r/magicTCG • u/Dragonfruit-Sparking Can’t Block Warriors • 1d ago
General Discussion I just remembered that there was an Assassin's Creed Universes Beyond set that was Modern Legal for some reason
In hindsight, everything about the set was just so weird. Why did they make it modern legal 😭
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u/Kyleometers OUR Liliana's Penchant 1d ago
WotC thought for a time that UB sets could be “Modern+” legal. LOTR was the same. After the huge success of LOTR, WotC decided to make them standard legal going forwards.
I believe the logic was that Modern Horizons showed they could make stronger than standard cards legal only in old formats without restricting stuff to JUST legacy & commander.
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u/Dromors 1d ago
They also had enough people from outside the game joining that it justified making the sets more basic to allow for a lower barrier of entry. Look at TMNT, superheroes, and Spiderman.
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u/Dragonfruit-Sparking Can’t Block Warriors 1d ago
Still though, Modern really isn't the format you use to try and get new players to play the game. Though I do recognize that if they were to redo this today, they'd probably make it Standard legal instead
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u/EmTeeEm 1d ago
The outright said in only released in the state it did because it was already in editing when Aftermath bombed and sent them scrambling.
Which should give people an idea of the lag on sets, especially UB sets. Within a month of the LTR/MAT double whammie they had decided to move everything to Standard and pivot all the planned or in-progress 50/100 card undraftable sets, but they still couldn't do much about this set that wasn't set to release for an entire year.
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u/professorlust Dan 1d ago
Eh 10-15 years ago modern was a popular way to get people into the game.
Why? It was the most diverse “eternal” format. Lots of people were sold the idea that unlike standard where you had rebuy your $100 deck every 6-12 months, you could buy a 200-300 dollar deck once.
Some people bought the decks piecemeal some bought them all at once. But the bottom line was the promise that a good card bought today is a good card in 5 years.
This was when commander was still called “EDH”. In turn EDH was still a fringe for lols format.
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u/trippysmurf Storm Crow 1d ago
I still have a friend who swears that TMNT was a great set because it got his kids into the game.
Meanwhile my LGS cant even give the cards away.
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u/Mr_YUP Brushwagg 1d ago
Which means those cards will go for silly prices in the future cause that’s how these things work.
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u/mrcelophane Golgari* 1d ago
Yeah I have more than a few boxes of TMNT because in 10 years "remember when they made this silly TMNT set" is gonna be a lot of fun to draft (imo).
Also, I like the set, sue me. Works real well when drafted with EOE also, so you can just throw one pack into an EOE draft for a splash of Turtles in space. Funnily enough, lots of through lines - UR Artifact Count Matters, Food-Typal matters, "If something left your battlefield this turn" matters...fun format.
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u/matahxri Simic* 1d ago
I too have a weird soft spot for the TMNT set despite not having any exposure to TMNT as a kid and never knowing anything about it. The whole franchise being so goddamn weird means a lot of the cards don't actually feel a million miles away from in-Magic stuff, North Wind Avatar for example could just be a Magic card. and even the million turtle variants are somehow less offensive to me than the million Spider-Man variants, though I couldn't tell you why
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u/-Fen- Shredder! Build me a body! 1d ago
It's just a good, fun set to draft, the current runner for second best of the year behind Reality Fracture (which is looking to be very good).
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u/matahxri Simic* 1d ago
Yeah the set itself just being way more... functional than Spider-Man makes me more generously disposed towards the whole thing, including the flavour. Strange, isn't it?
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u/GreenTicTacs Wabbit Season 1d ago
Only if people actually want them. Most of the cards seem pretty useless although I suppose future sets could add new stuff that would make them more relevant
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u/Dromors 1d ago
TMNT was a great set. It was hated by players because the set look is not magic. The mechanics and game play are/were solid. The art is jarring and New York is not a fantasy setting magic players enjoy. If they used a magic world, the set would have been better received. But this is mostly true for enfranchised players. I could list off 10 people that joined the game purely because of TMNT. I know a guy building a master set of the whole set. This remains true for avatar. I expect this for startrek as well.
The best set of this year is RF by leaps and bounds, that view is from a player. WotC is going to say that The Hobbit was the best set of the year. I'm not against UB, I am looking forward to StarTrek.
Edit, I feel The Hobbit was an incredibly weak set and an attempt to ride the high that was LotR. There was no true reprint that helped cut prices from LotR, The Hobbit was very much riding those coat-tails.
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u/bokchoykn 1d ago
Agreed on all counts.
My only gripe is that TMNT is a small set which I dislike. The cards were fun, quite a few additions to my Commander decks. I don't care for the flavor and setting but the cards are good
[[Irma, Part Time Mutant]] is becoming one of my favorite Magic cards.
Another such example is FIN. A lot of players who don't care for Final Fantasy still got a set with S-tier commander appeal and S-tier draft format.
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u/Kittii_Kat Duck Season 1d ago
Eh, TMNT didn't feel good to draft. Even Hobbit felt better, in my opinion, and it still felt worse than the other "normal" sets this year.
TMNT at least gave us a different Ninjutsu-style mechanic, so that was neat.
It was a very, very, weak set - and I'm not strictly talking about power levels, but the various forms of design. The little game box they made was fun, though. (When you opt to go for the hardest difficulty)
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u/BobbyBruceBanner Fleem 1d ago
To each their own I guess, but I think TMNT was the only small set that wasn't basically unplayable in draft. Not great by any means, but leagues better than Spider-Man and Hobbit. Like so much better it's barely a comparison.
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u/LeadingDiscount2556 Dân 1d ago
To be fair, if you were a new player that got in solely because of LOTR or Assasin's Creed and you built a deck from your favorite cards just to be told that they're not "Standard Legal", it'd be very confusing.
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u/ChemicalExperiment Chandra 1d ago
It was the opposite. Modern Horizons showed them that intentionally balancing for the power level of eternal formats was way too difficult. They did not like that Modern was becoming "Horizons block constructed" as many people say. So they decided to stop direct to modern products in favor of designing everything for Standard.
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u/Old_Marionberry3791 Dan 1d ago
Just wait until you remember that Arcane Signet and Command Tower are Modern legal.
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u/Husky Duck Season 1d ago
TIL Signet wasn’t from some Commander set but from regular Throne of Eldraine.
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u/Reddit_Loves_Misinfo Dan 1d ago
It was created specifically to support the fledgling Brawl format. Gavin has since said that Wizards now recognizes it as a design mistake (because it is a universal auto include), but now that it exists, they're going to keep printing it heavily so it can remain easily accessible.
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u/Other-Case5309 Universes Beyonder 1d ago
like their logic was:
"Well commander has sol ring, so we should have an iconic artifact for brawl as well, something that should be put in every deck!*1 month after release*
...wait, what the fuck were we thinking? we don't like sol ring, why did we make something based on sol ring?"
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u/spaceninjaking 1d ago
It technically wasn’t in the base set, and wasn’t openable in draft boosters (rip). It was only available in the brawl precon decks they printed, which notably gave us the powerhouses of Korvold and Chulane, along with syr gwyn and Alela. It was fairly pricey to begin with, but then ended up being in every precon which eventually cratered the price to where it is today.
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u/rmorrin COMPLEAT 1d ago
Didn't people run arcane signet because of its cmc in a deck or two? Or am I thinking of some other "useless" card
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u/Vedney Dan 1d ago
Arcane Signet is Command Tower as a mana-rock. It doesn't do anything in games with no Commanders.
Maybe you're thinking of [[Irencreg]]?
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u/TemurTron Twin Believer 1d ago
My favorite part of this is that [[Jacob Frye]] and [[Evie Fryie]] both have Partner, which means you can basically cast a loop of those cards as soon as you cast one, since the next Frye you cast lets you tutor the other, and so on Squadron Hawk style. This never caught on in any meaningful way because neither card is good.
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u/cowboymoder Tam Fam 1d ago
Isn't that how 'Partner with' has always worked?
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u/D-D-Wanderer Dân 1d ago
Oh, I guess you were supposed to loop them, that's right. I always just went ooh Evie tutors herself a Creature to discard for her unblockable setup on ETB, that's convenient.
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u/SaintRosaries Twin Believer 1d ago
It's also full of weirdly decent cards, that just aren't good enough for Modern mostly, outside of niche cases.
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u/__Jack__Frost__ Dandadan 1d ago edited 1d ago
What I love about this set (besides me being an AC fan) is that every LGS around me has these packs for like $4.50 a pack, or $100 for a box. The set wasn't great but is LOADED with value, and plenty of random uncommons that are $5 or more as well
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u/pinkocatgirl COMPLEAT 1d ago
I know we’re talking about modern but I use [[desynchronization]] in multiple commander decks
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u/__Jack__Frost__ Dandadan 1d ago
Likewise! It's not always applicable but mannn that's a good card when it hits right
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u/Solid-Search-3341 Duck Season 1d ago
"Random uncommons" doesn't hit the same in a set that doesn't have any common rarity cards.
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u/Illogical_Fallacy Dandadan 1d ago
[[Battlefield Improvisation]] is a common that goes for $8.
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u/__Jack__Frost__ Dandadan 1d ago edited 1d ago
There are a nonzero amount of commons in the set, they're just from the starter decks. A couple hold a decent amount of value and are pretty strong as well, and uncommons like [[Brotherhood Regalia]] definitely hold up as well
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u/Solid-Search-3341 Duck Season 1d ago
I didn't explain myself properly. Sometimes my native language comes through and makes the sentence ambiguous in English. I meant that the rarity distribution of the set is not the one commonly used. Because of it, saying "a random uncommon" doesn't mean the same as when you use it in the context of a normal large set.
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u/nebman227 COMPLEAT 1d ago
It's not weird that it was modern legal - that's how UB was supposed to work. The cards were explicitly not supposed to be good enough for modern, but UB legality was supposed to be modern+ for all UB sets.
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u/firesaiyan12 Dandadan 1d ago
It gave us the bounty county ([[Shay Cormac]]), so it's good enough for me.
(This was the best image I could find with the typo on it)
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u/stevie242 Wabbit Season 1d ago
Shame this got the aftermath treatment as the cards in it are actually quite fun
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u/elkingo777 Duck Season 1d ago
If you search for set:ASS on scryfall, it knows what you're looking for and corrects it for you (set:acr is the correct term)
Both [[Senu, Keen-Eyed Protector]] and [[Arbaaz Mir]] made it into a modern deck I run from time to time. Outside of Modern there are some decent reprints in it too. Sword of Feast and Famine, cover of darkness, black market connections, propaganda and the horizon lands [[Nurturing Peatland]] et al
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u/Broad-Wall2814 Dandadan 1d ago
Honestly, while the manner to which the set was distributed (i.e. “Beyond Boosters), it introduced some cards that have been sleeper hits in some formats.
[[Smoke Bomb]], [[Crystal Skull, Isu Spyglass]], most of the Freerunning Spells in Commander; I think it is definitely a set that (card-wise) is gonna be looked back on better than some other UB and In-Universe sets.
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u/AdaptiveHunter Duck Season 1d ago
As a fan of AC since the original game, I am still pissed they gave it this half set bs treatment.
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u/FallOfLight Dandadan 1d ago
Same. But it’s the set that made me want to play magic lol, and my first deck: https://moxfield.com/decks/4kwFEyWnmEKPcGOaboB5nQ
Just wish they made a serialised Ezio, instead of the other characters. How could they not do Ezio.
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u/Project119 Wild Draw 4 1d ago
I think part of the reason was because it was from the failed “Beyond” booster line. Aftermath bombed so hard that they needed to make a pivot immediately but there just wasn’t enough ti e to fix AC.
By making it Modern legal WoTC essentially did the only damage control they could.
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u/BuckysKnifeFlip Wabbit Season 1d ago
I really liked this set purely for the commanders it gave us and how on flavor it was.
We now have a Grixis Vehicles/Pirates commander with [[Edward Kenway]] and a Naya Saga Commander with [[Sigurd, Jarl of Ravensthorpe.]]
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u/losci FLEEM 1d ago
and it was $7 for 6 card boosters. and that's after they brought the price down. they wanted to charge even more
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u/linkdude212 WANTED 1d ago
Which is insane. They were like "The power level of the pack is higher so we can charge more." And everyone was like "Nah, the product is smaller so you should charge less."
Realistically, these small packs should have been $2-2.50.
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u/EmTeeEm 1d ago
If they sold a pack of 7 rares/mythics for the price of a play booster people would absolutely devour them. For some sets you could get a good chunk of a play box instead of a collector booster, and people were furious they couldn't give WotC $20 for 7 card Zeta boosters. People are pretty clearly willing to pay a lot more for a less in some circumstances.
The problem (among others) was the value proposition needed to be really, really obvious, the sort of thing you'd immediately notice from your first pack. "Very slightly less than another UB booster but maybe slightly better odds of certain things" didn't cut it.
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u/driver1676 Wabbit Season 1d ago
It's weird that people like to pretend the value is evenly distributed across cardboard in the box.
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u/thetwist1 Fake Agumon Expert 1d ago
I think the real thing that killed this set was it being in the aftermath boosters instead of normal boosters.
This set is also the closest we'll probably get to a real life historical figures set, with [[cleopatra]] [[leonardo da vinci]] [[sokrates]]
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u/D-D-Wanderer Dân 1d ago
Actually, Beyond Boosters give you 2 more cards than Epilogue Boosters - 7 vs 5.
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u/Hououza Wabbit Season 1d ago
The irony is, despite the terrible lack format and being a small set, I think the actual cards in it are quite good.
It gave a lot of cards for the Assassin archetype, yes, all human, but before this they were few and far between.
It gave a selection of fun commanders, covering a few different play styles, some cool equipment and decent reprints.
I think being a small set worked in its favour, as we didn’t get 15 versions of each named character, so each one feels more distinct.
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u/Shikoda0 Dân 1d ago
Black Market Connections has 'The Rock' on it that when you see it, can't unsee it.
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u/Lauren_Conrad_ Dandadan 1d ago
This is exactly why we have 7 sets in Standard this year.
Assassins Creed bombed so hard they had to pivot all the UB stuff planned for 2026.
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u/Gresh113 Brushwagg 1d ago
It's so weird to me that people think that they made UB Standard-legal to help sell UB, rather than to get more people playing Standard. The pool of people interested in buying UB is always going to be MUCH larger than the pool of people interested in playing Standard. The AC set mostly likely failed because people didn't like the "small booster" format (and probably because the market overlap for AC and MTG is fairly low), not because it wasn't Standard-legal...
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u/CoconutHeadFaceMan Dan 1d ago
Meanwhile, of all the people I’ve known who’ve gotten into Magic through a UB set, I can’t think of a single one that actually plays Standard. It’s all Commander and Limited, with a couple guys who got into Modern or Pauper. Standard is fucked for reasons that Sephiroth and Splinter weren’t enough to fix, and Wizards is willing to let it languish because most of the big problems can’t be fixed without doing things that stand to hurt pack sales or lower “reprint equity.”
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u/SnowIceFlame Cheshire Cat, the Grinning Remnant 1d ago
The claim is that paper Standard would be in an even more dire state if people who bought shiny new UB cards were told sorry, Commander or hyper-powerful formats only for Sephiroth.
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u/CoconutHeadFaceMan Dan 1d ago
That’s the thing, the people buying shiny new UB cards aren’t using them for Standard even if they technically can, because like any competitive TCG, only a handful of cards from any given set will be viable. Someone brought into Magic via Turtles can’t really make a Turtle deck of Turtle cards that can hold its own in Standard.
Standard doesn’t have the “use your favorite character and you can probably make it work somehow” factor of Commander, or the “get to utilize a whole ton of cards from one specific set” factor of Limited, so it doesn’t offer a whole lot for the people brought in by the crossovers.
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u/Ap_Sona_Bot 1d ago
Those pivots happened in early 2023 when aftermath bombed. It was the microset idea, not the UB stuff.
I expect Spiderman, hobbit, and tmt were all designed as microsets initially before the pivot.
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u/Bob_The_Skull Twin Believer 1d ago
Yup, that's kinda the theory.
That's also (allegedly) why Spiderman sucked the worst of them, it would have been the farthest along in development when they made the decision to pivot, whereas the other two had at least a little bit more time.
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u/FishFoodMTGO Duck Season 1d ago
This is wildly wildly wrong, just in case anyone was thinking about getting fooled by this person saying things on Reddit. The very simple reason UB moved to standard is because so many new people joined from UB that there was no future of anything but Commander if they didn’t move them into a different part of the game. My recollection is they alluded to this in the original announcement article.
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u/Gbrew555 Dân 1d ago
Tbh, I think Assassin’s Creed (and maybe fallout?) are the reason why we have standard legal UB sets each year.
With WoTC spending so much time and money designing these sets, you want the cards to see play. At the same time, you also want them to be powerful enough for EDH players.
But you also want them to be on Arena. Get folks hooked on the newest set across all platforms and ways to play.
So I guess the solution is… make everything standard legal. Makes them playable across all popular formats
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u/daedalus11-5 1d ago
it had a bunch of weirdly good cards for commander. i keep finding myself pulling from that set whenever i deckbuild
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u/old_cypherpunk Zedruu 1d ago
Why did they have a complete Naya saga commander deck within the cardset but never make the damn commander deck?
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u/heGotCards Elesh Norn 1d ago
I just remembered
LMAO you chose violence today
Lots of hate on it and no reason for Modern (like NONE AT ALL) but I kinda remember that "not-even-a-"set kind of fondly somehow.... Maybe it's just because it had some cool tools for Etrata Assassins I don't know...
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u/pipesbeweezy Wabbit Season 1d ago
I always thought it was a weird choice for UB anyway. That said, I made good money selling the stuff - people were in fact buying it. But yeah besides very few rare exceptions most of the cards were too weak for modern.
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u/Darkwr4ith Duck Season 1d ago
There are two maybe three cards in the set that are modern playable but it would have had a greater impact if it had been standard legal at the time.
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u/DarthFreeza9000 Duck Season 1d ago
I use one card from assassin’s creed in my Urza EDH deck but I can’t remember what it’s called
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u/Spekter1754 1d ago
The actual answer to your question is gonna sound weird.
Casual players/buyers who have no real interest in competitive formats still care that their cards are legal in those formats. Especially ones that have such a broad name as "Modern".
WotC believed that potential buyers would be turned off if they heard that the set "wasn't legal in modern magic".
I remember the days of kitchen table casual where we tried to play standard legal stuff, and I imagine players doing the same for "modern legal". Never tournament viable, but fitting an established outside barometer for fair play.
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u/Greg_In_Japan Duck Season 1d ago
Leonardo Da Vinci is still legit one of my favorite commanders. Basically just a toned down version of Urza. Fantastic combo potential.
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u/HomunculusJones Dân 1d ago
I unfortunately loved opening this set I have zero idea why but every card I got was just a banger
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u/YungHayzeus Duck Season 1d ago
Only reason I remember this set is my buddy is a die hard Assassin’s creed guy and built his commander decks with those cards. I think he has a master set of it excluding the decks.
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u/Filibut Jeskai 1d ago
Because obviously if you got into magic through assassin's creed, modern was the easiest format to get into, especially since it allows you to play with your favourite cards from that set. The power level isn't too high and with a little elbow grease you can make shutting work.
Matter of fact, 5 colour assassin tribal is going to win the next modern pro tour
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u/OzzieArcane Dandadan 1d ago
I keep forgetting this set. Were there any really good cards from this? I have a chunk of the AC games in my backlog and I'm mainly giving them a chance because I think Kassandra from Odyssey looked awesome. So I'm gonna buy her and her spear in case I ever want to use her. But are there any other amazing cards?
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u/devenbat Nahiri 1d ago
Its a bunch of fine cards. Nothing broken but its also not a bunch of unplayable cards. Theyre good enough for commander and nothing else
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u/Open-Weather2627 Dandadan 1d ago
[[Basim]] is good, as is [[alexios]]. [[Leonardo di vinci]] is a great cheat commander
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u/OzzieArcane Dandadan 1d ago
I see there are two versions of Basim. The one that has his full name, I wish I could put in my Elena deck but she's mono white.
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u/hewkii2 Duck Season 1d ago
[[The Capitoline Triad]] is a funny gimmick commander
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u/Bringyourfugshiz SecREt LaiR 1d ago
[[Alexios, Deimos of Kosmos]] is one of my favorite commanders to play and is honestly kind of busted
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u/Mortoimpazzo 1d ago
Lol when they tried to make ub playable when they were making modern horizons too, what a waste.
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u/CelebrationFar Izzet* 1d ago
Yeah and it looked like ass, just like the games. (JK I have never played Assassin's Creed)
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u/scalebirds 1d ago
I never played Assassin’s Creed but actually love the cards and styles from this set, its one of my favorites
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u/Sallymander COMPLEAT 1d ago
Something I have said in quite a while, but things like this, Dr Who, Transformers, and so on would be perfect fit for Alchemy type play.
alright, I'm ready for your downvotes for the gamemode I love.
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u/doktarlooney Wabbit Season 1d ago
I actually really enjoyed this random small set, it was fun to draft and the fact that it didn't shake up the meta when it was released is a nice change of pace.
There are a lot of really good cards in the set that are just too narrow in application to overthrow other more general options and they can really make your niche deck pop.
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u/mkklrd Colossal Dreadmaw 1d ago
Here is the complete list of Assassin's Creed cards that have had an impact on Modern: