The most hyped MTG Secret Lair Drop of all time was just announced, and players are about to witness a disaster in the making. Five Marvel Secret Lairs will drop on November 4th, with a limited print run.
These five Marvel Secret Lairs will all include functionally unique Legendary creatures that are legal in the Commander format.
In other words, if you want to run any of the new Marvel superheroes as your Commander, the only chance to get them will be during a limited time window online where the product is in limited supply.
Or, of course, you could buy them on the secondary market. The problem is, we’ve seen these popular sold-out Secret Lairs sell for exorbitant prices in the aftermarket. For example, the Walking Dead Secret Lair now costs $80 in the aftermarket, after originally listing for $49.99.
Although the print run for the Marvel Secret Lair Superdrop is arguably going to be much higher, so will the demand. Marvel is one of the most popular franchises in the world, and the crossover appeal to Magic: The Gathering players is immense.
We are seeing many people who have never bought a Secret Lair Drop before exclaim they will be buying the full Marvel drop. Not only that, hundreds of players have already posted decks they’ve built around these Commanders less than a day after they were revealed.
Perhaps the biggest kicker out of everything so far is just how powerful the new Commanders are. Let’s take a look at the Storm, Force of Nature Commander card:
This card is nuts! It has flying, and when it connects, your next instant or sorcery spell has Storm. That’s right, you can give your Time Warp storm! This gives even Narset, Enlightened Master a run for her money.
Not only will longtime fans of Marvel want to collect cards like Storm, Force of Nature, but so will Commander players for the sheer power level.
Given how strong and popular these cards are, scalpers will surely buy as many copies as the checkout system, or their number of addresses, lets them.
According to Wizards of the Coast, fear not, for they have printed these in massive quantities. Here’s what they had to say:
These drops are available in limited quantities. While there’s no hard end date to the sale, we do plan to clean up the storefront from time to time and remove products that have been around for a while.
Magic the gathering
WotC seems to imply that there has been a massive print run by saying they plan to clean up the store to remove products that have been “around for a while”. This shows that, in their view, they may have overprinted so much that they will need to remove them from the storefront because they simply aren’t selling anymore.
However, history has shown us that MTG has severely underestimated demand for every popular Secret Lair in the past. Secret Lair x Hatsune Miku sold out in less than a day, which (forgive me, Hatsune Miku fans) is a character that pales in comparison to the worldwide popularity of Marvel characters. And the more popular Monty Python Secret Lair sold out in less than an hour!
These sellouts have left a sour taste in many players’ mouths. The head designer of MTG even stated he has passed the complaints on to higher-ups as a result.
According to WotC, those past sellouts weren’t supposed to happen. Here’s what they said in January 2024, when they switched Secret Lairs to a limited print run from print on demand:
While popular Secret Lair drops may sell out fast, we now have four years of Secret Lair sales to base our print-run numbers on, and we’re aiming to get as close to overall demand as possible.
Magic the Gathering
When comparing Monty Python, which sold out in an hour, to Marvel, the difference will be striking. From a financial perspective, characters like Spider-Man have an estimated film rights valuation in the billions of dollars. And while we are talking about licensing rights to a card game, rather than for movies, that kind of clout makes any other past licensed Secret Lair look like child’s play.
So what is the disaster waiting to happen? Marvel fans, Commander players, and collectors will be clamoring to claim their copy of a limited print-run as soon as it drops. Fear of missing out will drive players to order based on their experience of less popular franchises selling out.
This Secret Lair isn’t going to sell 10x more than Monty Python, it isn’t going to sell 100x more than Hatsune Miku, it’s likely to sell 1,000x or more. What Commander player isn’t going to want to secure their copy of functionally unique and powerful Commander cards? They’ve seen what happened to the Walking Dead Secret Lair cards, and how painfully slow they have been to be printed with universe-within versions.
Once this Secret Lair Drop sells out, and it will sell out, players who don’t get copies will be left dissappointed. Did you have to work on the day they dropped? Were you traveling? Is your internet out? Sorry, no Marvel Commander for you.
Unless, of course, you’re willing to pay scalpers 2 or 3x more than they originally cost. And of course, players know this going into the Secret Lair release, which is why those who don’t normally buy Secret Lairs will buy one ahead of time, and not only that, they will likely buy multiple copies to sell or trade for a profit, thus becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy of a sellout.
Wizards of the Coast may think they have this print run figured out, but they have no way to accurately gauge this kind of print run. This is a franchise players have been making fan sets of for decades. It’s a brand that runs deep with many Magic: The Gathering players. Now is the time WotC needs to rethink their limited print run policy. These functionally unique Commander cards should be for everyone, not for the lucky ones who are able to queue up in the online store in time or for those with deep pockets willing to buy from scalpers in the aftermarket.
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