Bloomburrow preview season may be over, but the reveals never truly end in modern Magic. Continuing the endless stream of spoilers, the Inside an Elevator Secret Lair Superdrop is slowly being spoiled. On top of this, new Bonus Cards from the Summer Superdrop 2024 are now being revealed as they reach players’ hands finally.
Out of all the Secret Lairs from the Summer Superdrop 2024, the Secret Lair X Hatsune Miku: Digital Sensation was easily the most popular. Continuing the crossover with the beloved Vocaloid icon, players have been practically insatiable for these cards. The same is true for the drop’s Bonus Cards, which offer extra value and Hatsune Miku goodness.
At long last the new Bonus Card from the quickly sold-out Digital Sensation drop has been revealed. Continuing the drop’s staple-focused theme, this card is a real doozy. If you play Commander at all and love Miku, you’ll want this card in your collection. Provided you’re not too precious about your cards having text on them, that is.
A Textless Command Tower?
The Bonus Card for the Summer Hatsune Miku Secret Lair Drop is none other than Command Tower. This was revealed in an unofficial Reddit post by GuillaumeDuNord. The card is pictured above, but you’d be forgiven for not recognizing it at a glance. Not just because the promo features Japanese name text, but because, other than the name, it’s completely textless.
Textless promos are nothing new for Magic. We saw a stunning textless take on Urza’s Saga just a couple of weeks back, for example. They’re not even new for Command Tower, which has had two textless printings before. One in a pixel art style, and the other showing key scenes from The Princess Bride. Those both came from Secret Lair drops as well, so we’re starting to see a bit of a trend developing here.
It’s no bad thing, of course. Command Tower is one of the most popular, powerful, and played cards in the Commander format. Any deck running two colors or more has basically no reason not to include it, since it provides perfect fixing with no drawbacks. Like Sol Ring, the card is also a staple by virtue of its affordability. Command Tower has been printed so many times that most copies cost just $0.20.
Is this Bonus Card basically worthless then? Certainly not. While normal printings of the Tower go for cheap, special editions like this hold a good amount of value. Looking at the other two textless versions, both are in the $15-18 range, which isn’t bad at all. Given the popularity of the Hatsune Miku IP, you can expect this version to cost the same or more. I’m thinking anywhere from $20-30.
Cracking The Code
So this new Bonus Card is great, both value-wise and playability-wise. End of article? Not quite. A tiny detail of the card actually reveals some juicy new info as well, concerning another Bonus Card we saw last month. I’m referring to Encore Electromancer here, the Hatsune Miku version of ex-Modern icon Snapcaster Mage.
When players received their copies of the initial Secret Lair x Hatsune Miku: Sakura Superstar drop, most got an Elvish Mystic as their Bonus Card. A couple of lucky so-and-so’s got a Snapcaster Mage instead, which the community at the time assumed was a rare variant. We’ve seen plenty of those in Secret Lairs gone by, after all. The likes of Shadowborn Apostle and the recent Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite promo spring to mind.
With the reveal of this Command Tower, however, it’s looking much more likely that the Snapcaster Mages were included in those drops by mistake. You see, the collector number on the Elvish Mystic Bonus card is 805, and the Command Tower is 806. Snapcaster Mage is 808, which leaves a gap for 807. That’s four Bonus Cards, one for each season of the Hatsune Miku drop. Based on this, it seems like Snapcaster Mage is intended to be the Bonus card for the Winter drop, and just so happened to end up in the Spring one instead.
Whether this was a genuine mistake or a next-level marketing move is unclear, and will likely remain so. Straight answers concerning Secret Lair Bonus cards are almost never given, after all. While it’s looking likely that the Winter drop will be coming with Snapcaster Mage, nothing is definite, so don’t go buying 10 copies banking on it being present.
Read More: Stunning New Secret Lair Drop Barely Boasts $7 of Value
