Yesterday’s MagicCon: Atlanta announcements were an awful lot to take in. We saw four brand-new sets revealed, and a ton of spoilers for both Lorwyn Eclipsed and the Final Fantasy Holiday release. On top of that, we also saw a whopping 13 new Secret Lair drops announced. Even for hardcore fans, it’s hard to keep track of them all. While many of these Secret Lair drops are bizarre Universes Beyond crossovers, we got a dash of classic Magic in there with the new Dandân drop.
Based on a popular fan-made format from 1996, this is a real deep cut for the MTG community. It’s also something new for Secret Lair, featuring 80 cards that make up a complete-in-box gaming experience. Alongside a return for the hugely popular Countdown Kit lair from 2023, there’s a good amount for enfranchised fans to chew on here, even if they’re not big on all the wacky new collabs.
The Chaos Vault: Dandân Secret Lair Drop
If you haven’t heard of Dandân before, this new Secret Lair drop will be an educational experience indeed. Also known as Forgetful Fish, Dandân is a fan-made format developed by MTG player Nick Floyd back in 1996. Unlike traditional Magic, this format is played using a communal deck of 80 cards, from which both players draw. The deck is also pre-made in advance.
While lists do vary slightly, Dandân decks have a number of recurring characteristics. Within the 80-card deck, 10 copies of Dandân itself make up the sole win conditions. These represent the “Fish” part of the title. The “Forgetful” part comes from the eight copies of Memory Lapse the deck also tends to run. The rest of the deck is made up of various mono-blue draw spells and interaction pieces.
The result is a tightly-restrained Mono-Blue Tempo matchup, with a lot of room for players to interact with the communal deck. In terms of how the Secret Lair drop will adapt this, we have limited information so far. The reveal post on X mentions that the drop will feature the full 80 cards, 10 of which will be new-art versions of Dandân. We also know that we’ll be getting new-art versions of some other format staples, too, like Memory Lapse and Accumulated Knowledge. The rest of the list, however, remains a mystery for now.
While it’s great to see such an obscure and beloved part of Magic’s history celebrated like this, this drop isn’t quite perfect. Many players online have pointed out that Nick Floyd hasn’t been mentioned at all regarding the drop yet, despite being the format’s creator. Wizards still has time to correct this oversight, but it’s a worrying sign at this early stage.
Sentimental Value
In terms of financial value, this new Dandân Secret Lair drop is pretty much impossible to evaluate at present. We don’t know how much Wizards is planning to sell it for, for one thing. For another, we don’t know the exact decklist the designers have settled on. That said, we do have the contents of the reveal post to work with, so we can make a speculative start.
The 10 guaranteed copies of Dandân alone are a great start for this drop. The cheapest black-bordered version available right now is about $6, which puts this drop at $60 right out of the gate. Given that the Dandâns in this drop are new borderless versions, they could easily be worth a lot more than that, too. Dandân has never had new artwork before, nor has it been printed in the modern card frame. This new version will likely hold a lot of demand for those reasons.
The other cards we know for sure are far less exciting. Accumulated Knowledge is about $0.30, and Memory Lapse is about $0.35. Mystic Sanctuary is stronger at around $1.30, but still not much to write home about. The only possible outlier in this batch is Magical Hack. Like Dandân, this is a card with very few black-bordered printings. The cheapest you can get right now is the Beta printing, at around $76. This new version won’t be worth anywhere near that, of course, but it’ll likely go higher than the $3 white-border price.
That’s about all we know regarding the Dandân Secret Lair drop for now. Wizards’ post didn’t mention a release date, and as a Chaos Vault product it won’t be part of the upcoming Secret Scare Superdrop. We’ll need to stay tuned for more on this one later down the line.
Resume The Countdown!
Yesterday’s Dandân news wasn’t the only funky new Secret Lair development we got to see. Wizards also announced the return of the Countdown Kit lair, a hugely popular concept first seen in 2023.
On its debut outing, the Countdown Kit was aligned with Magic’s 30th anniversary. It featured 30 individual cards, one for each year of the game. These cards included some real financial bangers, like Necropotence and Chrome Mox. They also each had a 30% chance to appear in foil.
This new version of the Countdown Kit appears to be encyclopedia-themed, with each card starting with a different letter of the alphabet. This means we’ll likely get 26 cards here instead of the 30 from the previous drop. We got to see a few of Wizards’ picks in the announcement post, too. Demonic Consultation takes the D slot, Llanowar Elves the L, and Sol Ring the S.
Out of these three, only Consultation is really noteworthy in terms of value. This is a solid $11 card at base, with its existing Secret Lair printing going for around $33. That’s a nice start but, as with Dandân above, we don’t know how much this drop will be sold for yet. The previous version retailed for $150, so something similar would make sense here. Ultimately, we’ll need a lot more information before we can make any definite value calls.
Value aside, the Countdown Kit is a very cool concept, and it’s great to see it return. If Wizards can address the brutal supply issues the original version experienced, then this could be a slam-dunk product to close out the year.
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