The new Magic: The Gathering Secret Lair is a very bad deal. It’s as simple as that. That said, Wizards of the Coast knew what it was doing when it commissioned that extremely yonic island. It’s no surprise that foil versions of this card have sold out when (at time of writing) none of the others even have their ‘Low Stock’ badge. The company found the perfect trick to make MTG fans pay top dollar for basic land cards, and we have fallen for it hook, line and sinker.
While the Strange Sands Secret Lair is a little better than some of the worst lair drops we’ve seen over years, that’s not exactly high praise. Previously, Wizards has tried to package up one basic land of each color and serve it up as a full priced SL – which, frankly, is just insulting.
Here we at least get ten lands for our $30 or $40, but I’m surprised that Wizards thinks that is going to be enough, unless the artwork is something fans have really been clamouring for. Are players really willing to pay $4 per basic to soup up even the blingiest of decks? The fact that the hottest MTG Secret Lairs sell out within hours of release, and these are still all on the shelves, suggests they are not… Unless the island is shaped like a vulva, of course.
All in all, I’m not sure what to make of the Chaos Vault, Magic: The Gathering’s name for a spate of Secret Lair ‘experiments’ that are planned for the coming months. It’s a fun name for a concept that doesn’t seem all that fun, at least not so far.
According to the announcement last week, Chaos Vault is a place for Wizards to “stretch our creative muscles or just do one-off, cool, weird things… from launching sales at unusual times… to offering up unusual items”.
Leaving aside the fact that dropping Secret Lairs at weird times doesn’t seem all that interesting or chaotic, so far the two Chaos Vault products we’ve seen have been indistinguishable from regular Secret Lairs. One of them has had double-faced versions of cards and one of them has had (too small) batches of lands, but all in all, the most intriguing thing about them has been the unusually anatomical shape of one island.
Fingers crossed there’s more interesting fare coming in the future, as we’re yet to see what sets these drops apart from the regular stuff that appears on the SL website.
While Secret Lairs remain a mystery, we do at least know when the next MTG sets are dropping. Check out all the details on our MTG release schedule page.
Source: Wargamer
