It’s no secret that the Secret Lair sub-brand has been fraught with controversy. Since the shift to a limited-run printing model, there’s been no end of complaints about availability and FOMO. Even as things have been improving recently, it feels like it’s only a matter of time before a fresh controversy emerges.
Recently, the latest complaint from frustrated players is about exacerbated shipping times following recent drops. Considering the shift to limited-run printing was meant to solve this exact issue, it’s no wonder that players are upset. Unfortunately, judging by a new announcement from Wizards, things will get worse before they get better…
Massive Secret Lair Delays
As anyone who bought a drop from the Rad or Roll for Initiative Superdrops will tell you, shipping speed has been a problem recently. Many players are still waiting for these drops to ship, despite their launch on January 26th and February 9th, respectively. While some players have gotten lucky and received their cards vaguely on time, many have rightfully been complaining.
At long last, Wizards of the Coast has finally addressed these complaints in a new article. Acknowledging the delays to the Rad and Roll for Initiative Superdrops, Wizards blamed the ongoing problems on production issues. Reportedly, Wizards has “identified the root cause” and is working on fixing this problem, which is good news, at least.
Unfortunately, while things should get better, before then, we’ve got more delays to contend with. Not only were players not given an updated shipping date for their delayed drops, but future Superdrops have been postponed. According to Wizards, “the next few sales may face some delays as well.”
“We have shifted our upcoming (unannounced) sales calendar back a bit to adjust the time between the next few sales and shipping to help unclog some of the logjam.”
Despite moving the Secret Lair release calendar around to mitigate this problem, it’s not even a perfect solution. In the article, Wizards still expects the unannounced future drops to suffer “shorter but still real” delays. We can only hope that things will have been solved somewhat by then, at least, so the future delays aren’t as long.
Pat Yourself on the Back
While it’s nice that Wizards of the Coast is being transparent here, the fact that this is happening is incredibly frustrating. The shift to limited-run printing has been a mess, and it not eliminating these problems makes it feel pointless. Even while things have been getting better recently, it’s hard not to see this as a major step backward.
Technically, as Wizards brings up, improvements to the Secret Lair system have been arriving fairly steadily. Not only have Wizards been getting better at accurately predicting demand, but the queue is improving as well. While it’s not perfect, the current somewhat variable system is much better than the literal hours of waiting we had before.
Despite these being real improvements, Wizards highlighting them as “some good news” feels hollow right now. Similarly, pointing towards the Dandan Chaos Vault drop, which, notably, isn’t affected by delays, feels almost insulting. Since this sale was plagued by low supply and scalping problems, celebrating its lack of delay feels like a shallow, undeserved victory.
All in all, it’s pretty clear that Wizards still has a lot of work to do to fix Secret Lair. Hopefully, the delay problem will be rectified in time, so we can only hope we’re not waiting for too long. Currently, it’s unclear whether anyone affected by the ongoing delays will receive any compensation for their trouble.
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