Gavin Verhey used today’s episode of Good Morning Magic to review the Dr. Lair’s Secretorium Superdrop items and drop some knowledge on the different collections.
Verhey gave some backstories and trivia about all the drops, starting with the Culture Shocks. There was quite the debate over naming what would eventually become the Ravnica shocklands in design, as names tied to Ravnica would make them only reprintable in expansions set on Ravnica, while evergreen names would let them be more flexible. Of course, more than fifteen years later and the lands have only been reprinted in Ravnica sets, but the Culture Shocks Secret Lair drops will finally change that. Now players can see what these iconic lands would look like on different planes. Story tidbits can also be found on the flavor text on the new shocklands.
The Our Show Is On Friday, Can You Make It? drop was designed for Commander players, so all the cards see decent amounts of play in the 100-card format. Verhey also did deep dives on the cards featured, brining up original design notes on them. One factoid was that Preordain only said Scry 5 instead of what it eventually became.
The full-text lands were considered briefly for Unstable, but design didn’t think they would be as desired as full-art lands. The full-text lands are the only cards in Magic history to not have an artist credit.
Allied-color Mystical Archive cards were left out of the Strixhaven bonus sheet because they didn’t want players trying to draft color pairs that weren’t supported. Notably, this is the first reprint of Fire Covenant.
See more information about the Dr. Lair’s Secretorium Superdrop from Daily MTG.