Two weeks ago, I happily attended my first-ever pre-release event for a new Magic: the Gathering set. This was for Lorwyn Eclipsed, which veteran players inform me is a long-awaited return to the fantasy stylings of Magic’s Lorwyn plane after nearly 20 years. As you can imagine, there were a lot of long-time Magic fans who were very excited about this release, but in the minutes before my pre-release event began, I kept overhearing a tone of anxiety in the conversations around me.
The cause of the anxiety? Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
If you’ve never been to a pre-release event, what happens is this: you’re given a nice little box that contains several booster packs, which you will use to build a deck for the event and play some matches with other attendees. The boxes also tend to contain other goodies, which in the case of Lorwyn Eclipsed involved a deck box, a die, and a single foil card from the set. The foil you get is random, but it’s supposed to come from the set you’re there to play. And when I opened my box, that’s what I encountered. A nice little foil of Shadow Urchin.
But the reason for the anxiety at the event was because word had gotten around that some people were not receiving Lorwyn cards as their foil promo card. Instead, a number of social media posts had been circulating showing players with six Lorwyn Eclipsed booster packs and one foil card from the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles set.
Now, this is quite the mix-up! Not only is TMNT, uh, very different from Lorwyn, but the TMNT set isn’t even supposed to be out yet. It’s coming on March 6, just under two months from the date this was happening. So not only was this causing an issue for Lorwyn fans, but TMNT fans excited for the upcoming set were now getting previously unrevealed cards shown off via random social media posts.
This situation also complicated the event itself: normally, a TMNT card would not be legal in a Lorwyn Eclipsed pre-release deck. Fortunately, Wizards of the Coast issued a statement pretty quickly about the situation, saying that stores should replace the TMNT promo cards where possible with Lorwyn cards. Where not possible, players would be allowed to play with the TMNT cards. That… sort of helps, but the fact is that Lorwyn Eclipsed cards are part of a set that’s meant to be played together, with cards and mechanics that coordinate with one another to create a balanced game. A single TMNT card is more likely than not going to struggle to fit into decks like that. What’s more, shops would have to break into unsold pre-release boxes to take out the replacement foil cards, which essentially just eats through inventory for no reason.
Of course, you could argue, it’s just one card! Who cares! And that’s fair. But another sentiment I heard both online and at the event I attended was that the turtle invasion felt like a slap in the face to veteran Magic players. Not only has the wait to return to Lorwyn been long, but some long-time players have grown frustrated at how many collaborations with outside IP (dubbed “Universes Beyond”) Magic has been doing lately. Wizards has been doing these crossovers since 2020, though at the time Universes Beyond cards weren’t planned to be made legal in the Standard format and many of the ones that followed were just reskins, making them fairly easy to put up with if you didn’t want to see Transformers or Doctor Who in your Magic game.
But starting last year with Final Fantasy, that changed. The wildly popular Final Fantasy set was dubbed Standard-legal, and this year, Magic is getting more Universes Beyond sets than ever before: TMNT in March, Marvel in June, The Hobbit in August, and Star Trek in November. That’s four standard sets – more than Wizards is releasing of non-Universes Beyond sets, of which we are only getting three: Lorwyn Eclipsed, Secrets of Strixhaven, and Reality Fracture. This is a lot to keep up with both mentally and financially, and while you could argue there’s no pressure to “keep up,” there is if you play the game’s Standard format, which always revolves around the most recently-released sets.
It’s also worth noting that groups of fans aren’t the only ones who are annoyed here. Recently, shareholders of Wizards’ parent company, Hasbro, filed a lawsuit against it, alleging that it was overprinting sets of cards, thereby devaluing ones that already existed. In the suit, shareholders also claimed Hasbro had previously done some fairly manipulative things with Magic card sales to cover up shortfalls elsewhere in the company. Regardless of whether or not anything comes of the lawsuit, there are some pretty hefty accusations in the complaint that would understandably sow further distrust among those who already felt Magic was overplaying its hand.
So, back to the pre-release event, you can imagine perhaps being a long-time Magic fan, excited for the return of Lorwyn, ready to play some games involving elves and fairies and merfolk, maybe rubbed the wrong way a bit by the sheer volume of Universes Beyond but trying not to let it bother them, only to open their pre-release pack and find “Michelangelo, Weirdness to 11” in shiny foil. Doesn’t feel great. Heck, I’ve only been playing a year, and I breathed a sigh of relief when my pre-release pack (and, in fact, my entire card shop) was decidedly turtle-free.
To their credit, Wizards has acknowledged fan frustrations and is trying to make good. In a lengthy blog post written by communications director Blake Rasmussen, he apologized for the “shell shock” of seeing a turtle in a Lorwyn box. “We wouldn’t blame you if you found it cool, but maybe a bit rude, that Lorwyn Eclipsed had to share the spotlight with an upcoming set,” the post reads.
In response, Wizards went ahead and updated its image gallery to include official art of all rares and mythic rares from the main set. “They’re already out there if you know where to look, and we’d rather you have them all in one official place,” the post reads. “It’s ready for you now if you want to take a look.”
Rasmussen also announced plans for some sort of make-good event for the stores that had to deal with turtles at the event, though they weren’t clear as to what that would look like just yet. Here’s what he said:
“Then, to keep the Lorwyn Eclipsed party going, we’re going to do—something. We’re playing catch up a bit and we wanted to get this article out sooner rather than later, but we’re assessing how widespread the issue was and working on some kind of cool, back-end, Lorwyn Eclipsed-related thing we can do for affected stores because we’re really proud of this set and we want to make sure it gets its time in the sun. We’re going to figure said thing out and get back to you all.”
The response to this from the community has been mixed. A lot of people weren’t mad about the turtles to begin with. Universes Beyond, some argue, is a great way to get new players into the hobby who might not have otherwise noticed Magic before. Some others who were annoyed with the turtles appear to have been pacified by Wizards’ statement and response. Others still aren’t happy, believing this is a symptom of a larger problem at Wizards (too much emphasis on Universes Beyond) and an overall lack of care.
We won’t really know where the community writ large’s heart lies on the broader issues until later this year, when the Magic card deluge has fully arrived and we have a better idea of whether or not people are actually buying all these dang sets. As for Lorwyn Eclipsed, hopefully whatever Wizards is plotting to help assuage the affected stores is appropriately celebratory of Lorwyn, which frankly is a pretty cool setting. I ended up having a grand time at my pre-release event, and will probably attend future ones as a result, provided there are no horror stories of Borg showing up in Strixhaven.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to [email protected].
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