Earlier this week, the latest Magic: The Gathering Superdrop was revealed. Titled “The Ultimate Pencil,” the Superdrop contains five individual drops, spanning the usual dizzying range of styles and values. While these aren’t set to go on sale until May 12th, an errant article appears to have spoiled some of the Superdrop’s Bonus Cards early. If you’re planning to buy either of the MTG x KEXP drops, then you can do so without rolling the dice on the Bonus Cards.
These cards were revealed in an official article from KEXP, which may or may not have been a marketing misfire. While they’re not the best Bonus cards in the world, it is good to have the full information going into a new Secret Lair drop for a change. Additionally, the article reveals information about a hybrid MTG play session/live music event from KEXP. As far as Secret Lair gimmicks go, this is one of the most interesting we’ve seen yet.
Command Tower
- Rarity: Rare
- Type: Land
- Card Text: Tap: Add one mana of any color in your commander’s color identity.
We’ll start by looking at the MTG x KEXP Bonus Cards, and we’ll start that by looking at the more interesting of the two. If you pick up the Where the Music Matters drop, your Bonus Card will likely be a full-art, textless Command Tower.
At this point, this isn’t a surprising pick at all. Command Tower has been a Secret Lair Bonus Card no less than eight times, across a wide range of different drops. You can see Wizards’ logic here. Commander players likely make up a big percentage of those going after Secret Lairs, so a card all of them can play is a good pick for a Bonus. All the same, it is getting a bit repetitive at this point.
Thankfully, what this Bonus Card lacks in mechanical interest, it makes up for in financial interest. Of the eight past Bonus Card Command Towers, five are worth over $10. Three in particular, the Pixel Art, Arcane, and Princess Bride variants, all go for over $25. This means there’s a good chance this new version is worth some money too.
Of course, this isn’t guaranteed. Some of the other Bonus Card variants of Command Tower go for a lot less, like Cybertron at $3 and SpongeBob at $4. These are big, popular IPs, too, with a lot of conceivable demand behind them. As a Seattle-based Indie music radio station, KEXP has nowhere near the same draw as even these cheaper Command Tower variants.
On top of that, the inclusion of the card in the article implies it’s a guaranteed Bonus, not a rare one. Put those factors together, and I expect this will land somewhere on the low end of Command Tower pricing.
Minds Aglow
- Mana Value: U
- Rarity: Rare
- Type: Sorcery
- Card Text: Join forces — Starting with you, each player may pay any amount of mana. Each player draws X cards, where X is the total amount of mana paid this way.
Moving right along, the second of the MTG x KEXP Bonus Cards revealed in today’s article is Minds Aglow. It appears that this is the Bonus Card for You Are Not Alone, though, of course, we can’t confirm that at present.
This is certainly a much more interesting card than Command Tower. It’s a niche Commander draw piece for politically-focused decks, seeing use in less than 1% of blue lists according to EDHREC. For those who enjoy the social side of Commander, it’s a great inclusion to generate a good discussion. Competitively, it’s really not the best pick, but that’s a secondary concern for many. The art here is also pretty stellar, bringing to mind the book and DVD covers of the ’90s.
Financially, Minds Aglow barely registers on the scale. It’s not a very popular card, and it’s had quite a few precon reprints at this point. Because of this, you can get a base copy for as little as $0.50 right now. Even with the Secret Lair markup applied, this one is unlikely to bring in the big bucks any time soon.
A low-value Bonus Card is never great to see, but in this case, it is excusable. You Are Not Alone is excellent value for money as-is, with $46 in reprint value across its five baseline cards. That’s more than you’d pay even for the foil version of the drop, so there’s no need for a Bonus Card to swoop in and save the day. In this case, it’s fine for Minds Aglow to just be a fun extra that you can throw into your psychedelia theme deck at some point down the line. In an ideal world, this is how the Secret Lair/Bonus Card relationship would always work, but alas.
A Live MTG Music Event?
Bonus Cards aside, the MTG x KEXP article also revealed another interesting wrinkle of the drops. On May 3rd, both You are Not Alone and Where the Music Matters will be available at a KEXP event in Seattle.
Titled “KEXP ‘Magic’ The Gathering Space,” this event will feature “live music and plenty of space for Magic play.” As crossovers go, this is surprising but welcome. Playing Magic with some great music in the background certainly sounds good to me, anyway. The location will be a problem for some, since the event takes place at the KEXP Gathering Space in Seattle. For those who can make it, however, it should be a great time.
The other big selling point here is that this event provides early access to the Secret Lair drops. We’ve seen this before at various Magic Cons, but this is the first music event with a Secret Lair launch attached. Since this event takes place a full nine days before the official release date for the two KEXP drops, players in the Seattle area who are interested have an extra incentive to head on down.
The article also mentions that the “limited You Are Not Alone Foil Edition” will be available at the event. It’s unclear whether this drop is more limited than usual, but if it is, this is a big incentive. You Are Not Alone is looking like a great value pickup. The foil version will be even better in that regard. While it’s a shame that only a small subset of players will be able to enjoy this event, it’s great to see Wizards branching out within the Secret Lair space.