Alara Reborn Spoiler Season

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With Alara Reborn visual spoilers due out just more than a month away on the Wizards site, I am getting somewhat anxious about the deafening silence from the regular 'pre-spoiler' community. It is not altogether surprising however given the recent and aggressive crack-down by Wizards of the Coast. Most all of the individuals who had contributed to these spoilers in the past have had sanctions levied against them - either through DCI bans or a revocation of premium store program benefits if they had happened to be a hobby / game store owner.

With this silence, a spoiler-nutter like me now has to dig further and have now found myself evaluating speculations and obvious hoaxes from questionable sources. The only thing which may save me this upcoming spoiler season may be the extreme chance of being permitted an opportunity to officially spoil a new Alara Reborn card.

Speaking of possible Alara Reborn spoiler hoaxes from questionable sources, let me provide you with a (semi?) fictional story with many elaborations inserted. The story takes place in Howard, South Dakota at the PBM Graphics company. This printing and packaging facility is contracted by Wizards of the Coast to produce a variety of printed card products including Magic the Gathering cards.


At the facility, 180 Alara Reborn booster packs per minute are currently being produced on the production lines during two shifts. With all the complex equipment expected at a modern facility, misprints, defects and imperfections in the final product are almost non-existent but still do occur during production line set-ups. Small errors occur infrequently during printing, coating, cutting, trimming, and packaging. As the facility has solid quality control, it is almost impossible for a Magic Player to purchase a MTG product with any of these minor defects. Staff collect and destroy (via shredder) any product which does not meet the exacting specifications provided by Wizards of the Coast.

One day last week however, a batch of Alara Reborn cards with minor (almost unnoticeable) print defects is accidentally directed to a garbage bin outside the facility instead of a shredder. Later on that week before the bin is scheduled to be picked up and transported to the local landfill, an individual with a predilection for dumpster-diving explores the contents of the bin. After examining several garbage bags of lunch-room refuse, he discovers a few dozen MTG cards. He does not know yet that these cards belong to a yet unreleased set. That weekend, these cards find their way onto his table at a flea market on the outskirts of Sioux Falls, about an hour away from the PBM facility in Howard.

A mother of a young gamer is on the lookout for Yu-Gi-Oh cards and finds these recovered cards on a vending table. Although this was not the product she was looking for, she decides the catchy foil cards would be a welcome addition to her son's card collection. The kid accepts these and on Saturday, is at a Yu-Gi-Oh event at the Dragon's Den in Sioux Falls playing a game. A Magic Player who is also in attendance catches a glimsp of these cards in the kid's trade binder. He posts this observation on a popular MTG forum and it is promptly dismissed as being a hoax as there are no accompanying scans / images of these cards.

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uhhh . . . I hope we get spoilers soon as this sort of dreck, altough entertaining, does not satisfy my craving for new card goodness. Thanks for bearing with me.