March Of The Machine Aftermath was meant to be one of the most important 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Magic: The Gathering sets ev🧔er released. The bookend to the Phyrexian invasion arc shows how the multiverse coped in the wake of a war spread across every reality. It might not be a big 🌞set – only 50 cards compared to the usual 200 or so we’re used to – but it is poised to include story elements that will change MTG forever.
Then a YouTuber🐭 with a Collector’s box of Aftermath came a꧙long and spoiled it all in the least interesting way possible. While I&rsquoᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚ;ll be avoiding discussing any specifics here, having one guy blunder in and show over 90 percent of the set weeks before schedule isn’t just a bit disappointing, it’s outright selfish.
In terms of sheer number of cards, this obviously isn’t the biggest leak Magic has ever had. Just this year, Phyr🅘exia: All Will Be One had almost all its rares and mythics leaked💯 in packs of Dominaria Remastered. Last year, Commander Legendꩵs: Battle For Baldurs’ Gate had much the same happen. And, of course, the New Phyrexia set , thanks to a few French pro players sharing the ‘God book’ between themselves.
But none o💙f those sets had the magnitude of March of the Machine Aftermath. This was the final chapter of a years-long arc, and was hyped up by Wizards as being a change on the same level as ‘The Mending’, the event that gave us modern Planeswalkers and serves as the dividing epoch of MTG’s canon. On a smaller scale, it’s meant to give us closure after March of the Machine, and reveal what became of characters like K꧙arn, who gave up his Planeswalker spark to save Nissa and Ajani.
All of that is still to come – as of writing, preview season will be going on as planned, and the story will be published ahead of it. But it all feels flat and a bit pointless n🌱ow, as a guy with less than 2000 YouTube subscribers at 🐼the time flicked through packs ahead of time.
It’s important to note that, as far as we know, the YouTuber involved hasn’t done anything illegal. Somewhere down the line someone has cocked up enough to put dozens of boxes of Aftermath out into the wild, and all this guy did was buy them and open them o🅠n YouTube. He could’ve just sat on them, or opened them in private, but why do that when there’s a billion-dollar corporation to stick it to!
It’s tempting to see this in the same way we look at video ♊game leaks, where posting embargoed details of Lego 2K Drive is sometimes considered the ‘real journalism’ of games media. Who cares about a PR team’s schedule when we could know that a♚ thing might exist eventually? Fourth Estate and all that.
Except this isn’t journalism, it’s running into the theatre to shout that Darth Vader is Luke’s father or that Bruce Willis was dead all along. There’s no journalistic rigour or integrity; he plays ignorant the whole time, claiming he doesn’t know whether or not the set has been revealed yet, and mispronounces basic words like “Dead”. There’s no injustice to shed light on, they’re just cards. He’s not doing anything worthwhile here, he🐬’s just showing ♓us stuff we were going to see in two weeks anyway.
And for what? Five minutes after March of the Machine Aftermath comes out, the hype wheel will keep on turning, we’ll forget all about this, and be full steam ahead on 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Lord of the Rings. This guy gets a few subscribers, some notoriety as ‘the one who leaked Aftermath’ for the handful of people that remember, and then we move on. So will Wizards of the Coast – it ploughed on with Phyrexia: All Will ꧃Be One’s previews regardless of the leaks, and this is probably the first time you🌃’ve thought about that whole debacle since January.
The people this really fucks over isn’t Hasbro, it’s the creators who were scheduled to reveal cards in the preview season, who’ve now had their one moment of ge🐈tting the community’s eyes on their work snatched away. Preview seasons have always varied up who reveals things – big sites and major streamers, but also smaller sites, independent creators, local game stores, and Magic outlets outside of the Anglosphere that never get a look in in the wider MTG discourse. It’s a community event as much as it is a reveal.
Though people move on quickly, those previews can be a huge boost and put you in the limelight for a hot second. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Our March of the Machine reveal was one of our best-performing articles from the set, and we’re a big site sharing a 😼draft-centric uncommon. Nobody would have cared if Johnny YouTuber had already opened it. Who knows when that small hobby store, or that independent Croatian site will get a chance to reveal a card again?
In the grand scheme of things, none of this matters. By May 3, we’ll have the official reveals of the cards we’ve already seen, and we’ll be discussing the st🤪ory or wondering what comes next in Wilds of Eldraine. But it is a shame to see one of the biggest story arcs in Magic&rsqu🎀o;s history come to an end in the mitts of a random YouTuber.