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What does El Niño have to do with a card game about wizards who cast spells? Stick with us here. This year's El Niño climate pattern is sending temperatures spiking in parts of the Pacific Ocean. The excess heat is driving increased flooding and drought, serious and deadly consequences. The weather is also affecting traffic in the Panama Canal, disrupting supply chains. And one unexpected consequence of that shipping disruption is this - enthusiasts of one of the world's most popular trading card games are wishing for better weather. WBEZ's Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco visited a game shop in Chicago and has this report.
JOSHUA WILTSE: My name is Joshua Wiltse, and I'm here at the Dice Dojo, and we're about to play some Magic: The Gathering.
JUANPABLO RAMIREZ-FRANCO, BYLINE: Wiltse has been playing Magic: The Gathering since 1994, just a year after the game was launched by the company Wizards of the Coast, a subsidiary of Hasbro, the toy and games giant.
WILTSE: It's a new set called Reality Fracture.
RAMIREZ-FRANCO: And what's the big deal with reality fracture? Why are people so pumped about it?
WILTSE: It's sort of like a what-if set. So heroes become villains, villains have heroes - you know, hero aspects. Yeah, it's very interesting.
RAMIREZ-FRANCO: The card game is massively popular, with more than 50 million players worldwide. To win the game, players take on the role of wizards and compete to see who can cast the biggest spells. The cards are spells, and each player has an endlessly customizable deck of cards that draw on a massive catalog that grows several times a year because new sets are released every few months. This 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. But the El Niño-fueled drought kept the latest Reality Fracture cards from reaching Chicago. Emma Hendren is the general manager at Dice Dojo.
EMMA HENDREN: There were several products that were completely delayed, and we're not certain when it's going to arrive, unfortunately.
RAMIREZ-FRANCO: It's not just game shops like Dice Dojo. It's major retailers like Target and Walmart too. Wizards of the Coast announced back in August that cards would be delayed throughout North America due to an El Niño drought-powered traffic jam at the Panama Canal. The canal connects the Pacific and Atlantic and is one of the world's most important shipping lanes. Ross Griffith is the head of Americas freight pricing at Argus, an international agency that reports on energy and commodity markets.
ROSS GRIFFITH: This is going to be one of the strongest El Niños that we've experienced, and the result of an El Niño for Central America is a very strong drought.
RAMIREZ-FRANCO: The problem is that the Panama Canal is especially vulnerable to drought. The canal uses a series of locks that rely on millions of gallons of freshwater to move a single ship between the Pacific and Atlantic, and 40% of all U.S. container traffic moves through it. El Niño-powered drought conditions over the past couple of months translated into low water levels at the reservoirs which feed the canal. Authorities had to impose restrictions on the number of ships crossing daily. Griffith says forecasters predict El Niño won't end until early next year.
GRIFFITH: And then 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, so that can be really dangerous for 2027.
RAMIREZ-FRANCO: And for Magic card enthusiasts, that could mean more delays for getting their next set.
WILTSE: (Laughter).
RAMIREZ-FRANCO: But there's still a buzz inside of Dice Dojo. Traffic jam or no, people have been lining up to pick up orders and test out new cards.
WILTSE: Magic: The Gathering is all fantasy and all that stuff. And then, even in our little corner of the world, the supply chain affects us.
RAMIREZ-FRANCO: For Magic players like Joshua Wiltse, limited supplies aren't new. But El Niño-powered road bumps, that's a dose of reality. For NPR News, I'm Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco in Chicago.
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