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This year, Magic: The Gathering is set to release seven expansion sets, and that’s nearly on par with the hectic release schedule from when Magic first came onto the scene in 1993. In the very first year of Magic’s existence, the R&D team released six sets in total, which is amazing considering both how young the game was and the fact that the team itself only had a fraction of the manpower that it does today. 

At MagicCon Las Vegas 2026, the old guard of Magic’s R&D team sat down and reflected on the particular chaos of Magic’s early days. “It used to be much faster to get things done, the whole process. So from printing, shipping, art, and everything. So we were, I guess in the first year we probably had maybe six Magic expansions… which is kind of a lot,” Skaff Elias, former Senior Vice President of R&D at Magic, began. 

“And we were lucky because you guys didn’t know how to play, so it didn’t really matter what we put on the cards. And that helped a lot. But as people got more skilled, we had to put more and more time in… So through all of these things, I don’t want to say that the design was bad, because all the designs were bad, but they were pretty bad… So I don’t know how long we had to develop Legends, but it was like a month or something like that. And The Dark was less. And so that’s generally how it used to work. They kept needing new product and they kept having to come back on the schedule, and it would be like, ‘Okay, well we need the Legends set designed in a month, and it’s out the door,’” Elias said. 

Elias also mentioned that the Antiquities set was designed in “about a week,” which is staggering. Nowadays, Magic sets are in development for months, if not years, at a time, for good reason. Players have high expectations, and want to get their money’s worth. Thankfully for all of us, it is no longer the 1990s. 

Whether you are a Commander player, a regular at your local game shop's FNM event, or simply love collecting Magic: The Gathering cards, you've landed in the right place. From Universes Beyond to the furthest reaches of the Magic Multiverse, we've got you covered here at Popverse. 

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