Tom Wänerstrand began his journey with Wizards of the Coast in 1993 illustrating cards in his spare time. These days he guides the team responsible for the production of Magic, amongst other things.

As early as June 7, you may start noticing some slight variances to War of the Spark card stock. As we continue to look for ways to make your playing and collecting experience the best it can be, we are introducing a new playing card paper for Magic: The Gathering.

Some of you might be aware that we began introducing different playing cardboard in the Japanese market several years ago, and in 2018 we expanded distribution of that stock to other markets with both Battlebond and Ultimate Masters. This year, in our continued commitment to developing new and improved processes and materials, we're introducing another card stock into our portfolio.

While there are a multitude of reasons we're pleased with this new paper, in particular we are happy with improvements in areas of our development focus: surface consistency for printing, improved card cutting, as well as rigidity and "snap."

As always, we are committed to creating and shipping the best product possible and will continue to explore ways to improve upon our best products and practices. We look forward to players and fans getting their hands on the new paper and letting us know what they think.