A massive onslaught of Secret Lair products has been revealed over the last few days. This is no surprise, considering a new Secret Lair Superdrop is going live next week. So far, we’ve seen all manner of different styles and aesthetics, many of which have players seriously excited. The same is definitely true of the newly revealed Featuring: Luke Pearson Secret Lair drop.
In case you’ve not heard of them before, Luke Pearson is the illustrator and creative force behind the Hilda comic series and Netflix cartoon. While their new Secret Lair drop isn’t explicitly a Secret Lair release, it’s nonetheless packed with interesting references throughout. Thanks to this, there’s a real chance this charming Secret Lair could create massive financial premiums.
Featuring: Luke Pearson
MTG Secret Lair’s newest drop offers four reprints drawn by Luke Pearson. The artwork offers a healthy dose of references to Pearson’s work in the well-known Hilda comics and Netflix series. Of the four reprints offered in this Secret Lair, Bear Umbra is the most financially interesting.
Offering a small buff and an untap of all your lands on attack, Bear Umbra is a popular Commander powerhouse in a variety of green decks. Seeing play in over 10,000 decks according to EDHREC, the card isn’t a staple by any means, but can offer a massive dose of power to the right strategy. As long as your Commander wants to get in for damage, Bear Umbra isn’t a bad choice. The card also offers protection for your enchanted creature in the form of Totem Armor, which helps ease the sting of being two-for-one’d by removal. Sadly, it doesn’t exactly help exile-based interaction.
At the time of writing, Bear Umbra is worth about $6.75 at its cheapest despite multiple reprints in Commander product, but the card does not have any premium printings at the moment, which almost ensures that this adorable card will be the most expensive Bear Umbra on the market.
While Bear Umbra’s nonfoil iteration is worth a decent price, the foil is worth much more. Bear Umbra only has one foil printing from Rise of the Eldrazi. Since foil cards were rather rare back in the day, foil Bear Umbra go for anywhere between $20 to $40 depending on their condition. This suggests that the foil Secret Lair is likely the way to go for players interested in Pearson’s work.
Realmwalker
Realmwalker is another card that has had a healthy share of reprints but manages to retain a relevant secondary market value despite that. Going for about $3.50 to $4, this card almost exclusively sees play in casual Commander. The card is a fantastic addition to any typal strategy that has green in its color identity. Not only will Realmwalker benefit from any boons that the deck offers thanks to it being a Changeling, but the card also offers a healthy dose of card advantage, something that typal strategies can struggle with.
Many players love the artwork for Realmwalker in particular in this Secret Lair. Not only does it harken to Hilda significantly, but the combination of characters truly benefits the Changeling nature of Realmwalker.
Solemn Simulacrum
Solemn Simulacrum is on a whole other level in terms of reprints. To date, this card has 49 different variants on TCGplayer, including different foiling techniques for some recent Universes Beyond reprints. As you may expect, a card with this many different variations is going to have some seriously cheap ones. The price of Solemn Simulacrum variants ranges from $73 to 20 cents.
While this isn’t great news for the reprint value of this Secret Lair, the charming artwork behind this Sad Robot may have some players interested in picking it up. The card is a ubiquitous Commander staple, so many MTG players should be able to find a home for it.
For reference, other Secret Lair copies of Solemn Simulacrum are worth about $10. There’s a decent chance that this card will be worth about the same.
Witch of the Moors
The last card in Luke Pearson’s Secret Lair offers a similar story to Bear Umbra. Witch of the Moors is only worth about $2.25 on the secondary market, but the card doesn’t have a foil variant in print. This Secret Lair will change that. It’s impossible to know what the value of the foil Witch of the Moors will end up being, but we’d bet that it’ll be worth at least double that of the other variants.
Witch of the Moors is a difficult card to use. You need to be consistently gaining life in order to get any value out of this creature. The card also needs to survive until your end step in order to gain that value. That said, the trigger is quite substantial, forcing your opponents to sacrifice a creature while you return one back to your hand.
As long as you can reliably gain life on the turn you deploy Witch of the Moors, this could be a decent card to include in your Commander deck.
Foil is the Way to Go
From a reprint value perspective, the foil version of Luke Pearson’s feature is much more interesting than the non-foil one. Bear Umbra gets a significant boost in foil value, and Witch of the Moors will likely have a decent secondary market price at foil. Whether the price of the reprints will match the Secret Lair’s price tag is impossible to know, but since Secret Lair cards typically sell for a premium, the odds are probably in your favor.
Ultimately, the cards offered in this Secret Lair aren’t something that a lot of MTG players will be interested in, which means that the artwork, as well as the references to the Hilda series, will be the biggest factor in this Secret Lair’s success. The artwork has certainly received a lot of excited responses from the community, so there’s a chance that this Secret Lair will sell out quickly.