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Today's article was inspired by the Secret Lair series. The QS Discord (which if you haven't joined, stop reading this article now and do so) was full of the viewpoint that these cards would be easy money. Numerous people and stores will likely be buying the maximum allowed during the purchase window for this drop. Those buyers then have to wait for their product to arrive before trying to make a profit.
Prior to COVID-19, Wizards of the Coast seemed to be relatively quick with getting the products into the buyer's hands. However, once COVID-19 hit, we saw some massive delays in WotC shipping many of these Secret Lair products. This meant that the capital invested in these products was held up in limbo, some for months and months.
One of our members purchased 15 of the Summer Superdrop bundles on June 1, 2020 for $2727.75 which includes taxing and shipping. They arrived mid August, so that $2728 was in limbo for about two and a half months. He stated they were easy to move and his profit was around 20% + all 15 fetchlands, so depending on which fetches he received we could assume his total if he sold everything was probably somewhere in the neighborhood of $4000-$4100. In all honesty, you'd be hard-pressed to get a return like that in any form of investment outside of a very lucky timing on a major announcement from a company.
However, I think it's critical to point out that this member also happens to have a stake in a physical storefront, which may or may not help a lot.
Selling Them Sealed
If you take the TCGplayer Market value for 15 copies of all the sealed Secret Lairs from June we get:
TCG Low Value (including shipping cost) of Sealed Product: $2,527.2
Now, these values don't include the fetchlands which as we previously mentioned add around $750-$825 in additional value. Which brings our new total up to $3,304.2. Sadly though, we need to subtract fees and shipping costs. To make matters worse, if the Secret Lair Drops are purchased sealed you can expect a shipping cost of at least $8.30. With the current USPS shipping cost of a small flat rate box, you can probably fit one in a flat rate envelope which will still run you $7.75. This means that a $30 sale will cost you almost $12 in shipping and TCGplayer fees.
It goes to show that being able to sell these in person and not get hit with shipping costs can make or break this investment. If you multiply everything out including the shipping and fees, you're looking at a net income of something like $1982 + a fetchland value estimated around $700 (once fees and shipping costs are pulled out of those transactions as well). Eliminating the shipping cost really does make or break selling sealed Secret Lairs as a profitable venture.
Selling Singles
Given how the shipping cost eats into any potential profit, it seems that opening them all up and selling the singles will at least let you bypass the much higher shipping costs associated with sealed product. Unfortunately, a lot of the cards in these drops were relatively cheap already, so adding shipping helped keep some of the prices inflated. If people bought multiple copies from you and you only get to charge shipping once, then this value goes even lower.
TCG Low Value of Singles: $1890.15
That $1890 value doesn't even include your selling fees. So assume an additional loss of around 15% which would bring your expected total to $1606.5. Again, you can add additional value in the stained glass planeswalkers and fetches. For the sealed sales, we couldn't also get the stained-glass planeswalker value as they are included in the sealed product.
Not All Drops Are the Same
Running the numbers so far it would seem that these were some options better than others. The Full Sleeves Drop TCGLow value is 98% of the MSRP, whereas, The Path Not Traveled is only 41% of MSRP. The breakdown is as follows;
- Full Sleeves - 98%
- Ornithological Studies - 91%
- Mountain, Go - 76%
- Can you Feel with a Heart of Steel - 75%
- The Path Not Traveled - 41%
It's very important to remember that you only got a random fetch if you purchased the full Super Drop, which was all 5 of these Secret Lairs; even if you thought one of them might be a dud, there was no way to around it. Luckily, the value of the fetchlands at worst negated one of the Secret Lairs if you were unable to sell it.
Conclusion
While the QS member who provided me his valuable input may have done extremely well with his Summer Secret Lairs, the current values of either the sealed or the singles implies that anyone who doesn't have access to selling them in person and bypassing shipping and seller fees is likely to have lost money on this product. If you don't think you could sell these types of products locally, I would definitely avoid purchasing them unless it's for your own personal enjoyment.
It's also important to keep in mind that because of a lot of shipping delays many people who purchased Secret Lairs had a lot of capital tied up for a not-insignificant amount of time. If you own a physical store but rely heavily on quick turnaround of inventory purchasing, these products are riskier than having cash on hand to buy singles. The cost of not having said cash on hand is very real.
To make the tier list, a given deck has to beat the overall average population for the month. The average is my estimate for how many results a given deck "should" produce on MTGO. To be a tiered deck requires being better than "good enough". For September, the average population was 8.37, meaning that a deck needed 9 results to beat the average and make Tier 3. Then, we go one standard deviation above average to set the limit of Tier 3 and cutoff to Tier 2. The Stdev was 9.71, so that means add 10 results and Tier 2 starts with 20 results and runs to 30. Another Stdev above that is Tier 1, meaning 31 decks or more.
On that note, Humans is second place with 37 results after spending August just barely squeaking over the Tier 3 threshold with 8. That's not an increase, that's an explosion, more akin to the deck's 
Tier 1. Mono-Red did improve itself, moving from Tier 3 to 2 with ten additional results. However, that's still a net loss of eleven decks from the top three prowess decks. And unlike in August, I didn't record any other variants that just didn't make the Tierings.
The numbers never tell the full picture. The Mark Twain 
I just marked them as Rakdos Prowess. However, as the week wore on, it became clear that this was the new form of Rakdos Prowess and that it played very differently than before. So I started separating those decks as Rakdos Shadow. Rakdos Prowess should have fallen more, though I'm not going back through the hundreds of decks to figure out by how many.
Tracking the metagame in terms of population is standard practice. However, how do results actually factor in? Better decks should also have better results. In an effort to measure this, I've started using a power ranking system in addition to the prevalence list.
If Tier 1 was small and static, then it's Tier 2 where everything is happening. The power Tier 2 is larger than the population one, and is very different in rankings, too. This again indicates that power was more evenly distributed in September compared to August, and decks had a harder time outshining each other. I'd also like to draw attention to Ad Nauseam moving up from Tier 3 to being fourth place in Tier 2. The deck was clearly being underestimated in September and was able to rack up the points despite not being popular. Which may help to explain Humans's rise as an anti-combo deck.
Finally, we come to the average power rankings. These are found by taking total points earned and dividing it by total decks, which measures points per deck. I use this to measure strength vs. popularity. Measuring deck strength is hard. Using the power rankings certainly helps, and serves to show how justified a deck's popularity is. However, more popular decks will still necessarily earn a lot of points. This is where the averaging comes in. Decks that earn a lot of points because they get a lot of results will do worse than decks that win more events, indicating which deck actually performs better.
Change Is Coming
This 
We saw this one coming, too, as 
While Uro decks 
Modern, meet 
Triggering two land drops in a turn ain't tough in Modern. Just play and crack a fetchland, and voila! To immediately be rewarded with Omnath's entire casting cost for doing so is a bit ridiculous—that's the payoff of two active Lotus Cobras. And it's not like this deck lacks for things to do with all that mana; it's got walkers, interaction, and more. Still, it's a shame RGWU doesn't cleanly cast Cryptic Command or escape Uro.
Last up today is this beautiful disaster. Players using the Borderposts to bounce their own lands have historically favored 
Rounding things out are Auriok Champion and Daxos, Blessed by the Sun to hose aggro, Walking Ballista to decimate creature-combo strategies, and Leyline of Sanctity to beat random combo decks and prevent engines from suffering the wrath of Thoughtseize. And oh yeah, some two-mana enchantments: Runed Halo, a pseudo-removal spell which 
First and foremost are the card selection rules. The original ones read thusly:
Over the course of the 
The first two rules, on the other hand, have lost a lot of their punch. It's not that Modern's got the cantrips to make digging viable for bullets easier now. Opt is not Ponder, and Modern still isn't Legacy-lite. Rather, a major rules change has made finding sideboard cards sufficiently easier that niche answers are much better today than they were in 2016.
For proof, look no further than Veil of Summer. The card is absolutely 
sideboard card gets should reflect its importance to a matchup. When you really need a specific card, you still need to run a full set. The London Mulligan only 
that were worth discussing. I said that players should:
point about artifact decks. However, banning Mox Opal has 
1) Play effective graveyard hate. No exceptions; no excuses
This is harder than it used to be, partially because of more and better cards in the pool, and partially because more information on decks is more widely available. Players will be more prepared and are unlikely to straight-up lose to powerful cards. Strategic changes are needed to compliment and enhance the sideboard cards. Players need to prioritize figuring out what matters most after sideboarding, and either target that aspect or dodge it. A classic example of the former is Jund leaning into the attrition of the mirror by boarding out the more situational discard spells for universally useful planeswalkers and card advantage. An example of the latter is ditching the card advantage fight in the control mirror by boarding in Geist of Saint Traft to slide under clunky counterspells and end things quickly.
Potential Homes
Oh yes, that's Akoum Hellhound! 
This deck looks absolutely brutal, combining the best Rakdos Prowess and the Shadow archetypes have to offer into a blazing-fast aggro-combo behemoth. The sideboard hosts 4 Fatal Push, helping clear enemy boards of other Scourges and breaking up creature combos. But the instant doesn't earn a mainboard slot, presumably because this deck is too fast to need the interaction. 0-mana Tormod's Crypt being selected as graveyard hate is also telling. And should pilots need to go long, Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger is the only card in the 75 using the grave as a resource, and is here to put a beating on any card advantage-focused strategy.
Reason being, it's all-in on the combo and if anything goes wrong, it just loses. I play Death and Taxes and don't fear Belcher because there's nothing I can do against a turn 1 kill, but after that, all it takes is one Deafening Silence, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, or Phyrexian Revoker to completely shut it down. It's a much less precarious matchup than the other combo decks that can win through a single hate piece.
for the perfect hand. However, there is tons of utility to stacking a deck, including sculpting a gameplan to play around the opponent's interaction. With that piece of tech, the Belcher players hit MTGO, trying to make the deck work.
My understanding of 
The primary thing I learned is that the deck is very weird. There are a number of ways for it to win on turn two. There exists a turn one kill too, but I never had that come together. However, if the fast kill doesn't happen, Belcher is actually quite slow. Most of the lands come into play tapped, the sculpting cards cost three, and until you go off, there's not much to do. Storm and Neoform have a lot of play to them because they cast lots of cantrips. I mostly just sat around playing tapped lands until I went off. On that note, the deck only wants to keep hands with at least one Valakut Awakening, Recross the Paths, or Goblin Charbelcher. The only cantrip is Manamorphose, so if the opening doesn't have a payoff, it's unlikely to draw one. As such, aggressive mulligans are crucial.
First and foremost is Thalia. She's a legendary anti-combo card, but wasn't always great against Storm because her tax trades with Goblin Electromancer's reduction effect. This certainly makes it harder for Storm to go off, but not impossible. Neoform can't combo against a Thalia. It can certainly tutor up Griselbrand, but won't have the mana to pay for the Shoals and keep going. Manamorphose is also mana-negative against Thalia.
Meanwhile, Meddling Mage is a huge beating. Storm has multiple combo lines and plays maindeck answers, so Mage is mostly annoying. Neoform scoops to Mage naming Allosaurus Rider, especially game 1. Mage on Belcher is crippling, but not lethal. Most recent versions can only win via resolving Belcher, but they can remove the Mage with Shatterkull Smashing for 4 or more or two Spikefield Hazards. Those aren't impossible to pull off, but the odds aren't great.
After testing, my conclusion is that Belcher is unlikely to be a format-breaking combo. At least in its current form, it's too clunky and slow to ruin Modern. Humans just eats it, and I doubt it can reliably race other combo decks. There's not enough here to recommend it over the premier combo decks like Ad Nauseam or Storm.
