MTG News Jul 27-Aug 2: WotC President Steps Down, Battles Return in 2027

MTG News Jul 27 to Aug 2: WotC President Steps Down, Battles Return in 2027

Week of July 27 to August 2, 2026

Wizards is losing its president. John Hight is out on September 1, confirmed through an SEC filing rather than a press release, in the same week Hasbro wrote off $56 million in cancelled video games. The Hobbit closed its gallery on Friday with a Standard legal Settle the Wreckage, nine legendary creatures buried in Collector Boosters quietly pointed at battles coming back, and Gen Con made a Star Wars crossover look a lot less hypothetical.

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Hight relinquishes the role on September 1 after taking it on in 2024, per an SEC filing showing he and Hasbro entered a Transitional Advisory Services Agreement on July 27. He stays on in an advisory role through September 2, 2027, and no successor has been named. Under his tenure Wizards posted its most successful fiscal year to date, 45% year-over-year growth and roughly $2.2 billion in division revenue, $1.72 billion of it from Magic. Read more →

Hasbro's Q2 report wrote down $56 million in cancelled assets, revealing that several planned video games had been killed. MTG Rocks points at those cancelled games as the obvious root cause, noting they were believed to be a major focus for Hight, who came to Wizards from running World of Warcraft at Blizzard. A Wizards spokesperson told GamesIndustry.biz there is “no change to the strength of the Wizards business.” Read more →

MTGGoldfish posted the last rare and the full gallery on Friday, closing out the main set and the eternal set ahead of the August 14 release. The final batch included Radagast of Rhosgobel, Glamdring Foe-hammer, The Black Arrow, and Kili the Resourceful, but the card everyone stopped on was Settle the Wreckage. The Ixalan board wipe is back and Standard legal, so four mana once again exiles an entire attacking board and hands back basics. Read more →

Wednesday's previews included nine legendary creatures that appear in neither the main set nor the Commander decks. They belong to The Battle of the Five Armies Co-Op Kit, a 2027 product, and one of them, Chief of the Wilds, has text that cares about battles, the card type introduced on cards like Invasion of Zendikar in March of the Machine and untouched since. Collector Booster exclusivity means low supply, which Draftsim expects to inflate prices on cards tied to a product more than a year out. Read more →

Wizards announced at Gen Con 2026 that Dungeons & Dragons is getting its own Universes Beyond treatment this year, following Magic's crossover run. Wargamer's read on that announcement is that a Star Wars Magic set now looks very likely. Worth reading next to the 2027 original-plane slate Wizards laid out at MagicCon Amsterdam, because both things are apparently happening at once. Read more →

The Duel Commander Committee banned Spider-Man 2099, Lumra, Bellow of the Woods, and The Fantasticar as commanders. Spider-Man 2099 had become the format's most represented deck since Marvel's Spider-Man dropped, and the Committee banned it “in order to preserve competitive archetype diversity and freedom in deck construction.” All three stay legal in the 99, a softer landing than the Candelabra of Tawnos Legacy ban got earlier this month. Read more →

Wargamer calls Radagast one of the set's finest commanders and the text backs it up. The brown wizard is mechanically green, lets you play one green creature each turn as though it had flash, and hands that creature a two mana discount. Flash plus a discount on a creature-based green deck is a combination green does not normally get to have. Read more →

With the gallery closed, Draftsim went looking for the cards that outlive release hype. Elven Raft-Steerer gets the top billing as a better Retreat to Coralhelm for landfall combo decks, since green tutors creatures far more easily than enchantments. Elrond, Moon-Reader and The Queen of Dale round out the picks. Read more →

Three new Smaug cards arrived as Treasure payoffs and the offbeat Treasure staples went with them. Mastermind Plum turns cheap spells into cantrips and replaces big threats once you have Treasures from other sources, at the cost of steady life loss that Commander barely notices. It sits in just 20,900 decks per EDHREC, so the play rate has not caught up to the price. Read more →

Cyberman Patrol was $5.60 when Marvel Super Heroes landed in June and has climbed to $24.15, with most of the move in the past week. A Doctor Who artifact getting bid up entirely by demand from a different Universes Beyond set is the cleanest example yet of how crossover hype moves the back catalog. Same pattern we tracked when Marvel singles started spiking in early July. Read more →

The last box topper reveals landed with the full gallery, and MTG Rocks puts the batch at about $45 spread across seven cards, with Lotho, Corrupt Sheriff carrying most of it at around $13. More duds than bombs, which matters if you were pricing Collector Boosters off box topper value. Read more →

Mark Rosewater sat down with set design lead Annie Sardelis for a full episode on building The Hobbit, a small set carrying an enormous license. Good listen the week the gallery closed. Listen →

Card Kingdom traces the arc from Dwarven Warriors in the early sets, through the long stretch where elves and goblins became color pie cornerstones and dwarves vanished, to Kaladesh, Eldraine, Kaldheim, Strixhaven, and now The Hobbit. Dwarf typal is a serious deck for the first time since the 1990s. Read more →

Wizards is hiring a president, printing battles again, and finished spoiling a set that puts Settle the Wreckage back in Standard, all in the same week. Reply and tell us which one you care about most, and forward this to whoever still needs to hear about Mastermind Plum.

— The SparkMTG Team