Last updated on April 23, 2025
Curse of Opulence – illus. Kieran Yanner
One little Magic mystery has been solved! Without fanfare and while everybody was waiting for the Commander unbans announcement, Wizards of the Coast finally revealed what's up with the four sleeves that showed up on MTG Arena four months ago, which had art that matched no known Magic card…
Source: Reddit
… and that they again teased last January, when WotC formally introduced the Secret Lair Chaos Vault.
Turns out the four cards – gorgeously illustrated by Finnish artist Heikala – are all part of the latest Secret Lair, Adventures of the Little Witch, which went online for sale yesterday.
Heikala's illustrations for this Secret Lair have received a lot of praise among Magic players… but WotC's card selection, and above the increased price point for the foil treatment, are getting a lot of harsh criticism.
Foil Cards for Double the Price
Source: WotC's Secret Lair
The regular version of Adventures of the Little Witch sells for $29.99, which is in line with previous SL offerings. The card selection may leave something to be desired – none of the four cards is particularly popular in Commander, nor has too much of a competitive edge in other Magic formats – but the art is stunningly gorgeous.
The Adventures of the Little Witch Foil Edition, on the other hand, is priced at an outrageous $59.99, instead of the usual extra $10.
“That spike in price for the foil version is insane,” notes u/donethemath on Reddit. “$30 for the non foil but $60 for the foil? What's up with that?” wonders u/felipeshaman in the thread's most-upvoted reply.
“I love Heikala's artwork and was ready to get this both foil and non foil,” says u/Razzlesdazzle, “but the foil being double the price of the non… Wizards has lost their damn minds.”
Pretty much every commenter agrees that this is great art, but at outrageous prices.
The Four Cards from Adventures of the Little Witch
Realms Uncharted
As headliner, Realms Uncharted is not an entirely bad choice of a Magic card. It will be this green instant's first reprint since Rise of the Eldrazi. And the original printing is a somewhat pricey card, sitting at about $10-$12.
Source: MTGStocks
What's more, a near-mint, foil version of the original Realms Uncharted is worth about $55 on TCGplayer right now, although that's an “apples to oranges” comparison given how rare foil cards were at the time.
Realms Uncharted sees some Commander play (about 1% of EDH decks, according to EDHREC) and has competitive chops in Duel commander, often fighting under Azusa, Lost But Seeking's banner.
Serenity
Serenity is a very strange enchantment that removes itself, and all other artifacts and enchantments at your upkeep. It's a very old card, hailing from Weatherlight; which makes it old enough to only be playable in Eternal formats like Vintage, Legacy, and Commander.
While it does see some competitive play in Vintage, it's nearly impossible to find a Commander deck that wants this white enchantment. It hovered in price at about $15-$20 for the most part of 2022, but has steadily declined in price since then, and its recent reprint in Mystery Booster 2 has pushed the price below $1.
Esika’s Chariot
Esika's Chariot had its moment under the sun and was a 10-bucks card two years ago, during its Standard tenure. It still sees competitive play in Pioneer, usually as a four-of in Greasefang Parhelion decks, and you can occasionally bump into it in Commander games.
But, like Serenity, this legendary artifact's price has steadily dropped to around a dollar nowadays, above all after its reprint in Bloomburrow Commander.
Secret Rendezvous
Secret Rendezvous, a group-hug card-draw spell, is the most popular Commander card of the bunch… although also the cheapest at about 25 cents. Like Esika's Chariot it was recently reprinted as part of Bloomburrow's Commander precons.
Ha Ha, Hilarious
Smothering Tithe | art by Daisuke Tatsuma
“These reprints were individually selected to go with the art style and tone of Heikala's amazing work, and we think they turned out great,” says the Adventures of the Little Witch ‘s official site. “But then later, for fun, we challenged our designer to brew up the least-terrible possible Legacy deck he could using all four of them. Someone please go take down a tournament with this thing, can you imagine how hilarious that would be?”
While fun is of course in the Eyes of the Beholder…
… when beholding the linked deck in Moxfield, it becomes apparent that not even WotC's designer thought too highly of these cards.
“The list runs a 1 off of Rendezvous and Realms, [and] 2 [off of] Chariots,” points out u/hiddenpoint. “And then it doesn't even main deck the 2x Serenity.”
Hilarious, truly. “Amazing art that I would [have] loved to have,” says u/Walzhy, summarizing the sentiment among Magic players, “but they need to print them on cards that are actually valuable.”
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1 Comment
The artwork for these are absolutely lovely <3
Completely understandable that many people want the art on more valuable cards in order to make the cards themselves feel like a more worthwhile investment.
But I do appreciate that they actually tried to make the art befit the cards.
Because I do think it makes the art become more of the focus of these cards, and it makes the art the thing that quite literally gives them value, which allows the people, who actually do want these FOR the art a better chance to get a hold of them, rather than having them be horded, and traded amongst people who care more for their potential monetary resale value of the cards, than they do for the art itself.
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