Wizards of the Coast has announced that they will release Secret Lair: Ultimate Edition 2 in the Spring of 2021. It will contain alternate, full art, foil versions of all 10 of the new Pathway lands and will only be available at local game stores.
Don’t miss our coverage of today’s other Secret Lair news: The Foglio Secret Lair, the revelation that The Walking Dead Secret Lair was the best-selling drop ever, and a preview of five drops coming in 2021.
The Pathway lands were introduced in this Fall’s Rise of Zendikar expansion as dual lands that took advantage of the set’s “modal double-faced card” mechanic. Six Pathways were included in the set—Branchloft Pathway // Boulderloft Pathway, Brightclimb Pathway // Grimclimb Pathway, Clearwater Pathway // Murkwater Pathway, Cragcrown Pathway // Timbercrown Pathway, Needleverge Pathway // Pillarverge Pathway, and Riverglide Pathway // Lavaglide Pathway—rather than in Magic’s traditional five- or 10-card cycles. The remaining four Pathways will be printed in Magic’s next set, Kaldheim, which will release on February 5, 2021.
Wizards revealed the Ultimate Edition versions of the six Pathways from Zendikar on today’s Weekly MTG stream, featuring art from Donato Giancola, Paul Scott Canavan, Alayna Danner, Piotr Dura, Adam Paquette, and Yeong-Hao Han. The cards have a “borderless foil treatment,” according to Product Architect Mark Heggen.
The six Zendikar Pathways—with art set on Kaldheim!
But, rather than creating new art set on Zendikar, the Ultimate Edition versions of the six Zendikar Rising Pathways are set on Kaldheim! These 12 pieces of art are actually our first look at the plane of Kaldheim outside of the Planechase card that introduced the plane.
Likewise, the four remaining Pathways that will be included in the Kaldheim set next year will get Ultimate Edition versions set on Zendikar with art by Grady Frederick, Lucas Staniec, Jokubas Uogintas, and Johannes Voss.
Secret Lair: Ultimate Edition 2 follows in the footsteps of the original Secret Lair: Ultimate Edition that was released earlier this year. The original Ultimate Edition contained the five enemy fetch lands and was similarly only available at local game stores. Despite Wizards’ estimation that it would be priced similar to Commander Anthology—which was sold for $165—the desirability of fetch lands in general combined with the limited promo art caused prices for Ultimate Edition to skyrocket well beyond those expectations, often selling for more than $300.
However, Wizards says that they are printing “substantially” more copies of Ultimate Edition 2 than they did of the original Ultimate Edition. “We expect these to be more readily available,” Heggen said. “There will be more of these per store and we expect that they will sell [for] less than Ultimate Edition 1.”