On Tuesday, Wizards of the Coast unveiled the 2021 roadmap for Magic: The Gathering in a live presentation on YouTube. In it, the company revealed new details on the Zendikar Rising set due out this month. Plus, Wizards announced a crossover for the ages — the first set of Magic cards based on Dungeons & Dragons’ Forgotten Realms. You can watch the full presentation archived on YouTube, and embedded below.
A flashy new trailer for Zendikar Rising was also shown. We’ve embedded it above, but you can also find it on YouTube.
In the past, Wizards has put time and treasure into creating Magic-themed content for D&D. That effort , when the publisher released a free-to-download sourcebook for the popular RPG. Since then, Wizards has made many more settings available as fully produced, free D&D sourcebooks, including Plane Shift: Innistrad, Plane Shift: Amonkhet, Plane Shift: Kaladesh, and Plane Shift: Ixalan. There’s even an adventure available for download, X Marks The Spot, set in Ixalan that you can get for free. The effort culminated most recently most recently with two full-priced physical and digital sourcebooks — Guildmaster’s Guide to Ravnica and Mythic Odysseys of Theros.
Adventures in the Forgotten Realms is the first time that the crossover has gone the other direction. Expect to learn more about how the set will work mechanically in early 2021. All we know now is that it’s more than just a stunt. Product architect Mark Heggen said it would be a “full, black-bordered, Standard-legal set” of cards.
The next set of Magic cards, Zendikar Rising, will be out on Sept. 17 online and Sept. 25 in stores. The stream included highlights of new cards and returning mechanics. It also laid out the calendar for the next year, including the following new sets:
- Kaldheim, “Magic’s Viking world,” arrives in the winter of 2021.
- Strixhaven, “the most elite university in the Multiverse,” is coming spring 2021.
- Adventures in the Forgotten Realms lands that summer.
- Two unnammed sets are on the way featuring werewolves and vampires. Both are based in the gothic horror world of Innistrad, and both will arrive in the fall of 2021.
- Time Spiral Remastered, Wizards said, will “recapture the fun of a fan-favorite block.”
- Modern Horizons 2 is described as “a follow-up to the popular Modern Horizons set.”
To watch the entire roadmap revealed, skip ahead to the 31-minute mark.
