Spider-Verse

And be sure to check Popverse regularly for the latest gaming news.