Wizards of the Coast has promised to come up with a new Lorwyn Eclipsed-related activity or event for Magic: The Gathering stores affected by a strange prerelease error.
The Lorwyn Eclipsed prerelease took place over the weekend, but when players opened their promo packs, many found themselves looking at - not boggarts, giants, elves, and other creatures of folklore - but shell-bearing reptiles named after Renaissance Italian artists.
Somehow or other, cards from the upcoming Universes Beyond Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle MTG set snuck into Lorwyn Eclipsed packs given out at prerelease. WotC explains that a "small but noticeable number of players" received foil rares or mythic rares from TMNT.
As Wizards puts it, while some felt it fun to have the wrong cards stealth their way onto their battlefields, others found it "maybe a bit rude, that Lorwyn Eclipsed had to share the spotlight with an upcoming set".
It doesn't help that Lorwyn and the turts already feel weirdly squished together. A reminder if you haven't thoroughly studied the MTG release schedule, the first three sets of this jam-packed year are compressed together, with Lorwyn Eclipsed dropping January 23, TMNT on March 6, and Secrets of Strixhaven coming in April.
We don't typically get a main set January release; Aetherdrift and Murders at Karlov Manor both arrived early February, but with seven Standard-legal sets coming out in 2026, WotC had to shuffle things around, with some notable consequences. To fit around the Christmas break, Wizards has had to shorten spoiler season down to just a week of card reveals.
The result is that many Lorwyn-lovers were already feeling hard done by, like their favorite set of the year was being made to stand in a corner to make space for new IPs. The prerelease invasion won't have helped.
Wizards has promised to - as it puts it - "do- something".
"We're playing catch up a bit and we wanted to get this article out sooner rather than later, but we're assessing how widespread the issue was and working on some kind of cool, back-end, Lorwyn Eclipsed-related thing we can do for affected stores," an article published January 21 explains.
"We're really proud of this set and we want to make sure it gets its time in the sun. We're going to figure things out and get back to you all," it continues.
As well as something mysterious to celebrate Lorwyn Eclipsed, Wizards has radically changed its plans for marketing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles set. Since leaks were widespread, Wizards has shared the rares and mythics on the official gallery, all at once.
What do you think about the release schedule this year? Let us know over on the Wargamer Discord, and tell us what you're excited for and what you're not.