Without warning, Wizards of the Coast has released a surprise Secret Lair drop, with a selection of shiny MTG cards that are on sale now. With a reduced price tag and decent card value, this would be a slamdunk of a SL if it wasn’t for one rather irritating design choice.
The drop, titled The Fairest Drop of All, is very pretty, and only costs $25 for foil versions of its four cards (it’s also only available in foil). Since regular MTG Secret Lairs are usually sold for $30 and foils for $40, that’s not a bad price – especially since there’s about $60 of value here.
But Wizards has done the unforgivable with this drop. It’s commissioned cards that have the funky art on the front side, and all of the text on the back, making them a nightmare to use at the table. It’s not the first time this has happened, but please, let’s make it the last, okay?
Personally, I find even double faced cards kind of a faff, but at least with those, you only need to present one face at a time. Here, you have all the information you need on one side of the card and the pretty artwork on the other.
In other words, you have to choose between letting other people see what your card does and enjoying the thing that attracted you to the lair in the first place. You can selfishly obscure the card’s rules text from the rest of the table and bask in the art, or you can flip the card over to show everyone the rules text, and get little joy from your purchase. Fantastic.
Like I said, other than this, The Fairest Drop of All is a decent Secret Lair. It’s only got four cards, but one of them, Steely Resolve, hasn’t had a reprint since it originally showed up in the 2002 MTG set Onslaught, so foil copies currently go for $50.
For reference, here’s a quick price breakdown. First number is the regular cost, second is the foil (Estrid and Tuvasa only exist as foil cards).
Steely Resolve – $18/$50
Estrid, the Masked – $1.65
Tuvasa, the Sunlit – $4.11
Estrid’s Invocation – $1.12/$1.59
This release is part of the mysterious ‘Chaos Vault’. Presumably that’s going to be a series of Secret Lairs released over the holiday season, but Wizards is yet to fill in the details.
Gotta say, this isn’t a particularly chaotic batch of cards. They’re themed around enchantments; specifically, there are three cards from Estrid the Masked’s Commander 2018 MTG precon deck, plus Steely Resolve, which doesn’t really fit with the others, but does provide the lair most of its value.
It seems the chaotic part of the Chaos Vault is Wizards experimenting with how it releases SLs. For instance, this drop is cheaper, only comes in foils, and you’re limited to buying one copy at checkout. It does kind of make me wonder if this is ‘leftover’, unused product they’re trying to shift.
If you have an Estrid MTG commander deck, you might want to pick up this drop. Don’t expect your playgroup to thank you, though. I’ve also just now spotted that the shipping on this one stings, boosted up to a nasty $11, making this a worse deal than I thought. Bummer!
For more Magic content, check out the Magic: The Gathering release schedule for all the latest news on upcoming sets. We’re expecting to learn more about MTG Aetherdrift tonight!
Source: Wargamer
