Wizards of the Coast to "Test" Alternate Secret Lair Distribution

The List is dead. 

That's the news coming out of Wizards of the Coast's official announcements today, and in its place is a new experiment. 

The List, to catch you up, was a curated slate of reprints meant to "pay homage" to the game's past, and a card from The List could be found in roughly one in every four Play Boosters from 2020 to what seems to be the end of 2024. In those four years, 4,877 different cards appeared on The List, though in a rotating selection. 

As per an announcement today posted by Blake Rasmussen, The List used to be the primary way Secret Lair cards were "reprinted" for easier access, in the form of an "in-universe" reskin. The Secret Lair drops centered around The Walking Dead, Stranger Things and Street Fighter have all undergone this transformation and are categorized as Universes Within.

With The List no longer, Rasmussen said the new strategy to get mechanically unique Secret Lair cards into players's hands beyond the traditional Secret Lair website is to allow WPN-affiliated stores to sell them directly. 

A WPN store, or Wizards Play Network, is essentially an "official retailer" for Magic. Through WPN affiliation, a local game store (LGS) can gain access to merchandise, marketing materials and exclusive promos to distribute to players. "This means that the next time we have a drop that has mechanically unique cards in it, we're going to make a limited quantity of those non-foil drops available for WPN stores to sell directly to you," wrote Rasmussen. "Those drops will be on sale in stores while supplies last after they go on sale on the Secret Lair website, but they'll be the exact same non-foil drops you could buy on the Secret Lair website. Just from the person who runs your Friday Night Magic."

How it will work:

• WPN stores will purchase the non-foil edition of the Secret Lair Drop from their preferred distributor.
• Both foil and non-foil editions of the Secret Lair Drop will be available for consumers to purchase on the Secret Lair website.
• A few weeks later, WPN stores will sell the Drop at their store.

It has not been announced to WPN stores which future Secret Lair drops will be available for physical distribution, implying that not every drop slated for 2025 will be available. 

Rasmussen said this shift is a "test" and might not represent the final strategy going forward. "We're going to be watching this test closely and talking to fans and WPN stores to make sure we're doing this right, but we're pretty excited to give it a go regardless," he wrote.

Be sure to check back on Commander's Herald for more information as this strategy is implemented. Will you be foregoing the Secret Lair website distribution (which has a less-than-stellar reputation) in favor of purchasing the cards at your LGS? How will this affect players in areas of the world not within the United States? Let us know below!