Today, each of the five Commander precons for Secrets of Strixhaven has been unveiled. With each offering a fairly unique game plan and tons of fantastic reprints, there’s understandably tons to get excited about. Unfortunately for any MTG players in the United States who like the look of these products, you may have to wait longer than usual.
Secrets of Strixhaven Commander Precon Delay
Yesterday, following the set’s debut livestream, Wizards quietly announced a Secrets of Strixhaven delay. Given that social media was swarmed by wild new spoilers, there’s a non-zero chance this sneaky announcement was missed. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make this delay go away, and it’ll likely affect a lot of MTG players.
According to Wizards, there may be “shortages of Secrets of Strixhaven Commander decks and Bundles on Prerelease weekend.” Currently, it’s unclear how widespread this problem will be, but “lower availability” does sound somewhat concerning. Sadly, this may mean that many players are left unable to get the Commander decks they want during Prerelease weekend.
From the announcement, it appears that bundles, though not Codex Bundles, will be even harder to obtain. These are outright “unlikely to be available” until the set officially launches. That is the only silver lining to these delays, as it sounds like they should be short-lived.
In the news post, Wizards stated that the full allocation of Commander products should arrive at stores after a week or two. With Bundles only being delayed by a week, as well, hopefully, most MTG players won’t be waiting for long.
Delays on Delays
While delays are never good news in MTG, they’ve become surprisingly frequent recently. Most recently, both Lorwyn Eclipsed and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had products being delayed in North America. As if that weren’t bad enough, Secret Lair has, and still is, experiencing a major delay thanks to production problems.
As much as it’s concerning that delays keep happening over and over again, there’s no one problem behind this. Some MTG players suspect that issues may be linked to a “raw material shortage,” but that’s just a theory. More realistically, as many MTG players suggest, the main issue might be Wizards simply making too much right now.
In 2026, we’re getting seven brand new sets, with typically only six weeks between them. Due to this, it’s easy to see why we’d be running into production problems, as any slip-up could have knock-on effects. That said, as other players point out, printers will always be “as close to 100% capacity as possible,” so it’s not entirely on Wizards.
Either way, having MTG products be delayed, especially Commander precons, is undeniably frustrating. Hopefully, as time goes on, issues like these will be less and less common, but that remains to be seen.
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