Wizards of the Coast offered up a first look at Magic: The Gathering – March of the Machine, the next Premier booster set, and revealed important dates for retailers.
March of the Machine (see “Product Line Deets for ‘March of the Machine’“) focuses on the battle between the Gatewatch and Elesh Norn’s Phyrexian army over the fate of the Multiverse. Much like the Borg queen from Star Trek: TNG, Norn will stop at nothing to “compleat” (assimilate) everyone and everything in the Multiverse, and the planeswalkers and the legends on various planes are the only forces in her way. As a result, this set sees some bizarre team-up efforts between legends on the same plane.
The main feature of this set are the teamed up Legendary Creature cards with odd combinations of characters like Yargle and Multani; Ghalta and Maven; and even Thalia and The Gitrog Monster. There are also more compleated creatures, even a compleated God card in the form of Heliod, the Radiant Dawn. The set also continues WotC’s somewhat aggressive reprinting of desirable cards (see “Hasbro ‘Fireside Chat’“) by adding Multiverse Legends to the set, which are non-Standard legal reprints that are the Legendary Creature equivalent of Strixhaven’s Mystical Archive (see “‘Magic: The Gathering’s’ Mystical Archive“). There will also be a Secret Lair drop coming for this set that will contain more notable reprints like Questing Beast, Olivia Voldran, Walking Balista and others.
WPN retailers will receive new prerelease promos as the celebration of 30 years of Magic continues on. The promos in this round will be foil versions of Eternal Witness, Chord of Calling, and Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind. WotC has also changed up the Prerelease Packs to include additional foil-stamped legendary promo cards for Commander play with special card treatments.
The retailer dates to keep in mind regarding the release of this set are as follows:
- March of the Machine Story: March 16-28, 2023
- Set Debut, Cinematic Trailer and Previews Begin: March 29, 2023
- Card Previews: March 29–April 4, 2023
- Complete Card Image Galleries: April 5, 2023
- In-Store Prerelease Events: April 14–20, 2023
- MTG Arena and Magic Online Digital Release: April 18, 2023
- Global Tabletop Release: April 21, 2023
- In-Store Launch Party Events: April 21–23, 2023
For more information on future releases of Magic products, check out ICv2’s 2023 calendar (see “‘Magic: The Gathering’ 2023 Release Calendar“).
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Source: ICv2
