If you were playing Magic The Gathering this weekend in the midwest, specifically Wisconsin, then your card store may have been pretty busy.

This was the case in Green Bay where Wizards Of The Coast began their rollout of their Avatar release, and filled up tables everywhere there was an advertised event.

The early reviews? The best release since Final Fantasy. I didn’t get any negative feedback from the almost two dozen players I spoke to.

This is good news but there is also a lot to unpack. Let’s go slowly here.

Specifically, players were Avatar fans and were dropping their experiences watching it on Netflix. Despite my past covering television (which inspired the subtitle for these posts) I’m not an Avatar fan but I will likely check it out in the coming weeks.

This is exactly the experience that everyone wants. The customer gets a great MTG set. Wizards gets sales and a successful partnership. And Netflix gets subscriptions from the positive word of mouth.

As for the actual cards themselves, players loved the art. They loved the function of the cards. And Avatar hit the “sweet spot” in being an outside IP but not alienating the die hard traditionalist.

This was much better than Spiderman, hard to believe. But a taxi driver and bagels were no match to some of the cards we got this weekend.

The Avatar release will likely have more of a lasting positive impression than the web slinger in that regard. And poses a very important point to everyone that loves this game.

It might not be the overall size of the fandom associated with outside IPs but which brand is the best “fit” with Magic: The Gathering players.

It was a good weekend to be a MTG player.