We’re seeing the aftermath of the unusually fast MTG Dominaria Remastered spoiler season, and the feedback is surprising. This spoiler season was done much differently than before, hosting a vast reprint set over two days. With MTG’s product release becoming busier by the day, with players have become exhausted from all the new cards being spoiled weekly. This was an attempt by Wizards of the Coast to allow for more space between spoilers, as there will be no changes to the rate of new product being printed.
Even though new spoilers absolutely dominated for two days, the MTG community seems surprisingly very happy with the new spoiler season strategy, but that may only be because the new season had reprints only.
Some Positive Feedback
It didn’t take long for a question regarding this unusual spoiler season to be posed on Reddit. Posed by user Vanaheim0, the question simply asks for thoughts on Dominaria Remastered’s strangely short season. The consensus among replies is that this was a great way of doing things, but only because Dominaria Remastered is a reprint set:
“I like it, there’s no need to speculate how cards will impact formats or learn new mechanics since it’s all reprints. It came, I saw cards I was interested in, then it finished. It’d probably be better to do closer to the release date though, especially around the holidays” – soupergiraffe
“As a store owner, I really appreciate the time Windows. We had to order Double Feature basically knowing nothing about it, and it was the worst product they ever made.” – allanbc
“It felt perfect for a full reprint set but i will say they could promote the set itself more and had it overlap less with spoilers for jumpstart and All Will be One. A number of people in my playgroup have been confused about what cards are actually going to be in each sets and my lgs barely knew remastered was coming out because there has been so much product to keep up with.” – OliviaTachi
Picking up from this last comment, MTG’s spoiler season, as of late, has been hectic. Jumpstart 2022 was released only a few days before DMR’s rapid spoiler season started, leaving no time for the community to consume the product before the following spoilers kicked off.
The Next Set is Right Around the Corner
Times have changed. In accordance with Wizards of the Coast’s new ‘player profile’ strategy, set releases in the past few years are very different from the past. A lot of players lament the loss of the anticipation caused by the breaks between spoiler seasons:
“I miss spoiler season being way slower back when we got a card a day and really got to mull them over. Nowadays people regularly gloss over really bomby stuff because there’s just such a high volume of things coming out all the time.” – sabett
“I don’t really care about spoiler season anymore for any set. We get basically weekly spoilers for something anymore, it’s lost all meaning regardless of how they do it.” – GibsonJunkie
Unfortunately, those times are likely never to return. Wizards has repeatedly voiced that there are no plans to slow down set printings. Additionally, they do not believe that their product is being overprinted. However, what we do have with this spoiler season is an example of Wizards of the Coast trying to listen to feedback and compromise between their plans and players’ desires. In an attempt to slow things down for players, Wizards of the Coast even delayed their next core set by a week.
Ultimately, the majority of the replies from the community suggest that Wizards’ efforts are a step in the right direction. A lot of the success, as already stated, really is due to this being a reprinted set. With that in mind, I wonder how Wizards will handle spoiling a core set like Phyrexia: All Will be One with community feedback in mind.
