Summary
Universes Beyond, the collective name forMagic: The Gathering’smany crossovers, is here to stay. It’s a regular fixture in the top-performing releases, draws in tons of new players, and gives us some of the best cards out there.
They’re also quite often rather valuable. Whether it’s Doctor Who, Lord of the Rings, Fallout, or even Evil Dead, these cards are highly collectible if you’ve got the cash to grab them.
This list uses market prices fromTCGPlayer. It lists the highest price for these between foil and non-foil printings, but doesn’t include serialised cards.
10The Fourteenth Doctor
Doctor Who: Regeneration Secret Lair - $52.91
One of the big criticisms of the fourDoctor Who Commander deckswas that there wasn’t a unified commander to play every Doctor in. Fortunately, the Fourteenth Doctor finally made that viable, with a four-colour creature that is specifically tailored to Doctor-centric decks.
Partner him with Turlough if you want to go full WUBRG.
Amusingly, the Fourteenth Doctor supports all the other Doctors by dumping them into the graveyard. While this sounds counter-intuitive, it lines them right up to either be brought back to your hand or even outright win with a well-timed Gallifrey Stands.
Though the rest of theEvil Dead Secret Lairhas middling value, Field of the Dead is an incredibly powerful card that’s banned in Modern and Pioneer. Combined with land recursion, it’s a really frightful way to create tons and tons of Zombie creature tokens.
Notably, this was the first time Field of the Dead had been reprinted since its debut in Core 2020. It’s since seen a reprint as one of Murders At Karlov Manor’s special guest cards, but that’s done little to put a dent in its value.
8Dol Amroth (Minamo, School At Water’s Edge)
Lord Of The Rings: Tales Of Middle-earth Commander - $61.43
Lord of the Rings: Tales Of Middle-earthis by far the most successful Universes Beyond release ever, and that’s thanks in part to these Commander-focused reprints of powerful cards with a new, Tolkienistic coat of paint.
Dol Amroth is a reprint of Minamo, School at Water’s Edge, and, like other ‘skinned’ cards, is treated as if it was an exact copy despite the different name. This one in particular works well with The One Ring: one blue mana to activate The One Ring and draw a ton of cards is a fantastic deal.
7The Party Tree
Lord Of The Rings: Tales Of Middle-earth Commander - $81.70
Another skinned card from Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth, this time it’s Throne of Eldraine’s The Great Henge. A fiend during its time in Standard, it now enjoys play in practically every other format.
This card’s always been hugely popular as one of the best creature-centric mana rocks in the game. It provides card draw, +1/+1 counters, and life, and gets cheaper the bigger your creatures. It isn’t even that this version is much more valuable than non-Lord of the Rings ones; it’s just a great card everybody wants.
Lord Of The Rings: Tales Of Middle-earth Commander - $84.86
Cavern of Souls is easily one of the best kindred-focused cards in the game, giving you a reliable way of playing your chosen creature type without fear of it being countered. It’s mostly used for the likes of Elves or Dinosaurs, but there’s nothing stopping you from saying Assassin or even Okapi if you have the deck for it.
Interestingly, this card is actually Standard-legal thanks to its inclusion in a set that launches after The Lord of the Rings, the Lost Caverns of Ixalan. You can run this version in a Standard deck if you want, too, which is an oddity for Universes Beyond.
Lord Of The Rings: Tales Of Middle-earth Commander - $90.22
Yet another skinned card from Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth, Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth is an interesting card that can quickly become a nightmare for judges.
Turning every land into a Swamp enables a few things: Cabal Coffers utterly explodes with value for you, Consuming Corruption can do a lot of damage, and Dross Golem can be free to play.
It also turns your opponents' lands into Swamps as well, which is perfect for anything with Swampwalk.
Things get a bit messier when you introduce a Blood Moon; Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth; or a Harbinger of the Seas to the equation, but that’s why smarter people than I are judges.
4Glittering Caves Of Algarond (Gemstone Caverns)
Lord Of The Rings: Tales Of Middle-earth Commander - $102.90
Gemstone Caverns is a very odd card. As long as you’re not the first player, you can start the game with it already on the battlefield with a counter on it to allow it to tap for any colour. This might not sound like a lot, but it means on your first turn you’ll already be up a land, and you’ll have mana open for a counterspell or piece of removal before you even get started.
This Lord of the Rings version is based on a location that many in Middle-earth consider to be among its most beautiful. If this art is anything to go by, that may well be true.
3Balin’s Tomb (Ancient Tomb)
Lord Of The Rings: Tales Of Middle-earth Commander - $156.19
Ancient Tomb is one of the best lands in the game, so much so that in Commander, a format where Sol Ring is commonplace, Ancient Tomb can be considered a bit “too much”.
The problem with Ancient Tomb is that two damage isn’t a lot, especially in Commander where you start with 40 life. By the time you have to be careful about using it, you’ve likely got more than enough other mana sources as-is. In the early game, it puts you a turn ahead of everyone else, which, combined with mana rocks like Sol Ring, can let you run away with the game.
2The One Ring
The Lord Of The Rings: Tales Of Middle-earth Holiday Edition - $203.04
By far the biggest card to come out of Tales of Middle-earth was the One Ring. The one-of-one version was famously bought byPost Malone for two million dollars, and since then the card has been the bane of formats like Modern and Legacy thanks to its sheer power.
This version is one of the band poster printings included in the later holiday rerelease of Tales of Middle-earth. As it’s a rare treatment for a rare card found only in Collector boosters, it’s no wonder it costs a pretty penny.
1Mana Vault
Fallout: Vault Boy Secret Lair - $1028.82
Shockingly, the most valuable Universes Beyond card isn’t from Lord of the Rings. Instead, it’s a rare bonus card that was randomly included alongside theFallout: Vault Boy Secret Lair drop, which coincided with the Fallout Commander decks.
Like Ancient Tomb, The One Ring, and Party Tree, Mana Vault is an all-timer for Commander. It costs just one mana to play and taps for three colourless, enabling all sorts of infinite combo possibilities right off the bat.
But it’s Fallout and the highly-exclusive nature of this card that adds to its value, which otherwise sells for less than a tenth of the price. It’s in high demand, and is likely going to be for a long time to come.
