The new MTG Secret Lair December Superdrop arrived on December 5, and it looks like the Eldrazi cards from artist Aleksi Briclot come with an extra hidden surprise. The set’s pre-order page on the Secret Lair website says “there might be something strange happening with the flavour text…perhaps a hidden message? Piece it all together by adding these to your deck or collection”.
Sure enough, 35 letters at the bottom of the four MTG Eldrazi cards have been bolded. Magic fans online still don’t know quite what to make of the jumbled letters, but one Reddit thread proposes several theories. For example, we already have the right letters to spell out words like ‘Emrakul’ and ‘Ulamog’.
However, no one’s managed to unscramble any anagrams or decode any cyphers yet – leaving some on Reddit to theorise that a secret bonus card will provide the missing letters we need to crack the case. If that’s so, the only people who can solve the Eldrazi code will be those that actually buy the MTG Secret Lair. The non-foil version is available for $29.99 / £29.99, while the foils cost $39.99 / £39.99.
You can see the exact printing of the bolded letters in the image above, but here they are written out for each card:
- Thought-Knot Seer – i, n, t, e, y, u, a
- Inquisition of Kozilek – y, h, v, e, d, a, t, n, g, t, r, m, g
- Reality Smasher – e, s, v, a, o, l, n
- Eldrazi Temple – t, a, c, i, k, r, m, u
This isn’t the first time Aleksi Briclot has illustrated for Magic: The Gathering. His previous work includes art of MTG planeswalkers for MTG sets Lorwyn, Rise of the Eldrazi, and Shadows Over Innistrad. Naturally, he’s drawn plenty of Eldrazi before, too.
“Aleksi Briclot has been making Magic art for nearly two decades, so we’re shining the spotlight on his amazing talent with a drop that’s especially cool”, says Wizards of the Coast on the Secret Lair pre-order page. “All the borderless cards combine to form a complete panoramic scene”, it adds.
As well as Briclot’s Artist Series set, the December Superdrop features 11 other Secret Lair collections. There’s plenty for fans of nostalgia to chew on: along with Transformers Secret Lairs, The Secret Lair ‘Just Add Milk’ got its own 90s-style TV ad to complement the cards’ cereal box art style. All cards in this month’s Superdrop are available to pre-order until January 6.
For more Magic releases, keep a close eye on our MTG 2023 release schedule. We’ve got something for digital TCG players too – here are the best MTG Arena decks and all the MTG Arena codes you can get your hands on right now.