Fans of Magic: The Gathering have plenty of reasons to be excited for the upcoming Phyrexia: All Will Be One prerelease. It will continue the story of Phyrexia's attempted conquest of the multiverse, which has been in the works since the Kaldheim set in 2021. And the recently leaked Planeswalker cards have made it clear that the stakes are high. But the prerelease event will also mark a new shift in format legality for the wildly popular card game. It is a shift that may provide some convenience for players, but marks a major change in policy for the company.
The Phyrexia: All Will Be One Prerelease changes
The changes to the Phyrexia: All Will Be One prerelease were announced by a post on the official Magic website. The post goes into detail about how tournament legality for certain cards was always tied to the date of their global release. This means that if you picked up a bunch of cards during a prerelease event you couldn't play them in any other event until a week or more later.
That policy will now change with the Phyrexia: All Will Be One prerelease. Officially, tournament legality will be tied to prerelease, not global release. In other words, once you have the cards, you can play them. Between this shift, and the sales changes made during The Brothers' War prerelease, these events are the official release in all but name. Don't expect the name to change soon, as it seems Wizards likes having both the pre-release and release events.
Also coming for Phyrexia: All Will be One is a new retail exclusive Secret Lair. The official post is vague on details, simply stating that the Secret Lair will be all-foil, that it would be related to Phyrexia: All Will Be One, and that it would be coming to official WPN partners. We'll have to wait until closer to the lock-in date of January 13th to find out more presumably, if the information is available publicly.
The Phyrexia: All Will Be One prerelease event begins on February 3.