Secret Lair: Sans Mercy
Spoilers, Rumors, and Speculation forum
Posted on May 4, 2024, 11:04 p.m. by DemonDragonJ
I have not started a thread about a Secret Lair product in quite some time, since WotC has been printing so many of those that I feel it is foolish to make a thread for each one, but their newest Secret Lair is so ridiculous that I felt that I needed to make a thread about it.
The newest Secret Lair (at the time of this post) is Sans Mercy, and the cards in it have awesome artwork, but they are ruined by the ridiculous font; why would WotC do a thing such as that? What were they thinking when they designed those cards? What does everyone else say about this new Secret Lair product?
Squee_Spirit_Guide says... #3
I'm just left wondering how they call it "Sans Mercy" and don't include the card No Mercy... Unless that's part of the joke? In that case, well played, Wizards. Well played.
Also, I agree the art looks amazing!
May 5, 2024 12:15 p.m.
TypicalTimmy says... #4
SteelSentry, I read online that it was indeed a confirmed April 1st joke but that it was delayed and is now being instead referred to as Maypril 1st (despite launching on the 2nd).
As for the text, it's two poor decisions culminating together. The first is the use of Comic Sans, which nobody takes seriously. To be perfectly honest I'm not entirely sure why but it is what it is. I get it, it's text often displayed in comics (hence the name), and comics are satirical in nature. I mean, even if you take the most grounded and gritty comics, it's still satirical in nature when compared to our real life.
Anywho, so that's probably why people don't take Comic Sans seriously, to which I would argue that the message is more important than the font; If you have an official office memo, the font chosen is the least important aspect of it - but I digress.
So satire, we've established that.
The aLteRnATinG bIg anD SmaLl TeXt is supposed to be read in a mocking and sarcastic tone. And not an undertone either. A blatant disregard for everything repeated. It's actually more so insulting and ridiculing than it is sarcastic and witty. It's meant to be mean, not funny.
So you have rude tones, with satirical underscores, established on what should have been the Day of Fools.
All combined, it's one of those:
-
I cast Torment of Hailfire for 5.
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i cAsT "tOrmENt oF HaiLFi-" go fuck yourself, five?? God damn it.
A reflection on ACTUAL gameplay interactions.
Unfortunately, that humor was not well expressed within context, which is why players don't "get it".
I'm not here to defend it, either. I'm simply saying, from a design perspective, that's what the angle was coming from.
May 6, 2024 1:58 p.m. Edited.
I get where they were going with that secret lair, I just think they messed up the execution. This one isn't a big deal to me.
My bigger question is since Wizards changed the ways Secret Lairs work so there is only a very limited window to buy them, are they still really selling to people, or is it mostly just speculators buying them up?
May 6, 2024 2:59 p.m.
TypicalTimmy says... #6
They didn't change it, per se. It was always a limited window. The difference is that now that window is much smaller.
People are still buying them, otherwise it would have become a discontinued product line, not unlike the Signature Spellbooks and the Commander Collections, which frankly pissed me off because I wanted to have the Sol Ring that never got printed.
Given that WOTC will discontinue products, yet have kept SL, this informs us that the limited edition print runs are in fact financially viable enough to be sustained. In fact, it must be enormously successful because they need to commission art, new print runs, packaging, marketing and advertisment, etc.
Consider how many SLs there have been, and then realize this is a cost associated with every single one of them. So that means they need to make A LOT of money to make it a viable stream of revenue for the company, especially for being such a short window.
Now as to your question, Abaques, I highly doubt there are players dishing out money for every single run. More like, oh this one is interesting I want it. But as prints have gone on, more and more players found themselves wanting only 1 or 2 cards from the whole lot. So why spend $70 or $120 for 5 cards when you can just spend $30 on the two you wanted?
Meaning it's stores who buy them in bulk, who then upsell the cards individually.
Whether or not this is profitable for the stores? Who's to say. Stores are able to deduct losses on their taxes. So if a store spends $45,000 on SL products in a year and only sells $22,000 that's quite a good amount they can deduct against their taxes. Even if they bought $45,000 and sold $55,000 that's still a NET loss when you consider overhead, taxes and payroll. They'd likely need to sell upwards of $85,000 to make a profit, but again I digress.
The only people with cashflow like this in their reserves are stores, meaning that we can therefore deduce the largest buyer of SL products are storefronts, and not individual players.
May 6, 2024 3:34 p.m.
TypicalTimmy says... #7
Maybe one day WOTC can do a Sol Ring series of SL
Six cards; Each one tied to a single color, plus colorless. In the artwork, of course. Not like adding .
So artistically representing the colors of magic. Heck even a 7th card for WUBRG
Then maybe a 10 card guild set, a 10 card Shard and Wedge set and a 5 card 4c set
I'd definitely be interested in those. They'd be the perfect ideal for Commander players looking to add a little artistic life and flare to their decks
May 6, 2024 3:38 p.m.
RiotRunner789 says... #8
@TypicalTimmy: I hadn't realized the Commander Collections were axed two colors in. I've just been waiting for them to announce the next one. Great sadness.
May 6, 2024 3:55 p.m.
sergiodelrio says... #9
Isn't there a max limit per customer for SL? Wotc makes a lot on these bc it's direct to consumer so they get actual retail $ , not wholesale plus they can print to demand and not worry about overprinting. Also, they charge obscene prices for a handful of cards
May 6, 2024 4:06 p.m.
Crow_Umbra says... #10
My only real gripe is that I wish the use of Comic Sans & the alternating capitalizing better fit the art for this SL. I think the arts utilized are great, but feel kinda at odds tone-wise with the other details. As much as I like the arts, I wish they also had a jokey tone to them to better match the font. Hell, they even could've had Nicol Bolas in Torment of Hailfire imitating the Spongebob Meme that this is derived from. Probably a bit too on the nose lol
May 6, 2024 4:34 p.m.
TypicalTimmy says... #11
I could see comical art.
Like Mogis actively doing a table flip with cards and dice all over it lol
May 6, 2024 5:08 p.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #12
TypicalTimmy, I share your frustration at both Signature Spellbook and Commander Collection apparently benign cancelled, and the worst part of that is that WotC never explicitly confirmed that those product lines had been canceled, or for what reason, as they clearly expected everyone to simply forget about them.
May 7, 2024 9:47 p.m.
Y'all missed the best part: the Doom Blade has a typo! "Destroy targeet nonblack creature" lmao
May 8, 2024 9:56 a.m.
Gidgetimer says... #14
sergiodelrio They are no longer print to demand. They have made them a limited print run and the nice ones sell out very quickly. For example the Ravina Kai one was sold out the day they released before many people got home from work. Then they were reposted on TCGplayer for triple the price. Luckily they have come down and are only 150% of the sales price. I'm hoping they come down a bit more so I can get one.
May 8, 2024 6:04 p.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #15
Gidgetimer, that is ridiculous; why not have a normal print run for these sets? How can WotC be that greedy?
May 8, 2024 8:20 p.m.
Gidgetimer says... #16
It was (supposedly) to solve a problem that no one was complaining about and caused a problem that lots of people are complaining about. Turn around time on Secret Lairs was in the neighborhood of 6-10 weeks, with my longest wait being 14 weeks. People realized that they were collecting orders and then printing them, no one cared for the most part about the time it took. Having said that, apparently some of the commander decks took up to a year to arrive and that irritated people (rightfully). So Wizards announced that they were going to a limited print run model as the rule for the product line with some print to demand possible to lessen waiting times. But they assured people that "While popular Secret Lair drops may sell out fast, we now have four years of Secret Lair sales to base our print-run numbers on, and we're aiming to get as close to overall demand as possible". (source for rational).
The 2024 Equinox Super Drop started on April 8th and was supposed to last until April 28. I didn't know about it (I don't check the page that often) until April 12th by which time 3 out of 6 drops were sold out. That weekend I talked to a friend who had gone to watch the eclipse on the 8th because we were only about 2 hours out of the path of totality and he said by the time he returned home that evening the Rovina Cai drop had sold out. Less than 1 day into a 20 day long sale. By the 18th (halfway into the sale) the last of the Fallout themed drops had sold out and that left two drops with low value and art that isn't widely appealing for the remainder of the sale.
I have more issues with the Fallout Lairs too, but that is a completely other problem. It is obvious that they in reality have no idea how well drops are going to sell and they should go back to letting people order what they want and printing to demand. There would be challenges to it, but a better solution would be to do an initial run to get instant shipping then a print to demand to let people get drops for the entire length of the drop. Hell, they could offset logistics costs by charging a fee. Either for instant shipping from prestock, or a print to demand fee. I would pay an additional $5-10 on an order just to have the opportunity to buy the lairs that appeal to me without having to go into a FOMO craze and check the site repeatedly while at work. As is (assuming that every lair that is currently sold would still be sold, which speculators are a thing so it may not be true) they are losing out on $400-$500 per year on revenue from just me based on my previous buying habits.
May 8, 2024 9:37 p.m.
Wizards wants to drive FOMO because it makes people think less about their purchases. The card value in Secret Lairs has in general dropped over the past year or so (though there are obviously exceptions).
One of the ways Wizards can make money is by reprinting expensive cards (commonly called reprint equity) and Secret Lairs are a way to do that, but with the rate of Secret Lairs they are printing they need to limit the rate they reprint more expensive cards because otherwise they will deplete the value of the expensive cards. So Wizards has responded by making the Secret Lairs contain less valuable cards, which keeps more reprint equity for Wizards. The problem with this strategy is that it will likely negatively impact sales for Secret Lairs.
So because Secret Lairs are obviously a profit area for Wizards, in order to keep sales up they're relying on FOMO. I think this is a tactic that will only work over the short-term, but hey, that's corporations for ya.
This is all just my opinions of course, and I'm certain that Wizards would deny that's their strategy, but I think Wizard's actions make that the most likely scenario.
May 8, 2024 11:06 p.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #18
RiotRunner789, I, also, am very sad that WotC has apparently canceled both Signature Spellbook and Comamnder Collection, since those sets were excellent sets, and had so much potential to explore.
June 19, 2024 8:45 p.m.
TypicalTimmy says... #19
Gidgetimer, I use to collect SLs and bought a verity of them to start. It was the Theros set that killed it for me. It took me nearly six months to receive my foil set, and upon finally receiving them the cards were curled out of the box.
I stopped paying attention to SLs after that moment.
June 19, 2024 9:27 p.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #20
Abaques, this game should be affordable and accessible to everyone; I wish to play against a player, not against their bank account.
June 19, 2024 9:39 p.m.
Gidgetimer says... #21
TypicalTimmy I'm sorry that you had to wait 6 months for those. If you haven't started buying them again now that they went (back) to this FOMO bullshit my point stands.
SteelSentry says... #2
If I had to guess, it was planned for April 1st but got delayed. I have not seen one person that is interested in them, even though the art is great. I'd much rather have unplayable cards with great art like the last April Fools secret lair (featured cards like Mudhole and Goblin Snowman) than having them both look great and be hard to look at.
May 5, 2024 4:25 a.m.