Dandân is a 4/1 fish that was printed in Magic: the Gathering's first ever expansion, Arabian Nights. This underwater icon from 1993 is the namesake card of its very own MTG format, and anyone looking to play some Dandân is in luck. Wizards of the Coast will be releasing everything you need to play the fishy format in an upcoming Secret Lair drop that will go live this Monday.
Dandân, like Commander before it, is a fan-made game variant. It was invented back in the nineties by an MTG enthusiast, and amateur game designer, named Nick Floyd. Unlike a typical game of Magic, in Dandân players share a single 80 card library, and every card that they cast gets jumbled together into the same graveyard. The deck can contain cards released in any MTG set. Typically, though not always, a Dandân deck is mono-blue and contains only ten creatures. All ten of these creatures are Dandâns.
These rule changes shake the game up in several fun ways. Cards like Brainstorm, Mystical Tutor, and Memory Lapse, that modify what's on top of the deck, work very differently here. Since both players are drawing from the same library, a major part of the strategy is sabotaging your opponent by forcing them to draw weak cards, while attempting to guarantee that only you will get your hands on the most powerful spells.
When Wizards of the Coast first announced the Dandân Secret Lair back in September of 2025, they were not initially working with Floyd. They later brought him on board, featuring him prominently in a marketing video released two days ago promoting the product drop.
A new Secret Lair Chaos Vault drop is due to be unveiled on Monday. That Chaos Vault is going to be stuffed full of fishy fun, as it will be a fully playable Dandân deck.
Have you ever tried out Dandân? Let us know how your undersea experiment went on the Wargamer Discord server.
For more news about what's next for Magic: the Gathering, check out our MTG release schedule.