High-end D&D accessory maker Beadle and Grimm’s teased more details about its upcoming Magic: The Gathering Secret Lair during yesterday’s Weekly MTG livestream. Titled ‘Here Be Dragons’, the Secret Lair is connected to Dungeons and Dragons, and contains seven dragon-themed cards. It’ll be released just three days after the D&D Commander set Battle for Baldur’s Gate comes out, available to purchase on June 13.
According to Beadle and Grimm’s founder, Matthew Lillard, who came onto the Weekly MTG livestream with host Blake Rasmussen on Thursday to discuss the drop, Beadle and Grimm’s dragon-filled Secret Lair has more than just cards. “We have gone out and curated and built this really high end premium set that comes with a collection of cards,” Lillard says, adding that, “We leaned into the secret aspect of it”.
Only one extra item from the Here Be Dragons Secret Lair has been shown off so far, a metal dragon life counter which counts up to 45 (for Commander games, or decks with a ton of lifelink). According to an advert on Beadle and Grimm’s website, there’ll also be a deck box and sleeves. The cards themselves are still a mystery, though we’d guess they’ll probably include some of the dragon cards that have been printed across the two D&D MTG sets.
All previous Secret Lairs have been print to order, which meant that, provided you made your purchase during the pre-order window, you’d be guaranteed to get the product you wanted. This isn’t the case for Here be Dragons, however. Beadle and Grimm’s has produced a limited run of the Secret Lair and there are only 10,000 copies available. Lillard stressed during the stream that fans should follow the company’s social media or sign up for its mailing list to be first to hear about the drop.
Magic: The Gathering has had some trouble in the past with limited edition products. Its release of War of the Spark Mythic Edition in 2019 was particularly disastrous, with numerous orders from fans getting cancelled after they’d already been made. Of course, it should be stressed that Beadle and Grimm’s had no involvement in that debacle.
The advantage of packaging this Secret Lair as a limited edition is that it should reach buyers quickly. “Everything is already produced,” Lillard said on Thursday. “It goes on sale in June, and should be getting to everyone in August, if everything goes to plan.”
The price of the Here Be Dragons Secret Lair has yet to be announced. It seems obvious though that, given the extra accessories included in the product, it’ll be substantially more expensive than the usual Secret Lair price tag of about $39.99. The accessory-filled Kamigawa Platinum edition from Beadle and Grimm’s costs $499/£402, though that box contains more goodies than have so far been promised in the upcoming Secret Lair.