Monster Hunter Wows With Spectacular Art, Drops the Ball with Reprint Choices

Last updated on November 26, 2025

Vaevictis Asmadi, the Dire | Illustration by Oxygen

Editor's Note: WotC has announced that they're reworking this Secret Lair Superdrop due to poor reception. Stay tuned for updates!

Wizards of the Coast smashed the “big monster” button yesterday with the reveal of the Secret Lair x Monster Hunter Superdrop: Four drops, 19 reprints, a Valstrax Sol Ring promo…

… yet without a single piece of cool equipment. Or too many valuable reprints.

But they did manage to include a typos in one of the card names.

Wait… Monster What?

Drakuseth, Maw of Flames (Rathalos, King of the Skies) | Illustration by Brock Grossman

Monster Hunter is a videogame franchise, developed by Capcom. Monster Hunter: World, released in 2018, is Capcom's best-selling video game of all time.

As you may guess from the title, it's all about hunting big monsters. But one quirk (that, as we'll see in a bit, is a big source of disappointment for this Secret Lair…) is that, unlike traditional RPGs, your character doesn't have stats you can raise, or experience points you can gain: It's all about “I'ma gear up and take you down.”

And, of course, about getting better and better gear. You use loot and monster parts to forge and upgrade the tools of your monster-hunting trade, which in turn let you hunt bigger game.

In other words: Monster Hunter's gameplay screams “equipment cards and artifacts”… which the Monster Hunter Secret Lair sorely lacks.

What the Wizards Say…

Deflecting Swat | Illustration by Izzy

“I cannot believe they botched a MH crossover this hard,” notes u/AnuraSmells in the most-upvoted comment from the reveal thread on Reddit, and summing up a recurring sentiment among MTG players. “This should have been easy money. Such terrible card selections.”

“This should by all means be the IP I drop all my money on and get every card, but it just isn't. The art is really nice but the card choices are questionable at best and I just have no interest in anything,” complaints u/Dystratix. “Like I look at the Velkhana card and go oh shit that's cool, then read the rules text and go, oh I don't care actually.”

One common complaint is the disappointingly low reprint value. According to calculations by the MTG finance community, “The Hunter” drop is worth about $20–$30 when you consider regular prints… but the other three are worth less than $10 bucks each.

But the core problem is that the card selection is just plain bad.

What Are Monster Hunter Fans Saying?

While MTG players seem clearly unhappy about pretty much everything about this Secret Lair (card selection, reprint value, lack of cool gear for a franchise that is all about cool gear)…

… Monster Hunter fans are arguably even more disappointed.

“[This is] the most hyped I had ever been for a secret lair,” says u/HadToGuItToEm in one of the threads discussing the Super Drop in the Monster Hunter subreddit, “until I read the card list. Most of the cards aren’t very playable and on top of that the reprint value is terrible.”

“It’s kind of impressive just how bland the flavour text is here,” notes u/Pytas in one of the most upvoted replies of another thread.

To be fair not all comments are negative; DarkHero, a Monster Hunter YouTuber with a fairly large channel, does seem to fall in the “Shut up and take my money!” camp…

Source: Post on X

… but, at least at the time of writing, positive comments are pretty hard to come by.

What Do the Spellcheckers Say?

Rotten cherry on top, WotC managed to misspell some of the names.

“To be quite frank… I'm just wondering how they messed up spelling Kokoto,” notes u/Carnet about a typo that both MTG players and Monster Hunter fans were quick to point out.

There were even more typos in the reveal thread (although thankfully not the cards themselves), prompting more than one joke about the Kushala Dora the Explorer Secret Lair. 

Final Nails

Weaponize the Monsters | Illustration by Magali Villeneuve

There's little doubt that Monster Hunter is a franchise that a good chunk of MTG players would like to see. And which, unlike other crossovers, Monster Hunter's setting does blend very well with Magic's plane – players that may retch at the sight of SpongeBob SquarePants cards in their Magic game won't have such a big deal playing against big demons and dragons.

But, WotC… you totally botched this one, I'm afraid. Even big Valstrax fans don't care too much about their cool dragon being a mana rock. And doubly so when some cards are misspelled.

“I LOVE Monster Hunter, and these look absolutely terrible,” laments u/beefy-boy. “Easy pass.”