Evaluating the MTG X Final Fantasy Secret Lair Drop

May 16, 2025 Cliff Daigle Leave a comment

If you’ve been thinking, ‘Golly, I have too much money to spend on Magic’ then I have some news for you! It turns out that the Magic: the Gathering X Final Fantasy Secret Lair drop is coming out on June 9th, and it is a doozy.

The current Secret Lair drop, the ‘ran-out-of-names’ Ultimate Pencil Superdrop, nothing is even tagged as low stock. I freely admit I skipped this, between my buying up Dragonscale fetches and saving for assorted Final Fantasy goodies. The Final Fantasy drops are not going to have that problem, not one bit.

Let’s go over the three drops, the two finishes, the two languages, three bundles, and one promo card, and figure out what is worth buying.

First, let’s talk about the three drops, before we get into finishes and languages.

For each card, I’m going to list any special versions, the price of those versions, and the EDHREC inclusion. This should give us a good baseline for the card’s value and demand pattern. For this article, I’m referring to ‘premium’ as a borderless frame. Lots of these cards have special art but the normal frame, or maybe a retro frame, or perhaps a special foiling over a normal frame. Those are good, but they aren’t as special.

The price for each lair is the standard $30 nonfoil, $40 rainbow foil that we’ve come to expect under most circumstances.

Secret Lair x FINAL FANTASY: Game Over

	Premium Version(s)	EDHREC # of decks
Day of Judgement	Fracture foil ($95) Mystical Archive ($18) MPR textless foil ($23)	50,000
Temporal Extortion	Pack foil $73 (PLC)	10,000
Toxic Deluge	2XM Borderless foil ($37)2XM Etched foil ($20)	543,000
Praetor’s Grasp	SLD 2022 – Kamigawa Manga ($18) Pack foil (NPH) ($60)	67,000
Star of Extinction	CMM Etched foil ($6) Pack foil (XLN) ($3)	29,000
Bonus: Feed the Swarm	WHO surge foil ($15)	524,000

We’re off with probably one of the biggest locks in a while. Four of these cards don’t have a premium version yet, and I didn’t know Grasp was so popular. The art on all of these is top-notch, and even if you don’t recognized the scene/villain/game, collectors will.

I would buy this just for the Deluge and the Swarm cards, due to massive Commander demand, and the other cards are just extra dessert. People will be looking for excuses to play Sephiroth’s Meteorfall in decks, and you get other goodies to go with it. I don’t need a lot of words to tell you that I’m really impressed here and I expect this to mature nicely.

Secret Lair x FINAL FANTASY: Grimoire

	Premium Version(s)	EDHREC # of decks
Prismatic Ending	SPG foil ($10)	3000
Cyclonic Rift	RVR Borderless Foil ($165) 2XM Borderless Foil ($70)	760,000 (Game Changer)
Damn	DSC Promo ($5)	217,000
Lightning Bolt	Too many to list, most around $5	309,000
Heroic Intervention	Marvel Borderless ($17) WHO Surge FEA ($11)	830,000
Bonus: Silence	SLD Princess Bride foil ($38) SLD Toons foil ($11)	171,000

Speaking of locks, you could offer me just about any drop with five of six cards being in the EDHREC six digits and I’d be interested, sight unseen. This drop carries a small amount of burnout risk, as Prismatic’s SPG slot was MH3, Intervention was part of the Marvel superdrop, Lightning Bolt is everywhere, and this is the third SLD printing for Silence.

I don’t think it matters much in the long term, as these are fantastic cards with iconic characters and for something as universal as Rift, it doesn’t matter what’s on the art.

These spells will be popular, in demand, and you should feel good about buying this set of cards. I sure will.

Secret Lair x FINAL FANTASY: Weapons

	Premium Version(s)	EDHREC # of decks
Staff of the Storyteller	No foil ever	31,000
Blade of Selves	SLD DaVinci foil $25	90,000
Umezawa’s Jitte	SLD reg frame foil $10	32,000
Colossus Hammer	SPG foil $20 SLD Evil Dead foil $20	74,000
Sword of Truth and Justice	SLD reg frame foil $40	60,000
Bonus: Forge Anew	LTR Scrolls foil $15	57,000

This is the weakest of the drops, but there’s some factors that still make me feel pretty good about this drop. Hammer gets sold by the playset, for once, and even with the quantities that are likely for this drop, this Hammer will be in demand. We’ve been getting all sorts of Equipment-centric goodies, and the Forge and Sword fit right in. I have low expectations for the Staff as a card, but as a depiction of Yuna it’s got a lot to like.

The big speculation here is that this is a sign that Jitte is getting unbanned in Modern. Jitte was banned the last time they added it to a Secret Lair, and nothing ever came of that. Speculate away, but I think making this art Jitte just speaks to Cloud doing it all with the Buster sword.

Interestingly, this is only the second time we’ve gotten a Universes Beyond reprint with this Forge Anew, we just got a reprint of Raise the Palisade from LTC in the Morophon Commander deck that is still available on the site. We might see more or less of this, but the name not referring to a specific IP might help. We’ll see.

Other Bonuses and Bundles

Each of the drops has a regular bonus, but there is also a chance for a rare drop, one of the five pitch Elementals as Summons, and even if there’s already plenty of sweet versions of these cards, them being rare and collectors’ items will keep the prices high. If you get one, congratulations!

There will be a bundle price of $200 for six drops, all three in both foil and nonfoil. That will include a promo Gilded Lotus, and this should be a nicely priced card, considering the art and how there’s no other borderless version.

Additionally, this drop is available in Japanese as well as English, for the same price. All the cards, even the bonus and the promo Gilded Lotus, will come in Japanese, and the same bundle pricing applies.

If you’re really feeling it, you can go for the mega-bundle for $400, and get the whole shebang, including a pair of promos.

The bundle pricing doesn’t save you much. One of each without a bundle is $420, which is a 5% saving. I’d want more of a discount if I could, but I’m not in charge.

I think I’m going to go for a max of English bundles and an additional max of the ENG foil and nonfoil drops. The Japanese is tempting, but I think I would rather wait till the week that all the products arrive, and then buy a giant brick of things like Cyclonic Rift and Heroic Intervention in ENG and JPN foil. I’ve written about the gap in price that happens when you have good cards in more than one language, and I expect this to be a great example. I want some sealed to sock away for a while, but I also want the singles when they are cheap, so I want to spend the money a little more targeted, rather than just blast away at everything.

If you want to talk about my buying scheme or your own plans, please reach out on social media or the ProTrader Discord!

Cliff (@WordOfCommander at Twitter and BlueSky) has been writing for MTGPrice since 2013, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the co-host of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at a GP and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.

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MTG x Final Fantasy: Preparing for Tidus & Yuna

May 9, 2025 Cliff Daigle Leave a comment

Tidus and Yuna have a great story, lasting over a couple of games and endless amount of time. There was more than one twist in FInal Fantasy X, and I don’t want to spoil things for you. But these two are Bant counters creatures, and while they work really well together, I want to talk about their decks and what people are going to play.

Some of these cards I’ll have mentioned in the ProTrader Discord, or on the MTG Fast Finance cast, so there might have been movement already by those speculators or other unknown agents. Let’s get into it!

There’s a chance some of these see reprints in the decks, no way to know till we’ve got the lists released. Some of these, though, are tough to reprint due to IP.

Cards for the couple (meaning either deck):

Damning Verdict – $19 – This has a foil at $40-$50 from the promo pack and if there’s no foil included in the Commander decks here that could be a $100 card, as it’s unfairly perfect. There’s a lot of great SNC synergies with counters, but lopsided wrath effects are the most fun by far.

Brokers Ascendancy – Gilded Foil $5 – A lot of times you just want to get the counters on everyone and everything, so this will be a welcome card. Great version, unique styling, should do well.

Kami of Whispered Hopes – Promo Pack Foil $6 – This is the only special version so far, and this does two important things. Adds counters, and when you add counters to it, lets you scale up fast. Get yours cheap.

Hardened Scales – WOT foil $5, Borderless 2XM foil $4 – Either version will be under a lot of pressure very soon, so get the one you like best. I expect either/both to be more than $10 by July 4.

Lae’zel, Vlaakith’s Champion – Foil Etched $2 – I’m one of the folks who thinks that this showcase is so unappealing, I’d much rather have the etched. Again, adds to your counters and gives you something to do with them.

Zimone, Paradox Sculptor – Mana foil $28 – Looking at the stock, there’s just too many of the reg borderless and the FEA available, so go for the most special version. We love doubling counters, and here you do.

Branching Evolution – FEA Surge foil $10 – You would think there was a special version along the way, but nope, go for the PIP surge foils while they are still cheap.

Yuna-specific cards

Freed from the Real – nonfoil $3 – We’ve already seen the SLD rainbow foils jump to nearly $30 in less than a day, as it makes a combo with Yuna. Tap her for a blue, her +2 counters is ready to go. Untap her, do it again, cast a Triskelion of infinite size. GG. There’s only two foil versions, both too expensive already, so get yourself some cheaper ones.

Warden of the Grove – clan foil $4 – Warden loves coming in with counters, and helps everyone else come in with counters too. Wins all around! It might get a little cheaper as time passes but not by much.

Marwyn, the Nurturer – DOM promo foil $5 – This is very tricky, because the upcoming Festival in a Box for Vegas will have a special foil of this staple Elf, and that’s a card I can’t wait to stock up on.

Simic Manipulator – pack foil $1 – One of my favorite ways to turn counters into profits, the Manipulator reloads well. Even if it dies, you keep the creature you stole!

Threefold Thunderhulk – Pack foil $1 – Instant value with Yuna, as it comes in with the bonus and you instantly get the bonus tokens. Sadly, a strong candidate for being reprinted in the commander deck, so watch out.

Kurbis, Harvest Celebrant – nonfoils $1 – As a Midnight Hunt Commander card, there’s a lot of them out there, but so so good with the theme! Extra counters means extra protection.

Sage of hours – pack foil $18 – She’s about to pop this card off, and somehow it’s never been reprinted. Sage is a staple in the counters decks, but at least it’s too good/too expensive to likely be included in the deck.

Scholar of New Horizons – bulk – A great way to use counters and get lands for them. Also great with your assorted Sagas.

Triskelion – Borderless foil 50¢ – The classic, able to turn counters into damage instantly.

Tidus- specific cards

Tekuthal, Inquiry Dominus – Oil-Slick foil $15 – We get to double proliferates AND a way to get indestructible counters? Heck yes. Make an indestructible counter, proliferate it, and move it? Or make two counters? The fun never stops. The other Dominus creatures should likely be included too, but the blue one is the big target here.

Arwen, Mortal Queen – scrolls foil $17 – I agree that the poster is sweeter, and that could go up a lot. This is the range I like for my specs, to go from $20ish to $40ish is much more likely than the poster foil going $120 to $250. The card is perfect for what you want, because if you proliferate her indestructible counter, you can still remove one to give out the other counters.

Eagle of Deliverance – bulk – There are blessed few ways to put an indestructible counter onto a creature in these three colors, and the Eagle is an expensive but useful way to do it. All you need is the first one, and you can go from there.

Agent’s Toolkit – promo foil $8 – Tidus loves this card, and I’ve mentioned it before. You can get the only foil version surprisingly cheap, but it won’t be cheap for long.

Falco Spara, Pactweaver – Gilded foil $12 – You might run out of things to do, but with just a couple of counters around, you can do it all! This tends to get killed quite quickly, so make hay while the sun shines.

Contractual Safeguard – promo foil $4 – If you cast this in your main phase, you get 2W: put a shield counter on each creature you control. That’s already pretty good for a deck like this, but the potential with the other counters you’ll have access to really makes this fantastic. Again, promo foils are the only shiny ones out there.

Diamond City – surge foil $5 – Being in the Fallout set, you’re pretty safe from reprints. It’s also really great as a proliferator because it helps you move around the things you proliferated.

Brotherhood Outcast – Surge foil $8 – Just three mana to start the fun with a shield counter, already a pricey foil due to its inclusion in other proliferate decks, this should bump the price hard.

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Final Fantasy x MTG: Getting ready for Y’Shtola

May 2, 2025 Cliff Daigle Leave a comment

I am planning on getting to all of the big commanders in Final Fantasy, but the ones designed for Commander are the ones that are most likely to get a lot of the attention and the money. We don’t know all the legendaries that will be printed in the set, but we know four of the ‘face’ commanders and one of the backups.

Let’s get to Y’shtola first, as between the mana cost, effects, and character, this promises to be a very powerful and popular commander. I plan to get to each of the commanders in their own time, but my expectations are highest for the Cat Warlock.

Before we get to the cards, there’s two big hurdles for these specs to get there: 1) Y’shtola has to be popular. I think that won’t be a big problem, but with the sheer amount of new legends we’re getting, so many fan-favorite characters, there’s a decent chance that all the attention splinters. 2) For any Commander, there’s staples, must-haves, cards which are too good to leave out. Sad truth is that decks could be 150 cards and still feel like there’s not enough space. These are cards that I would at least try in the decks, and we’ll see if that’s enough to get the prices to jump.

She wants you to cast spells and drain, and rewards you every turn for doing these things. Therefore we’ll want to maximize what we’re doing on other turns, or finding repeatable ways of inflicting life loss. I talked about how good buyback cards are for Y’shtola before, so none of those are on this list. For each of these, I’m going to call out what version I think is worth buying and what their current price is.

Foil Intimidation Campaign – bulk – There’s an awful lot of these around, but it’s exactly what the deck wants, a repeated way to cast a noncreature spell of cost 3 or more. Sadly, there’s no promo or foil-etched, I just feel that this is something worth doing in the deck.

Bloodchief Ascension – borderless CMM foil $20 – The etched foil should be watched too, there’s a lot of people who like that matte look. The card doesn’t directly combo with the commander, but they do go together awfully nicely. Once it’s online, which shouldn’t take long, every kill spell you fire off ends up costing someone 4 life, 2 from the commander trigger and 2 from the Ascension. Repeat as needed.

Faerie Tauntings – pack foil $12 – Perhaps the card I love most for this deck, you’ll be casting a lot of instants and now they all come with a bonus drain. Very low supply, only one printing, this might hit some very high value if the hive mind notices the synergies.

Bontu’s Monument – pack foil $22 – There’s no special version of this yet but if you want to build a creature version of Y’shtola, this will help the triggering a lot.

Gixian Puppeteer – FEA $2 – Seems pretty easy to draw a second card on a turn, and the life loss will lead to more card draw. The recursion isn’t as important as the life loss, but this chaining is what you’re looking for.

Keen Duelist – SLD Foil $2.50 – When you get to make someone lose life, for no mana, that’s going to be a win for you. It’s also handy that this can happen before you put Y’shtola into play, and you’ll still get the draw trigger at the end.

Loyal Subordinate – CMM foil is bulk-priced – This will get you most of the way there for her trigger, and all for no extra mana. This is just a great card with the exact synergies you want.

Rusko, Clockmaker – $90 MB2 foil – As one of the Alchemy/Arena cards to be brought to the real world in foil only, this is already pricey thanks to players who love Commander flavors of UB Control. It’s obnoxiously easy for this to get out of hand, and given such a tiny supply, this could get crazy expensive!

Subversion – NM pack foils are $40, but LP can be had at $20 – It’s expensive at five mana but the free trigger is super helpful, especially if added to other such effects. This has had one mild reprint in the Battle Royale but as a rare in Urza’s Legacy, the first foiled set, there are so few of these out there.

Twilight Prophet – Etched Foil $9 – This is a case where the Etched Foil is the only one that looks notably different, even though there’s a Secret Lair it’s got the regular frame to go with new art. Go with the most unique frame. The card itself requires a turn cycle to work its magic, but will synergize beautifully with what the deck is trying to do.

Will of the Abzan – EA nonfoil $6 – Really, the perfect card if Y’shtola is in play. You get to have the trigger for life loss, they lose a creature, they lose more life, you get a creature back, and then at end of turn you get something good back from your yard! It’s a recent card, so the price hasn’t fallen far, but this is a card worth keeping an eye on. Usually with Commander-only cards like this the regular frame rises more (there’s less in circulation) but with the EA cheaper that’s where I want to start.

Casual Fridays

Is It Really That Bad If A Premium Card Is Reprinted?

April 25, 2025 Cliff Daigle Leave a comment

One of the big things about Magic speculation and finance in the modern era is that we have more avenues for reprints than ever. Special Guests, Secret Lairs, bonus sheets, it all adds up so very fast!

So today, I’m going to show my research about this topic, and attempt to answer the question: Does a new special version of a card damage the price of other versions of the card? Buckle up!

Let’s talk about specifics for what I mean. Specifically, the Dragonscale fetchlands, some cards that manage to combine being mega-staples across Constructed, Cube, and Casual formats, low drop rate, thematic importance, and gorgeous art. (that last part is important, we’re going to get back to that!) What will happen to other versions of the card, though?

Right now, let’s talk about Misty Rainforest. Right now, the Dragonscale is about $300 on TCG, and rising. The pattern it’s following tracks with my expectations, that I wrote about three weeks ago. Let’s look at the prices for the other versions right now. The FEA from MH2 hasn’t moved from the $35 range, and the foil retro frame hasn’t gone up or down yet either from its $30 (!) price. There’s two other premium versions, since the pack foil can be had for under $60, and that’s a revelation in and of itself.

Misty’s had two Expedition printings, and both of them have been on a downward trend for the last year. The most expensive is the Battle for Zendikar Expedition, followed by the Zendikar Rising set. Here’s the look and the one-year graph for the BFZ version:

I expect this trend to continue, but that trend was in place because MH2 has put an absolute boatload of fetches into circulation. Those prices have come down and stayed down because of the amount that have been printed, and that’s an important data point. However, there’s other examples I want to look at today.

One card I want to start with in this research is Arcane Signet. There are 68 different printings, and remarkably few look the same. It’s got seventeen versions listed at $10+ and several more in close range of that figure. Some are rare by virtue of what they were in, perhaps an underprinted Secret Lair, like the Galaxy Staples. Perhaps it was an inclusion in the Marvel buys, and was going for more than $50 before settling down to $20. I don’t think it’s a perfect example because all of the art is so unique and the printing has been in vastly different quantities, but I do want to show the graph for the Rovina Cai version:

Again, very unique and I think that’s why it has resisted falling in price as more and more SLs were printed. Heck, the same time in Fallout packs gave us a super-rare Pip-Boy Arcane Signet that shot up to $60 and has stayed high. I think the art/frame/theme plays a big part in the card. Let’s find a card with multiple borderless printings, but similar art. These Signets are too different.

Kaalia of the Vast was a card I built around when she came out in 2011 and she’s had more than one special printing. Specifically, there were borderless foils in Double Masters (2020), then another in Modern Horizons 3 (2024), followed by the Secret Lair version we just got a couple of weeks ago.

Let’s take a look at the prices for the premium 2XM version when the MH3 was released:

That’s pretty damning. Once the card was reprinted with special borderless art but the same general look, the decline began. We’ll have to see if the new Tragic Romance version and the MH3 version cannibalize each other, as they are both around $100 at the moment. The art is pretty different, though. It’ll be an interesting case to follow.

Kaalia is a commander, almost never an inclusion in the 99, and being Modern-legal has meant nothing, she hasn’t been featured in any Modern decks of relevance. So the price change is all based on people wanting the new borderless instead of the old. The market for her isn’t as strong as it is for Misty, but there’s also been a whole lot less copies of Kaalia printed compared to copies of Misty.

How about a card with a special version, and a recent reprint with a special character? Flawless Maneuver has impeccable use, being in 270,000 EDHREC decks. There was one borderless version, and then Marvel dropped a second one. Let’s start with the first:

And then the Captain America example:

The Marvel drop was in November of 2024, and we sure enough saw a little dip in the price. However, it quickly recovered and is still the more expensive version. I suspect this is due to supply, because a lot of Marvel has been dumped into circulation as the hype rocketed upwards. We’ll see what happens this summer when we get Spider-Man and more cool hero stuff. For today, though, I want to note that if the demand is there, the art is different enough, the card recovers.

And that’s the pattern I want to highlight. Let me go through a couple more side by side examples of different art making for a dip, and a smooth recovery.

Exquisite Blood:

The Ozolith:

Teferi’s Protection:

For each of these, we can see a little dip but a fast recovery and steady growth, the sign that the card is still being bought up. So I think that makes my case, and I’ll summarize: The art needs to be different enough, or the foiling, or the characters, something. If it’s different enough, the card will dip, and recover.

I think I’ve been thorough with my checking but if you’ve got examples you want to talk about, please reach out on social media or join the ProTrader Discord and talk it out with me!

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