Wizards of the Coast has announced that effective December 20th, 2007 all new Magic the Gathering releases will become legal for Constructed play on the day of the product's release.  The new policy replaces the previous strictures under which new cards would not become legal until the 20th of the month following their release.  The first new set that will be affected by this change of policy will be Morningtide, which will be come legal for Constructed play on February 1st, 2008.

Pat Fuge of Gnome Games in Green Bay, Wisconsin summed up the effect of the new rule on brick and mortar retailers for ICv2:  'This could be the largest show of support for the true brick and mortar hobby store that Wizards has done in the past five years.  If they hold the existing policies in effect of not allowing online retailers to ship prior to the street date, limit the amount of product that is sold at prereleases, and actively enforce these policies with strict sanctions against stores and distributors that violate street dates, we welcome this with open arms.  We would expect that if the early sales policies are enforced and PTO's are limited on the product that they can sell at prereleases--that our release weekend sales would increase dramatically, and the devaluation caused by Internet discounters would be decreased somewhat.'