WoTC Considering REVERSING Their Current Planeswalker Policy

Last updated on February 18, 2025

Liliana, Dreadhorde General | Illustration by Yoshitaka Amano

WotC is reconsidering its position about having only a single Planeswalker in each premier Magic set, according to MTG Head Designer Mark Rosewater.

“We are talking about it,” Rosewater wrote in his blog last Sunday, answering a reader's question on whether MTG sets could increase the planeswalker head count.

A few hours earlier, Rosewater had asked his Blogatog readers, “How do others feel about us despairing [sic] the majority of the planeswalkers?”

This question sparked a lively ongoing debate, with readers their thoughts about the number of planeswalkers per set, and how they feel WotC handled the story.

A Sudden Despark

Technically introduced as card types in Lorwyn back in 2007, planeswalkers have been one of the cornerstones of Magic since Alpha: the players themselves play the role of powerful wizards, capable of traveling (“planeswalking”) through the multiple planes that compose Magic's multiverse, summoning powerful creatures to battle. Since Lorwyn, several of Magic's most iconic characters – like Chandra, Teferi, Ajani, and Jace – have been planeswalkers, and also among the characters represented most on cards: Chandra, for example, has nearly 20 different prints as a red planeswalker.

But last year, Magic's storyline saw the majority of planeswalkers losing their “spark” (the inherent trait that allows some characters to become planeswalkers) in the aftermath of the Phyrexian Invasion, and WotC suddenly announced their decision to limit planeswalkers to just one per premier set. In a preview panel at MagicCon: Barcelona, Mark Rosewater and Gavin Verhey confirmed that as a direct result of planeswalkers losing their spark, we would see a lot less of them.

The reason, according to Gavin Verhey in that same panel, was to allow designers more time to create each new planeswalker. Rosewater later confirmed in his blog that the shift was driven both by story- and design-related reasons.

While design reasons sound plausible, it's not entirely clear why Magic's storyline would need most planeswalkers desparked, or why it would impact the number of planeswalker cards per set. After all, March of the Machine is a set that takes place across every known plane with pretty much everybody joining the fight… yet the set has only four planeswalkers. What's more: MOM came with the Multiverse Legends bonus sheet, specifically to show more of Magic's iconic characters joining the fight, yet MUL has exactly zero planeswalker in it.

And as we saw with Duskmourn, a planeswalker can be part of the story without having a card in the set: in Duskmourn‘s story we see Kaito bumping into Jace (who's looking for Vraska and Loot), yet only Kaito got a planeswalker card.

Many players believe that WotC's underlying interest in desparking planeswalkers was to print legendary creature versions of fan favorites like Nissa that could be used as commanders, but that sounds like a stretch: there are many tools at WotC's disposal for letting you put a planeswalker in the command zone (from complex mechanics like transforming permanents, to brute-forcing the issue by slapping “this planeswalker can be your commander“).

Backtracking

To be fair, Magic's designer never said that “There Can Only Be One” was a rule carved in stone. In the Barcelona panel, Rosewater and Verhey mentioned this was their general intent, and MTG has a long, healthy history of designers changing their minds where new data and player sentiment show they may have missed the mark.

In particular, Rosewater clarified last March that more planeswalkers per set are an option.

“One is the current default, not the only choice,” he wrote. And this has always just applied to premier Standard sets – supplemental sets like Modern Horizons 3 can, as we recently saw, have lots of planeswalkers, and even with complex mechanics like flipwalkers.

But Wizards seems to be changing their minds about this topic: about a month ago Rosewater conducted a poll among his readers asking how many planeswalkers they would find ideal, and with nearly 2,000 votes the majority of voters lean towards 2 (40%), and 3 (20%) planeswalkers per MTG set, and very few (less than 8%) asking for more than that.

“Not at all,” Rosewater replied when asked if he found the results surprising.

Universes Beyond Planeswalking

Nissa, Who Shakes the World | Illustration by Chris Rallis

One hard line that Rosewater has noted, though, is that Universes Beyond crossovers – Magic sets that take place in other IPs, like Lord of the Rings last year, Doctor Who or Fallout this year, or the upcoming Marvel and Final Fantasy MTG sets in 2025 – are not getting any planeswalkers.

“We are only planning to do planeswalkers in Wizards owned IPs,” Rosewater said in June last year when asked about the lack of planeswalkers in WH40K or LotR.

In April this year, he was even more direct when a reader expressed their disappointment should WotC represent Final Fantasy's Gilgamesh as a legendary creature instead of a planeswalker.

“Universes Beyond sets are not going to have planeswalkers,” Rosewater said. “That has been decided, so I would set your expectations accordingly.”

Given that Lord of the Rings is thus far the best-selling MTG set of all time, and the popularity of other crossovers like Warhammer 40K and Doctor Who, the lack of planeswalkers in UB sets doesn't really seem like a deal-breaker for Magic fans.

But, as far as premier sets go, it looks like a crossover between planeswalkers and Highlander may have swung the pendulum too far in that direction, and we may see more than one per set again.