Hallelujah! Wizards of the Coast has switched back to a print-to-demand model for Secret Lairs. Ah, balls! It’s just a one-off, something the Magic: The Gathering creator is doing for its charity drop, but then scrapping for the regular versions of its premium card batches.
In fact, as MTG Executive Producer Mike Turian explained in a stream on Tuesday, Wizards has printed a bunch of the Extra Life 2024 charity Secret Lairs up front. These will ship faster to the earliest buyers.
But when those run out, Wizards will shift to the print-to-demand it used to use for MTG Secret Lairs, providing copies to everyone who orders one within a certain window.
This will allow Wizards to shift a lot of Lairs and raise the most money for Extra Life, but there are presumably other costs or complications involved that make it less profitable for it, otherwise it would just always do this.
It is the absolute best of both worlds for the consumer, however, so we wish this was something the company could do all year round. When Wizards stopped printing these products to demand they created a playground for scalpers, and many of the most popular Lairs have sold out within hours of going up for sale.
The Extra Life 2024 Secret Lair is available to purchase from October 14 – November 17. Its artwork features Fblthp characteristically out of place in a 2D platformer Castlevania-style video game, with most showing a boss fight against Nicol Bolas.
As for the cards themselves, they’re pretty great. Delayed Blast Fireball is $15, and Fierce Guardianship is the most expensive MTG card I can remember seeing in a Secret Lair, a $40 card that Commander players love.
50% of the proceeds from the Secret Lair will be donated to Extra Life, to support children’s hospitals – in particular the Seattle Children’s Autism Center. This is far from the first time Wizards has supported this group, with previous schemes including cards designed by children and a DnD monster manual made by kids.
The center’s executive director, Mendy Minjarez, was on Wizard’s stream speaking about a mental health crisis in young people, including children with autism. She says that as a direct result of Wizards’ funding, they’ve been able hire new people for their family navigation team to support families in crisis.
However, Wizards has faced criticism for its fundraising in the past. This is because Seattle Children’s Autism Centre offers Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) therapy.
A common but controversial form of therapy, ABA has an ugly history, and some argue it still focuses on training autistic children to behave more like neurotypical children instead of meeting their individual needs.
For more Magic the Gathering content, we recommend our list of every MTG set ever released, and our guide to the best MTG planeswalker cards.
Source: Wargamer
