SOI Leak 3-08

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Happy Friday MTG peeps,

You know what were are going to say already, don't you ?  'As it is Friday, why not go on down to your local gaming store and take in a Friday Night Magic Event'.  Yes - we say this pretty much with every Friday post.  This week however, you may start seeing some very cool Shadows Over Innistrad prerelease event marketing materials (Avacyn Standee) at your local gamery store.  If you are out-of-town visiting or just don't know where your closet LGS may be, use the handy-dandy Wizards Store and Event Locator.  Unfortunately, we won't be able to make it out to our favourite gaming store, OMG! Games, here in Barrie, Ontario because of work stuff - sad panda.

Anywhoos, onto today's post!

Something rather interesting happened on Monday 7th March.  The MTG Realm crew was surfing the interwebs and checking out content on the mothersite when, lo and behold, we saw product images for Shadows Over Innistrad - quite specifically, the Buy-A-Box promo and an image showing the Intro Packs being showed quite plainly on the site.  This of course is weird as WotC would typically make a preview article before posting.  MTG Realm jumped into action and realised that no-one else was talking about this - (what?!) we could not have been the first to see.

Apparently we were - so we posted it to our sister site MTG Realm on Tumblr and a few other places . . .

Photoset March 07, 2016 Magic: the Gathering - Shadows Over Innistrad

BUY-A-BOX - PROMOPurchase a Shadows Over Innistrad booster box in-store and receive an alternate art premium promotional card, limit one per customer, while supplies last.
Foil Alternate art Elusive Tormentor, illustrated by Anna Steinbauer with this very sweet flavour text - “Older vampires are usually more cautious than the newly-sired, calling upon ancient magic for which neonates lack patience.”

INTRO PACKSEverything you need in one ready-made deck. Includes 60 cards, a foil premium rare card, two sealed 15-card booster packs, a strategy insert, and a Magic learn-to-play guide.

All appear to be mono-coloured.White - Drogskol CavalryBlue - Nephalia MoondrakesBlack - Markov DreadKnightRed - Fireblade Angel Green - Soul Swallower

Not very long after, reddit had picked up on our post. . 

Fans love MTG newness and pretty soon everyone was looking including our Bro-Chaco Evan Erwin (@misterorange)

Then something very unusual happened the very next day on the mothersite - On the 'Daily Update' (which rocks by-the-way !!), Blake (and WotC) acknowledged the 'leak'.

In this article, Wizards admitted that some content was promoted and uploaded before its due time and Blake did a great job by not only addressing it head on (it was a WotC internal organisation error anyway), but even providing a challenge for MTG fans - "guessing card abilities from half-covered text is kind of fun for a lot of you".  

We've got Bro-Love for WotC again folks, not because MTG Realm was (sort of) mentioned, but because the company did a great job of bending like a reed in the wind and using the momentum of the fans to help push the brand even further.

Keep being awesome Blake and WotC !
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