Before becoming the first mass-market TCG and a global sensation, playtest Magic: The Gathering cards were printed on paper with placeholder images and plain text. Secret Lair x MSCHF: The Zeta Set returns to the visuals of those do-it-yourself cards, in partnership with absurdist art group MSCHF.
Named in line with the original Alpha and Beta test cards, The Zeta Set is comprised of 121 reprints from across Magic’s history, from early icons to Commander staples. Wizards of the Coast and MSCHF collaborated, using public-domain images and MSCHF’s photography, with card text formatted to resemble the original playtest cards.
True to MSCHF’s nature as a group that pushes the line, the art selections and card compositions get radical. Mono-Black devotion all-star Gray Merchant of Asphodel appears with “Gary” handwritten on the card, referring to the card’s community nickname. Sideboard counterspell all-star Spell Pierce is represented with the word “pierce” spelled out in tiles. Cruel Reality, an enchantment with the imposing subtype of Curse, is represented wth a simple image of a woman working in a cubicle.
Most striking of the set is the reprint of Eternity Vessel, which doesn’t follow the same playtest style. Instead, the image is of an actual copy of Eternity Vessel, sealed in a mock-up card-grading slab, then printed back out. The card’s grading is a 6 – the same as its mana cost, keeping it visible in the top right of the card like all the rest. It’s a funny joke that also highlights the careful and clever art direction of The Zeta Set.
For a splash of modernity, each card in The Zeta Set comes in three visual styles. Photocopy is the classic black-and-white printout look like the first playtests. Photocopy Negative inverts that style, and Color Banding evokes the office frustration of a CMYK printer error, with colored lines streaking across the cards.
What is in the Zeta set?
The Zeta Set is the first booster pack product from Secret Lair. A pack is priced at $19.92, a homage to the year before Magic’s release. Each seven-card booster contains the following rarity distribution:
- 3 Common cards
- 2 Uncommon cards
- 1 Wildcard of any rarity
- 1 Rare or Mythic Rare card
Secret Lair x MSCHF: The Zeta Set is available in limited quantities on the Chaos Vault page of the Secret Lair website…or it was supposed to be.
Instead, the release of The Zeta Set went so poorly that Wizards of the Coast issued a statement calling what transpired “a disaster.” Definitely not a great sign of things. 40 minutes after the start of the sale, Wizards paused the entire Secret Lair waiting room queue. This means that everyone waiting for a chance to check out was completely on hold.
After 20 more minutes of waiting, buyers were able to try to buy packs of The Zeta Set – but that window quickly closed as the product completely sold out. Social media posts suggest that the sellout occurred within 10 minutes of the queue restarting.
What is not known is exactly why things transpired this way. There are some factors that likely played into the events: Secret Lair’s limited-run nature, a 12-pack purchasing limit, and the continuing shift of TCGs away from being games and toward being more and more collectibles may all have created high demand.
However, Wizards of the Coast themselves are not sure. Their statement promises a thorough root cause analysis to be shared later. The statement mentions “external tampering” as a possible cause, which is particularly concerning. Things like the long queue process Secret Lair uses are frustrating but are intended to prevent exploitation by bad actors. If that’s not the case, that’s a huge problem for this entire product line.
For now, those who think they successfully ordered Zeta Set packs and haven’t received confirmation should contact Wizards’ customer support team for assistance. Customers with other questions should do the same.
It’s a quiet comfort, but Secret Lair director Matthew Hodgins says that there are no current plans for another booster product. In the same update, he confirms the next Secret Lair Commander Deck will be print-to-demand.
Players can sign up for future Secret Lair alerts on the Secret Lair website.