A detailed look at the history of Magic’s release schedule (and why the Winter set gets squeezed)

(ersatz_cats here. This was my first serious endeavor in gaming journalism, posted to Reddit in January 2017. I had noticed a number of very interesting things, both about the release schedule of Magic: The Gathering up to that point, as well as indications that schedule was about to change. What was wild was, while I did correctly identify that a change was underway based on existing patterns, I had assumed it would be a minor change. Instead, we ended up with a major scheduling overhaul, as detailed in Mark Rosewater’s column “Metamorphosis 2.0”. The following write-up is presented as it was originally posted.)

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In 11 days, the NFL will host the Super Bowl – the fifty-first, for those who are counting. That same day, Wizards of the Coast will host the finals of Pro Tour Aether Revolt, to significantly fewer viewers and viewing parties. This means we can all look forward to a week of questions on Magic forums to the tune of “Why the heck did Wizards of the Coast schedule the Pro Tour during the Super Bowl?” (Just like last year.) All this coming off recent questions of “Why are there only one week of previews for Aether Revolt? Aren’t previews usually two weeks?“

The point of this post isn’t to ponder the wisdom of scheduling a Pro Tour opposite the Super Bowl. For what it’s worth, this Pro Tour in Ireland will be over well before the Big Game, but if the Pro Tour continues being on the first Sunday in February, that won’t always be the case.

I’m also not posting this to debate the wisdom of shrinking official previews for the Winter set from two weeks to one – although you really don’t need me to tell you how important spoiler season is to Magic’s marketing.

This post is a look at why this awkward scheduling is happening – why it did not happen in the past, and what’s causing it now.

(A quick note: As MaRo is fond of pointing out, the seasons are not globally consistent. When I refer to “Winter” sets and such, I’m referring to the seasons as they exist in the Northern hemisphere. Sorry, Aussies!)

I’ll say up front, this isn’t a light read. A lot of the material is very dry and technical stuff. But if you love Magic trivia, man, are you in for a treat today!

A WALK THROUGH HISTORY

Below is a chart outlining the schedule of set releases and related events for every Standard expansion back to Mirage, the dawn of the annual “block”. But first, I should explain the simplified notation I used.

Here’s the way this chart works. I listed each set’s release date, but in order to make this massive amount of data readily digestible at a glance, all other relevant dates are written relative to the release date. If release weekend is “X”, then the weekend before release (typically, the prerelease) is “X-1”. The Pro Tour is typically two weekends after set release, which would be “X+2”. Four weekends before release is “X-4”. With a few exceptions (which will be noted), all the relevant dates are on Friday, Saturday, Sunday or Monday, so those four days are treated as one long weekend. Since we’re working with Fridays and Mondays here, that means these aren’t exactly whole weeks we’re counting, but it’s close enough for our purposes. (To illustrate what I mean by that, Aether Revolt previews started on Monday, and the full set was spoiled on Friday, so previews technically lasted only four days, but we considered that “one week” of previews. If the set spoiler had come the following Friday, we would consider that “two weeks” of previews, even though that would technically be eleven days.)

I’ll walk though Kaladesh as an example of this notation:

Kaladesh released on Friday, September 30, 2016 (which is “X”). The Pro Tour went from Friday, October 14, through Sunday, October 16, two weekends after release (or “X+2”). The prerelease was Saturday and Sunday September 24 and 25, one weekend before release (or “X-1”). The full set spoiler was on Friday, September 16, two weekends before release (or “X-2”). And official previews began Monday, September 5, which (counting Monday as part of the weekend) was four weekends before set release (or “X-4”). Again, these aren’t exact weeks, because we’re dealing with Mondays and Fridays, but this is close enough for our purposes. So at a quick glance you see “Two weeks of previews until the full spoiler, a week later is the prerelease, a week later release, then two weeks later is the Pro Tour.”

Got it? Good. Here’s the chart:

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As you can tell, this chart is just dripping with interesting Magic history and trivia. If you already know all Magic trivia, or if you’re just not interested in such minutiae, but you do want to read about the Winter set squeeze, go ahead any time and skip ahead to the next section. Otherwise, stick around fellow trivia nerds, because it’s party time!

• First off, I only included Standard expansions and Summer core sets, and not supplemental products like the Masters sets or Conspiracy. Supplemental sets are naturally inconsistent, and as I’ll show as we move along, they’ve had no impact on the Standard release schedule around them. I also did not include core sets prior to Eighth Edition, which were released in the early Spring, smack in the middle of a block. They certainly weren’t “Summer sets”, coming before the Spring expansion, and they only appeared every other year. As you can see, there’s no difference in the release schedules of years that had Spring core sets and those that did not.
• Long ago, Magic sets used to be released on Mondays and not Fridays. The last (Standard) set to release on a Monday was Eighth Edition, and the first (Standard) set to release on a Friday was Mirrodin. The change is denoted in the chart by a thick line.
• Not every Standard expansion since Mirrodin released on a Friday. Alara Reborn was released on a Thursday. Who knows why. Maybe R&D are all filthy socialists who don’t believe in working on May Day. Anyway, the date on the chart is correct, but for purposes of the relative dates, it was treated as a Friday release.
• For “Official previews begin”, I didn’t include special “Week Zero” previews. In most cases, I went by the Monday in which MaRo introduces his “Making Magic” column with “Welcome to the first week of such-and-such previews,” with two exceptions. DailyMTG premiered on Tuesday, January 1, 2002, and kicked right off with previews for Torment. (Here’s Ben Bleiweiss previewing the card Ichorid in his inaugural Wednesday column “Uncommon Knowledge” on January 2.) MaRo’s first Making Magic column wasn’t until the following Monday (featuring more Torment previews). This was noted in the chart as 4 1/2 weeks of previews. The other exception was Magic 2013. MaRo “introduced” Magic 2013 previews on June 25, 2012, but the set also had a solid two weeks of advanced previews as part of a promotion for the video game Duels of the Planeswalkers. Since those previews were extensive, I included them, giving M13 the longest preview window of any core set. Also, I only included the DailyMTG era when tracking spoiler seasons. Prior to DailyMTG, previews were largely done through print media (like Inquest Magazine) and product pages like this one (updated as the block progressed), making tracking down exact dates for spoiler season an exercise in futility.
• Occasionally, but not consistently, DailyMTG would take the day off for various American holidays, like Memorial Day. As part of this, DailyMTG took Labor Day off… but only once. In 2007, Rosewater’s first September column was a repeat of the week before. This pushed back the start of Lorwyn previews to the following week, and likely contributed to Lorwyn being the latest Fall release since Urza’s Saga.
• There was an odd phenomenon with prereleases way back when. A couple, like Visions, were super-early, but then they figured out their routine, hosting them one week before the Monday release. (Remember, these are the old regional prereleases, held by WotC at big city convention centers.) They continued this way through Scourge. (Eighth Edition, like other all-reprint core sets, did not have a prerelease.) But when release day changed, instead of moving the release up to the beginning of the weekend as one might have expected, it was as if they pushed the release back four days from Monday to the following Friday, but kept the prerelease where it was. Thus the prerelease went to being two weeks ahead of the set release. Here’s Rosewater saying the prerelease is your chance to get new cards two weeks early. The prereleases stayed two weeks ahead of release for years, until the whole prerelease system was changed with Shards of Alara (moving them from regional convention centers into local game stores, as they are today), at which time they were pushed back to one week ahead of release.
• If you want to know why New Phyrexia’s full set spoiler was at the beginning of the two preview weeks, Google “New Phyrexia” and “God Book” (or just read this). And yes, in spite of the leak, DailyMTG soldiered on with two “Preview weeks” devoid of any actual preview cards.
• The history of full set reveals was difficult to parse, for a few reasons. One rather farcical reason was a series of bogus announcements on the Mothership. Several sets came accompanied by a Monday copypasta announcement, each time reading “As is our tradition for the Monday after a new set’s prerelease events, today we post the full card list for a set right here on the front page of magicthegathering.com.” Don’t listen to those pages!!! Those do not mark “Full set spoiler” days. Here’s the one announcing “today we post the full card list” for Innistrad, a whole seven days after MaRo’s card-by-card column offering readers the complete Card Image Gallery for Innistrad. You can’t make this stuff up, folks. I’m only reporting what is.
• Here’s the actual history of full set spoilers. Per MaRo, new sets historically were added to Gatherer to coincide with the first prereleases, held in New Zealand (which would be Friday afternoon here in the States). The reason full set spoilers came so late was because of R&D’s philosophy that the prerelease – not just the weekend, but the actual event – should be the first time you see the totality of the cards. Since prerelease attendees were free to post their findings online, that meant the first global prerelease was the first moment at which WotC could no longer contain the information, thus the sets were made official at that time. Full set reveals operated this way all the way through Worldwake, over a year into the new “local store” prerelease system. (While DailyMTG will continue doing preview articles through the full preview weeks, they always discontinue showing “preview cards” once the full set is officially revealed.) Starting with Rise of the Eldrazi, the full set spoiler was moved up to Wednesday before the prerelease. Note that even though the last week of previews was cut short by the full set spoiler, the last Friday was still officially part of the last “preview week”, so it was still considered two (or in the case of Scars, three) “weeks” of official previews. In the middle of this, New Phyrexia happened. Starting with Innistrad, full set spoilers were posted the Monday before the prerelease. This was true all the way through Born of the Gods. Starting with Journey Into Nyx, the full set was posted as of the Friday one week before the prerelease, which is the timing they still use today.
• The old all-reprint core sets got some unusual treatment from DailyMTG. The first to release during DailyMTG’s run was Eighth Edition. While it did not have “official preview weeks”, a look through the archive shows effectively the same thing, starting on Monday, July 7, when MaRo discussed Eighth Edition’s “hook” – the inclusion of at least one card from every Magic set which had never appeared in a core set before. “Coverage of the core set” continued with preview cards (note that these weren’t actual “preview” cards – the whole set had been revealed in print media weeks in advance – but they still served as card preview articles during “preview weeks”) until release day, when the topic shifted to a celebration of Magic’s 10th anniversary. After that, things took a turn. It’s comical just how silent DailyMTG was on the release of Ninth and Tenth Editions. Of MaRo’s three columns leading up to the release of Tenth Edition, only one passing reference is made to the upcoming core set. Ninth Edition was the same way. Both Ninth and Tenth Editions did have weekly “Countdown” series in which readers were shown new card art and were left to guess what cards they went to. (Remember, Tenth Edition was the last of the all-reprint core sets.) But there wasn’t the type of “preview weeks” we get today, even for supplemental sets. Ninth Edition had a Monday reveal (before the Friday release), whereas the Tenth Edition reveal was even later than that.
• Long-timers know all about the “third set problem”, but I’ll recap it for anyone unfamiliar. Blocks always consisted of a large Fall set, a small Winter set, and a small Spring set. The third set was always a problem child. It was either “more of the same”, or it deviated too much and didn’t mesh well in draft. For most of its run, it was the last set drafted, so it was often just not relevant in draft. They tried saving gimmicks for the third set, but that often left the second set without a hook. Often the story had run its course and players were just sick of the block and ready for the next one. R&D started doing bonus large sets (highlighted in green above) with mechanical reboots, before they finally realized the existence of the third set was the problem, so they did away with it, resulting in the “Two-Block Paradigm” which exists today.
• For “Pro Tour,” I only included Pro Tours directly associated with a set release, starting with Pro Tour Dark Ascension. Previous Pro Tours were all over the calendar – Pro Tour New York 2000 was the day before the Monday release of Invasion, while Scars of Mirrodin Standard didn’t see a Pro Tour for ten weeks. As such, the old Pro Tours provide no relevant information to the discussion of release schedules.
• We’re not really here to discuss “Game Day,” so I didn’t try to squeeze it into the chart above, but it is a regularly scheduled event tied to a set’s release, so here’s the rundown for those who are interested. The very first Game Day was the Saturday of the release of Tenth Edition. (Remember, old core sets didn’t have prereleases, so this was its big event.) “Game Day” was brought back for the next core set, Magic 2010, and then became a mainstay of every Standard expansion and core set to follow. Through Innistrad, each Game Day was held four weekends after release (“X+4”), but starting with Dark Ascension, they were pushed ahead to three weekends after release – i.e., the weekend after the new set-specific Pro Tour – which is where they continue to sit to this day.
• Another event tied to a set release – a new development – is the “Standard Showdown.” The Kaladesh Standard Showdown was held each Saturday from November 26 through December 17. In the notation of that chart, that would be “X+8” through “X+11”. As I’ll show, that schedule is only possible during the Fall set window. The schedule for Aether Revolt Standard Showdown has not been released.

THE WINTER SET SQUEEZE

If you thought preview season for Aether Revolt was short, it wasn’t your imagination. Despite Mark Rosewater’s peculiar claim that “Small sets get one week of previews”, this had literally never happened before Aether Revolt (excluding supplemental sets and some core sets). Per MaRo previously, small sets have two preview weeks while large sets have three, and as explained above, every Standard expansion before Aether Revolt had at least two official “preview weeks”. (Some were cut short by Wednesday reveals, but even those were technically eight days of preview cards with the full set reveal on the ninth day, while Aether Revolt had four days of previews with the full set reveal on the fifth day.) Maybe MaRo meant that it was a change they intend starting now and going forward? Still, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that when Hour of Devastation rolls around, and they’re not up against a holiday break, they’ll find a way to give us two whole weeks of official previews.

So why is the Winter set getting squeezed? Well, because the release date keeps getting earlier and earlier. (Thanks, Captain Obvious!) But it goes much deeper than that. First of all, as you can see, this is a recent trend. The Winter set release sat comfortably on the first Friday of February since Invasion in 2001, until Fate Reforged, when it got pushed up to the fourth Friday in January. Actually, that’s not even correct. Now, with Aether Revolt releasing on the 20th, it would be more accurate to say “the second-to-last Friday in January”. Yes, “Fourth Friday in January” wasn’t early enough!

But it goes even deeper than that. Here is every WotC “holiday break” since the beginning of DailyMTG:

(Note: If you’re fact-checking me, which I encourage, and you think you found an error with the Onslaught holiday break, read this.)

Yes, you read that correctly. They’ve actually moved their holiday break up to accommodate the Winter set. And now that set is still getting squeezed.

Oh, it all started innocently enough. Remember earlier when I mentioned how DailyMTG would sometimes take the day off for some American holidays? Well for three years there, if the two-week holiday break got close to New Year’s Day, the site would just take the extra Monday off. Thus for three years it was effectively “a two and a half week holiday hiatus” instead of just two weeks. Then some years went by, and they stopped worrying about New Year’s Day, allowing the holiday break to creep right up to January 2. Note that full set spoilers got moved up about a week around this time, which necessitated that previews start even earlier than before. Then Gatecrash became the first (and to date, only) large expansion in the Winter slot, and naturally a large set deserved an extra week of previews. In his “Six Hundred and Counting” recap, MaRo quaintly remarks how unusual it was that his first column back from break that year fell on December of the exiting year. Starting with Khans block, this was the new normal, as their holiday break – once starting as late as Saturday, December 22, was now starting as early as Saturday, December 12, and a December return to the office was a given. Still, even with the squeeze in full effect, they were always able to get two weeks of Winter set previews in… until now.

So why did the January release work out okay the last two years, but result in a preview crunch this year? It’s because of something I call “Calendar drift.” A regular year is 365 days long, which is exactly 52 weeks plus one extra day. Because of that extra day, everything on the calendar moves over one day every year. That’s why your birthday was on Wednesday one year, on Thursday the next year, and Friday after that. If the span crosses over a Leap Day, a given day actually moves two spots over. That’s why, around Leap Year, your birthday skipped Saturday and went right to Sunday. That’s if you’re tracking numerical dates. If you’re tracking a day of the week (like the first Friday in February), it moves the other direction. It’s the 7th, then it’s the 6th, then it’s the 5th, then after Leap Year it skips the 4th and lands on the 3rd. In the first case, tracking a numerical day, it just loops endlessly across the days of the week. But in the other case, there’s a hard reset: The first Friday in February is the 2nd, then it’s the 1st, then it resets and becomes the 7th again.

Now, WotC can try to push the Winter set up in the calendar all they want, but eventually it runs up against their holiday break, which is built around Christmas, and Christmas does not move. It’s like two gears that don’t quite mesh. They run okay for a while, but then one “resets” and they start to grind against each other.

The following chart shows all seven potential outcomes for the holiday break and the Winter set, given the recent trend of the holiday break, and the Winter set being the second-to-last Friday in January:

The yellow highlights are the last three years’ actual outcomes, while the other four are extrapolations. You can see that some years it all lines up, and you get 25 days to introduce the new set – The two gears are running smoothly. But when one of these two gears “resets” when the other one doesn’t, you end up with the 18-day crunch. Also, note that the “Saturday” scenario I gave is favorable to WotC on this – Maybe they don’t want to be back in the office on Monday two days after a Saturday Christmas. If not, that scenario’s return date gets pushed back to January 3, and you have 18 days to introduce that new set as well. (Oh, and those green highlights? Those are the years the Pro Tour finals will fall on Super Bowl Sunday.)

I would have been willing to entertain the notion that January 20 is some arbitrary limit – that for whatever reason, Jan. 20 is okay, but Jan. 19 is just way too early – but truthfully I would have said the same thing about January 20. They’ve now shown they’re willing to break the “Fourth Friday in January” barrier. They’ve even shown they’re willing to break the “Two weeks of previews” barrier. There’s no reason whatsoever to think that the 18 days between Jan. 2 and Jan. 20 are okay, but the 18 days between Dec. 31 and Jan. 18 are unacceptable.

All that said…. the Winter set squeeze still isn’t caused by the Winter set itself. And it isn’t even caused by the holiday break. There’s another culprit at work, and like a good murder mystery, the guilty party is the “innocent” character, the one you’ve known about all along, but never suspected…

A REAL WHODUNIT

So who is the guilty party here?

If you look back at the big chart above, you’ll see the different release slots have moved around a bit over the years. Here’s a chart showing the earliest ever release date for each season’s set, and the latest release date for each set, as well as the span of days in between.

Now, admittedly, this chart isn’t that useful for today’s purposes, mainly because it includes some extreme aberrations. (I mean, geez, Stronghold released on March 2, and no one cares about Stronghold.) So let’s see the same chart, but this time, we’ll exclude the three earliest and three latest releases for each season set.

Let’s go over these one by one.

Spring Set – The Spring set has been all over the place. Granted, the overall historical momentum has been for it to keep moving earlier (understandable since the Summer slot came into existence, and then later into prominence), but clearly WotC is at liberty move the Spring set around at will.

Summer set – The Summer set looks pretty stable, with an 8-day window (down from 17 days on the first chart). But the Summer set has clearly never been a focal point for Magic. For a while, they didn’t even bother to have previews for the core sets. And no large expansion has ever released in the Summer.

Winter set – The Winter set appears to be the most stable set of all, with a beautiful window of 7 days (after excluding the three extremes), which is the shortest window possible. But I would suggest that this “stability” is an illusion. There’s a lot of tension in the Winter set, as we’ve discussed, with all the evident momentum pushing it earlier. The three earliest extremes that were excluded were these last three years. If not for the holiday break drawing its line in the sand, all signs say it would just keep trending earlier and earlier. The Winter set only appears stable because it’s pinned between a boulder and a wall.

Fall set – Magic’s one and only anchor. The Fall set is the rock, the foundation upon which the entire Magic year is built – not just the last few years, but going all the way back to Mirage, the start of the annual structured block. Fall sets come in one size, and one size only. “Welcome to Fall set previews” is Magic-ese for “Happy New Year.” There is no evident momentum pushing it forward, and there is no evident momentum pushing it backward. The Fall set releases in the end-of-September/beginning-of-October window because Wizards of the Coast wants it to.

And now we’ve come to the moment in the murder mystery where the detective stuns the assembled group and announces for all the identity of the true killer – the one no one suspected.

“The one causing the Winter set squeeze is…….YOU, FALL EXPANSION! YOU DID THIS! THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!”

“This is absurd!”, the accused pleads their innocence. “How could I have possibly done this!? You know that I haven’t left this spot in twenty years! If I was causing all these scheduling snafus, then why would WotC have scheduled me where they did in the first place!?”

Why, indeed.

TWO DECADES OF CHANGE

The answer is, because the schedule used to work out perfectly. It’s true that the Fall set release has not meaningfully changed in 20 years. But MTG around it certainly has.

Here’s an alteration to the original big chart. This time, no prereleases, no Pro Tours, none of that. We’re just showing release dates, and the number of weeks between each release.

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Look at those first six blocks, Mirage through Odyssey. There’s a little oddness with Stronghold releasing so late, but otherwise, it’s just so…. clean. Except for Tempest/Stronghold, every release span is between 16 and 19 weeks. (As I said before, the every-other-year Spring core sets had no effect on the expansions around them.) And it makes sense. When you have three major releases a year, you can space them out evenly at four-month gaps – early October, early February, and early June.

Then you get into the Summer core set years. But if you look closely, the release schedule still didn’t change. Much like DailyMTG previews, the three other sets simply ignored the Summer core set. Scourge effectively had an 18 1/2 week span (as they moved from Monday releases to Friday releases), and Saviors of Kamigawa effectively had an 18 week span. Sure, you could argue the third set still kinda got the shaft by having to share time with a core set, but third sets were historically a problem anyway, so maybe it wasn’t a bad thing that players had an alternative for when they finally got sick of the current block.

This all changed, starting with the first Ravnica block. But it wasn’t Ravnica’s doing; it was Coldsnap, the bonus Summer set. R&D decided, in years they didn’t have a Summer core set, they would have a bonus expansion, upping the number of Standard expansions in those years to four. The Fall set window remained a healthy 17 (thank you, holiday break), but the Winter set went from 16 or 17 in previous years down to only 13. That left 22 weeks, to be divided evenly between Dissension and Coldsnap.

This trend continued with the year of Tenth Edition. Unlike Ninth Edition, which basically shared time with Saviors, Tenth Edition gots its own 13 weeks, to go alongside Planar Chaos’ 13 and Future Sight’s meager 10.

But this still wasn’t a problem for many years. So the large Fall expansion had 5 or 6 extra weeks in the sun. So what? Maybe it should get more of the limelight. It is a large expansion, the year’s flagship product for Magic, after all. And it’s not like the small sets are hurting. They just get less prominence then they used to when we only had three major releases to worry about. (Of course, the large expansions in the Spring, like Shadowmoor and Rise of the Eldrazi, didn’t get that large set bonus, but maybe it’s their own fault for not being Fall sets.)

Flash forward to “Metamorphosis”, the biggest change in Magic release schedule history. Rather than just the large set in the Fall, with the Winter and Spring sets continuing the block’s story, now there would be two blocks a year, one beginning in the Fall and one in the Spring. This was a prelude to a significant shift in scheduling. To quote MaRo, “[I]f we were going to shift to a Two-Block Paradigm, we wanted the second block to feel just as special as the first block.” He went on to say, “[O]ur goal was to make the second block of the Magic year feel the same as the first block.” The two blocks were to be equal, and for a while, they were.

No longer able to rely on the pretext that the Fall set can get special treatment by virtue of being both a large set and the start of a block, they were officially on the hook to give the Spring set the same prominence. For the next two years, the Fall set released end-of-September/beginning-of-October, and the Spring set released end-of-March/beginning-of-April, exactly six months later. For two years, we had a symmetrical six-month separation between the blocks.

Before we continue, let’s talk a bit about supplemental sets, as it affects our discussion on the scheduling of Dragons of Tarkir. It’s a popular notion that Standard expansions get moved around to accommodate the release of Masters sets (or other supplemental sets like Conspiracy). When Dragons of Tarkir was first announced, with a March release that was at the time an aberration, that was the popular theory – “Obviously it’s because Modern Masters 2015 is coming out in May!” But we now have two more years’ information to go on. The fact is, Dragon’s Maze (the other “Dragon” set) was not moved up to accommodate the first Modern Masters, and Journey Into Nyx was not moved up for Conspiracy – an actual low-MSRP “Please draft this several times” set. Going back several years, there’s no difference between a Masters year, a Conspiracy year, a Planechase year, or a year without a Summer supplemental set (to say nothing of FTVs, Commander decks, Anthologies, Duel Decks, or any other random bonuses they’re free to release whenever they have a window). Furthermore, it doesn’t really make sense for them to do this. Standard sets are WotC’s bread and butter. They’re opened and drafted orders of magnitude more than any supplemental sets. There’s an entire ancillary product line built around these sets (Intro decks, Toolkits, Gift Boxes, etc). They schedule prereleases, Pro Tours, B&R announcements, Standard rotations, Game Days, all of that around their Standard expansions. Bonus sets have none of that. Eternal Masters comes out, there’s a week of clamor, we draft it once or twice, and then we go right back to our previously scheduled drafts of Shadows. They will drop sets like Conspiracy: Take the Crown (August 26, 2016) into dead space – this year’s Modern Masters is moved up to March, so they obviously can release it whenever they want – but they have never, not once, adjusted their comprehensive Standard release schedule strictly to create dead space for a supplemental set. Now, I am not in those meetings at Wotc, and one could certainly accuse me of extrapolating a bit and making a few assumptions on what WotC’s actual agenda is, but at least the idea I’m presenting is consistent with the facts. Those who would still say, based on superficial observations, that Standard sets are shuffled around to make room for Masters sets are also extrapolating and making assumptions, while presenting a notion that is inconsistent with the facts. There is no reason to think “make room for Masters” is a phenomenon, and sufficient reason to think that it is not.

As to why Dragons of Tarkir got an early release, it’s actually very simple. WotC did exactly what they told us they would do. They split the year in two halves, and they made the two halves equal in every way. You see this objectively with the Battle-Shadows year, but the same scheme was used for Khans-Dragons the year before (even though that was technically the last three-set block). Take another look at the big chart above if you don’t believe me. The Two-Block Paradigm starts with a six-month separation, which was implemented one year earlier. Tarkir block was transitionary in many ways, including being the first set subjected to the “new” 18-month Standard rotation. Tarkir block was the only three-set block to have part of the block rotate out of Standard while the rest remained. Tarkir block had one foot in the old, and one foot in the new, and the schedule shift – a source of speculation at the time, when we had limited information – was an example of the new. The simple fact is, in September 2014 R&D announced they would make the two annual blocks equal, and effective that moment, they were on a six-month schedule.

As for why the six-month separation is now being broken, with Amonkhet being pushed back to where the Spring set used to be… we’ll get to that as well.

The point here is, the annual block system started with Mirage, and through several schedule changes, we arrive where we are today. Instead of three sets symmetrically scheduled four months apart, we now have four sets that want very much to be scheduled three months apart, if not for that anchor in the Fall (and this little immovable thing called Christmas).

Now, some might quibble and say “It’s still the fault of the holiday break. If that wasn’t there, they could move the Winter set up all they wanted.” And that’s technically true, but that’s missing the point. The holiday break is (having already moved it up one week) immutable. It is a known commodity. You don’t blame what you can’t control, you focus on what you can. The Winter set squeeze is caused by three factors in conflict: The holiday break (non-negotiable), the Two-Block Paradigm (an overall positive change for Magic), and the Fall set schedule (at Wizards’ full discretion).

PROJECTING FORWARD

So how does the Winter set squeeze get solved?

It might not. But there is hope.

First of all, can the Fall expansion be moved? All other things being equal, I believe the answer is “Yes”. There are many factors of course, surely including ones we in the public aren’t aware of. But we do know that the Fall set has occupied its slot since years before Hasbro bought WotC, and has persisted through a decade and a half of changes at Hasbro, suggesting the slot isn’t dictated by them. And if you set Hasbro interference aside, and look at just WotC itself, well forget about it! Magic the Gathering runs WotC. Magic doesn’t schedule its biggest release of the year to accommodate any other products; other products move to accommodate Magic. If the heads at WotC decided Magic would benefit from a move of the Fall expansion, it would move.

In working on all this, there was a lingering question I had a hard time answering. If they had moved up Dragons and Shadows in attempt to equalize the two half-years, why did Amonkhet then get pushed back to around the previous end-of-April/beginning-of-May slot (seven months after the release of Kaladesh)? Kaladesh block gets 30 weeks of the spotlight, and if “Ham” (the codename of the 2017 Fall set) releases on September 29 – the most likely extrapolation based on history – then Amonkhet block would get shortchanged with only 22 weeks of the spotlight. So why would they shortchange Amonkhet block?

Then an idea dawned on me… What if Amonkhet wasn’t getting shortchanged. They have a lot of bright people at WotC – of course they’ve gone over all these factors and variables I’m presenting today. What if they had already decided the Fall set schedule was the problem? What if they already had a plan in the works to push the Fall set back to the end of October? And what if Amonkhet’s late release was an attempt to equalize Kaladesh and Amonkhet blocks amidst this 13-month span?

Let’s take a look at what the year of “Ham” would look like with a later Fall release:

[Direct link to image]

This time, I included Game Day to show that, even for the Fall set, everything fits comfortably in its allotted window. The new “Standard Showdown” would have to be adjusted, but it will have to be anyway. “X+8” through “X+11” works in the current Fall set window, but such a schedule for Amonkhet this Spring/Summer would make Standard Showdown run during the same weekend as the next set’s prerelease. But as you can see from this hypothetical schedule, such a change is doable. (Before you point out my hypothetical Showdown conflicts with Thanksgiving weekend, Showdown already conflicts with Thanksgiving weekend.)

Take it in, folks. The gorgeous symmetry of it all. Three sets each releasing on Friday the 27th, and the fourth releasing on the 26th, all evenly spaced at three months apart. No problem with the holiday break, no Pro Tour on Super Bowl Sunday. I’ll give you one more moment to bask in this beautiful, symmetrical schedule, before I crush this dream.

As I came to analyze the information further, I found three big strikes against this theory of a late release for “Ham”:

1) If they knew they had a whole extra month to work with before “Ham”, why did Aether Revolt get squeezed with short previews? Why was it so necessary to push it up into mid-January?

2) If they knew they had an extra month to work with, why is Hour of Devastation still releasing mid-July? An October 27 release for “Ham” would give Amonkhet 11 weeks of drafting and Hour 15 weeks, an acute disparity between the two as well as a distinct reversal of the historical trend to give the large set more time in the drafting spotlight.

3) Here’s the big one I haven’t touched on at all. First with Innistrad, then starting in earnest with Theros, WotC has kicked off Fall previews with presentations at PAX Prime (now “PAX West”) in Seattle, at the beginning of September – a great marketing opportunity to be sure. In order to push the Fall set back, WotC would have to a) end or greatly diminish the PAX West tie-in, b) have PAX previews four weeks before any other previews begin, or c) extend Fall set spoiler season from three weeks to seven weeks. I can’t see any of those as a real possibility here. If Magic wasn’t firmly locked in the end-of-September/beginning-of-October time slot before the PAX tie-in, it is now.

To the question of why Amonkhet’s release was pushed back to the end of April (the Spring set’s old window before the Two-Block Paradigm), I may have an answer. Let’s look at the facts. Kaladesh block has 30 weeks. “Ham” is, in all likelihood, releasing on September 29, giving Amonkhet block 22 weeks. There are two possibilities:

1) This is an aberration (meaning, the Spring set will return to end-of-March/beginning-of-April next year, and we go back to the six-month separation), or

2) This is the beginning of the new normal going forward.

If this is the new normal, then we can expect more 30/22 splits in years to come. Which would mean that WotC has backed off their goal of making the two blocks of a year equal partners. They’ve already backed off the twice-a-year Standard rotation – the Fall set will be accompanied with a rotation, while the Spring set will simply be yet another addition. This schedule shift could be a sign that they’re backing off their original goal more than we knew. It could be that, from now on, the Fall block will be the “Greater Block”, and the Spring block will be the “Lesser Block”. (WotC would never characterize it quite that way, but that is what we’re talking about.) We would still get two independent blocks a year, just one would be deliberately more prominent than the other.

Now, this is just a possibility at this point. That said, facts are facts. Kaladesh block does have 30 weeks, and if the Fall set is not moved back, then Amonkhet block does have only 22 weeks.

While this schedule did produce the Winter set squeeze this year (the worst on record), it also bears our best hope. If they’re already unbalancing the blocks, if they’re already giving one significantly more time than the other… then would it kill anything to just push the Winter set back a week or two? Kaladesh had 16 weeks for draft and Aether Revolt has 14. Would it really hurt anything to make it 17-13, or 18-12? 12 weeks would still be more than Amonkhet is getting, and more than Hour will get assuming “Ham” releases September 29. Thus the solution to the Winter set squeeze wouldn’t be a relocation of the Fall set, and it wouldn’t be a cancellation of the holiday break, but a softening of the Two-Block Paradigm to a “Greater Block / Lesser Block” model, the likes of which we’re already potentially seeing in action.

All that said, at the end of the day, money drives the bus. If there’s no drop in Winter set sales, and if there’s no drop in Pro Tour viewers (or participation), then it would be hard to convince WotC there is a problem, which would mean we’d be seeing single week previews for Winter sets for more years to come.

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Sources for the big chart: Magic sets, Pro Tours, and Mark Rosewater’s “Hundred and Counting” recap series. (FWIW, some of the dates on the actual “Hundred and Counting” pages are wrong, specifically the ones relating to Lorwyn. Click through to the actual columns for the correct dates. Remember, MaRo’s column always falls on Monday.)

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TL;DR

• There’s a lot of interesting trivia related to Magic’s release schedule history.
• WotC has consistently pushed up their Winter schedule, including moving up their holiday break, and are now reducing Winter set previews from two weeks to one.
• The “Winter set squeeze” is caused by three factors: WotC’s holiday break, the Two-Block Paradigm, and the timing of the Fall set release.
• It’s unlikely the Fall set will be moved, but it’s still possible the Winter set squeeze could be solved. Also the change to this year’s Spring set schedule may herald a new shift in set releases going forward.