It's been an interesting weekend for Magic: The Gathering Strixhaven. Today, Wizards of the Coast announced via the game's official website the certain products for the newest set would be delayed for pretty much everyone. If that wasn't bad enough, there's also been an art snafu on some of those fancy Japanese Mystical Archive cards.
Magic: The Gathering Strixhaven School Of Delays
It sounds like you might have a bit of a longer wait than you anticipated for certain Magic: The Gathering Strixhaven products. According to the announcement, several of the bigger products will be delayed in various regions. In Australia, New Zealand, and Thailand, the prerelease event has been pushed back to match up with the actual release date of April 23, while Thailand exclusively will also see a delay in Strixhaven bundles until some time in mid-May.
You haven't escaped the delays even if you live in North America. In the US and Canada, Draft Boosters and Japanese-language boosters will be delayed for an undetermined amount of time. Wizards were keen to point out that these Magic: The Gathering Strixhaven products are not a limited release, and more will be made available after the new set drops on April 23rd. The only reason given for these delays in the NA territory was "unforeseen production issues", but one imagines that it is likely a mixture of COVID-19, and a certain canal being blocked by a giant ship.
Clearly, this will have an effect on the rarity of draft boosters and will make it a little harder to get your hands on those exclusive Japanese art cards. Of course, that might have a knock-on effect on the price of the Japan-exclusive cards as well, so if you're into that cool new art, you'll want to wait a bit for supply to buoy in the near future, as the large printrun at the beginning of the set was still undertaken, it just is taking longer to get where it needs to.
A Magic: The Gathering Strixhaven Art Snafu Too
Another issue plaguing Strixhaven appears to be a production mess-up that has seen two cards with their art swapped around. The Japanese-exclusive version of Ephemerate and Memory Lapse from the upcoming set's Mystical Archives have accidentally been printed en masse with their art accidentally traded. Thanks to how close to release this issue was discovered, there's no way to change things now. If you play in Arena you might notice that the art hasn't been fixed there either, presumably to keep the digital and physical versions of the cards in parity to prevent confusion.
This isn't the only issue that the Mystical Archive cards have run into either. Recently, it was alledged that the art of one of them, Crux of Fate, was plagarized from other artists. On a much smaller scale, there is also the fact that seven of the cards have been banned from entering the Magic: The Gathering Arena Historic format for power level concerns.
Magic: The Gathering Strixhaven is expected to release on April 23rd worldwide. You can learn more about the set on the game's website.
What do you think about the problems plaguing Strixhaven? Will you be looking out for the art-swapped cards in April? Let us know your thoughts below.
