This past Monday saw the much-anticipated release of the Cats Are the Best Secret Lair Superdrop. As is now the norm for Secret Lair, some of those drops have found their way to players already, which means we have new bonus cards to check out. While this isn’t the most exciting batch we’ve ever seen, the Cats Are the Best bonus cards at least give us more of the great art from their respective drops.
The Cats Are The Best Superdrop Set Bonus Cards
The most notable card from today’s bonus card batch is undoubtedly Hellish Rebuke, which is the bonus for the Purr Majesty drop. This card is not only the priciest bonus on offer, at around $4.50, but it also features some more excellent Vanessa Stockard art. Gameplay-wise, it’s a reasonably well-played card in Commander, where it can counter Aggro swings or cards like Impact Tremors, but it’s hardly a staple.
Things drop off considerably from here, with Warp World being the next-priciest hit at around $1. This is the bonus card for the Felix the Cat: Magic Bag of Tricks drop, and its great art is really all it has going for it. While it does see some play in casual Commander, this is a pretty mediocre card overall.
While the rest of the bonus cards offer terrible reprint value, they at least have some play to them. Shoot the Sheriff, for example, serves as the bonus card for Garfield: Our Only Thought is to Entertain You. Despite its $0.40 price tag, this is a full-on Standard staple, seeing ample play in decks like Dimir Excruciator and Mardu Discard.
Similarly, Shiny Impetus and Clone are cheap cards, at $0.15 and $0.30, respectively, but ones with established homes in cEDH. Impetus comes bundled with the Garfield: Motivationally Challenged drop, and is a great Goad piece for Alexios, Deimos of Kosmos lists. Clone, from the Garfield: As Intended drop, sees regular play in Aang, at the Crossroads decks as a redundancy piece.
More Retro Frame Humans
In addition to the drop-aligned bonus cards, Cats of Chaos, Toby’s Journey by Gary Baseman, and Witch’s Familiar get retro frame Humans. This theme has been around for a while at this point, but the two revealed today are new additions.
The highlight here is Glowrider, which is actually getting its first-ever reprint here since Legions in 2003. Though it’s a mediocre example of a Thalia, Guardian of Thraben-type card, this $2.70 card actually sees a good bit of play in Premodern, where better options are unavailable.
Knight of the White Orchid is another solid hit, seeing play in over 195,000 Commander decks by EDHREC numbers. Though it mainly appears in thematic lists like Sidar Jabari of Zhalfir, this $2 Knight also shows up in cEDH Winota, Joiner of Forces decks from time to time.
While these new retro Humans aren’t the most exciting, they are at least playable cards. With how popular the Cats Are the Best drops have been, we could see more cards from this series soon, too.
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