Wizards of the Coast’s recent trend of naming video game executives to the position of president continued this past week as Dan Ayoub, most recently the head of Dungeons & Dragons but previously an executive producer at 343 Industries, will take over the helm from former Blizzard executive John Hight. Hight of course replaced Cynthia Williams, who had been working with the XBox team at Microsoft, and Williams in turn had replaced current Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks, who in 2016 left his role as Microsoft’s Vice President OEM Technical sales (but had previously also worked in the XBox team and before Microsoft worked at LeapFrog).
So once again we continue to affirm Wizards’ commitment to the digital space and that should be none too surprising as Magic Arena continues to chug along and D&D Beyond had a large chunk of the annual roadmap reveal dedicated to new features for the flagship TTRPG digital platform that Wizards continues to try to figure out what to do with.
With Magic the Gathering continuing to shatter its own earnings records, it’s hard to imagine that there’s much pressure on being president of the company, but outside of Magic Arena the promise of new successful digital products coming out of Wizards of the Coast hasn’t worked out. While John Hight oversaw Magic during the incredibly successful time of Final Fantasy and Avatar: the Last Airbender he also oversaw Dungeons & Dragons during the challenging product rollout that was Sigil.
According to Wikipedia, Sigil launched as part of D&D Beyond in March 2025, and was almost immediately followed by 90% of the dev team being laid off. In October 2025 it was announced that Sigil would be shutdown at the end of October 2026. Wizards announced in July this year that Hight would be stepping down as CEO effective September 1st, staying on in an advisory role for a year to the new CEO, who we now know is Dan Ayoub.
Since Chris Cocks joined Wizards of the Coast and has taken over Hasbro, the focus on bringing flagship digital products to WotC has been obvious. While there have been plenty of successful licensed products, most notably Baldur’s Gate III, in the now 10+ years since Cocks came to Wizards, nothing developed in-house has had staying power beyond Arena and D&D Beyond.
Whether or not Dan Ayoub will be able to succeed in this area is the big question. The continued success of Magic and D&D as tabletop products is virtually assured. The roadmaps for both are bright and promising with Darkhold coming in the spring for Magic and Star Wars coming next summer for D&D. But the ambitions at Hasbro are much higher and they keep pinning those hopes and dreams on a new digital product.
Star Trek Full Card Image Gallery Revealed
With the prerelease upon us, Wizards new President will be hoping that the last set of the year will be as big a success as the previous ones have been when Star Trek arrives at game stores just in time for the holiday season. While the jury is still out on whether the set will be fun to play I think the verdict is in on the aesthetic beauty of the set.
Here are my top five booster fun inserts from Star Trek:
- Ship Schematics
- LCARS Surge Foil Shock Lands
- Full-Art Holodeck Basic Lands
- Classic Enterprise Showcase Surge Foils
- Klingon Language Showcase
The card I want to open most at the pre-release this weekend is Wesley Crusher, Starfleet Cadet, ideally with the LCARS border but I won’t be picky. I had just graduated from university around the time of Time Spiral block and one of my absolute favorite all-time limited cards was Venser, Shaper Savant. While I don’t think Wesley is quite as good as Venser, getting to choose two abilities makes him a powerhouse for sure.
Of course, opening a specific rare isn’t that likely, so I’ll also be hoping for a foil copy of U.S.S. Voyager, Lone Wanderer, the homage to the favored Star Trek show of my youth.
Mengucci wins Vintage Championship
Our last story this week comes from the Vintage Championship at the North American Eternal Weekend held this past weekend in Pittsburgh, PA. While the game’s eldest formats don’t often get the spotlight, it’s hard not to notice when a player as decorated and as beloved as Andrea Mengucci takes home the title.
Vintage is unlike any other format when it comes to Magic and the championship is always a sight to see, not only because the decks are usually worth a small down payment, and not only because the games have a tendency to end in the most absurd ways, but because the love that the Vintage community has for their format is unparalleled across the entire breadth of the myriad ways to play Magic.
The Vintage format has long been held up by its pillars, one of which is Mishra’s Workshop, and it’s the pillar that powered the Italian World Champion Mengucci to victory in Pittsburgh. But what’s always amazing about Vintage is the combination of cards as ancient and powerful as Mishra’s Workshop and Time Vault combining with outrageously new cards to form novel ways to win games.
This year, Mengucci made use of cards like Tezzeret, Cruel Captain, The Fantasticar, and The One Ring to power his way to victory alongside traditional workshop deck staples like Trinisphere, Chalice of the Void, and Tolarian Academy. I think it’s safe to say that when Mishra’s Workshop was created, Richard Garfield didn’t envision it being used to power out The Fantasticar, but here we are, in universes beyond, soon to be setting a course for strange new worlds.
Congratulations to Andrea Mengucci and all the other winners at this year’s Eternal Weekend!
Rich Stein (He/Him)