I'm one of the assholes who got both 40k and LOTR cards. I liked them quite a lot. But I always thought they should be kept separate from mainline MTG products.
40K did do that well, I think, as it was basically 4 Commander decks make for some fun games together and one Secret Lair I think.
Eh, I don't think it makes you an asshole. Too many players are buying it anyway. And I know if they all just didn't then we'd have a successful protest but the problem with that in TCGs is competition. If you protest a product then you are literally shooting your viability in the foot. If I played my modern deck without the few LOTR cards it needs, I'd be at a severe disadvantage unfortunately. Even in casual circles I've seen this be true. Just because Commander is casual doesn't mean there isn't an arms race among friends or communities. I've watched casual playgroups who play all the time eventually shift towards very competitive decks over time as they garner larger collections and trading power.
Any way you slice it, it feels good to win and it feels better to lose with a shot to win than it does to lose to someone playing major leagues while you're hitting the baseball off a tee.
LOTR was a different thing though. It was way bigger, and from what I saw, they added LOTR cards in Modern Horizons 3, no? That's...yeah, I don't like that.
Yeah I'm not a fan of how they're treating Modern now either, especially between Universes Beyond AND Modern Horizons.
For the uninitiated, Modern was first introduced in 2011 and the idea was to "give a home for your old Standard cards." Standard was the de facto format of MTG for many years, it was a rotating set of the most recent cards essentially. Once a set or group of sets had been around too long and a new one released, the oldest one would become illegal to play in Standard.
So Modern's goal was to replace a format that was Standard but had twice the card pool called Extended. Essentially it was Standard but took twice as long for cards to rotate out. Instead, Modern would feature any card from Standard legal sets from 8th Edition to today. 8th Edition was the first set to feature a border redesign on cards, which was the "modern" design at that time.
Well, Modern becomes a home to very powerful decks and new Standard cards are relevant for awhile. But as the years go on, WotC decides that Standard shouldn't have these crazy powerful cards running everywhere, which is fine, but it presents an issue. Modern relies on reprints of old cards in Standard or new powerhouses in Standard to get Standard players to build a starting collection to get into Modern. Now, that isn't so possible since so many Modern staples and mainstays won't ever get Standard printings. So WotC has a "solution."
They make a set called Modern Horizons, it's the first set to ever skip Standard but be legal in Modern and it's meant to introduce new cards to breathe fresh air into the metagame. A great idea on paper. But it also comes with the fact that old staple cards become more irrelevant. They did it again with Modern Horizons 2. So now it's a running joke that fetch lands (expensive lands that havent seen reprints in Standard since like 2013) and Modern Horizons cards compromise 90% of the metagame. Not exactly true but the sentiment has truth in it.
Then comes Universes Beyond. It'll only really affect Legacy, Vintage, and Commander because those are the only sets that allow all black border tournament legal cards no matter what set they're from. But then LOTR set releases and they announce that it is also a direct-to Modern set! And what's even worse is that Modern Horizons 3 is coming out this year alongside another Universes Beyond set that will be Modern legal, Assassin's Creed.
And there's speculation (or maybe confirmation?) that the Marvel sets will be Modern legal.
Modern is the biggest competitive format for MTG and Commander is the biggest casual format. There's a reason everything is made for one or both of these sets going forward. It's where the bulk of their income is at.
I don't mind MtG having special sets from other IPs, but they should be self-contained. Want to play 40k or LOTR MtG? It's all fine, but please don't mix these with "regular" MtG official tournaments and events.
The first taste of this type we got was in Ikoria which had their behemoths reskinned as Godzilla variants and Godzilla villains. This was universally loved I'd say as people thought "it's a legal normal MTG card but you *can* get it in a different skin, so who cares?"
Now, people who play competitively have either quit or they have to suck it up and deal with the Universes Beyond. And even before LOTR was modern legal, the other ones were already Legacy and Vintage legal for tournament purposes. But WotC doesn't hold events or series for those formats anyway, I think they're used to being a wild west afterthought at this point.
