Spoiler season is, undeniably, one of the most exciting parts of the Magic: The Gathering calendar. Getting to see a bunch of new cards revealed and discuss them with the community and friends is always a treat. Unfortunately, that excitement has soured somewhat in recent years. With the sheer quantity of new sets and products coming out, Wizards has essentially created an “endless spoiler season,” which makes the whole thing more tiring than titillating at times.
The community has complained often and loudly about this issue, and now it seems Wizards is taking action. In its usual “Where to find previews” article for Lorwyn Eclipsed, it announced a couple of significant changes to the set’s spoiler season. While these seem to be mere experiments for now, they could easily herald a new, more player-conscious approach to card reveals.
Changes For Lorwyn Eclipsed Spoiler Season
Earlier today, Wizards revealed a number of changes coming with Lorwyn Eclipsed spoiler season. First of all, it notes that it’ll be “trying out a new kind of preview season with an emphasis on in-depth videos” this time around.
While it sounds innocuous, this is actually quite a significant shift. While many creators, the Tolarian Community Colleges and MTGGoldfishes of the world, did preview content this way in the past, others used a range of different methods. Some created short skits, some wrote articles, and some even just used posts or tweets. By the sounds of things, long-form video will be usurping all of those for Lorwyn Eclipsed.
This change comes alongside a move to a “shorter list of outlets” as well, so this spoiler season will have far fewer creators involved than usual. Looking at the official schedule, in fact, there are only seven creators with dedicated preview content. Contrast this with the 43 we had for Avatar: The Last Airbender, and the 38 we had for Spider-Man, and it’s a big drop-off. We will still get other card reveals via the official Wizards channels, like the card gallery, but the involvement of community creators is way down here.
As you’d expect, these changes mean Lorwyn Eclipsed spoiler season will be quite a short one overall. It’s planned to run from January 5th to January 8th, so just four days in total. That’s pretty much the same length as Spider-Man preview season, so that’s not a wholly new development. In today’s article, however, Wizards notes that it’s “testing shorter preview seasons for some upcoming sets in 2026,” which means this is likely part of an ongoing trend.
Steps In The Right Direction?
Taken together, these changes are a bit of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it’s great to see Wizards listening to the community in regard to the constant stream of previews we’ve been getting recently. On the other hand, it does mean we’ll be getting around 300 new cards in the space of just four days.
As some pointed out on Reddit, this could be overwhelming in its own right. Spider-Man had a similarly compressed schedule, but that was also a smaller set, so the impact will likely be bigger here. Thankfully, this change is far from entirely negative, as the new, longer videos from Wizards could easily have tons of new lore and information.
At this point, it’s too early to say whether these changes will be a net good or not. The fact that Wizards is at least trying to address spoiler season concerns is admirable, mind you. Even if this one doesn’t work out, it’ll likely pave the way for a better middle-ground solution in the future.
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