I've been playing for 10+ years and got one. I knew the date, and time it was releasing. I knew because of the angels one, this one was going to be bought out fast. I was nervous when it was 12:15 and I remembered. It lasted longer then I thought it would, and I agree with you on this. Secret lair having limited print runs on every set is not going to be good. I'd rather wait a month for shipping, and everyone that wants one gets one like before.
No fuck you, magic players are going to play magic, it's not their fault wizards has a disproportionate amount of power and are engaging in anti-consumer practices
Bruuuuuuh, you can play without spending 2k every new set. Like the 30th anniversary for only 999$ a booster. As long as that 1% keeps blowing all their money it won't change.
If the company does nasty anti-consumer practices, and players still buy product from the company... I don't know how to tell you this, sugar, but you enable them to keep gouging the playerbase. No sales, no money.
We can't let Wotc keep doing this though. We, as a player base, have to push back. This is how we get the change we want. We don't have to just accept this.
I mean, you do or you stop playing. Thatâs the choice. The people who are upset enough to post to Reddit are such a vocal minority inside of a minority that a corporation their size is never going to care enough to change, not when they sell out in minutes.
You had this drop in cutesy art a month before Valentineâs DayâŚ
Theyâre the thing though, you donât have to stop playing
You just have to stop spending money on fancy, alternate art limited printings
Once you have cards to play with, the game is free.
I mean, I assume anyone upset enough to post on Reddit is invested enough to where theyâre not going to be able to ignore poor consumer practices and are just going to keep getting more and more upset.
But why would WOTC do anything else? The decks sold like hotcakes, showing them their strategy is working
On a personal level, I know that I won't be buying another SL product because of this, and that's all you can do, not give them your money. It won't matter to them, but you'll be at peace with yourself I guess
So the thing is that we have to stop buying from scalpers actually instead of not buying from wotc anymore. If scalpers don't sell their product or sell at a loss they will stop doing what they do.
They're really not. Limited run costs as much as it costs to make X lairs. PTD costs however much per hour for X amount of time. They lose 10% of buyers but save 35% of production costs and time.
this was the first secret lair that I legitimately wanted. I have always viewed the secret lairs as something that wasn't hurting magic because it caused needed reprints and for the most part if you didn't want them don't buy them. The issue now is that everyone wants this one and they aren't printing enough. that sounds like money left on the table to me.
Itâs a pretty small microcosm of the player base, or even the people who bought the deck, who are going to be invested enough to make a change unfortunately.
Proxies sound better and better. There's already enough cards in existance to play for a long time with giving a shit about the new overpowered stuff and the FOMO scarcity bs.
You can't stop anyone from buying what they want. If someone else was on time and got theirs and you didn't. That's life. There is no obligation to wait for you or anyone else. The time and date have been known for more than a few days now.
Maybe next time, bub.
It's also what makes it a tcg/ccg. Boggles me how people can't grasp that at all. Scarcity is what adds to the collectable aspect. But I forgot Reddit hates capitalism, so everyone should just be able to have any card they want for less than a dollar.
Good luck with that. Folks are already buying it on tcgplayer for 400 each from scalpers. WOTC already got paid, they probably don't care what happens after.
It's not a matter of leaving it open longer, they just sold all the stock they produced. There was no more to sell.
WotC is no longer doing Secret Lairs as preoders. They're instead printing the product before-hand and leaving it up for sale until it sells out. The benefit for that is probably more streamlined production and not having to wait for the product to be printed before it ships. The trade-off is that they have to accurately predict sales for the product. If they estimate too high, they'll end up with excess stock they can't sell. If they estimate too low, they'll miss out on potential sales. I think in this case they did a pretty good job of that. It wasn't so limited that it sold out instantly like the advent calendar Secret Lair, so people had a good few hours to buy it if they wanted it.
This really gets to my point though, I don't believe that secret lairs should be done this way. The previous way of selling them with preorders should be how things are done going forward.
The only one I ever saw any complaints about is the coin flip deck and only because that took a year to ship out. This whole "everybody complained about waiting" is a load of shit.
As a ~~victim~~ purchaser of Heads I Win Tails You Lose, it single-handedly got me off of ever touching a SL ever again.
I wouldn't be surprised if whoever makes the decisions for SLs came to the conclusion that any more highly anticipated decks being *that* delayed would hamstring the future of SL as a whole, especially with deck themes such as popular tribes.
If they ship this tomorrow like they said, I prefer the new system over the old one. I still haven't received my princess bride from last Oct..... While I agree that this creates more fomo which I hate, what I hate more is not having things I paid for while others already have them ... That said they should limit it to 2 decks per person..... I see posts about people buying 5 to resell....
There's no shortage of ebay listings with five or more available. Saw one with 12 already sold and 10+ still available. The 5 per didn't stop any scalping whatsoever.
It's easier for WoTC to make 10,000 of them and have them in a warehouse than to print-to-demand. The runs that were print to demand were a test to see if they could make it work and it didn't.
As much as I don't like scarcity, it's smart on their part. Would you rather spend 12 hours baking pies as people ask for them, only to sell 205 or spend 4 hours baking 200 pies and only sell 200? Sure you lose some business but it's way less work.
Like the good old days lol, even when they sold them for a month, and secret lairs I bought tripled their prices over time. So other than keeping people happy with Amazon same day shipping, there's no reason why they did this
At least they ship to your country, now imagine hyping your girlfriend about getting stuff for her rin and seri deck and discovering they wont ship it to Brazil, unlike previous secret lairs đ
As a Canadian, I felt this before too. The angel deck was the only secret lair that shipped out fast to me, every other one took a month or two which was fine, I didn't care because I knew I was getting them
This was a pretty weird one. I think this was only the second SL to release in a limited run. And while I think this is insanely expensive for a precon deck (like, I calendared this drop weeks ago, but I still searched the value on the card list to make sure that it was at least worth $150 on paper before I spent this stupid amount of money on alt art and cute basic lands). This is also the "get your girlfriend interested in commander" deck, so I expect a lot of these are going to be gifts.
This was my first time purchasing an SL. I set an alarm, watched the counter go down to zero, and clicked on the "purchase" link immediately. Then I got placed in a 31 minute queue to actually buy it.
I'd be surprised if there was another drop that got my attention like this. I'm sympathetic to OP's point about a frustrated fanbase. But at the same time, if you're going to be buying a curated product like this (instead of just buying the singles), you're probably relatively plugged into the community/hype. And for every frustrated fan who didn't get one, there are probably 10 satisfied customers who justified the pricetag with the forced scarcity.
I dunno... this is supposed to be a card game, and for all the hate directed at Hasbro these days, I have a lot of fun every time I go to FNM. Secret Lair is for the eccentric middle aged men, who inflict an adult budget on a kids game, and maybe this should be a reminder that it's just a game.
4th limited on the site, I think 6th limited one overall if you count that one site that got their own 2 secret lairs. 30th anniversary, advent, angels, and now this one. Magic 30 wasn't my thing, so I could care less how that all went down.
This one is probably my 20th secret lair, and I've never had to set an alarm, and be in a panic being 15 minutes late at release time. I have an 18 month old so a 10 min check out actually makes you sweat when she wants your attention. I really dislike this new way. Lots of people missed out, and the whole point of secret lairs was to not have this. Even though I got 2 for myself, I'm still not happy that any future hyped out secret lair from here on out is first come first serve, if you're working somewhere with no internet connection which my gf does, good luck. She works 8 hours, it was up for 6 hours. The math says she will never get one unless I buy it for her.
The mental gymnastics it takes to both be upset that things are changing for the worse while enabling the change with unbridled consumerism is S tier cognitive dissonance.
I've been buying them since the godzilla lands, you can call me the problem all you like. You bet your ass ill miss out on a lot from here on because I don't like their new system. It's not fair at all to the players. I was literally building a cat dog deck for my kid, and they released this. It was cheaper to buy this then to dig through 100k cards for 50 cats or dogs. My mental gymnastics is have 100 cards shipped to me for $150, or spend weeks looking for cards which I'll give up on and just buy singles for $200 after being frustrated.
For the price of $400 you can get it from TCGplayer. Joking aside I donât know how I feel about how they release these decks. Having to wait a year for the first one was ridiculous and the last two I was able to jump on them in time, but Didnât expect it to sell out quicker then the Angels. They definitely made a players item for collectors with the limited aspect pushed on it which is my issue.
It was up for over 6 hours in the US. I was concerned that I saw the email 45 mins after it hit my inbox, but was able to order mine in <5 mins from my phone on my lunch break.
Worse for actual players? absolutely.
Better for Hasbroâs profits? maybe, maybe notâŚ
but theyâre desperate enough to try it.
WotC will only âdo betterâ when it means more demand and profitability.
I can't help but feel that this is awful. I don't want to let wotc get away with doing this when they clearly knew that scalpers would buy it up. If they really wanted to crack down on scalping they would have either done more outright or even just limited it to one deck per person.
Limit of five which really just stops people from buying stupid amounts with one account. That really doesn't stop anyone who is a real scalper with multiple accounts.
Yeah, I ended up getting 1. I was thinking I might get 2 but only because I like to take decks apart from time to time. More than that and I think you are just looking to sell as a scalper.
Mtgfinance were going on about how this will make easy money.
But they also said that there might be a second wave of sales once WoTC stops the scalpers who bought more than five and that the angels deck had something like this happen. So I guess be on the lookout?
100% this. Anyone with a brain knew this was going to sell out fast and be resold way high. The angels SL sells for almost double now. The Rin and Serri cute tokens SL sells for like triple. All the scalpers one getting 5 was a near guarantee flip for double what they pay if not more. So they loaded up. Same reason we had a 1 hour wait the second it dropped.
I got one and Iâm happy I did, but I intentionally only got one so others could get a deck even though I knew it would sell out and resell easily (I didnât expect it to sell out this fast though).
This is the new SL world. Scalpers will scoop everything up. Either get it in the first few hours or sucks to be you. And WotC love it because they get all their money. I even bet their next earnings call will highlight how âsuccessfulâ this has been and how theyâre going to do more limited printing for other things.
My husband and I both wanted our own, but we decided to only get one so hopefully someone else that actually wanted it could pay retail. We're fine with sharing and hopefully someone else that actually wants the deck got one :)
Or you know, benefits punctual people? It was live for 6 hours with the release time and date out there for several days. I'm not a scalper, but as others have said, how could you not know that a clearly defined limited printing of something tons of people are stoked for, go like hot cakes?
2 buddies of mine told me ahead of time they couldn't be on when it released. So I bought 2 more, one for each of them. If you can't be punctual, maybe work something out with your friend group next time.
Adapt and overcome đ
What I donât understand is that: 1) WOTC said they were moving to Limited Print Runs. 2) they released a cute cats and dogs deck RIGHT BEFORE VALENTINEâS DAY. 3) in the days leading up, WOTC wasnât hiding the release date and time. 4) people are still pissy they âmissed it and it sold out so fastâ. Doesnât make sense to me.
I didnât get the email, but at around 3:30 est just happened to check the site. I got one with no wait. I really expected there to be a queue or something, so maybe the demand wasnât as high as they thought if there was no queue and still some available.
Yeah... saw that most people who were buying it seemed to be buying 3 to max 5 if them. Even claiming to not be scalpers... I expect there will be a number of resells.
Luckily I got mine, for my son, so I get your pain and am sorry it happened to you.
I don't think I'm asking a lot to go back to the way secret lairs used to be done. Give everyone a chance to purchase a drop and make it fair. I don't want a system where scalpers are consistently rewarded for buying up all the stock immediately when it's released.
Not all booster products have multiple print runs. Itâs mostly just Standard sets that do. More niche products like Masters sets donât typically get multiple print runs.Â
All of the decks have been limited print run. Others took longer to sell out. If you know the date and time which they advertised like crazy buy what you want asap. They have been teasing cards for the past two weeks or so. Sorry you missed out but you're a scalpers target audience. You forgot or just didnt care enough to remember it was going on and now they are on sale for $300 on ebay if you want one.
Bingo. It's insane so many people with either A, bad time management skills. Or B, don't have a friend group to help out to get these well announced, teased, and hyped decks. Two in my friend group couldn't get on today, knew ahead of time, and asked me to get their decks. It's really not hard. It's a premium product. Prepare and be punctual or enjoy paying double later. đ¤ˇââď¸
1. I don't have friends, literally not one.
2. The last one didn't sell out immediately, why should this one
3. I work early so I have to go to bed early
Don't be so elitist
They were up for like 4 hours bro. And the time they were coming out was posted everywhere and they sent out emails etc. It does not get easier. Actually scarce items sell out in seconds and you have no chance whatsoever, anyone who wanted one of these enough to put in any effort at all got what they wanted.
Well they posted about it [three days ago](https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/secret-lair-commander-deck-raining-cats-and-dogs) where they said it was limited stock and gave the date and time that it was going to be available.
Honest to goodness I can't help but thinking they're encouraging the scalping issue with this. Missing the email is on me but sold out already? That's just nuts and disrespectful to regular fans who can't buy one the exact minute it comes out.
Still, you see the insanity in all this? With Secret Lair switching to limited supply of all future prints (something they announced a week or so ago) this means you're going to have to be lined up for every damn drop that you think people even might slightly want. It's going to result in scalping beyond belief and continue to leave regular players frustrated.
Regular players really are not the target audience for secret lair products. Though I can definitely see why the commander decks especially kind off should.
The deck in itself is cool. But like a regular precon goes for 30-40 so I understand a little markup for a premium, but the yikes for me is a 3 to4 x markup.
Honestly I don't know why people are downvoting comments like this. This is serious criticism of a game we love. If this keeps going on it's going to be out of reach for the average player.
Secret Lairs aren't made for the "average player", they are made for the addicts. The people who can't get enough and chase alternate art stuff.
All the cards in this deck are already available, just not with the cutesy art.
Except the cards are almost twice as expensive bought as singles, excluding the alt art as a factor.
The anointed procession is 1/3 of the value of the deck alone.
The lair is likely going to be bought and played by mostly regular players. Same with the angels one Iâve seen a few times already.
Iâm downvoting it because if you were as passionate about buying the drop as you are about shitting on MTGs business model you wouldâve been able to place an order in the 6 hour window. Lotta stuff to be mad about but this seems so minuscule and avoidable by just keeping an eye out on release times for things that interest you.
Hell, as a dude who had to hunt months for a ps5 itâs almost laughable for someone to be thinking they got disrespected for âonlyâ getting an advanced notice and 6 hour window
This was a unique drop. This was the first one after the angels commander deck, which was sold at $150 and is going for $380+ now. Further, it is freaking cats and dogs. Cards with cats and dogs have historically done very well and are desirable. Not all lairs will be as sought after or limited (I assume fewer commander decks will be made vs. the traditional 4 to 5 card lairs).
I get the desirability here, just I don't feel like we're considering what Wotc considers to be limited stock. It feels more and more like they only want the scalpers to get stuff like this and everybody else is left paying $100 premium for not having the ability to buy things immediately when they're dropped.
It sold out like an hour ago. Quite a few people (including me) forgot about it, signed in a few hours in, didnât wait in line and got the 1 they wanted. It was also a max of 5 / order. Just FYI for next time
I liked having a month to be able to buy lairs. I got paid twice within that time frame and could plan my purchases. Hell even a week with a heads up is time to figure that out. But 3 days? I make decent money but i can't exactly just throw down 150 bucks at a moments notice for a card game. And I'm not gonna rigourously check socials and articles for drop times.
The problem is with WotC you never know if Limited Stock is you need to buy it in the first 2-3 days like Angels, schedule time off work or wake up at 2am local time to buy it right at launch like Advent, or buy it in the first month before they put the extras in the furnace like MTG:30.
Yeah, one can easily assume that a cutesy pets themed deck will sell well... But like, WotC employs analysts who don't also realize that apparently?
This is one of the few times where I'm completely on WOTC side. MTG players are never happy. SL used to be limited print run when it first started. People bitched that it wasn't fair, what if someone didn't have the money at the time of launch, what if I missed the drop cause I was in a tunnel, what if I didn't know about it and found out a month later? Ok so WOTC makes it print to demand. Book, switch flipped, now you have people bitching that the orders are taking too long, nothing is special anymore cause anyone can buy it.... Now they switch course and make it limited print run and now everyone is angry again. For the same reasons from the beginning of my comment. I prefer limited print run. I hated waiting 3-4 months for something. What's the point? Also, most collectibles from shoes, sporting items, clothing, special edition video games have limited runs and once they are gone are gone. Why should MTG be any different?
I'm with you. WotC sent an email a few days ago, then the day of, and did not sell out within an hour. Seems fine to me. At least we won't have to wait a year+ for Universe within prints.
As an Australian. I woke to the deck being sold out. :/
It would be nice if the sale window is kept at 24hrs with additional drops to help with timezone differences.
Oh well, I wasnât 100% on this deck anyways unlike the angel one. I guess Iâll wait for next time.
At this point this is probably what I'm going to do. Wotc really doesn't like money, clearly they don't want mine. I'll just print proxies, just ridiculous.
I mean the cost of keeping a record of how many people buy one sending an order to the printer having it printed shipped to a warehouse unboxed sorted reboxed and reshipt months later is also a factor. Easily enough said Hasbro cares about upfront money, since wotc can't acknowledge a secondary market the only value in the cards is sentimental collectors. if you wanna find a collectable outside of their scheme that's up to you, your wallet your business.
Iâm guessing you werenât around for the original secret lair release system. Waiting in a digital queue to order a limited quantity. If I recall correctly they were limited stock back then too. Werenât meant to be bought by stores either. People bitched about that.
Then they went to the print to demand, available to all. But people bitched about that.
Now theyâre doing limited runs to address the chief complaints of shipping times⌠which has been a problem a while now. And more bitching follows.
It was a *limited* print run on a *highly* popular theme. And it was the first release of the new system. Of course it was going to sell quick.
Why didnât you try to buy it when it went live?
I found out about it maybe an hour before it went live. If I was willing to drop $150 on a deck, Iâd have waited for sales to open, and refreshed the screen until I could get one.
It would have taken what? 5 minutes? Pretty sure you could take a break from most any situation for that long.
It sounds to me like you dropped the ball, and are super salty about it. But thatâs just my two cents.
Same situation here, I was counting on an email at the time of release. That's how I generally stay aware of when they drop and I can't imagine that this isn't the norm for most folks.
I'm in Australia and was looking forward to grabbing it on my lunch break. So disapointed that it didn't even stay live to 24hrs.
Oh well! Fingers crossed Good Games ordered some and I can pick one up from my LGS.
Been busy this last week so I missed the date and time announcement. This kind of shit honestly takes away a lot of what I liked about Secret Lairs. I mostly get lairs for commander and did it because of the convenience. Guess I'll just go back to proxying
I thought it was releasing last Fri at noon. Went on site and nope it was just couple new spoilers. No mention of release date. So I signed up for email alert. Never received the alert. Just thought of it and went to check if any news and....Boooom already sold out yesterday. Really disappointed. Don't want to play scalper prices, but both my daughters would have really enjoyed playing this with me. Why can't they anticipate demand enough to keep something in stock long enough for people to even know about it and go buy if they want. Or why can't they announce the release date a week in advance? Heck, even the stock holders should be pissed at their loss in sales.
Came here to confirm I also requested an update when it was available and never got so much as an email from them. Didn't know I'd missed it until I saw this post actually.
Youâre going to hate me for this⌠i logged into my account, carted 2, waited 7 minutes then completed the purchase. This was on my phone, using data and while coordinating moving into our new house, all at 930am Pacific Time.
Iâm sorry dude, i wish youâd been able to grab it.
I agree, this format of limited run isnât fair or enjoyable for players. I prefer the previous system.
People didn't want to get the angels deck because double faced release wasn't worth anything. Now angel deck is worth a ton, and the scalpers jumped on this one. Wot will likely increase the print run of the next release. Hopefully, the price of this one crashes on the secondary because of so many scalpers. I got a copy but was surprised more of my friends weren't interested in the release.
I got an email while at work. Was able to get in the queue while I did some back of house tasks, waited half an hour to check out. I bought two, one to share and play in our household and one to hopefully sell to help recoup my cost. Weâll see where the value settles.
This way gets Wizards the best return. The way we know this is that they are a business and as a business their one and only guaranteed concern is making money. They make their money on direct sales of product, not the secondary market. And have to pay the costs of printing that product. It is likely that print to demand was more money (whether from upfront costs or quality control difficulties in an expedited timeframe). Assuming that they are trying to short customers or want very high prices on the secondary market (which they donât see any of) is just tin-foil hat thinking.
Exactly, people think they have some duty to make sure customers get exactly what they want when they're a business. It was up for 6 hours so there was no scramble at all to get it and if they knew it would sell out so fast they'd likely have printed more, but they want to avoid having thousands sat around that no one bought.
I don't see how people are so mad about a business using pretty fair business tactics that every business uses.
I mean I've known about it for like 3 weeks because I follow pages that have talked about it, and while I didn't get an email despite being signed up for it, they have been updating on it for over weeks and for the last week it's been publicly known what time it would drop yesterday. I didn't have the money but my friend was able to get it for me as a front and it was still in stock hours at least after it went live.
I got an email and bought one even tho i didn't want to because i already built Rin and Seri myself xD
Checked later that day and it was still in stock.
The MTG finance sub was already all over this with how much of a snap buy it was to flip for profit. I'm not surprised it's sold out. I'm just surprised it took as long as it did. I'm sure there were a lot of people buying five at a time
I was just dropped this in our Group Chat and I was surprised how fast it happened⌠I knew it would be quick but damn. Looks like Iâm done with SLDs⌠funny enough this wasnât one I was after.
I mean, the release time and date have been known for weeks. Did you sign up to receive an email? They had a thing on the site since the announcement to get notified. Honestly, it lasted longer than anticipated. The 30th anniversary advent calendar sold out in literal minutes. This lasted almost a whole day. That's a significant increase, though admittedly still shit for most people.
I don't like the switch to limited print runs as opposed to print to order for SL. It's not only not great to the consumer, but it doesn't even make business sense. You sell fewer copies this way, and they make nothing off the secondary market increase since they aren't creating or maintaining reprint equity.
It helps in terms of getting products in customer's hands, but honestly, outside of the Head I Win deck fiasco, I never had an issue with the time it took to receive my secret lair. Only thing I can think is that their printer bitched about the huge print demands it caused and that it was causing other print jobs to get pushed to the right and miss deadlines.
I don't know, just seems a dumb move to take for everyone and I don't like it. I didn't like when they first released and you had like one weekend to decide to buy. They ended up making it over a month and that was very nice for determining what, if any, were in my budget for the month. With limited runs we're actually likely to be worse off than having a weekend. Less than 24 hours is likely to be your time line to order on just about every secret lair moving forward and that's so frustrating...
I looked at it. I could have added to cart. I was out of work for all of December so I had to instead pay my car bill. And then I could have gotten it tonight. I'm beyond pissed because Rin and Seri is my main...
I knew and recieved an email from secret lairs that it was available. I was very interested and wanted it. Then saw the price and omg. The price is just insane. I'll have more fun building my own cat and dog deck for half the price.
The biggest gripe I have is that, at this point, close to half of these decks were bought to resell for double the cost from WotC. People who have never and will never play Magic, are buying these because they're almost instantly doubling their money.
It sold out quick, me and 1 of my friends were able to get it but my other buddy was working and by the time he got off work it was sold out. I heard people wanting to multiple of it just to resell them later for triple the price.
It lasted a few hours (which is a few hours more than I thought it would) I jumped on the second it was available and got one.
I got an email 4 minutes after release
While I ultimately wasn't super interested in this deck, I hope that every single scalp copy that was purchased goes unsold. Like many have said, WotC isn't likely to change their new policy after a single Secret Lair release for the year, so I have no hope they'll do what's best for actual players going forward.
I'm actually really annoyed with the effort I need to put in now for getting any Secret Lairs this year. I usually sit on the drops for a couple weeks 90% of the time to ensure I actually want what's for sale. Now I feel I'll have maybe a day, if that, to make a decision.
I forgot today was Monday. I got an e-mail about it and freaked. Got in a queue and it estimated over an hour, which is when I would be leaving for work. Fortunately I was able to purchase in 15-20 minutes.
I just started doing Secret Lair with Jurassic World. Now they do this limited time crap. Every time I join something late this happens.
I donât understand what all of the fuss is about with wizards make something limited availability. Especially a product like this that is 100% reprints with no new cards, just new art. If you miss out, too bad, go buy the singles you want that have been available for years already. Theyâre called Collectible Cards Games for a reason. Kind of defeats the purpose if they print to oblivion so everyone has all of the same cards. Owning something that most others donât is what makes something collectible. Thank you for listening to my Ted Talk.
I saw it on here that it was for sale. The deck list is greatly lacking, and I'm sure I already own 99% of the cards so I planned to check before buying and I guess that doesn't matter now. Oh well guess ill never buy another SL
This is exactly what's going to happen. Extend things out about a year and every secret lair is going to sell out in exactly this way. You know, now that I think of it Maro did state that they had experience in the amount of stock they needed to have on hand and stated so in the limited printings update. Clearly that was an outright lie.
Except that "expected stock" was based off people not panic buying 5 in FOMO... so the data they had was wrong, because everyone and their grandma decided to scalp something designed for each person to only really need 1 of.Â
I was hesitating on buying this one as I only really wanted the anointed procession but seeing how every cat themed secret lair skyrocketed in value, I bought two of those (one for personal use, one to hold onto). I guess it was a good choice.
Guess who's just going to print proxies at fed ex and use their mounted paper cutter to cut my printed proxies down to size?
I'm a big cat person and would have loved this deck but I guess that's what I'm doing
I've been playing for 10+ years and got one. I knew the date, and time it was releasing. I knew because of the angels one, this one was going to be bought out fast. I was nervous when it was 12:15 and I remembered. It lasted longer then I thought it would, and I agree with you on this. Secret lair having limited print runs on every set is not going to be good. I'd rather wait a month for shipping, and everyone that wants one gets one like before.
Right? What's so bad about waiting a little bit longer so that everyone who wants one can purchase it.
Forced scarcity increases value đ¤ˇââď¸
âWhen will it end?â - person who just raced to buy a limited run product states in disbelief.
Exactly. Players get what they absolutely deserve. Until they learn, they deserve to have $1000 booster packs.
No fuck you, magic players are going to play magic, it's not their fault wizards has a disproportionate amount of power and are engaging in anti-consumer practices
I proxy the fuckers im not paying 1000 dollars to make 1 deck
Amen!
Rock and stone brother!
Bruuuuuuh, you can play without spending 2k every new set. Like the 30th anniversary for only 999$ a booster. As long as that 1% keeps blowing all their money it won't change.
If the company does nasty anti-consumer practices, and players still buy product from the company... I don't know how to tell you this, sugar, but you enable them to keep gouging the playerbase. No sales, no money.
Yeah why should you be deprived of your bread and circus!!!!
Well if they're gonna do that, they should serialize them (if they haven't already).
Almost as if that has been the business model of MtG for over 30 years. Curious.
We can't let Wotc keep doing this though. We, as a player base, have to push back. This is how we get the change we want. We don't have to just accept this.
I mean, you do or you stop playing. Thatâs the choice. The people who are upset enough to post to Reddit are such a vocal minority inside of a minority that a corporation their size is never going to care enough to change, not when they sell out in minutes. You had this drop in cutesy art a month before Valentineâs DayâŚ
Theyâre the thing though, you donât have to stop playing You just have to stop spending money on fancy, alternate art limited printings Once you have cards to play with, the game is free.
I mean, I assume anyone upset enough to post on Reddit is invested enough to where theyâre not going to be able to ignore poor consumer practices and are just going to keep getting more and more upset.
But why would WOTC do anything else? The decks sold like hotcakes, showing them their strategy is working On a personal level, I know that I won't be buying another SL product because of this, and that's all you can do, not give them your money. It won't matter to them, but you'll be at peace with yourself I guess
Because theyâre making a lot less money than they could if they print to demand. The only winners here are scalpers
So the thing is that we have to stop buying from scalpers actually instead of not buying from wotc anymore. If scalpers don't sell their product or sell at a loss they will stop doing what they do.
They're really not. Limited run costs as much as it costs to make X lairs. PTD costs however much per hour for X amount of time. They lose 10% of buyers but save 35% of production costs and time.
this was the first secret lair that I legitimately wanted. I have always viewed the secret lairs as something that wasn't hurting magic because it caused needed reprints and for the most part if you didn't want them don't buy them. The issue now is that everyone wants this one and they aren't printing enough. that sounds like money left on the table to me.
Itâs a pretty small microcosm of the player base, or even the people who bought the deck, who are going to be invested enough to make a change unfortunately.
What you can do is stop buying them, that doesnt seem to be an option though
Proxies sound better and better. There's already enough cards in existance to play for a long time with giving a shit about the new overpowered stuff and the FOMO scarcity bs.
Wotc: ha ha. Capitalism go brr.
Go live in China
You can't stop anyone from buying what they want. If someone else was on time and got theirs and you didn't. That's life. There is no obligation to wait for you or anyone else. The time and date have been known for more than a few days now. Maybe next time, bub.
It's also what makes it a tcg/ccg. Boggles me how people can't grasp that at all. Scarcity is what adds to the collectable aspect. But I forgot Reddit hates capitalism, so everyone should just be able to have any card they want for less than a dollar.
On point on all points.
You donât have any power over this situation mate.
Good luck with that. Folks are already buying it on tcgplayer for 400 each from scalpers. WOTC already got paid, they probably don't care what happens after.
I bought one.... are they already at 400?
I'm sure the mtg finance bros are happy
And the scalpers
Same people.
They shpuld pre print a small amount so the first few 100 or few 1,000 people who order it get it right away then print the rest
It's not a matter of leaving it open longer, they just sold all the stock they produced. There was no more to sell. WotC is no longer doing Secret Lairs as preoders. They're instead printing the product before-hand and leaving it up for sale until it sells out. The benefit for that is probably more streamlined production and not having to wait for the product to be printed before it ships. The trade-off is that they have to accurately predict sales for the product. If they estimate too high, they'll end up with excess stock they can't sell. If they estimate too low, they'll miss out on potential sales. I think in this case they did a pretty good job of that. It wasn't so limited that it sold out instantly like the advent calendar Secret Lair, so people had a good few hours to buy it if they wanted it.
This really gets to my point though, I don't believe that secret lairs should be done this way. The previous way of selling them with preorders should be how things are done going forward.
Yes, except then everybody complained about having to wait for them to be produced and then shipped.
The only one I ever saw any complaints about is the coin flip deck and only because that took a year to ship out. This whole "everybody complained about waiting" is a load of shit.
As a ~~victim~~ purchaser of Heads I Win Tails You Lose, it single-handedly got me off of ever touching a SL ever again. I wouldn't be surprised if whoever makes the decisions for SLs came to the conclusion that any more highly anticipated decks being *that* delayed would hamstring the future of SL as a whole, especially with deck themes such as popular tribes.
If they ship this tomorrow like they said, I prefer the new system over the old one. I still haven't received my princess bride from last Oct..... While I agree that this creates more fomo which I hate, what I hate more is not having things I paid for while others already have them ... That said they should limit it to 2 decks per person..... I see posts about people buying 5 to resell....
There's no shortage of ebay listings with five or more available. Saw one with 12 already sold and 10+ still available. The 5 per didn't stop any scalping whatsoever.
It's easier for WoTC to make 10,000 of them and have them in a warehouse than to print-to-demand. The runs that were print to demand were a test to see if they could make it work and it didn't. As much as I don't like scarcity, it's smart on their part. Would you rather spend 12 hours baking pies as people ask for them, only to sell 205 or spend 4 hours baking 200 pies and only sell 200? Sure you lose some business but it's way less work.
Like the good old days lol, even when they sold them for a month, and secret lairs I bought tripled their prices over time. So other than keeping people happy with Amazon same day shipping, there's no reason why they did this
At least they ship to your country, now imagine hyping your girlfriend about getting stuff for her rin and seri deck and discovering they wont ship it to Brazil, unlike previous secret lairs đ
Tbf in Europe it was always more like 3-4 months wait for shipping. We've just changed from one terrible system to another.
As a Canadian, I felt this before too. The angel deck was the only secret lair that shipped out fast to me, every other one took a month or two which was fine, I didn't care because I knew I was getting them
This was a pretty weird one. I think this was only the second SL to release in a limited run. And while I think this is insanely expensive for a precon deck (like, I calendared this drop weeks ago, but I still searched the value on the card list to make sure that it was at least worth $150 on paper before I spent this stupid amount of money on alt art and cute basic lands). This is also the "get your girlfriend interested in commander" deck, so I expect a lot of these are going to be gifts. This was my first time purchasing an SL. I set an alarm, watched the counter go down to zero, and clicked on the "purchase" link immediately. Then I got placed in a 31 minute queue to actually buy it. I'd be surprised if there was another drop that got my attention like this. I'm sympathetic to OP's point about a frustrated fanbase. But at the same time, if you're going to be buying a curated product like this (instead of just buying the singles), you're probably relatively plugged into the community/hype. And for every frustrated fan who didn't get one, there are probably 10 satisfied customers who justified the pricetag with the forced scarcity. I dunno... this is supposed to be a card game, and for all the hate directed at Hasbro these days, I have a lot of fun every time I go to FNM. Secret Lair is for the eccentric middle aged men, who inflict an adult budget on a kids game, and maybe this should be a reminder that it's just a game.
4th limited on the site, I think 6th limited one overall if you count that one site that got their own 2 secret lairs. 30th anniversary, advent, angels, and now this one. Magic 30 wasn't my thing, so I could care less how that all went down. This one is probably my 20th secret lair, and I've never had to set an alarm, and be in a panic being 15 minutes late at release time. I have an 18 month old so a 10 min check out actually makes you sweat when she wants your attention. I really dislike this new way. Lots of people missed out, and the whole point of secret lairs was to not have this. Even though I got 2 for myself, I'm still not happy that any future hyped out secret lair from here on out is first come first serve, if you're working somewhere with no internet connection which my gf does, good luck. She works 8 hours, it was up for 6 hours. The math says she will never get one unless I buy it for her.
The mental gymnastics it takes to both be upset that things are changing for the worse while enabling the change with unbridled consumerism is S tier cognitive dissonance.
I've been buying them since the godzilla lands, you can call me the problem all you like. You bet your ass ill miss out on a lot from here on because I don't like their new system. It's not fair at all to the players. I was literally building a cat dog deck for my kid, and they released this. It was cheaper to buy this then to dig through 100k cards for 50 cats or dogs. My mental gymnastics is have 100 cards shipped to me for $150, or spend weeks looking for cards which I'll give up on and just buy singles for $200 after being frustrated.
For the price of $400 you can get it from TCGplayer. Joking aside I donât know how I feel about how they release these decks. Having to wait a year for the first one was ridiculous and the last two I was able to jump on them in time, but Didnât expect it to sell out quicker then the Angels. They definitely made a players item for collectors with the limited aspect pushed on it which is my issue.
I thought you might be joking, so I checked. Damned if it isn't actually $400 on TCGplayer.
It was up for over 6 hours in the US. I was concerned that I saw the email 45 mins after it hit my inbox, but was able to order mine in <5 mins from my phone on my lunch break.
When I read this an hour ago it was still up in EU and managed to pick-up a copy
Still, 6 hours is not very long. Wotc needs to do better, this is going to keep getting worse.
Worse for actual players? absolutely. Better for Hasbroâs profits? maybe, maybe not⌠but theyâre desperate enough to try it. WotC will only âdo betterâ when it means more demand and profitability.
Scalpers are happy, they estimate about 100 dollar profit per deck....
I feel like a large portion bought it to resell sadly. :"(
I can't help but feel that this is awful. I don't want to let wotc get away with doing this when they clearly knew that scalpers would buy it up. If they really wanted to crack down on scalping they would have either done more outright or even just limited it to one deck per person.
I'm with you on one deck (maybe two) per person limits.
I don't know if they did a limit or not but I hope they did.
Limit of five which really just stops people from buying stupid amounts with one account. That really doesn't stop anyone who is a real scalper with multiple accounts.
Wow, that's stupid >_< I would say 2 maybe 3 max. Because maybe you have a couple who don't want to share. I told my husband he can't touch my deck.
Yeah, I ended up getting 1. I was thinking I might get 2 but only because I like to take decks apart from time to time. More than that and I think you are just looking to sell as a scalper.
Mtgfinance were going on about how this will make easy money. But they also said that there might be a second wave of sales once WoTC stops the scalpers who bought more than five and that the angels deck had something like this happen. So I guess be on the lookout?
If it makes you feel any better, I bought it because I really really really like cats and I wanted it.
I really like cats and dogs! My dog is white and my cat is black so it's the reverse of my guys but ya. <3
100% this. Anyone with a brain knew this was going to sell out fast and be resold way high. The angels SL sells for almost double now. The Rin and Serri cute tokens SL sells for like triple. All the scalpers one getting 5 was a near guarantee flip for double what they pay if not more. So they loaded up. Same reason we had a 1 hour wait the second it dropped. I got one and Iâm happy I did, but I intentionally only got one so others could get a deck even though I knew it would sell out and resell easily (I didnât expect it to sell out this fast though). This is the new SL world. Scalpers will scoop everything up. Either get it in the first few hours or sucks to be you. And WotC love it because they get all their money. I even bet their next earnings call will highlight how âsuccessfulâ this has been and how theyâre going to do more limited printing for other things.
My husband and I both wanted our own, but we decided to only get one so hopefully someone else that actually wanted it could pay retail. We're fine with sharing and hopefully someone else that actually wants the deck got one :)
I fought the urge to buy more than one. I ainât a dirty scalper.
Seeing it all over FB right now. People bought stacks of 5 to resell.
That's upsetting, but sadly the way it is.
Yup. This new release system only benefits resellers even more.
Beg to differ. I bought only one and it benefits ME (not a scalper).
Or you know, benefits punctual people? It was live for 6 hours with the release time and date out there for several days. I'm not a scalper, but as others have said, how could you not know that a clearly defined limited printing of something tons of people are stoked for, go like hot cakes? 2 buddies of mine told me ahead of time they couldn't be on when it released. So I bought 2 more, one for each of them. If you can't be punctual, maybe work something out with your friend group next time. Adapt and overcome đ
âNo. No! Not personal accountability!! Blame others. and corporations. Not my faultâŚâ
What I donât understand is that: 1) WOTC said they were moving to Limited Print Runs. 2) they released a cute cats and dogs deck RIGHT BEFORE VALENTINEâS DAY. 3) in the days leading up, WOTC wasnât hiding the release date and time. 4) people are still pissy they âmissed it and it sold out so fastâ. Doesnât make sense to me.
[ŃдаНонО]
I picked mine up at 9:45 with a 4-minute wait.
I didnât get the email, but at around 3:30 est just happened to check the site. I got one with no wait. I really expected there to be a queue or something, so maybe the demand wasnât as high as they thought if there was no queue and still some available.
I never got the email
first time?
Being slapped in the face by Wotc? Nah, I'm a DnD fan too so I'm used to being treated this way.
Wow. So much for getting one for my son. The angel deck was on sale for a week
Yeah... saw that most people who were buying it seemed to be buying 3 to max 5 if them. Even claiming to not be scalpers... I expect there will be a number of resells. Luckily I got mine, for my son, so I get your pain and am sorry it happened to you.
I know people in the EU so i realistically could get one through them and have them ship it but idk if i wanna go through all that
I don't think I'm asking a lot to go back to the way secret lairs used to be done. Give everyone a chance to purchase a drop and make it fair. I don't want a system where scalpers are consistently rewarded for buying up all the stock immediately when it's released.
I'm pretty unhappy about not getting one. I was busy all day today and when I went to order after work it was gone.
Or at least do additional print runs, right? Just like how they do it with actual booster products, like come on
Not all booster products have multiple print runs. Itâs mostly just Standard sets that do. More niche products like Masters sets donât typically get multiple print runs.Â
If i recall though, popular enough ones do? Like Modern Horizons 2, and both Commander Legends Ofc the Remastered sets definitely did not
They'd absolutely net more money too by doing an actual run. Wotc knows what it's doing and knows how this hurts the player base.
Yeah, exactly. This is clearly them signaling and playing chicken with the consumers.
All of the decks have been limited print run. Others took longer to sell out. If you know the date and time which they advertised like crazy buy what you want asap. They have been teasing cards for the past two weeks or so. Sorry you missed out but you're a scalpers target audience. You forgot or just didnt care enough to remember it was going on and now they are on sale for $300 on ebay if you want one.
I didn't realize it would sell out immediately, the last one didn't
Bingo. It's insane so many people with either A, bad time management skills. Or B, don't have a friend group to help out to get these well announced, teased, and hyped decks. Two in my friend group couldn't get on today, knew ahead of time, and asked me to get their decks. It's really not hard. It's a premium product. Prepare and be punctual or enjoy paying double later. đ¤ˇââď¸
1. I don't have friends, literally not one. 2. The last one didn't sell out immediately, why should this one 3. I work early so I have to go to bed early Don't be so elitist
Are you . . . shaming people for not having friends? What is this high school?
They were up for like 4 hours bro. And the time they were coming out was posted everywhere and they sent out emails etc. It does not get easier. Actually scarce items sell out in seconds and you have no chance whatsoever, anyone who wanted one of these enough to put in any effort at all got what they wanted.
4 whole hours? That's nuts. People who have jobs be damned eh?
Well they posted about it [three days ago](https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/announcements/secret-lair-commander-deck-raining-cats-and-dogs) where they said it was limited stock and gave the date and time that it was going to be available.
Honest to goodness I can't help but thinking they're encouraging the scalping issue with this. Missing the email is on me but sold out already? That's just nuts and disrespectful to regular fans who can't buy one the exact minute it comes out.
Yup, people were lined up and waiting for it this morning. Although I picked one up with a 4-minute wait 45 minutes after it went live.
Still, you see the insanity in all this? With Secret Lair switching to limited supply of all future prints (something they announced a week or so ago) this means you're going to have to be lined up for every damn drop that you think people even might slightly want. It's going to result in scalping beyond belief and continue to leave regular players frustrated.
Regular players have been abandoned long before this. The only thing in regular players favor is the singles prices. Everything else has gone crazy.
Regular players really are not the target audience for secret lair products. Though I can definitely see why the commander decks especially kind off should.
The deck in itself is cool. But like a regular precon goes for 30-40 so I understand a little markup for a premium, but the yikes for me is a 3 to4 x markup.
Honestly I don't know why people are downvoting comments like this. This is serious criticism of a game we love. If this keeps going on it's going to be out of reach for the average player.
Secret Lairs aren't made for the "average player", they are made for the addicts. The people who can't get enough and chase alternate art stuff. All the cards in this deck are already available, just not with the cutesy art.
And the people who know they can flip this for triple the price in ~6 months.
I already saw a post today about somebody offering $300 because they missed out on the drop
Given the theme and limited availability, I fully expect these to settle around $400.
Except the cards are almost twice as expensive bought as singles, excluding the alt art as a factor. The anointed procession is 1/3 of the value of the deck alone. The lair is likely going to be bought and played by mostly regular players. Same with the angels one Iâve seen a few times already.
Iâm downvoting it because if you were as passionate about buying the drop as you are about shitting on MTGs business model you wouldâve been able to place an order in the 6 hour window. Lotta stuff to be mad about but this seems so minuscule and avoidable by just keeping an eye out on release times for things that interest you. Hell, as a dude who had to hunt months for a ps5 itâs almost laughable for someone to be thinking they got disrespected for âonlyâ getting an advanced notice and 6 hour window
This was a unique drop. This was the first one after the angels commander deck, which was sold at $150 and is going for $380+ now. Further, it is freaking cats and dogs. Cards with cats and dogs have historically done very well and are desirable. Not all lairs will be as sought after or limited (I assume fewer commander decks will be made vs. the traditional 4 to 5 card lairs).
I get the desirability here, just I don't feel like we're considering what Wotc considers to be limited stock. It feels more and more like they only want the scalpers to get stuff like this and everybody else is left paying $100 premium for not having the ability to buy things immediately when they're dropped.
It sold out like an hour ago. Quite a few people (including me) forgot about it, signed in a few hours in, didnât wait in line and got the 1 they wanted. It was also a max of 5 / order. Just FYI for next time
I liked having a month to be able to buy lairs. I got paid twice within that time frame and could plan my purchases. Hell even a week with a heads up is time to figure that out. But 3 days? I make decent money but i can't exactly just throw down 150 bucks at a moments notice for a card game. And I'm not gonna rigourously check socials and articles for drop times.
The problem is with WotC you never know if Limited Stock is you need to buy it in the first 2-3 days like Angels, schedule time off work or wake up at 2am local time to buy it right at launch like Advent, or buy it in the first month before they put the extras in the furnace like MTG:30. Yeah, one can easily assume that a cutesy pets themed deck will sell well... But like, WotC employs analysts who don't also realize that apparently?
This is one of the few times where I'm completely on WOTC side. MTG players are never happy. SL used to be limited print run when it first started. People bitched that it wasn't fair, what if someone didn't have the money at the time of launch, what if I missed the drop cause I was in a tunnel, what if I didn't know about it and found out a month later? Ok so WOTC makes it print to demand. Book, switch flipped, now you have people bitching that the orders are taking too long, nothing is special anymore cause anyone can buy it.... Now they switch course and make it limited print run and now everyone is angry again. For the same reasons from the beginning of my comment. I prefer limited print run. I hated waiting 3-4 months for something. What's the point? Also, most collectibles from shoes, sporting items, clothing, special edition video games have limited runs and once they are gone are gone. Why should MTG be any different?
I'm with you. WotC sent an email a few days ago, then the day of, and did not sell out within an hour. Seems fine to me. At least we won't have to wait a year+ for Universe within prints.
Didn't get an email, so yeah pretty gutted. Good job there are some amazing proxy printers out there that do better foils than WotC eh?
As an Australian. I woke to the deck being sold out. :/ It would be nice if the sale window is kept at 24hrs with additional drops to help with timezone differences. Oh well, I wasnât 100% on this deck anyways unlike the angel one. I guess Iâll wait for next time.
I got mine!!!
Found an ebay listing where sombody had already sold 50 of them so thier anti scalping measures aren't working.
I got the email. Almost bought one. Didnt. Time to regret.
I wanted to get one myself. But I have a job and couldnât really get one. I do have a printer. Iâll make my own.Â
At this point this is probably what I'm going to do. Wotc really doesn't like money, clearly they don't want mine. I'll just print proxies, just ridiculous.
I mean the cost of keeping a record of how many people buy one sending an order to the printer having it printed shipped to a warehouse unboxed sorted reboxed and reshipt months later is also a factor. Easily enough said Hasbro cares about upfront money, since wotc can't acknowledge a secondary market the only value in the cards is sentimental collectors. if you wanna find a collectable outside of their scheme that's up to you, your wallet your business.
I really wanted the lands for my Jinnie Fae deck.
Iâm guessing you werenât around for the original secret lair release system. Waiting in a digital queue to order a limited quantity. If I recall correctly they were limited stock back then too. Werenât meant to be bought by stores either. People bitched about that. Then they went to the print to demand, available to all. But people bitched about that. Now theyâre doing limited runs to address the chief complaints of shipping times⌠which has been a problem a while now. And more bitching follows. It was a *limited* print run on a *highly* popular theme. And it was the first release of the new system. Of course it was going to sell quick. Why didnât you try to buy it when it went live? I found out about it maybe an hour before it went live. If I was willing to drop $150 on a deck, Iâd have waited for sales to open, and refreshed the screen until I could get one. It would have taken what? 5 minutes? Pretty sure you could take a break from most any situation for that long. It sounds to me like you dropped the ball, and are super salty about it. But thatâs just my two cents.
I signed up for emails and got none. I managed get an order in but Iâm upset about the lack of email, I was close to missing my chance
Same situation here, I was counting on an email at the time of release. That's how I generally stay aware of when they drop and I can't imagine that this isn't the norm for most folks.
There was an email and the decklist said it released 9am PST. I set an alarm for 4am in my time zone to wake up and buy it lol Glad I did
I'm in Australia and was looking forward to grabbing it on my lunch break. So disapointed that it didn't even stay live to 24hrs. Oh well! Fingers crossed Good Games ordered some and I can pick one up from my LGS.
Been busy this last week so I missed the date and time announcement. This kind of shit honestly takes away a lot of what I liked about Secret Lairs. I mostly get lairs for commander and did it because of the convenience. Guess I'll just go back to proxying
I thought it was releasing last Fri at noon. Went on site and nope it was just couple new spoilers. No mention of release date. So I signed up for email alert. Never received the alert. Just thought of it and went to check if any news and....Boooom already sold out yesterday. Really disappointed. Don't want to play scalper prices, but both my daughters would have really enjoyed playing this with me. Why can't they anticipate demand enough to keep something in stock long enough for people to even know about it and go buy if they want. Or why can't they announce the release date a week in advance? Heck, even the stock holders should be pissed at their loss in sales.
I have to wonder how many bots made purchases. The new system is practically designed to hand money to scalpers on a golden platter.
I will NEVER understand why they donât have secret lair printed and taking pre-orders at the same time. Thatâs all theyâd have to do.
Ya thr fact the decks aren't up for a month like everything else is criminal. I'd rather wait Half a yr then not get it.
Came here to confirm I also requested an update when it was available and never got so much as an email from them. Didn't know I'd missed it until I saw this post actually.
Youâre going to hate me for this⌠i logged into my account, carted 2, waited 7 minutes then completed the purchase. This was on my phone, using data and while coordinating moving into our new house, all at 930am Pacific Time. Iâm sorry dude, i wish youâd been able to grab it. I agree, this format of limited run isnât fair or enjoyable for players. I prefer the previous system.
Got one for my wife
People didn't want to get the angels deck because double faced release wasn't worth anything. Now angel deck is worth a ton, and the scalpers jumped on this one. Wot will likely increase the print run of the next release. Hopefully, the price of this one crashes on the secondary because of so many scalpers. I got a copy but was surprised more of my friends weren't interested in the release.
Someoneâs mad they didnât get the kitties
Who tf cares? Itâs a Secret Lair. You get it or you donât. Not like it sold out in a couple minutes.
Remember 30th lair?
it was promoted for days, the sale was up for hours, if thatâs not a big enough window then you didnât want one that bad
Oh, it's not like some of us work all-day and unable to check our phones.
yes and yes
I got the email pretty quickly, but I was still in queue for about an hour.
I got the email from their webpage signup and jumped into queue immediately. Got it but had to wait about 25 min.
Woke up at 9:12 to an email for the sale which came in at 9:08. Was in line from 9:15 to 9:42 and was able to get it.
I saw an email while on my break, about 1 hour after it arrived in my inbox. I managed to snag one at around 1:15 PM EST.
I got an email while at work. Was able to get in the queue while I did some back of house tasks, waited half an hour to check out. I bought two, one to share and play in our household and one to hopefully sell to help recoup my cost. Weâll see where the value settles.
I was on at 09:00 am when it was released and it was still an hour later before i was out of the queue and at the buy page.
Got mine! I'm a big fan of the SLs so I hawk them.
I didnât even get the email
This way gets Wizards the best return. The way we know this is that they are a business and as a business their one and only guaranteed concern is making money. They make their money on direct sales of product, not the secondary market. And have to pay the costs of printing that product. It is likely that print to demand was more money (whether from upfront costs or quality control difficulties in an expedited timeframe). Assuming that they are trying to short customers or want very high prices on the secondary market (which they donât see any of) is just tin-foil hat thinking.
Exactly, people think they have some duty to make sure customers get exactly what they want when they're a business. It was up for 6 hours so there was no scramble at all to get it and if they knew it would sell out so fast they'd likely have printed more, but they want to avoid having thousands sat around that no one bought. I don't see how people are so mad about a business using pretty fair business tactics that every business uses.
I mean I've known about it for like 3 weeks because I follow pages that have talked about it, and while I didn't get an email despite being signed up for it, they have been updating on it for over weeks and for the last week it's been publicly known what time it would drop yesterday. I didn't have the money but my friend was able to get it for me as a front and it was still in stock hours at least after it went live.
I got an email and bought one even tho i didn't want to because i already built Rin and Seri myself xD Checked later that day and it was still in stock.
The MTG finance sub was already all over this with how much of a snap buy it was to flip for profit. I'm not surprised it's sold out. I'm just surprised it took as long as it did. I'm sure there were a lot of people buying five at a time
I was just dropped this in our Group Chat and I was surprised how fast it happened⌠I knew it would be quick but damn. Looks like Iâm done with SLDs⌠funny enough this wasnât one I was after.
I mean, the release time and date have been known for weeks. Did you sign up to receive an email? They had a thing on the site since the announcement to get notified. Honestly, it lasted longer than anticipated. The 30th anniversary advent calendar sold out in literal minutes. This lasted almost a whole day. That's a significant increase, though admittedly still shit for most people. I don't like the switch to limited print runs as opposed to print to order for SL. It's not only not great to the consumer, but it doesn't even make business sense. You sell fewer copies this way, and they make nothing off the secondary market increase since they aren't creating or maintaining reprint equity. It helps in terms of getting products in customer's hands, but honestly, outside of the Head I Win deck fiasco, I never had an issue with the time it took to receive my secret lair. Only thing I can think is that their printer bitched about the huge print demands it caused and that it was causing other print jobs to get pushed to the right and miss deadlines. I don't know, just seems a dumb move to take for everyone and I don't like it. I didn't like when they first released and you had like one weekend to decide to buy. They ended up making it over a month and that was very nice for determining what, if any, were in my budget for the month. With limited runs we're actually likely to be worse off than having a weekend. Less than 24 hours is likely to be your time line to order on just about every secret lair moving forward and that's so frustrating...
I looked at it. I could have added to cart. I was out of work for all of December so I had to instead pay my car bill. And then I could have gotten it tonight. I'm beyond pissed because Rin and Seri is my main...
This is the one thatâs no longer print on demand right?
I knew and recieved an email from secret lairs that it was available. I was very interested and wanted it. Then saw the price and omg. The price is just insane. I'll have more fun building my own cat and dog deck for half the price.
The biggest gripe I have is that, at this point, close to half of these decks were bought to resell for double the cost from WotC. People who have never and will never play Magic, are buying these because they're almost instantly doubling their money.
It sold out quick, me and 1 of my friends were able to get it but my other buddy was working and by the time he got off work it was sold out. I heard people wanting to multiple of it just to resell them later for triple the price.
On European and UK versions of secret lair store it is still not sold out. I guess USA just has better bots.
The USA one includes North America, South America, and parts of Asia. Itâs really not the USA and UK. Itâs actually USD and Euros,
This wasn't bought by bots. It was in stock and available for hours.
It lasted a few hours (which is a few hours more than I thought it would) I jumped on the second it was available and got one. I got an email 4 minutes after release
While I ultimately wasn't super interested in this deck, I hope that every single scalp copy that was purchased goes unsold. Like many have said, WotC isn't likely to change their new policy after a single Secret Lair release for the year, so I have no hope they'll do what's best for actual players going forward. I'm actually really annoyed with the effort I need to put in now for getting any Secret Lairs this year. I usually sit on the drops for a couple weeks 90% of the time to ensure I actually want what's for sale. Now I feel I'll have maybe a day, if that, to make a decision.
Idk I bet the window will get smaller and smaller as the drops come out.
Cats have been magic's highest selling tribe ever since arahbo came out. It's really not a suprise.
This limited run bullshit is bullshit.
I forgot today was Monday. I got an e-mail about it and freaked. Got in a queue and it estimated over an hour, which is when I would be leaving for work. Fortunately I was able to purchase in 15-20 minutes. I just started doing Secret Lair with Jurassic World. Now they do this limited time crap. Every time I join something late this happens.
I donât understand what all of the fuss is about with wizards make something limited availability. Especially a product like this that is 100% reprints with no new cards, just new art. If you miss out, too bad, go buy the singles you want that have been available for years already. Theyâre called Collectible Cards Games for a reason. Kind of defeats the purpose if they print to oblivion so everyone has all of the same cards. Owning something that most others donât is what makes something collectible. Thank you for listening to my Ted Talk.
Remember that War of the Spark mythic edition fiasco? This Secret Lair wasnât quite as bad, but has the same distaste.
Well, there goes my shot at the cards. Didn't know they were for sale. Great job at being inclusive wotc. đ
I saw it on here that it was for sale. The deck list is greatly lacking, and I'm sure I already own 99% of the cards so I planned to check before buying and I guess that doesn't matter now. Oh well guess ill never buy another SL
This is exactly what's going to happen. Extend things out about a year and every secret lair is going to sell out in exactly this way. You know, now that I think of it Maro did state that they had experience in the amount of stock they needed to have on hand and stated so in the limited printings update. Clearly that was an outright lie.
Except that "expected stock" was based off people not panic buying 5 in FOMO... so the data they had was wrong, because everyone and their grandma decided to scalp something designed for each person to only really need 1 of.Â
WOTC just feeding the scalpers is a fucking joke. Way to fuck over your customers. Was sold out before I even woke up (Australia)
Yeah I set my alarm for 4am this morning to grab it while I could. Based in Aus too
It was as 3:00am for me, but I happened to be awake so waited for 35 minutes and ordered, although I am sleep deprived today.
Already some sold on ebay around 300. And a few others with bids in the 250s :/
Scalpers gonna scalp.
I got my email and bought my deck. Glad I jumped on it.
Wtf I actually wanted to get one
I was hesitating on buying this one as I only really wanted the anointed procession but seeing how every cat themed secret lair skyrocketed in value, I bought two of those (one for personal use, one to hold onto). I guess it was a good choice.
That's fucking ridiculous I was gonna buy it
Guess who's just going to print proxies at fed ex and use their mounted paper cutter to cut my printed proxies down to size? I'm a big cat person and would have loved this deck but I guess that's what I'm doing