Throughout 2023, we’ve seen an utterly baffling smorgasbord of MTG products, collaborations, and promotions being released. Each celebrating Magic’s 30th Anniversary, Wizards, or rather Hasbro, hasn’t held back in celebrating this momentous occasion. For better or worse, this has given players branded beers, bean bags, and even pancakes!
While each of these promotional products is undoubtedly an oddity, 2023 still has a whole lot of weirdness in store. More miraculously than the new products just existing, however, they’re entirely a creation of Wizards! Celebrating the encroaching summer months, Wizards has created the “Summer of Magic” and it’s absolutely wild.
Wait… Summer Is Coming?
After taking a quick look out of your window, you might be asking yourself the above question. With temperatures dropping and storms raging, it certainly doesn’t seem like summer right about now. As odd as it may seem for most people, however, summer really is just a month away for some lucky MTG players.
In case you’re unfamiliar with what’s going on, Australia and New Zealand have literal polar opposite seasons to most countries. From December to February, much of the Oceania region is in summer time, rather than the cold frigid Winter. To solve the mystery, this is why Wizards is celebrating the Summer of Magic throughout December.
Diving into the event itself, the Summer of Magic promotion is, unsurprisingly, only available at WPN stores in Australia and New Zealand. Spanning two months, this promotional event series offers a variety of baffling yet nonetheless compelling rewards. Alongside these, which we’ll get to shortly, there’s also a unique event to entice players to their LGS.
For the Summer of Magic, Wizards is vicariously organizing Chaos Sealed events. Providing LGS’ in the region with product kits, organizing the Summer of Magic events should be a breeze. With each kit containing a wild assortment of Booster Packs, the event certainly looks like a lot of fun too. Here’s a quick breakdown of what each kit contains.
- 1 x The Brothers’ War Draft Booster
- 1 x Phyrexia: All Will Be One Draft Booster
- 1 x March of the Machine Draft Booster
- 1 x Wilds of Eldraine Draft Booster
- 1 x Jumpstart 2022 Booster
- 1 x Collector Booster at random, from one of the sets listed above
Given this assortment of packs contains a Collector Booster, Chaos definitely appears to be the name of the game. Hopefully, this will prove to be incredibly fun for participants, rather than broken and dominated by unexpected cards. Just like the new Play Boosters, there’s definitely the potential for pack-based trouble with this event.
Surprisingly Summery MTG Rewards
Alongside the event looking like a lot of fun, as we alluded to earlier, the fun doesn’t stop there. To truly get into the summer spirit, there are also a number of baffling promos for players to receive. Earned by either participating or winning these items should let players celebrate in style… Well, hopefully, at least.
By attending a Summer of Magic event this year, each MTG player should receive a promotional magnet and Sunglasses. Featuring the above art, there’s no denying the magnets look absolutely fantastic, especially that adorable Koala character. As for the glasses, sadly they haven’t been revealed just yet, but they feature “flower rims and bright colors like blue, pink, orange, and yellow.”
Alongside the magnets, there are also two different beach towels up for grabs. Given out only to winners of the Chaos Sealed events, these towels also look absolutely great. Featuring all the characters together, or a big summery MTG logo, these towels would certainly make good beach attire. Our only hope is that the quality of these promotional products is actually usable, and not just a novelty.
For better or worse, while these promos do look rather nice and summery, the art isn’t available elsewhere. From what Wizards has stated so far, there are no sleeves or playmats featuring the above designs. Considering they would be absolutely perfect for this, it’s definitely a disappointment, however, hopefully, that can be rectified in the future.
Summer Fun but Only for Some
As we’ve mentioned a few times already, this Summer of Magic event is currently only available in Australia and New Zealand. For better or worse, this means these promotional items may be rather hard to obtain. As usual for MTG products, this means that they should be rather expensive on the secondary market. That will be the case, at least, provided Wizards doesn’t run this event in other regions.
Unfortunately, at the moment, Wizards hasn’t indicated this event will run again at any point. Considering how good these promotional items look, we’d certainly welcome it, but, right now, we just don’t know. Hopefully, even if Wizards doesn’t repeat this exact Summer of Magic event, they can create similar events in the future. With how fun this event looks, it would be hard not to get excited about that.
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