Magic: The Gathering players welcomed Lorwyn Eclipsed with open arms over the weekend, with pre releases filling my stores here in Northeast Wisconsin, and social media reports of filled tables all over the country. The latest release is an early success for MTG, and keeps the momentum going from the Avatar campaign from the end of last year.

I went to two pre release events in my town, and here were some things I overheard or had discussions about..

Lorwyn Eclipse satisfied about four out of five players: That’s pretty good. Look at a movie. An 80 percent Rotten Tomatoes score is a good thing. And the complaints I heard were more about individual cards and favoritism than the actual set.

Precons were winning games: MTG wants to Magic to be approachable. While adding more mechanics seems counter-intuitive to that, players were still winning with Ashling and Auntie Ool. There were elementals wreaking havok everywhere.

Blight was indeed leaned into and synergies were explored: We knew that players were look forward to blight, given their reckless nature to harm anything, even themselves if it means winning. But we’re seldom happy there, and there were several different synergies that people tried which we’ll explore on the blog in the coming days.

No Ninja Turtle leaks at my events: After the leaks started on Friday night (story HERE) myself along with everyone else was keeping an eye out for Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles leaks. There were none. But the conversation leads me to my final bullet point.

Traditionalists still panned upcoming Universes Beyond releases: MTG faithfuls still voiced concerns over upcoming Universes Beyond sets. This includes TMNT, Marvel Superheroes (with some hard feelings over the Spiderman release) and even Star Trek, which becomes more of a high stakes push the closer we get.

But the cash registers were busy and cardboard was everywhere. Meaning it’s unlikely Magic: The Gathering will change course at any time.

The pre release of Lorwyn: Eclipsed was a success. In my market anyway.

The real fun begins next week, as players start modifying and optimizing their decks.

What are you seeing out there? Let me know in the comments.

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