During Magic Con Atlanta, the Secret Lair panel announced the brand’s upcoming Secret Scare Superdrop. But it wasn’t the cards that were the star. It was listening to the team talk both on stage and during the press Q&A that followed.
One of the most striking things I heard from Magic: The Gathering’s Secret Lair designers is that they know that not everyone will like their work. But more importantly, the Secret Lair drops are specifically for the one group of people who will be excited for the set. The statement wasn’t flippant; it just exemplified the Secret Lair team’s dedication to reaching out to niche fans, creating unique content, embracing diverse themes, and ultimately connecting with fans of different IPs where they are.
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If you’re unfamiliar, Secret Lair is Wizards of the Coast’s boutique arm of Magic: The Gathering. The brand releases small-batch “drops” of product through collaborations with specific artists, IP, and, in some cases, philanthropic causes. At the same time, some fans have expressed frustration toward the high-priced releases and, more specifically, the lack of availability.
With highly anticipated video game collaborations like Final Fantasy and Sonic, it’s hard to see Secret Lair drops as something attainable. Hell, I only have the Nuestra Magia drop because it was a print-to-order versus limited quality, like the brand’s other philanthropic causes.
But despite the high collectability and revenue generated from the set, speaking with the developers brings home a dedication to the niche corners of fandom and love that allows them to continually push the envelope and, more importantly, shine a light on sections of Magic players who may not have their interests represented in main Magic sets, Universes Beyond, and otherwise.
The Nuestra Magia Secret Lair Philanthropic drop remains a showstopper.
The love for Secret Lair drop and their success remind me of A24. They’re making blockbusters by embracing the weird little Furby monstrosities, because someone somewhere wants nightmare fuel in their deck, or maybe a Hatsune Miku or two. And like A24, they’re not struggling to be seen, but rather using the name and collector drive to just make things.
During Magic Con Atlanta’s 2025 Secret Lair panel, players got the chance to see the upcoming Secret Scare superdrop. Among the announcements came an ode to Halloween for the spooky season with a Trick or Treat theme, a collaboration with The Office that gives fans a deck of Dwight cards to play, a Jaws release that even contains a bucket of blood, two drops for Iron Maiden’s Eddie, two Furby drops that ranged from cute to terrifying, an all black and grey Dreaming Darkly drop, and most importantly to me, a sexy demonic artist spolight drop by Keiren Yanner that evokes the best of romantasy.
Throughout the pane, the Secret Lair team made it clear that they knew not everyone would love the drops, but all that mattered to them was that someone, in the audience, at home, just someone would love them and feel seen by their work on the different collaborations.
After the announcement panel, a group of press spoke with Steve Sunu, Lindsey Bartell, and Sam Strick, about Secret Lair, upcoming drops, and the attention the team puts towards those not usually represented by Magic (be that internet meme superfan or someone just looking for representation). When asked about how the team balances Secret Lair drops with niche IP or references against a larger audience who may have no idea what the references or IP are, the team just said they don’t think about it.
To the Secret Lair team, it’s not about making everyone happy.
Essentially, how do you balance the “small audience” and the potential profits they need to make as a brand? For most products, these two things are treated as opposing forces. For Steve Sunu, Secret Lair’s Senior Product Designer, who focused on the product design perspective, he doesn’t think they’re opposed.
“I don’t think they have to be [in opposition],” Sunu said. “It’s really fun to look into what people love about something and try to figure out what people love about magic that relates to that [specific] thing. It could be an art style, [because] people really connect with art. To your point, ‘Tragic Romance,’ a drop that we did earlier this year, was one of our most popular drops. Abigail Larson absolutely crushed it.”
Tragic Romance, for those unfamiliar, is, to put it simply, a monster lover drop (you can replace the word lover with another if you catch my drift). With beautiful art from Abigail Larson and featuring flavor text on the Kaalia the Vast card, which depicted her being held by a Dragon that read, “Some bonds can’t be explained, only felt.”
But for Steve Sunu and the rest of the team, it wasn’t about just designing a product for monster lovers to pick up, but rather making a starting point or enhancement for them as they build their deck. They want you to play with one of your Secret Scare superdrop Dwights or hideously hilarious Furby Oddbody. And with the case of Tragic Romance, build an entire deck.
Romantasy is alive and well, with monster lovers getting their share of Secret Lair drops.
“The cards that you got in [Tragic Romance] are amazing as a base for a Kaalia the Vast deck. So it’s about looking at not just drop framework, but [also] thinking, ‘Is there a different product that we could think about for this that would better serve that portion of the community?’ We don’t look at it as either or. We look at it as, ‘How do we make sure that we’re doing both, and if we can’t do both, why not?'”
To Sunu’s point, I’ve built entire decks around getting the Nuestra Magia set into my Commander Nights. And as a set focused on Green and Red, well, that was completely different from how I played, but they opened the door for me to explore that part of Magic’s Color Pie.
Lindsey Bartell, Secret Lair’s Senior Director, jumped in, “I would just build on that and say that sales [are] not important, I mean, it’s not one of the first things that we think of when concepting a product. Having it be true to the brand, be authentic, and be something that somebody out there is going to love are ranked way above the sales standpoint of mass appeal. [Mass appeal is] just not who Secret Lair is.”
The panel laughed a bit, and most of us in the press seats were surprised. “Otherwise,” Bartell continued, “We’d be turning out things that look a lot different than what we are, right? It’s again, not just that we are a business— recognize that we are—but it’s just in terms of designing products. That’s just not how we think about it.”
Secret Lair Creative Lead Sam Strick added, “Also, I’d love to throw out there that I see us a little bit as a curator. We’re not trying to make one of everything, but we’re choosing things that we want people to see out there. As a curator, when it comes to those drops or products, [we] thought that this story with these cards matters and that’s like an act of curation.”
Secret Lair isn’t about mass appeal, and the Secret Scare Superdrop shows that.
But more importantly, what this response shows is that Secret Lair is a vehicle ripe to expand Magic: The Gathering’s wide open, in the same way that Universes Beyond has done, but with sets that also highlight specific cultures and causes, Secret Lair can also be a solidifying force in someone’s life. For me, that was the release of the Nuestr Magia drop. The philanthropic drop, which donated 50 percent of its proceeds to the National Association of Latino Art and Culture.
Raising around one million dollars, the set spoke to the cultural history and importance at a time when our community has been targeted. That set was the first time I viewed Secret Lair drop as a labor of love, regardless of the IP or culture attached.
When the panel released Keiran Yanner‘s set, which includes reprints of Demonic Tutor and Lord of the Pit, among others, it happened again, only not in such a personal way. While I saw women throughout the convention, we still represented a smaller percentage of attendees.
Something I felt most when I was trying to make way through lines or when men hovered around our table making trades as we played Commander in the Command Zone. You don’t really notice how few women you’ve been around until you start to get uncomfortable with men twice your size surrounding you. And that’s not their fault. Even now, the stereotypes of Magic players are often focused on men. But that’s not all who is there.
Commander games at Magic Con Atlanta were staples; I just wish I had met more women.
To close out my last night at Magic Con Atlanta, I played a game against two women from Wizards, who had some of the best decks I faced. And while both of them are impressive, seeing one of the woman’s Tiamat commander deck clad in holographic pink heart sleeves from Prismatic Defender, a woman-owned Magic: The Gathering peripheral brand, made me feel so much at home that any moment of anxiety fell away.
It was a similar feeling I got looking at Kieran Yanner’s set. Its visuals strongly evoke the romance and erotica that is often gendered as women’s literature. Beyond that, while Demonic Tutor is often depicted with women, this Secret Lair card features a sensual and romantic look of the Demon (also featured on Lord of the Pit) holding a man.
The queer-coded card isn’t just speaking to LGBTQ+ audiences but also those who have taken to following and reading the much-expanded genre of MLM romances, often called BL by fans, which are largely read by women and gay men. It’s a treatment for a card that embraces romance and sensuality, but is done in a different way.
With the romance novel-inspired cover, but centering a man as the one learning from the Demonic Tutor. For lack of a better phrase to accompany this kind of sexy monster, one has reference to the “female gaze,” a disputed term but one apt for describing a style of art often speaking to women.
During the post-panel Q&A, I asked the team how they approached creating cards that catered to the feminine gaze by embracing artistry that speaks to media often centered on women as a core audience. And I also informed them that the first thing I did when Kiren Yanner’s Demonic Tutor card was shown was snap a picture and send it to my girl’s group chat, filled with the women in my life who have no idea what Magic: The Gathering is, outside “that game Kate plays on Wednesdays.”
Secret Lair is made to be added to your decks, not just collected.
Steven Sunu was the first to answer, “I think the truth of it is that we work with world-class art directors and world-class creative talent. I mean, you see somebody like Kieran Yanner, who’s been drawing cards for years and years and years and has so many different magic illustrations to his name. And then we get to say, hey, you get to do whatever you want. And he comes and plays with us, and he does that. You know, that’s really telling as to where his passions are, and where his passions direct him.”
“In terms of the other part of your question, romantasy, I don’t think it’ll surprise you to hear that there are a lot of romantasy fans on the team, especially given some of the things that you might have seen pretty recently there. I’m really happy to hear that’s resonating [for you],” he added.
But it’s not just about the artist; it’s also about the audience when it comes to designing the products. “From a product design perspective,” Sunu added, “The thing that’s most important to me is that our products resonate with the people that they’re designed for.”
He conitnued, “So for you, for example, in your girls chat, if we can get really world class artists, if we can get world class artists and creative talent like Sam under the direction of somebody who has so much vision as Lindsay, our ability to come together as a team and bring you and your friends something that is really going to resonate with you.”
Not a single card hit me like Kieran Yanner’s Demonic Tutor did.
“[Something] that you’re going to be able to point to and say, ‘I see myself in this. This is how I want to play Magic. This is the type of game that I want to play.’ If we can do even that, just a little bit, we’ve done our jobs, and we feel so proud that we get a chance to add to that conversation,” Sunu explained.
Lindsay Bartel added, “I’ll just say that I really appreciate the thoughtfulness of your question about the ‘female gaze’ and that point of view, which has been something that has been historically, most of our approach. And I would say there’s an appetite on the team, with my leadership and the people that I have on my team, [for it too]. So more to come on that.”
When it comes to Secret Lair, I’ve come to appreciate, perhaps even more so after listening to Sunu, Bartell, and Strick talk. Sure, they may be limited, the site may be congested, and it may be a little pricey, but the reality is that the joy of seeing a product so aware of you as a target audience member is something you can’t beat.
The panel is right, I want to play Magic with sexy demons, anime treatments, and cards that make me feel at home. And Secret Lair is proving that they can do that. Let’s hope there are more weird, grotesque monstrocities and sexy beasties to come.
