The Sonic x Magic: The Gathering Secret Lair Drop Saw Eager Fans Running Headfirst Into Long Waits and Queues

Magic: The Gathering's Secret Lair crossover with Sonic the Hedgehog went unrecorded this morning, and it was predictably rather popular. Within minutes, radical trying to get the peculiar tally of cards were met with agelong queue times and uncertainty.

Secret Lair is Magic's peculiar enactment of cards, often taking creator liberties oregon caller approaches to classical cards. In the past, these person ranged from re-envisionings and experimental paper layouts to full-on franchise crossovers. Final Fantasy, which had its ain wildly fashionable crossover main set, besides got its ain Secret Lair tally that sold retired reasonably fast.

One would presume that Sonic the Hedgehog, the Blue Blur himself, would garner rather a spot of interest. And arsenic it turns out, helium did; those anxious to bargain the Secret Lair acceptable featuring Sonic and pals flooded successful this morning, and queue times changeable up.

— Arin Hanson (@egoraptor) July 14, 2025

Complaints flooded societal media, arsenic diligent Magic and Sonic fans alike waited for their accidental to prime up the cards. While immoderate of these are reprints of classical Magic cards—like Unexpected Windfall, Sol Ring, and Lightning Greaves—others are caller cards, and imaginable Commanders for those looking to physique a platform astir their favourite Sonic character.

Not agelong aft the acceptable went live, the Secret Lair relationship posted a connection saying the pre-order tract is presently experiencing "extremely precocious traffic" and hold times mightiness beryllium longer than usual. Later updates confirmed the squad was alert of issues affecting queue times and is moving to resoluteness them.

The Secret Lair website is presently experiencing highly precocious postulation and hold times whitethorn beryllium longer than usual. Please show the queue leafage for real-time updates, including merchandise availability successful your region.

— MTG Secret Lair (@MTGSecretLair) July 14, 2025

In my ain anecdotal experience, I went to load up a cart and enactment immoderate cards successful astir fractional an hr after the acceptable went live, and person been watching a queue leafage beryllium present with "more than an hour" arsenic the expected hold time. I've been talking to radical who person been capable to get through, gradually, but it does look similar there's rather a spot of patience indispensable to get this set.

Wizards of the Coast did instrumentality a bounds connected items, astatine two-per-item, which seems to person helped a bit. There has been immoderate disapproval implicit the model, arsenic Secret Lair went from print-to-order to a limited-print-run exemplary past year.

While I've heard a fewer stories of frustrated waiting, I've besides heard from respective radical who were diligent and managed to get the cards they were after. We'll larn implicit the coming days however scarce the acceptable winds up being, particularly arsenic immoderate merchandise moves onto third-party seller sites.

Meanwhile, the adjacent Magic: The Gathering acceptable Edge of Eternities volition driblet connected August 1, with pre-release opening connected July 25.

Eric is simply a freelance writer for IGN.