There’s a lot to love about Secret Lair drops in MTG. Whether you’re in it for the potential reprint value or the amazing art, there are plenty of potential positives. When you factor in Universes Beyond crossovers and limited-run printing on top, it’s no wonder Secret Lair drops sell out. This doesn’t mean, however, that the Secret Lair brand is totally ineffable.
As much as some drops offer good value and can skyrocket in price, there have been plenty of duds recently. Alongside this, the theme of each drop isn’t always to every player’s tastes, but that’s part of the fun. What’s not fun, however, is when Wizards accidentally just makes a card worse.
Koma, a Slightly Worse Serpent
Very rarely, an error will slip through the Secret Lair production pipeline. Sadly, this is exactly what has happened in the Horrors Across the Planes Secret Lair drop. Announced in early September, this Secret Lair appeared to be fairly underwhelming and didn’t garner much attention.
Overall, the contents of this drop were only worth around $20, and the striking art style was hardly beloved by all. Inspired by the design of 80s horror comic books, there’s a big ol’ face and a boatload of somewhat confusing text. Without much consideration for kerning, each card’s paragraph of text was seemingly ignored by many players.
This was especially true for Koma, Cosmos Serpent, which boasted the most amount of text on any Horrors Across the Planes card. There was a lot to read through, but thankfully Koma is a pretty known card so that wasn’t necessary… right? It turns out this assumption was actually leading players astray, as this variant of Koma is a little bit different!
Looking at the original Kaldheim printing, we can see that Koma will trigger “At the beginning of each upkeep.” This is an invaluable distinction in Commander since it’s a multiplayer format. More players means more upkeeps which means more somewhat expendable 3/3 tokens.
Turning our attention back to the new Secret Lair variant, we can see Koma only triggers “At the beginning of your upkeep.” From the looks of things, this is a huge downgrade to Koma, Cosmos Serpent which massively nerfs their utility, value, and overall effectiveness.
The Words, They Mean Nothing
Obviously, a mistake on a card like this is a bad look for MTG. Secret Lair cards are meant to be premium high-quality products, and errors like this make a mockery of that. Subsequently, it would be very easy to dunk on Wizards right now, but players have been remarkably restrained. As Nyx-weaver comments on Reddit, this isn’t an incompetence issue, it’s a Hasbro issue.
“Edit: we should understand this as a systemic/Hasbro issue, rather than a personal “incompetence” issue. Thanks u/Thegodoepic for bringing that aspect up. We’ve known there’s a ton of crunch happening at WotC for a while now. When your process is to rely on one human to never make an error, that’s how human error gets into your process.”
Nyx-weaver
Between the volume of MTG sets and cards being produced nowadays and recent Hasbro layoffs, it’s a wonder more mistakes don’t happen. It’s a testament to Wizards development rigor that errors like this are rare enough that they’re news when they occur. Ultimately, typos just happen sometimes and slip through the cracks, which we’re guilty of ourselves.
At the end of the day, it’s rare for a simple typo to completely obscure what the writer was saying. This is doubly true in MTG, as the text on a card actually doesn’t matter at all. While this may seem strange in principle, errata and textless MTG cards confirm this to be the case.
Instead of MTG cards doing exactly what they say on the tin, each card uses its Oracle text. Found on Gatherer, this system ensures each card works correctly, regardless of language, printing, or errata. This means that the nerfed Koma, Cosmos Serpent actually isn’t nerfed at all. Regardless of what the card says, it still triggers on every upkeep.
The Misprint Market?
Since the text on the card doesn’t actually matter, this misprint is harmless at worst. At best, it could be a rather lucrative aspect of the card since misprints often command premium prices. That being said, we don’t even know if this misprint is real yet.
While the previews typically match the final printed product, there’s a non-zero chance this mistake was fixed during production. We won’t know whether or not this is the case until Wizards makes an official statement or the drop launches. That said, since Secret Lair drops are now pre-printed, it’s likely this mistake is on cards already.
Regardless of what happens, this misprint is only that in a technical sense. Unlike other misprints or errors, this mistake will be very widespread if it’s printed. This minimizes the scarcity aspect of misprints, which usually drives their value. Should every Secret Lair Koma feature this error, it simply won’t feel special.
This is to say that the misprinted Koma, Cosmos Serpent likely won’t sell for a significant premium. This would follow the trend set by Circular Logic, which was misprinted as a sorcery, rather than being an instant. Currently, this card sells for around $3 on TCGplayer. While this is more than the usual $0.14 asking price, it’s not a huge premium as far as Secret Lair cards go.
As a result, the newly discovered misprint of Koma, Cosmos Serpent likely isn’t going to increase the card’s price. Instead, it will just be another Secret Lair card with a unique quirk to talk about at the table.
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