Gavin Verhey is Magic: The Gathering’s Principal Designer and one of the key players responsible for shaping the flavor and gameplay of the landmark TCG. Back in October 2025, at PAX Australia, he was kind enough to sit down with Dexerto and dive into his past, present, and future with MTG.
Prior to sitting down with Gavin, we took some time to observe him at Wizards of the Coast’s massive Magic: The Gathering booth. Watching him sign cards and merch, take photos with fans, and engage in discussion with this pocket of the MTG community, one thing became abundantly clear: You cannot fake the level of enthusiasm this man has for the game and his work.
Prior to becoming one of the faces of MTG, Gavin racked up wins and tournament accolades on the TCG’s pro circuit. His history with the game was storied before he ever set foot in the hallowed halls of Wizards of the Coast’s corporate headquarters.
When we got to sit down and chat with Gavin, he regaled us with how he all but willed himself into a job with Wizards, opened up about his enemies-to-lovers romance arc with MTG’s Commander format, and revealed his ideal Universes Beyond setting.
MTG’s Principal Designer applied for the job when he was 11
Since he was old enough to grasp the nuances of Magic: The Gathering, Gavin Verhey has wanted to dedicate his life to it. “When I was 10 years old, I started playing Magic,” Verhey told us. “When I was 11, I decided I wanted to go make Magic cards.”
It would be easy to dismiss as childish fantasy if we didn’t know Gavin as the Principal Designer for MTG, and one of the people directly responsible for creating a significant portion of cards from the last decade. At 11 years old, Verhey wasn’t just dreaming of working for Wizards of the Coast though; he was actively trying to do it.
At a local event in Seattle, Gavin cornered the company’s Vice President of Game Design at the time. “I was 11 and I went up to him and I said to him: ‘Hey, I want to work for you. Like, I’m ready, hire me.” He explained.
“He looks at me really seriously, and he’s like, ‘Okay, kid, you’re going to need two things. The first thing you’re going to need is a college degree,” Verhey recalled. “My heart just sinks because I’m 11 years old and I’m thinking it’s going to take forever to get one of those.
“The second thing he (the President of Game Design) says is ‘you should be really good at Magic.’ We only hire people who are really good at Magic”. So, thinking that becoming a professional MTG player would be easier than getting a college degree, Gavin set out to do that.
“I went pro when I was 15, started college when I was 16, graduated when I was 20, and I was hired at Wizards within a year,” he revealed.
Despite missing the thrill of pro play, Gavin is exactly where he wants to be after a 14-year career as a Game Designer for MTG.
“Coming to Wizards, you have to think about the game differently. For example, when you’re playing professionally, you’re like ‘What is the best deck I can play in a game? You’re like ‘How can I defeat my opponent?” He explained. “In playtesting, I don’t think about that at all. I’m like ‘Okay, am I having fun? Should this card I’m playing change? Is my opponent having fun? Will this card impact their fun?”
For close to a decade now, Gavin has been having most of this internal debate over MTG’s multiplayer Commander format. If you’d told him that in 2011, however, he may have been surprised.
‘Commander’ in chief
Here in 2025, Verhey accurately describes himself as “the guy everyone comes to when they want to talk Commander”. In 2024, he was named the Chair of the Commander Format Panel, a sort of governing body of the format that communicates players’ wants and needs to Wizards of the Coast. You’ll also find him talking Commander quite regularly on his YouTube channel.
A big part of that appointment was likely because the bulk of Gavin’s design work with MTG has centered around the game’s more casual, four-player offering. Interestingly enough, this isn’t the path he saw for himself when he started his career.
“I came to Wizards as a professional player. I did not play Commander, and I had disdain for it. I had absolutely no interest in playing Commander whatsoever,” he admitted. So, when the opportunity to tackle his first project as a Lead Designer arose, it was Commander 2017, and Verhey wasn’t exactly leaping at it.
“I took the weekend to think about it,” he recalled. On that weekend, Gavin took a trip to New York and found himself in a small LGS called The Uncommons, where patrons were celebrating the new release of the Commander 2014 decks.
A group of strangers offered Gavin the Guided by Nature precon deck helmed by Freyalise, Llanowar’s Fury, and invited him to play a round. “I had such a fun time in that moment that I came back on Monday and told my manager I’m in for the set,” he told us.
Verhey credits that single game for his current status as ‘the Commander guy’. “These four strangers were like, ‘Hey, you like Magic? You want to play Commander? Sit down and grab this pre-con, and let’s play.’ We were laughing immediately. And that kind of immediate connection, the Gathering part of Magic: The Gathering is a huge part of what the game is to me.”
Since then, Gavin has led projects including Commander Masters, Commander Legends, Murders at Karlov Manor Commander, and more. His most recent contribution to MTG was leading development on the insanely successful and record-breaking Final Fantasy Universes Beyond set.
We’ll also be keeping our eyes peeled for a possible Universes Beyond Expedition 33 set and any other video game collabs MTG may see in the future. For now, we’ll have to content ourselves with what we do know of the release schedule.
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