The Gathering’s New Crossover May Seem Like Its Strangest Yet, But It Actually Fits Like a Glove

Magic: The Gathering has had its fair share of crossovers and collabs over the past few years, be it simple, small-scale Secret Lair drops or full-fledged sets like this year’s Universes Beyond selection. Some collabs were received better than others, with good examples of this logic being how MTG‘s Lord of the Rings set, or more recently, the Final Fantasy set, were great in terms of sales and popularity. On the other hand, sets like the upcoming Spider-Man can be divisive due to their themes, how the IP is handled, and other potential factors. Now, Wizards of the Coast has announced another upcoming crossover that seems like a head-scratcher, but it also makes perfect sense.

One of the issues lamented by fans regarding Universes Beyond is that they typically increase the price of any given product by a decent margin, and since they are more recognizable and potentially more successful, they can be harder to get due to scalpers setting ridiculous prices. Magic: The Gathering‘s Spider-Man set is a prime example of this, as its Collector Booster display was selling for around $1,000 just a few days ago, and then crashed to around $650 due to market volatility and player reception. While Spider-Man launches on September 26, MTG fans should also keep an eye on September 29 for a one-of-a-kind crossover with Play-Doh.

There’s More Than Meets The Eye to Magic: The Gathering’s New Play-Doh Secret Lair Drop

A crossover between MTG and Play-Doh seems pretty wild, and possibly the strangest so far, even after the likes of Magic: The Gathering‘s SpongeBob Secret Lair drop. While it can still be fairly strange to have a collab between Play-Doh and Wizards of the Coast’s TCG, it makes sense for a few reasons:

• Play-Doh as a brand has been owned by Hasbro since 1991, and in 1999, Hasbro also purchased Wizards of the Coast, which is one of its subsidiaries.
• Play-Doh doesn’t have recognizable characters, settings, or items other than what the brand offers, so Wizards of the Coast was able to have a Secret Lair drop with past cards reimagined as Play-Doh figures.
• Hasbro toys and IPs like Transformers and Cluedo are in Magic: The Gathering already, so it makes sense to follow up with a different Hasbro-owned brand.

What follows is that Wizards of the Coast can set a new precedent here, as Play-Doh‘s lack of brand-identity elements means that not all collaborations moving forward need to have specific characters, items, or settings tied to their cards. It could even be a good thing for UB sets in MTG as a whole, but those are unlikely to sell as well unless they are indeed about properties that are already popular among the general public.

Is Magic: The Gathering’s Play-Doh Secret Lair Drop Worth It?

The Play-Doh Secret Lair drop includes four cards, available for $39.99 in regular versions or for $49.99 for the foil versions. These are:

• Greensleeves, Maro-Sorcerer
• Polyraptor
• Academy Manufacturer
• Wurmcoil Engine

Greensleeves, Maro-Sorcerer, is a particularly “rare” card, in the sense that it has very few printings available. Currently, it sits at around $16 on TCGPlayer. Polyraptor is more widely available, but it’s still quite valuable, at around $14 on TCGPlayer. MTG cards spiking in value is nothing new, and Academy Manufacturer recently went from around $3 to around $6, but it’s generally a rather good card that sees a lot of play. Finally, Wurmcoil Engine is also quite valuable, at around $11-13 for a Commander reprint.

This means that the overall value of the bundle exceeds its selling price, as the regular versions of the cards included in it total $48, give or take. Considering that some of these cards are popular in Commander and other formats, the deal is a good one for both its regular version and its foil version, and theoretically, all cards can be played in a single deck due to the color requirements being limited to Green. Seeing how great commander cards like Lumra, Bellow of the Woods are, and how popular the new MTG World Shaper Commander deck from Edge of Eternities is, Greensleeves can already fit perfectly in there, whereas the other cards are all token-centric and can still benefit Green decks.

Original Release Date

August 5, 1993

Designer

Richard Garfield

Player Count

2+

Age Recommendation

13+