The Gathering Reveals the Universe Beyond the Marvel Secret Lair Card

Wizards of the Coast has revealed the first of many crossovers between the two games. Magic: The Gathering And Marvel has a full Secret Lair superdrop dedicated to five of its biggest heroes.

The Magic: The Gathering

When they hit the Secret Lair site on November 4th, each drop will be priced at $39.99 for the regular edition and $49.99 for the foil. Like other recent drops like Monty Python, this one is also a limited time release. They are still in stock so they may sell out very quickly.

You can use this card in Commander, Vintage, and Legacy along with other Magic cards, including cards from other Universes Beyond crossovers like The Lord of the Rings and Doctor Who.

Secret Lair

The first drop is Captain America, a white/blue/red commander in charge of equipment artifacts. He's unique among equipment commanders in that he's more interested in tactically disarming his throwing abilities than building huge piles and smashing faces.

A neat touch is that his casting cost (1 red, 1 white, 1 blue mana) is formatted differently than the regular 'Jeskai' cards, which are traditionally ordered in that order: blue, white, red.

In the drop you'll find a collection of cards perfect for any Voltron deck, as well as tons of reprint assets. Flawless Maneuver is one of the spell cycles that can be cast for free if you control the Commander, and Sigarda's Aid provides a cheap way to load up the Cap and get him firing. And of course Cap's Shield is here as a reskin of Sword Of War And Peace, a great card in the Voltron deck.

This drop isn't specifically tied to the comics or the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so it's an interesting mix of the two. The best example of this is Captain America's Aid, which features Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson's incarnation as Captain America, with Sam being similar to actor Anthony Mackie.

Secret Lair

King of Wakanda is the star of the second drop, and his abilities are an impressive mix of +1/+1 counters and life gain, the two most common deck types in green and white.

When a creature enters, a +1/+1 counter is put on the land, and you can then pay a cost to move the creature onto it and gain that many life points. Alternatively, you can skip the move by using one of the green printed land animation cards, which feels appropriate for Black Panther.

Black Panther's casting costs include no blacks. In Magic, black is the exact opposite of Black Panther's character, because it is seen as a selfish color that sacrifices anything in the pursuit of power.

The reprint of this drop contains the best green cards in the Commander format, along with Heroic Intervention and Primal Vigor. Also a much-needed reprint is Karn's Bastion, a colorless land that can proliferate counters on lands or creatures.

Stacking Secure The Wastes next to Primal Vigor may not seem like an exciting reprint, but it's an easy way to trigger Black Panther's ability potentially dozens of times. The drop also comes with a Dora Milaje Warrior token.

Secret Lair

Pod decks are very popular in Commander. Named after the Birthing Pod card, this card sacrifices creatures to find increasingly more expensive creatures to put into play, and Iron Man brings a similar tactic to Artifacts.

Sacrificing an artifact allows you to put into play another artifact that costs one more than the one you sacrificed directly. This means the treasure token could easily be a Sol Ring or a Thran Dynamo could easily be a Crest.

The Commander's Plate's art is reminiscent of Iron Man's sleek 'Bleeding Edge' suit.

The reprint offered here includes Sol Ring in the style of Iron Man's Arc Reactor, the most played card in all of Commander. Commander's Plate and Inventor's Fair add a ton of reprint value to the drop and are excellent cards. Galvanic Blast isn't a big money card, but it definitely suits Iron Man's tastes.

Secret Lair

The first of two X-Men themed drops is Ororo Monroe, also known as Storm. There is no reward for guessing what her card is. She wants you to deal combat damage in order to cast your next spell with Storm.

If your spell has Storm, it copies it for each spell you previously cast that turn.

The included reprint contains some of the terrifying ways in which Storm of Storms can be used. Lightning Bolt is a staple that, with the right deck, can create enough storm copies to blow anyone away in the game. Alternatively, Storm's Will is a reskinned Jeska's Will, one of the best mono-red cards in the game that provides mana and card advantage.

Ice Storm is a fascinating inclusion here. Land destruction is sometimes frowned upon in Commander, and casting Ice Storm with Tempest to potentially wipe out a board of all lands can be a little more spicy than people might expect.

The last card is a reskinned version of the classic Storm deck, Manamorphose. Now named Ororo Borealis, this card provides mana and draws enough cards to start the game, freeing up mana.

A reskinned card is treated as if it were the same as the unskinned version. A deck can only contain one Manamorphose or Ororo Borealis since they are the same card.

Secret Lair

The last drop is Wolverine, who is personally one of my favorite Marvel characters. Like Storm, he brings back an old, underused mechanic from Regeneration to reflect his healing factor ability. Elsewhere, he's a fantastic Smash Commander, dealing damage when he hits a creature and rewarding him with a +1/+1 counter.

His reprints include staples that meandering players will love, like Rhythm of the Wild and Berserk, as well as the +1/+1 counter staples of Rite of Passage and The Ozolith. Here it is skinned with an Adamantium Bonding Tank. Naturally, most of the reprint value of this drop is in Berserk and The Ozolith, which are not readily available.

If you want, you can put three of these cards in a deck that includes Black Panther and go all-in on the +1/+1 counter.

The art showing the different eras of Wolverine is interesting. Berserk wears a brown John Byrne uniform, while Rite of Passage has his more famous blue and yellow costume and a surprise cameo from Wolverine's prodigy X-23.

Rounding out the Marvel superdrop is an exclusive promotional version of Commander's main Arcane Signet. This is # only available by purchasing the bundle that includes all the drops.

This version of the Arcane Signet is none other than the Avenger's Tower, which has become one of the most memorable buildings in the entire Marvel canon. Promotional Arcane Signets are rarely that valuable, but for Universes Beyond like this, the cost can skyrocket, so it's worth picking up if you're planning on building a Marvel-centric deck.