Today is a big day for Secret Lair fans, as a huge new product is being released. After its own mini spoiler season, the latest preconstructed Commander deck, 20 Ways to Win, is going on sale today. While the deck itself is rather dubious, decent reprints and fantastic new art have nonetheless intrigued plenty of players. This new Commander deck may sell out incredibly quickly.
Before that happens, however, Secret Lair-loving MTG players have a new obsession. Added to the Secret Lair website with little in the way of explanation, the Secret Lair Chaos Vault has mysteriously appeared. Exactly what the Chaos Vault is currently steeped in mystery, but players are nevertheless understandably excited.
Secret Lair Chaos Vault Coming Soon
For now, all that we know about the Secret Lair Chaos Vault is that it’s coming soon. Even that, however, is open to interpretation as there’s no word on exactly how soon soon is. In theory, we might hear about it tomorrow during a WeeklyMTG livestream, or we could be waiting until 2025. Ultimately, we’ll only know when we know, and we’ll just have to wait until then.
Needed as it might be, waiting is rather boring, so it’s time to get speculating about what’s to come. For starters, Chaos Vault appears to be a new product line, rather than simply a fancy new Superdrop. We can piece this together from the smidgen of text encouraging players to sign up for email notifications.
Since notifications are sent out “when a new Chaos Vault product drops,” it seems this is something entirely new. That said, the Chaos Vault name does imply a certain sense of nostalgic appeal. It’s hard not to think back to the classic From the Vault series, which offered themed foil reprints.
With this in mind, it’s possible Chaos Vault will randomly offer reprints or old MTG products from yesteryear. Specifically, the Chaos Vault seems like the perfect place to re-release past Secret Lair drops. Looking online, many MTG players were similarly convinced about this possibility, given its home on the Secret Lair website.
As LooksLikeAWookie comments, many players expect this is “the new way to offload unsold [Secret Lairs].” This suggestion makes a lot of sense following the switch to limited-run sales, even those without a strict time limit. Having unsold products sitting on store shelves simply isn’t good for business, so unloading that seems sensible. Should this be what Wizards is doing, however, there’s no need to stop there.
Chaos in a Box
On Reddit, user Overoerme suggests this could be a “Festival in a Box type product again. Just a thing with a scattershot collection of packs most likely.” While entirely unconfirmed, like every suggestion, this idea does seem reasonable. If the goal is to get unsold products off shelves, then creating random boxes of stuff would certainly do it.
Should this be the route that Wizards is going down, there are certainly a lot of options to cram into Chaos Vault boxes. Old packs, old Commander decks, or even old Secret Lair drops could easily be included. Given it’s all old stock, Wizards could presumably sell these boxes at a decent discount, especially if they’re blind boxes.
We can only hope that whenever the first Chaos Vault appears, it will be well worth the cost of admission. Since Wizards sets the price, the Chaos Vault does have the potential to be rather lucrative. Should this be the case, however, the question then becomes about supply volume, and now that could affect the market.
If Wizard is selling old packs, decks, or Secret Lairs, the current prices for those products may drop somewhat. While the latter two would require a great deal of new supply, Secret Lair prices are more volatile. Even if the drop wasn’t initially popular enough to sell out, new supply could nonetheless push prices down in a meaningful way.
Ultimately, all these predictions are pure speculation at best, as the Chaos Vault could really be anything. While the vast majority of players expect to see unsold Secret Lair stock, that’s hardly been officially confirmed. We’ll only know more about what’s in store when Wizards reveals more details or unveils the first product. Exactly when this will be is sadly a mystery, as “coming soon” doesn’t tell us much.
