Remembering Ron Spears

Mana Dorks: Well, well, well. Look who the cat dragged in. It's just me. It is just me today, Connor, on this The Lord's hundred and twentieth episode of the Duels in Minidors Podcast. We've got a lot to talk about today, but first, we need to address something. We need to address something. Okay. Two hundred and fifty years of of America's existence. Very exciting. Love to see it. I'm recording this on the fourth of July. Yeah, we're a little late. We'll get into that in a moment. But as a Jessica a slut like I am. I'm a big fan of Fourth of July, the red, white, and blue, the white, blue and red, the blue, white and red. The Jess Kai wedge, as it were. Big fan. Huge fan. Okay. But because it is a holiday weekend, our beloved Wyatt, the typical Gemini, has has gotta be with the family. I know, right? Ridiculous. Ridiculous. And then Sam, who just moved to another state on the East Coast, not quite the East Coast, but in that direction. Well, he's gotta get a second job to, you know, live and survive. And when you're low on the totem pole, guess what? You're working the holiday weekend, baby. And so here I am, working on this holiday weekend, to bring you an episode of the podcast. Solo. It's gonna be we're we're gonna make it intimate today. Okay? Just bring it in close. Bring it in close. Okay. We're gonna get we're gonna get a little personal. Okay, me to you, you to me, us together, talking about Magic the Gathering at the Duels and Manadorks podcast. Got a lot to cover today. But first, gotta shout it out. Patreon.com slash Manadorx. It's where you can get early ad-free access to all the podcasts, early ad-free access to all the YouTube content. The long form videos, which by the way, the last one, the aftermath of March of the Machines aftermath, doing quite well. Doing very, very well. In fact, it's the best long form Magic the Gathering piece of content I've made, which is pretty sweet, I think. ⁓ I do want to talk about one one of the comments I got though. One one comment. One comment. People did not like the loop bit. Made a whole bit about about loot going to Hogwarts or I get going to Strixhaven and learning magic from, you know, the Strixhavians, if you will. And people didn't people didn't were like, get to the video, get to the content. And I'm like, I'll be damned if I go straight to the content. All right. I'm doing a silly little bit. That's who I am. You you can you can pry them from my cold dead hands at this point. But thankfully my comment being like, well, I'm keeping them, got more likes. So you know, you know how it is. You can check that out on YouTube. But five dollars a month, early I have free access to all of the things podcasts, YouTube videos, all that kind of stuff. You can join the Patreon for free. Submit questions, comments, concerns, thoughts, and ideas. Get get your get your name in the credits at the fifteen dollar a month tier, where I shout you out, like Brandon Voll, who is a beloved member of the community. Couldn't be done without him. Hope he is enjoying his fourth of July with the family, in fact. But enough of the pleasantries. We've got a lot to discuss today. All right. Marvel's been out. It's on arenas now. And we gotta talk about the cool things that are happening on arenas, specifically what the Marvel said. I made a I made a short the other day about it. It's pretty cool. We're gonna talk about Festival in a Vox, An's Amsterdam. Amp Ampersand I almost said Ampersand. Like the little the and symbol, the ampersand. That's not it. It's Amsterdam. Festival in a Box Amsterdam, which is coming out July 13th. We'll get into that because it's probably one of the better value festival in a boxes we've ever gotten. We're gonna be talking about the banned and restricted announcement. Nothing for the format of Commander, quite a few things for the brawl format on arenas. A little bit of popper, a little bit of legacy. It's fun stuff. But before we get into any of that, the big one, the big kahuna, what we need to discuss. Sorry. Getting ahead of myself. I'm getting ahead of myself. One small update before. This is a this is an update on an ongoing topic in the Magic community. The Magic Arena team has been trying to unionize at Wizards of the Coast and has been met with a little bit of opposition. Though, at this point, United Wizards of the Coast has been officially voted on by the employees of the Magic Arena team and in an overwhelming majority. The union was officially formed on June 23rd. ⁓ it is yet to be officially recognized by Wizards of the Coast at this point, so that is going to be the next step in the process. But the union has officially been voted on by the workers and is going to happen. So we're going to be having some conflict going on there, I would imagine. And well, that's just another step along the road. Just a quick update before we get into the big story of the day. The passing of Ron Spears. Ron Spears is a very storied magic artist who has been around for a very, very, very, very long time. His first piece of art from Urza's Saga in 1998 was a blue enchantment called Veiled Sentry. And since then he has done wonderful pieces of art for magic in The 20 years since iconic pieces like Acroma Angel of Wrath, Phage the Untouchable, A Togatog, Mystical Teachings, The Original Dark Confidant, Engineered Explosives, the ⁓ full art version of the Sapphire Medallion from Modern Horizons 3 has been one of his more recent inclusions. And the last piece that we got from him was an exotic orchard from the Lorwin Eclipsed Commander decks. Frankly, some of the most iconic cards in Magic. The recently unbanned BioRhythm, ⁓ in Modern Horizons 3 Bridgework Battle, one of the MDFC lands, both halves of Brothers Yamazaki. I the the amount of art he has contributed and s to some of the most played cards in Magic the Gathering, the original art for In Tomb in Odyssey is him. W Dream Tide Whale, which is a fun Modern Horizons 3 piece, people need to be playing with more. Dream Chisel from Onslaught, the the face-down creature cost producer. It's it's tough to put into words when you scroll through and you see the number of art pieces he has contributed to this game. I mean, the full art flair of malice. ⁓ he did a lot of things for Modern Horizons 3, actually. ⁓ did quite a few pieces of art for that set. And just fun pieces from throughout Magic's history. We got Lightning Surge. ⁓ in Lore and Eclipse, he did things like Lava Leaper. He did mischievous sneakling. the the full art dominaria remastered Mystic Romora, the full art Commander Masters Orin Frostfang. The the man's fingerprints have been all over magic art almost from the very, very beginning. ⁓ Ron Spears ⁓ Tough. It's it's it's very sad to see a great magic artist like this pass away. ⁓ he had been battling cancer since the end of 2025, November, December of 2025. ⁓ kind of a silent battle with his family. Lorin Eclipsed was the last ⁓ his last contribution to Magic of the Gathering, and he'll be greatly, greatly missed. ⁓ Sorry, I I misspoke earlier. The Exotic Orchard is from the Secrets of Strixhaven commander decks, not from Loran Eclipse. ⁓ Loran Eclipse was his last full set inclusion. ⁓ and then just a single card for the Secrets of Strixhaven Exotic Orchard. go and find your favorite place to get singles. ⁓ a lot of his pieces are exceptionally playable. ⁓ The several of the full arts from Commander Masters for the Commander Lands, Spectator Seating, Undergrowth Stadium are him. a you the Utopia Sprawl from Ravnica Remastered is him. Spirebluff Canal from Thunder Junction. Just super playable pieces. It's a great way to to honor a great piece of magic history. And for that reason, he's our top story today. And very well deserving. Ron Spears. Gone too early, but you can still you can still love the art that he contributed and his influence in Magic. It was it was very, very big. And sad to see him gone. Next story though. It's quite a turn. I know. Just just bear with me, okay? Patience. Pack your patience, okay? Needed the needed that Mountain Dew Zero from Taco Bell to get me through this today, man. It's hard talking to a camera by yourself. I don't care. I don't care what anyone says. It's hard. It's challenging. It's not like, you know, manual labor in the 95 degree heat that the United States is experiencing right now, but it's it's not simple. It's not simple. Speaking of the heat, if you're hearing there's that. Got a got a room air conditioner because my AC broke during the heat wave. So yeah, I'm going a little crazy. I'm going a little crazy. June 29th, we had a new band and restricted announcement. This was a planned band and restricted announcement, ⁓ with the exception of Brawl, which had six bannings. ⁓ this is to coincide with the competitive Brawl scene that is beginning on Magic Arenas. There were only two formats that experienced any changes. That was Legacy, where they banned Candelabra of Taunus for the first time since the nineties. And Popper, where they got rid of Seeker of Skybreak, which was recently found to combo with the newly released Hawkeyes Bow from the Marvel superhero stat. ⁓ interestingly, standard, pioneer, modern, vintage, and then on arena alchemy, historic, timeless, and competitive brawl specifically. No bands. No bands. ⁓ they're continuing to pretend that standard is in a good spot. ⁓ where, to be fair, the gameplay is quite diverse. It's it's just the expense of being able to build a standard deck. ⁓ Pioneer basically doesn't exist. Modern. Interesting. ⁓ I think the recent the recent hit to Boros Energy has kind of brought things into a better plane of existence for modern. ⁓ Remains to be seen. But let's get into Legacy. Candelabra of Taunos. ⁓ This card is being rebanned. Rebanned in Legacy. Back in 1999. This was before the time of Legacy, Vintage, Standard, any of that. It was simply called Type 1.5. Originally there were two formats: type 1 and type 2. Type 1 is what we currently know as vintage, where it's just all the cards that have been released. And then type two was the original version of standard, where you were only playing with the most recent sets. And then Legacy, Type 1.5, was introduced where it's kind of splitting the difference. ⁓ It was a r it was banned at the start of the type 1.5 slash legacy format back in 1999, though it was later unbanned in that same year, 1999, when ⁓ Time Spiral and Memory Jar were banned. ⁓ they the the combination of those cards was particularly challenging. ⁓ and Candelabra of Thanos was kept around as a more useful piece in other decks compared to Time Spiral. But it managed to dodge a banning for twenty-seven years, Candelabra of Thanos. But as Time Spiral was recently unbanned, and when you combine it with cards like High Tide, Fast Mana, and Tron Lands that you can abuse in colorless decks, Candelabra has found itself on the chopping block once again. ⁓ the the legacy format i it can't it can't handle Candelabra and Time Spiral with all the amount of mana acceleration ⁓ that exists in Legacy. It's just simply too much. not really a legacy player here. I'm I'm intrigued in like value vintage. ⁓ not quite the same thing. Obviously, vintage and legacy two very separate formats. But I think the the entire story of Candelabra of Thanos. Sorry, it was banned in nineteen ninety six, not nineteen ninety nine. I misspoke. It was unbanned in nineteen ninety nine. ⁓ but Being on the initial ban list when the format was founded and then later unbanned and has just lasted for basically thirty years without being rebanned is in and of itself exceptionally, exceptionally impressive in my mind. ⁓ unfortunately Time Spiral basically being a game reset. Memory jar also being a bit of a game reset along with Candelabra of Tanos, where you're able to untap and reuse land. The value is just too much to deal with in in in a colorless form, in mono blue forms. It's it's just too much. It's just too much. ⁓ if you play Legacy, let me know what you think of This ban in particular in the comments down below. The one I'm more interested in is Popper. ⁓ Popper is the 60 card format of my choice when that I play. ⁓ and they banned the Seeker of Skybreak from 8th edition originally. ⁓ that is the combo of Seeker of Skybreak and Hawkeye's Bow is costless. Hawkey's bow, for those of you that don't know, is an equipment from Marvel Superheroes. ⁓ whenever the equip creature becomes tapped, it deals one damage to each opponent. You can play it for one mana, you can equip it for one mana. It's very cheap. ⁓ it only provides a plus one plus ⁓ buff and reach other than the tapping to deal damage claws. Secret of Skybreak, on the other hand, you can tap it to untap target creature, so it can tap and untap itself infinitely. So any card that gets value off of creatures becoming tapped or untapped can just generate infinite value, or in this case, infinite damage and kill your opponent as soon as turn three. ⁓ there's a number of reasons that Seeker of Skybreak caught the band specifically as opposed to Hawkeye's Bow. ⁓ Hawkeye's Bow, while being the damage outlet for Seeker of Skybreak, Seeker of Skybreak is in and of itself the problem. ⁓ the formatting of how they do these tap-to-untap effects in the modern day is you have to target something else. When you are tapping Seeker of Skybreak, just being able to target any other creature, including itself, is the problem. It's not designed to be ⁓ these kinds of effects are not designed to be in the modern day infinitely tap and untappable and just looping that forever. So banning Seeker of Skybreak specifically. Opens them up in the future to not have to deal with this same exact problem when there is another common that cares about a creature becoming tapped or untapped and then getting an effect. And I think that's a very good idea. There was talk about waiting until later in the year. ⁓ but specifically ⁓ They wanted to do it now, like right as Marvel Superheroes was being released, because the combo can be very, very powerful. And if they waited until August 10th, when the next BNR announcement is going to happen, ⁓ there would be multiple very, very large events. Popper Geddon in the United States and Popper Genesis. Or sorry, Popper Geton in Italy and Popper Genesis in the United States. Two of the biggest popper tournaments in the world are happening between this BR announcement and the August 10th BR. And because of the power level of the Seeker of Skybreak Hawkey's Bow combo in Popper, it for these big tournaments would have encouraged a lot of people to invest in cards and invest in decks and strategies that Would basically be played for those tournaments only, with the knowledge that it would definitely get banned at the next banning. And they wanted to avoid that issue entirely. So they got ahead of it and they banned Seeker of Skybreak to get rid of this issue. Now, the other card that they bring up here, they wanted to address the sneaky snacker problem, which upsets me greatly because my deck The deck, my popper deck that I love, my popper mat Rakdos Madness deck. Not mono red madness, Rakdness. See, the sneaky snacker is a great value piece. A fantastic value piece. And therein kinda lies the problem. It has been on their eye for a while now. It is not ⁓ going to be banned in this announcement, but it is something that they are keeping an eye on. ⁓ it slots into Way too many decks is just kind of free value. It's being run in decks like the Rakdos Madness deck that I am running, where blue is not even a color of mana that the deck can produce, and as such its ability ⁓ being just an easy thing to discard to the yard that you can get value of just from drawing cards, which is something a lot of popper decks want to be doing anyway. It runs as a four of in a lot of decks ⁓ and is kind of homogenized stuff in a way. And they're taking a very, very serious look. They want to wait until after Papagendon and Popper Genesis to kind of see how things play out and see if it actually is a problem. ⁓ but they will definitely be talking more about this card on the August 10th Banned and Restricted announcement. So look forward to that. ⁓ the only other card they talk about is Bonders Ornament, which was recently unbanned and it is not. been a problem in popper. And quite frankly, I'm not surprised in the slightest. The last BNR announcement that we are going to be discussing today is Brawl. Brawl got hit with seven or sorry, six bands on arena. And these are I think some of the most clear-cut, like good bannings For Magic Arena. Brawl can be very tilting in a lot of ways, particularly with the Secrets of Strixhaven recent introduction of Force of Will into the format. The bonus sheet, the Mystical Archives giving arena Force of Will. ⁓ The power of a card like Subtlety, which has been in the format for a little while, being a bit of a free counter spell as well. Or sorry, a free. Bounce spell that puts it on the top or bottom of a library, it gums up draws, and then wash away, which is a good commander counter spell. One mana, you can counter target spell that wasn't cast from its owner's hand. So basically anything coming from a command zone, it can get rid of any commander, counter it for one blue mana, or you can do one blue, blue, and you can counter anything. You can get a cancel, or you get like ⁓ a what's the strict serenade, but without any downside. And can target anything as long as it's from exile. It's a whole it's not a great comparison. But Washaway is a very powerful counterspell and is worth running in your commander decks. It's an uncommon from Inestrad Crimson Val. I have several copies in decks, and they play quite well. It helps to get rid of the very pesky commanders that kind of take over games. The really big ones. You know you know exactly what I'm talking about. You're one of those players. I know you are. Listening right now, James Kevin. Andy. I know Andy's playing something bad. Mm-mm. Mm-mm. But the counter magic, ⁓ powerful countermagic, free and cheap, ⁓ in a one v one commander based format where you always have your commander ac you always have access to your commander. ⁓ having just a free one mana counter spell for an opponent's commander in a one v one format where there isn't as big a downside for letting loose a counter spell as there is in a four player game is very, very powerful, very tilting, and not very fun ⁓ in terms of play pattern for Brawl. ⁓ the other three were Ugin's Labyrinth, which is a powerful mana accelerator ⁓ for colorless decks, particularly things like Eldrazi, fast mana, basically. ⁓ time warp, and then temporal manipulation. These are the most ⁓ cheap and efficient extra turn spells. ⁓ Extra turns in commander can be dealt with because you've got three opponents that you're fighting against. Im Brawl being 1v1, five mana extra turns. It's just a little bit too strong, leads to really com repetitive games. ⁓ and I think these are all exceptionally good bannings, personally. ⁓ Ugin's Ugin's Labyrinth, I think, is a little bit of a stretch. ⁓ they previously banned cards like Chrome Mox and Ancient Tomb for very similar things. I think Ugin's Labyrinth has you go through a couple more hoops in terms of deck building that I think it could have been okay. ⁓ they've also looked at like your one-card burst mana spells, your dark ritual, your pyretic rituals, basically a ritual effect. ⁓ but because they're one-offs, they add variety, they're not as ⁓ tilting as ⁓ Man as just kind of free mana acceleration that you would get from something like Anugin's Labyrinth, an ancient tomb, a Chrome Mox, that sort of thing. Fast mana versus burst mana, effectively. Force of Will, Subtlety, Wash Away Counterspells. They are also looking at cards like Snuff Out, which can be free in a lot of decks, particularly commander decks ⁓ where you're really willing to pay life and you have a lot of swamps in them. And then Force of Negation for very similar reasons as Force of Will. It's a little bit more narrow than Force of Will is, which is just kind of completely free. Force of Negation, it requires you, ⁓ it requires you to be countering a spell that's not being cast on your turn. But they are both cards that are going to be looked at. And they didn't want to ban just everything all at once and make a large swath change, as six bans all at once is already going to be quite a big shakeup, particularly because five of them are blue. So a lot of blue decks are probably going to have changes that need to be made. Thank God. And then competitive brawl, brand new, no bands. ⁓ we're we're good there. And that's all of the band and restricted announcement information. And that's all for the major stories. We just got a couple things to wrap up. While we're on the subject of arena, though, we're gonna bring up the Marvel superhero milestone achievements and the battle pass, ⁓ which seems to be greatly improved from other sets' battle passes. And I hope this is something that they bring forward into other sets not. Just universes beyond sets like Marvel Superheroes. So the milestone achievements are going on during the release of Marvel superheroes. If you there are the milestone achievements that you just kind of generically get for your account, you can get things like ⁓ you can get little titles, you can get new quotes that you can tap on during matches, that kind of stuff. Mostly cosmetics. With Marvel Superhero's milestone achievement set, you instead are getting achievements that require you to do things like cast a hundred green spells, cast a hundred white spells, cast a hundred blue spells, cast ten hero spells, fifty hero spells, a hundred hero spells, cast fifty ⁓ spider spells, ⁓ doing things that are involved within the Marvel Superhero set. And some of the rewards you are getting because of this are s Similar, you get well for one, you get battle pass XP, which pretty cool. You get ⁓ new emotes, you can get comments that you can put ⁓ during matches, you get new titles, but most interestingly, you are getting play sets of some of the Marvel Superheroes eternal cards from the commander set. Now, these are not cards from the commander decks, these are cards that are from the jumpstart packs, effectively, the supplementary stuff ⁓ to the commander product. And They're just giving you full play sets of these cards. Now, are they exceptionally powerful? No. No, they are not. But you are getting play sets of cards just for doing things that you're already going to want to be doing while this set is on arena. And I think that is just kind of a huge win across the board. Similarly, if you bought the Mastery Pass, you are also getting play sets of some of these Marvel Eternal cards, as well as getting. Way more bonus packs and way more card styles than you normally would in these sets. Like, you're instead of getting like a pack of Secrets of Strixhaven, you get four packs of Secrets of Strixhaven. You get three bonus packs of Marvel superheroes. You get four packs of Lore Winnie Clips, of foundations, of whatever. You're getting handed way more packs, which helps build your collection. You're getting handed Play sets of cards, particularly for new players that are coming to Arena, it makes it way easier to build a playable collection of cards without having to just completely be drained of wild cards right when you enter the game. What I really, really hope going forward is that this is not just a Marvel superhero thing to try and drum up interest in this set on arenas. This needs to be something that happens across the board. I want to see this in the Hobbit set. I want to see this in Reality Fracture. I want to see this in Star Trek. I want to see this in Modern Horizons 4, because that's eventually going to happen probably. I want to see it in Commander Masters 2, whenever that I want to see this style of just player friendliness happening in Arena. ⁓ when you look at other phone-based gotcha games, because at the end of the day. While it's not something like ⁓ a Hoyoverse game or like Persona 5 the Phantom X or Genshin Impact or anything like that, it is a gacha game. Just like the Pokemon TCG Pocket game, anything where you're Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Masters, Duel Link Duel Masters, I don't remember. It's been years since I played it. These card-based gacha games, they are gacha games. You are effectively gambling. And when you're getting more freebies. It encourages people to actually engage with the game. And particularly the achievement system, encouraging you to engage with the newest set that's come out. Like imagine if we got this with Secrets of Strixhaven, where maybe if you cast 100 blue spells, you get a play set of days from the mystical archives. Not a crazy powerful card, but a pretty good playable card in a lot of formats on Arena. Maybe you need to put hundred plus one plus one counters on something and it encourages you to dr to go and draft into the the CIMI or sorry the ⁓ my god the Quandrix there we go the Quandrix archetype in the draft formats or you need to cast fifty spells from exile or your graveyard and you need and you go and you play like the lore hole draft. You try and play into that archetype. It encourages you to engage with the set in the way that it's being presented and then giving set-specific rewards. It's I it's just kind of a win. And it's something that they need to look at for sets that aren't just these big tent pole crossover event sets. This should just be the standard. Okay. They, I think, are starting to feel pressure from games like. The Pokemon Pocket T C where you just log in and you get a free pack every single Why can't you just do a daily login prize where if you log into your Magic Arena account, you get a a pack of the most recent set? Or a pack of foundations or a pack of any a random standard legal set. Just something to encourage people to engage with the game every single day. Very basic, small things. Helps people build their collections on arena, which makes decks way more diverse. It makes it way easier to experiment with decks digitally that you want to build physically. I think it's just good. It's just a good idea. And I really, really, really want to see them keep doing this. It is crazy what good can be done when your staff feels better about working there and is in a union. Isn't that crazy? Who could have guessed? Who who thunk it? Who thunk it? That was a little bit longer of a of a wrap up than I was expecting for that for that topic. I literally have right written out one sentence. I just had so many thoughts. I wanted to get them out to you. Okay. Lastly, Festival in a Box Amsterdam. For Magic Con Amsterdam, which is going to be happening later this year, ⁓ is releasing on July 13th, 2026, on the Secret Lair website for $199.99, and you get a limit of two per customer. For those of you that don't know, Festival in a Box is a product that goes out with every Magic Con. You basically get a booster box of, in this case, Mystery Boosters 2. ⁓ it used to be the original Mystery Boosters, it recently has become Mystery Booster 2. You get a exclusive secret lair to the event, and then you get some promo cards thrown in as well. ⁓ we recently had the Festival in a Box. You can see I got the Festival in a Box Las Vegas one there recently. ⁓ and that had a fun, like dark carnival secret layer. In this case, we're getting some beautiful reprints of gr mono green land synergy cards. ⁓ and some really, really good looking. Promos as well. I'm going to be giving you some monetary values here. These are the TCG market prices for all of these products. ⁓ when I did this write-up about two days ago, a Mystery Boosters 2 booster box on TCG player market value, you can get as cheap as $270. So already right off the bat, if you're in the market for a mystery to a Mystery Boosters 2 booster box. You're already going to be saving $70 if you can get into the secret layer line and are able to get this product. Just right off the rip. Which makes the secret layer and all the promos attached to it just kind of gravy. And the gravy is quite rich, I will say. ⁓ the secret layer includes brand new arts for Nyssa Resurgent Animist. This is from March of the Machines Aftermath. This is a $24 landfall card. If you know how powerful Lotus Cobra is, It's like a souped up Lotus Cobra for one more mana. It's a very good card. ⁓ you also get Ramanat Excavator, which is effectively a Crucible of Worlds, playing cards from the graveyard. It's a creature. It's about $2. It's been printed in several precons. ⁓ 6 of Remon 6 fame, the Creature 6 from Modern Horizons 3. Again, Land Synergies. It's about $350. The two cheap ones, though, for this are Tireless Provisioner, a very playable. Landfall card. Whenever you play a land, you get a food or a treasure token. ⁓ this has been printed to death in pre-cons. The cheapest version is about a buck fifty. And then Titania, Protector of Argoth, ⁓ just a mono green card from Dom Remastered, I believe. Brothers War. Something like that. And it's 50 cents. It synergizes with a specific land, and then you can meld it. It's Brothers War is what that's from. And Those are just in the cheapest printings. ⁓ there's the Lord of the Rings version of Tyler's Provisioner that's worth a couple bucks more. ⁓ the fancier versions of Nyssa Resurgent Animist worth way more. ⁓ and all of these versions. This is going to be one of the most expensive versions of six, I would imagine. This is going to be the most expensive version of Titania. This is probably going to be the most expensive version of all five of these cards, quite frankly. ⁓ would be my guess. But again, we can't go on speculation. We go on what the cheapest version you could get for that is. ⁓ and in this case, it's over $30 just from the Secret Layer, which, as far as regular secret layer releases go, is actually pretty solid value, all things told. The promos you are getting, though, are particularly juicy. You get a foil future site Lana War Elves. Lana War Elves has not been printed in the Future Sight frame before, and you get it in Foil. The cheapest Lana War Elves you can get is only 25 cents, but the fancy versions of Lana War Elves go for significantly more than that. ⁓ several of them can be had for multiple doll hairs and not just pennies on the doll hairs, as it were. And I imagine this is going to be one of the more valuable ones. ⁓ a foil textless utopia sprawl, a very good mono green ramp piece, again for one mana, much like the Lana War Elves. Textless versions of cards are always very, very popular, particularly for simple effects like Utopia Sprawl, that you don't need to have an entire crazy you don't have to memorize Urza's saga. On this. All right. You just gotta remember you enchant a land, it taps for two. There you go. It's pretty simple. ⁓ you can get Utopia Sprawl for a buck twenty-five. This is again probably going to be the most expensive version of this particular card. But the big kahuna here, a foil showcase kind of movie poster style version of Atraxa Praetor's voice. Atraxa Praetor's voice. ⁓ this is the N Step Proliferate Atraxa Sans Red Pho Rexian Angel Horror. ⁓ the cheapest version of this card is ten dollars. It is one of the most popular commanders that has ever been built and continues to be built to this day, and having a fancy, really cool looking art version is going to just bring the value up, up, up, up, up, up, up, even higher. ⁓ personally, I think the Nyssa Resurgent Animus is the truly big hit here, but Atraxa is also going to be a super, super big hit here. ⁓ if you're into the Moost Mystery Booster playtest cards, you are also getting a promo of Bicycle Elemental. ⁓ two in a blue, two two artifact creature elemental. When it enters, you choose a word. And then each card in your hand with the chosen word in its name, typeline, and or rules text also gains cycling too. And then whenever you cycle a card, you put a plus one plus one counter on the bicycle elemental. Playtest cards are super fun. They're really great for cubes. They're really great for building your own ⁓ draft well, cube is you building your own draft environment. ⁓ any, any like commander cubes. These playtest cards are super, super fun. Building playtest cards into decks, building a playtest commander card. There's a plenty of bracket two and bracket three games where you if you rolled up with a playtest card and you're like, I built this with a whole bunch of playtest cards in it. Are you guys cool with it? Everyone's gonna be like, fuck yeah, let's do this. And these playtest cards are dirt cheap. They basically have no value because they're not legal to play in any format. So bicycle elemental is effectively nothing. Just Assume that it's not worth anything when you're calculating the value of this. For the cheapest printings of all the cards, for the cheapest way you can get Mystery Boosters 2 online currently, we're looking at a minimum value here of $313 for your $200 investment. And it is likely going to be pushing $400 in value ultimately at the end of the day. ⁓ again, July 13th, 2026, $199.99 limit two per customer to help fight the scalpers. Good luck. Good luck. ⁓ for those of you that do not know and for people that don't believe me, this is literally how they Wizards of the Coast tells you to do this. Okay. I'm gonna give you a tip here that a lot of people argue with me on, but it's literally their directed method of how to do this. Okay. An hour before the drop goes live, in this case twelve PM noon Eastern Standard Time. Go in to the Secret Lair website an hour early. Click on the product, add it to your cart, go to checkout. It's gonna throw you into the waiting room. When the drop goes live, everybody in the waiting room gets shuffled into a big pile and then randomly assigned an order in line. That is the best way to get in. If you show up on the website exactly at noon and you try and add to your cart and get into the line, you are going after all of those people that were just added to the line randomly. That is your best chance at getting the secret layer products you want to get. If you are not doing that, You are unlikely to get these popular secret layer drops. And I guarantee you, Festival in a Box is going to be one of them. It's always one of the most popular secret layer products, even the ones that don't have a lot of value. And this is arguably the best value we've ever gotten from a festival in a box product. So you have been warned. I did I did my job. All right. I d I don't know what more you want from me at this point, quite frankly. America's two hundred and fifty years old. You're complaining to me that you that I'm wrong about the secret lair process. I mean I don't know what those two have to do with one another, but ⁓ it's what's going on. That's all we got for the news, ladies and gentlemen. That is all we got for the news. ⁓ Yeah. Thank you guys for checking out the Aftermath of Aftermath YouTube video. I had a lot of fun making it. I think it's a really cool story. The entire history of March of the Machines aftermath and all the fallout that has been happening for More than half a decade at that it feels like. But for the years since March of the Machines aftermath's release, it's just been fascinating to watch the ripple effect of that idea gone so horribly wrong. Super appreciate it. You can check that out on YouTube. It's probably linked at the end of this podcast if you're watching it on YouTube. Again, early ad free access to the podcast, patreon.com slash manadorks. It's a good time. Five dollars a month, early at free access. Otherwise, it goes out on the following Monday for free feeds. Sorry, this one's a little bit late. Holiday weekend, scheduling conflicts with Wyatt and Sam. We tried to make it work. It just wasn't in the cards for us. In the cards. In the cards for us, unfortunately. ⁓ if you're listening on free feeds, you're probably like, it's right on time. It's because it is. It's for the Patreon. Patreon.com slash Manador. Thank you very much for watching. We love you very much, and as always, goodbye.