Last updated on May 23, 2026
Many, many copies of Lightning Greaves
One might call it a greave-ous mistake. One might instead call it yet another error in the Hasbro-to-MTG pipeline. Whatever one would call it, the cat’s out of the bag: There simply weren’t enough copies of Lightning Greaves printed for the financial quarter.
Lightning In a Boot-le
Lightning Greaves | Illustration by Jeremy Jarvis
Lightning Greaves debuted in the Boomer Age of Magic: The Gathering, and has since become what Wizards of the Coast believes to be the most popular Magic card of all time. Since the dawn of Commander, players have been shrouding themselves out of interacting with their own creatures and granting haste to creatures they have no business attacking with, so much so that the boots have become an icon of the format. Once dominated by Sol Ring, the posterchild of EDH is now one particularly fast af pair of shoes.
This is evidenced by the Secret Lair team’s obsession with creating drops featuring a new version of Lightning Greaves. Across just 2026’s main and supplementary releases you can find versions of Lightning Greaves in all of these sets:
- Secrets of Strixhaven Commander
- The bad Deadpool Secret Lair
- The Payless Collab Secret Lair
- The Fallout Secret Lair advertising season 2 of Amazon Prime’s hit TV series of the same name, Fallout.
- Nike’s Air Force 1 Universes Beyond crossover set.
And that’s all just this year, which doesn’t include the 50+ other reprints across Secret Lair drops, Commander precons, and Mirrodin Remastered.
A Secret Lair Shoe-In
We were able to sit down with Secret Lair’s Product Director and self-proclaimed Shoe & Boot Connoisseur Lacey McChasey Jr. to talk about why Lightning Greaves gets picked for new drops so frequently.
It’s all a matter of supply and demand.
-Lacey McChasey, Jr.
McChasey quoted supply and demand as the main driver, whilst polishing a particularly well-tailored Santoni brown-leather lace-up. “Commander decks are virtually unplayable without a copy of Lightning Greaves, and given the sheer number of people moving into Commander these days, we have to keep up with demand.”
This logic tracks, since Hasbro’s latest financial report claimed the Commander player base was up by “approxiamtely three quadrillion percent,” which is even higher than Q1’s 2-quadrillion percent increase.
When asked why Swiftfoot Boots didn’t receive the same treatment, McChasey simply responded: “Well, that card totally sucks. I’d rather push out more copies of Lavaspur Boots before we print preemo copies of Swifty.”
Even with this mentality, the recent financial reports indicate a failure to meet player demand, which will likely result in an increased number of Boots reprints in future sets.
Oops All Boots Secret Lair
The non-stop printing of Lightning Greaves is coming to a head (or foot, rather) with the release of 2027’s “Oops All Boots” Secret Lair Drop, which will be available directly through the Rack Room Shoes website.
This drop contains five reprinted, old-art versions of the popular Commander cards:
Remember, Secret Lair drops always contain an unknown bonus card as well. It’s unclear at the time of writing what players can expect that card to be.
The drop will go on sale for $179.99, the price of a pair of men’s Timberland Lace-Up boots at Rack Rooms Shoes.
Follow Draftsim for awesome articles and set updates:
2 Comments
The cheapest copy of greaves still sits at $4+ there is good reason for them to keep printing it to the dirt.
Oh, 100% agree, joke still stands.
Add Comment