After months of waiting since the first initial teaser, March of the Machine’s spoiler season is finally over. Now, with three weeks until the set’s release, players are finally able to sit back, relax, and digest the spoilers. Doing this, however, might be easier said than done, as March of the Machine had a lot going on. Alongside the main set, MTG players were inundated with spoilers for Commander products, Multiverse Legends, and even a surprise Aftermath spoiler! All in all, players have been left with 851 different new cards, reprints, and art treatments to sift through. As you can imagine, this monumental task is a bit much for some MTG players, reigniting complaints around the game’s problematic spoiler season.
A Pervasive Problem
Unfortunately for MTG players and Wizards alike, the nature of MTG’s spoiler season is not a new problem. In fact, over the past few years, it’s only been getting worse and worse. This is thanks to Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro expanding MTG’s product line while increasing the frequency of releases. On the one hand, these two developments, in conjunction, have led to MTG soaring in popularity and achieving record profits. On the other hand, however, many enfranchised MTG players have been struggling to keep up with the tempo of releases.
Throughout 2022, for example, Wizards of the Coast released fourteen major products for players to enjoy. While this is already more than one product a month, it hardly covers all released products. Including Secret Lair Superdrops, Alchemy releases, and preconstructed decks, Wizards released a total of 40 dedicated products last year. On average, this means a new product was released, roughly, every nine days. With a tempo like that, it’s understandable why MTG players have long complained about the endless spoiler season. Unfortunately, however, part of the major problem with MTG’s spoiler season is that everything isn’t spaced evenly apart. Instead, spoiler seasons often come in rapid bursts, especially when two product release dates coincide with one another.
Thankfully, for 2023, Wizards is trying their damnedest to prevent the double release of Unfinity and the Warhammer 40,000 Commander decks from happening again. Sadly, however, this improvement isn’t a cure-all fix to the spoiler season problems within MTG. This has recently been proven by March of the Machine. Despite just being a single set, all on its lonesome, March of the Machine is too much for some.
Damning Density
As with most modern MTG sets, March of the Machine is a whole lot more than just the base premier set. For instance, there are supplemental Commander and Jumpstart products, as well as a myriad of art and foil treatments. Accompanying all this, March of the Machine also features the somewhat rare addition of a bonus sheet. Chockablock with reprints, these bonus sheets are typically a beloved addition to an MTG set. Unfortunately, however, they nevertheless exacerbate spoiler season problems when they do appear.
With all these products and the release of March of the Machine: The Aftermath looming in the distance, it’s no surprise some players have complaints. The most prevalent of these, this time around, however, isn’t about the amount but rather the structure of spoilers. Voicing their dissatisfaction to MTG’s Lead Designer, Mark Rosewater, Tumblr user Blaze-1013 complained that “MOM’s spoiler season was very uneven.”
“Wednesday-Friday had TONS of spoilers, almost nothing on the weekend, some on Monday, and then another avalanche today. I don’t mind spoiler season happening over a week, but this was too condensed. Especially with 5 Commander decks and Multiverse Legends adding dozens of more cards to be shown off.”
Blaze-1013
Thankfully, when responding to this complaint, Mark Rosewater was very sympathetic toward the concerns that were raised. First, stating, “we don’t (normally) do spoilers on the weekends,” Rosewater then asked, “is one week not enough time?” From this inquisitive response, it seems that Wizards really does care about getting spoiler seasons right going forward. In fact, Wizards is already trying to do just that, as Rosewater went on to point out. “We’re trying to shorten preview seasons to stop feeling like endless preview seasons.”
Unfortunately, while some MTG players on Tumblr, such as Rhystic-buddy, agreed this strategy helped, others weren’t so pleased. Nicolbolas96, for instance, stated there were “too many cards concentrated in too few days. A week can be fine if it is equally or at least almost equally distributed.” Other players, meanwhile, simply suggested Wizards is creating too many products to digest at the moment.
“That’s also not the way to stop the ‘endless preview season’ feeling. That would be releasing less products overall in a year, cutting some of the supplemental ones which are too many right now in my opinion. I understand saying ‘make less products’ might be a bad business move, but that would be the correct solution to that problem in my opinion and I would do it anyway.”
Bravelion83
Pick and Choose Problems
Considering that the plight of MTG’s seemingly eternal spoiler season has existed for literal years, it’s hard to get optimistic about change. That being said, however, it does appear that Wizards is willing to learn and improve things where they can. Should they wish to do just that, there are plenty of suggestions they could implement going forward. For instance, Tumblr user Zorroaburrito proposed a full week of spoilers that isn’t needlessly split. Meanwhile, users such as Ledlighton on Tumblr proposed a new spoiler season structure to aid comprehension.
“Monday through Friday would feel more like a single week than going through a weekend that has nothing previewed. Just one actual week, either Mon-Fri or Sun-Sat, like any other regular week. That would be my pref”
Zorroaburrito
“I would love to know the Limited archetypes on Day 1 to better navigate throughout the spoiler season. Signpost uncommons would be great but even just the names of the archetypes would be cool. This way the spoiler season would be easier to approach (for Limited players at least) no matter if it lasts one week or two.”
Ledlighton
To take this suggestion one step further, personally, I’d recommend Wizards further segments each set’s spoiler season. Rather than overlapping different parts to get it all done in a week, having separate times for Commander, Jumpstart, and Booster Sheet spoilers could make everything much easier to follow. Admittedly, this approach may slightly extend each set’s spoiler season and could be an experiment that’s doomed to fail. That being said, there are benefits, as this segmented system could greatly improve how players digest and follow spoilers.
Recently, Wizards and Hasbro have repeatedly stated that MTG players should now pick and choose what to follow rather than trying to consume everything. Since different players enjoy different things, this approach seems to make a lot of sense on paper. In reality, however, many enfranchised MTG players feel like they don’t have a choice but to follow every spoiler constantly. After all, thanks to past precedent, many feel if they’re not keeping up, they might miss a surprise two-card combo or format-warping trick.
This already frustrating problem is exacerbated for MTG Arena players, who don’t even get every card. As highlighted by u/sjepsa on Reddit recently, this can make spoiler seasons incredibly frustrating. With enticing Commander cards mixed in throughout the regular spoiler season, tracking spoilers can be a minefield of disappointment. Due to this, many players sorely hope that Wizards can make some changes soon to mitigate this frustrating issue. Whether or not they will, however, sadly remains to be seen.
Read More: Infamous EDH Deck Gets Bizarre Support in March of the Machine!
