On a Saturday morning in September, the game shop Dice Dojo was packed. People were sitting arm-to-arm at tables lining the Edgewater store, opening Magic: The Gathering trading cards and playing in a tournament.
Noel Camilotas spent most of the day pacing past rows of packed tables and helping players decipher the rules of the hotly-anticipated new set release. But now, he was done for the day and walked out of the store with two boxes of cards.
Despite the armful of cards, Camilotas hoped for a bigger haul.
“Some of the products I requested are not going to be available for me anytime soon,” said Camilotas.“One of the other products is not going to be available for purchase at all.”
Wizards of the Coast — a division of the toy giant Hasbro that puts out the sets — announced back in August that its new set of Magic cards would be delayed throughout North America.
“Supply will be tighter at launch than anticipated as those boosters [card packs] make their way through the logjam,” according to the card game’s website.
The company pointed to a drought-powered traffic jam at the Panama Canal, which facilitates nearly 6% of global maritime trade and about 40% of US container traffic. El Niño spikes surface water temperatures in parts of the Pacific Ocean, setting off extreme weather like floods and drought across the globe.
The delay is an early warning sign for how susceptible one of the world’s most important shipping lanes is ahead of what experts warn could be the strongest El Niño in history and a warming planet more generally.
Magic: The Gathering has amassed more than 50 million players worldwide since its introduction back in 1993. The game has birthed an entire media ecosystem around it, as well as a robust resell market for rare cards. The rapper Post Malone reportedly purchased a one of a kind card based on the One Ring from a Lord of the Rings-themed set for $2 million dollars.
New card sets have been released every few months for years, allowing players to customize their decks endlessly. The model has been tremendously successful. Magic made its parent company Hasbro more than $1 billion in revenue in just the first half of this year. Now, the trading card game is facing off with one of its greatest real-world foes yet: El Niño.
“The result of an El Niño for Central America is a very strong drought,” said Ross Griffith, the head of Americas freight pricing at Argus, a UK-based price-reporting agency. Parts of Panama received rainfall about 34% below the long-term average between May and August, raising concerns about water levels at the freshwater reservoir that powers the canal system and supplies drinking water to the region.
As a result, the Panama Canal Authority began restricting traffic, limiting daily crossing slots and driving up the bid prices shipping companies pay to secure a spot to cross. This isn’t the first time El Niño has slowed down traffic at the Panama Canal, daily crossings dropped down to 25 in November of 2023.
El Niño is expected to last into early 2027 and could stack on top of Panama’s upcoming dry season, according to Ross, who added that the delayed Magic cards could be just the beginning of more El Niño-induced traffic. “If you have drought conditions on top of a typically more dry period, even what little replenishment you were getting then is probably not coming,” he said. “That can be really dangerous.”
So, at least for now, card collectors in Chicago and beyond will likely be waiting longer than usual.
“Some products are now coming in waves,” Emma Hendren, the general manager at Dice Dojo said. “We’re not going to have it available for sale today. We’re not certain when it’s going to arrive, unfortunately.”
Magic players are used to dealing with limited quantities or even delayed cards, but the ongoing climate change-powered hiccup is a new one.
“Magic the Gathering is all fantasy and all that stuff,” Joshua Wiltsie, who has been playing Magic for 30 years, said. “Even in our little corner of the multiverse, the supply chain affects us.”
This coverage is made possible through a partnership between WBEZ and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.