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MTG sneaks Baby Groot into every Marvel Secret Lair

Every one of the Magic: The Gathering Secret Lair drops featuring Marvel characters has an extra, adorable Baby Groot card thrown in.

MTG card featuring Groot Wolverine

The Magic: The Gathering Marvel Secret Lairs released on November 4 included small batches of cards featuring five superheroes: Wolverine, Storm, Black Panther, Captain America, and Iron Man. But, as it turns out, there was another character stowing away in the superdrop, as Baby Groot appears on a surprise sixth card in every set.

Each Secret Lair has a Groot card that shows the little alien tree boy interacting with or dressing up as the lair’s main hero. For instance, the Captain America Groot has grown a lovely floral shield, while the Wolverine Groot has grown leafy sideburns and hair tufts.

MTG card featuring Groot with a Captain America shield.

Each Groot card fits in mechanically with the unique MTG commander found in its Secret Lair. For instance, Sculpting Steel is a useful card for Iron Man’s artifact deck, while Regrowth is a powerful card for enabling Storm.

MTG card featuring Groot Iron Man

However, it’s probably worth noting that all of these cards are either green or colorless. That means they would all fit within a mono-green Groot deck too, if such a Groot card actually existed. Perhaps we can hope for a Guardians of the Galaxy-themed Secret Lair drop in the near future?

MTG card featuring Groot with Storm

Though the Marvel Secret Lair release was horribly bungled, the fact that fans have been able to share their bonus cards so quickly does illustrate the one big advantage of the new Secret Lair model (from the perspective of players that is). Back when these products were print-to-demand customers would be waiting weeks or even months for their precious cards, but these have reached buyers in a matter of days.

MTG card featuring Groot with Black Panther

It doesn’t exactly make up for how limited the supply of this hotly-anticipated crop of crossover cards was however, nor the fact that some people were able to skip the hours-long queues. It certainly stings to see scalpers taking advantage of the current model, with copies of these collections selling for hundreds of dollars.

For more Magic: The Gathering stories, check out our list of the best Commanders in Foundations and Jumpstart 2025. And don’t miss our MTG release schedule and list of all MTG sets.