Magic: The Gathering‘s latest Dungeons & Dragons crossover arrives Monday, Feb. 9, with the “Roll for Initiative” Secret Lair Superdrop delivering various reprints of spells and characters all set in the Forgotten Realms. The drop was announced during the Feb. 3 episode of Weekly MTG hosted by Blake Rasmussen, where he was joined by Secret Lair Senior Director Lindsey Bartell and Senior Product Designer Steve Sunu. Each of these drops will be available in non-foil and foil versions, priced at $29.99 or $39.99, respectively.
Because this is a series of seven D&D-themed drops, many of the cards included are reprints from Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate. Fans of Baldur’s Gate 3 might be thrilled to see new versions of Shadowheart and Gale here bundled with cards that directly support their abilities. Across the remaining drops, there’s a good amount of value to be had, but perhaps the very best focuses on Curse of Strahd‘s titular villain. Let’s take a closer look.
Shadowheart’s Devotion
- 1x Shadowheart, Dark Justiciar
- 1x Beseech the Queen
- 1x Black Market
- 1x Victimize
- 1x Ancient Bronze Dragon
Most of the cards here don’t boast a ton of value, but there’s some great synergy to be had between Shadowheart, Dark Justiciar; Black Market; and Victimize for anyone with a black deck that emphasizes sacrificing creatures. Even other multicolored decks that leverage this mechanic, like one featuring Edea, Possessed Sorceress as the Commander, can make great use of these cards. The standout of this drop, however, is definitely the Ancient Bronze Dragon, which costs about $16 or more on TCG Player. Though it’s expensive to cast at seven mana for a 7/7, it comes with flying and lets you roll a d20 and then add X +1/+1 counters on each of up to two creatures whenever it deals combat damage to a player. Roll high on that d20, and this ability can win you games. Even if you roll low, you’re still looking at a fairly consistent buff to two of your creatures.
Gale’s Ambition
- 1x Gale, Waterdeep Prodigy
- 1x Arcane Denial
- 1x Archmage’s Charm
- 1x Brainstorm
- 1x Personal Tutor
There isn’t much going on in the Gale’s Ambition drop unless you have a lot of love for the long-haired wizard from Baldur’s Gate 3. Brainstorm and Arcane Denial have already been reprinted so often they’re really not worth much. Archmage’s Charm has some versatility, but since it costs three blue mana, that pretty much limits it to mono-blue decks. Personal Tutor is probably the best card here because of its sheer value: for a single blue mana, you can search your library for any sorcery card and put it on the top of your deck.
Black Lights & Dark Dungeons
- 1x Seasoned Dungeoneer
- 1x Displacer Kitten
- 1x Tortured Existence
- 1x Sefris of the Hidden Ways
Featuring eye-catching pulpy art and a solid collection of cards, this might be the coolest of all the drops in Roll for Initiative. That said, Seasoned Dungeoneer and Sefris of the Hidden Ways both require that you’re already invested in Magic‘s dreaded “venture into the dungeon” mechanic. Meanwhile, the price for other versions of Displacer Kitten currently hovers around $24, and with good reason. Its core ability lets you blink one of your creatures (removing it from and then returning it to the battlefield) every single time you play a noncreature spell for extra enter the battlefield (ETB) triggers. Investing a lot in instants means you can do this during combat to prevent damage. Tortured Existence is also an interesting choice here. That enchantment was originally part of 1998’s Stronghold set and can only be found in The List (a curated list of older cards that no longer appear in Play Boosters nowadays), making it rather hard to acquire unless you pay the circa $4 to buy it on some kind of marketplace. The initial cast costs one black mana, and then with it on the board, you can pay another single black mana and discard a creature card to return a creature from your graveyard to your hand, thus making it a strong recursion tool.
Shadows Over Baldur’s Gate
- 1x Grim Hireling
- 1x Wild-Magic Sorcerer
- 1x Xorn
- 1x Prosper, Tome-Bound
These four cards encourage you to create a deck with Prosper, Tome-Bound as the Commander, leaning into a dual focus on casting spells from exile and generating treasure tokens as a result. Wild-Magic Sorcerer activates cascade every time you cast a spell from exile, so you’d get easy free spellcasting there. Xorn lets you generate an extra treasure token every time you create one, making it useful as well. Grim Hireling is easily the most expensive and useful card in this bunch with a market price between $16 and $18. It generates two treasure tokens whenever you deal combat damage to an opposing player, but for one mana, it also lets you sacrifice treasure tokens to reduce a target creature’s power and toughness by that amount. It’s not a legendary, so you can’t have it be your Commander, but if you’re running any kind of treasure-focused deck — like Korvold, Fae-Cursed King — then it’s a must-include.
Whispers in Candlekeep
- 1x Counterspell
- 1x Dragonborn Champion
- 1x Klauth, Unrivaled Ancient
- 1x Miirym, Sentinel Wyrm
Klauth, Unrivaled Ancient basically invented firebending long before the Avatar: The Last Airbender set formally introduced it to Magic. Better yet, you get to keep the mana it generates until the end of your turn rather than lose it at the end of combat. (Though Ozai, the Phoenix King does this even better, allowing you to keep the excess mana.) Miirym, Sentinel Wyrm is solid, but only in green-blue-red dragon decks and nowhere else, so that’s a tad limiting. Dragonborn Champion is fine for helping you draw cards, but you need a way to reliably deal at least five damage to a player (probably with another dragon with flying). And you really don’t need yet another Counterspell, do you?
Strahd’s Descent
- 1x Strefan, Maurer Progenitor as “The Devil Strahd”
- 1x Bloodletter of Aclazotz as “Cast-Off Consort”
- 1x End the Festivities
- 1x Voldaren Estate as “Castle Ravenloft”
It’s a shame that Wizards went with Strefan instead of Edgar Markov to finally give us the iconic Strahd von Zarovich in Magic. Frankly, Strefan isn’t all that interesting with his clunky Blood token abilities, whie an Edgar reprint would have sent players into an absolute frenzy. End the Festivities seems like an incredibly powerful early-game sorcery in four-player Commander, hitting every opposing player, creature, and planeswalker for one point of damage — and for only one red mana! Castle Ravenloft is decent for vampire decks, and a must-include for those that lean into blood tokens (aka, perfect for Strefan/Strahd). The huge draw of this particular drop, however, is Cast-Off Consort. Originally from 2023’s The Lost Caverns of Ixalan as Bloodletter of Aclazotz, it’s a vampire demon that doubles the amount of life an opponent loses. That explains why it typically goes for around $30 online.
Lands of the Forgotten Realms
- 2x Plains
- 2x Island
- 2x Swamp
- 2x Mountain
- 2x Forest
Drops that focus entirely on basic lands are a bit of a rarity, but Wizards seems to be banking on the fact that players have a lot of love for the Forgotten Realms. Each land here represents a different location in the Forgotten Realms, namely Waterdeep on plains, the Moonshae Isles on islands, the Underdark on swamps, Neverwinter on mountains, and the jungles of Chult on forests.
The “Roll for Initiative” Secret Lair Superdrop arrives on Monday, Feb. 9.
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Author: 360 Technology Group
