Whether you love them, hate them, or just get enraged waiting in the queue to try and get them, there’s little doubt that Secret Lair has proven itself to be a goldmine for the folks at Wizards of the Coast.

These special drops highlight different properties that a player, even five years ago, would scoff at as being impossible inclusions, bringing new eyes to the long-running card game.

As the releases are limited, some of the cards included in these Secret Lair drops are highly sought after, whether it is from a collector standpoint or just because folks love the art.

#10 Armiger Unleashed (Forge Anew - Rainbow Foil)

Equipment cards saw a bit of a boost in popularity in 2025, thanks in part to popular Commander decks like the Final Fantasy VII precon, Limit Break, so it should come as no surprise that Armiger Unleased, which focuses on Equipment, would have sold well last year.

This says nothing of the incredible success and popularity of the Final Fantasy set. Thankfully, Armiger Unleased is a pretty solid card on its own, even when you take away the Final Fantasy art and name, letting you equip a creature at instant speed and getting one free equip on your turn. Great for those especially expensive situations, such as Kaldra Compleat’s 7-cost.

#9 Super State (and Rainbow Foil)

Super State was a brand-new card introduced in Secret Lair’s Sonic: Friends and Foes drop and gave us not only an incredibly powerful aura for your Voltron decks, but also probably the closest thing to a Super Saiyan card we will ever get.

Giving the attached creature a host of abilities, including flying, first strike, trample, and haste, along with a boost to a base power and toughness of 9/9, even with its high cost of 7 colorless mana to cast, it’s not hard to see why it was such a hot commodity card in 2025. The sick art of Super Sonic didn’t hurt either.

#8 Knuckles the Echidna (Rainbow Foil)

With all sorts of tokens taking up space on tables nowadays, with things like Treasure, Food, and Lander tokens, a card like Knuckles the Echidna from the Sonic the Hedgehog drops is a great commander card to take advantage of the do-dads.

This comes largely from his special win condition that allows you to win if you control more 30 or more artifacts at the beginning of your upkeep. Put Knuckles behind a “Walls of Ba Sing Say” and alongside an “Academy Manufactor” and just bide your time to victory!

#7 Deadly Rollick (and Rainbow Foil)

The Secret Lair x Marvel’s Deadpool: April Pool’s Day drop was full of cards (expect to see a couple more), but Deadly Rollick and its glorious unicorn has found its way to this list.

Featuring Deadpool riding a unicorn and a scared Cable, this card is a great removal instant for fans of the commander format (which seems like is a majority of players these days), as having your commander - or any commander - under your control lets you exile a target creature for free. A free instant exile removal card? That’s more appealing than a fresh, hot chimichanga! No wonder it’s sold so well!

#6 Deadpool, Trading Card (and Rainbow Foil)

Not to be shown up by a silly Unicorn, it’s no surprise that Deadpool himself as a trading card would sell better as “Deadpool, Trading Card”. Cards with silly novel abilities are fun to pick up and build around, and this card’s “exchange his text box with another creatures” lends itself to some funny combos.

This card was also the only new card in that drop, but it captures that chaotic nature of the character brilliantly, and makes for a fun potential commander, making it no surprise that it sold so well last year in the secondary market.

#5 Plains (#1513)

A card doesn’t need to have a neat gimmick or be incredibly powerful to sell well, and the special Plains card from the Raining Cats and Dogs Commander Precon is a perfect example of this.

This lovely card features the bestest furry cats and dogs lounging and playing in a pristine field of green grass and flowers. In the wild times that we live in, this imagery just gives warm fuzzy feelings, and I find myself wishing I were there in that same grassland plains, and judging by the fact that this was the fifth best-selling card of the year on TCGPlayer, I think I’m not alone in that sentiment.

#4 An Offer You Can't Refuse

Featuring a kittified version of the popular Planeswalker, Jace, this special printing of “An Offer You Can’t Refuse” was actually printed back in 2023 as a Secret Lair Showdown card. Making it only available as a reward for attending and participating at a competitive event.

The card itself is a pretty solid commander staple, allowing you to counter a non-creature spell for only a single blue, at the expense of giving the opponent two treasure tokens, but for the low cost and the kitty Jace, the community has deemed it a worthwhile tradeoff in the number four spot.

#3 Porom's Silence Magic (Silence - Rainbow Foil)

Turns are a lot less stressful, especially in the end game, when you don’t have to worry about your opponents doing something that throws a wrench in your well-laid plans, and that’s why Silence is almost a must-have in decks running white.

Porom’s Silence Magic is a fairly common bonus card from the Secret Lair x Final Fantasy drop from last year, which is a reskin of the powerful spell depicting the twins wielding their magic. The mix of utility and just really stinkin'-good artwork booster this Secret Lair card all the way to the third-best-selling card of 2025.

#2 Harmless Offering (Rainbow Foil)

Yet another card from the Deadpool: April Pool’s Day drop, the Gwenpool carrying Jeff the Land Shark reskin of “Harmless Offering” stands at last year’s number two spot.

With a low price and silly artwork, this card can be a fun addition to multi-color decks when you pair it with something like Nine Lives, Demonic Pact, Archfiend of the Dross or any other cards that can impose a stipulation that will cause the person holding the card to lose the game.

Normally, you want to steal other people's cards, and turning that on its head with Gwenpool and Jeff and giving someone else a card you don’t want is a great way to get a reaction out of people.

#1 Command Tower (#7012 - Rainbow Foil)

Nostalgia is a powerful thing, if the SpongeBob pineapple house “Command Tower” is any indication.

While there are far more valuable cards from the SpongeBob SquarePants Secret Lair release, the affordability of Pineapple House Tower, along with the recognizable and iconic imagery it’s easy to see why this bonus card reaches the top of the list for 2025.

It also doesn’t hurt that nearly every commander deck out their has a copy of some sort, so there is always a demand for new and unique towers to add in to the next deck.

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Scott White is a freelance contributor to IGN, assisting with tabletop games and guide coverage. Follow him on X/Twitter or Bluesky.

Bungie has revealed plans to change Marathon in some key ways just a few days after launch, outlining early patch notes for an update due out next week.

In a tweet, the developer said that “in the near future” it will adjust the amount of Lux, Marathon’s in-game currency, you get for the $10 bundle so that it grants 1,120 Lux, up from 1,100.

This is important because currently a runner skin costs 1,120 Lux, but you can’t buy 1,120 Lux exactly from the store. Instead, you have to spend $10 to get 1,100 Lux (just 20 Lux shy of what you need), and then another $5 to get 500 Lux on top, which in total dollar terms matches the price of the $15 bundle available from the store.

As IGN has reported, this had caused a stink within Marathon’s burgeoning community, with some players accusing Bungie of resorting to “scummy tactics” for the extraction shooter’s monetization. As a part of the change, Bungie will credit 20 Lux to players for each $10 Lux bundle they purchased before this tweak occurred.

But the virtual currency denominations aren’t the only point of contention. Marathon’s $10 Battle Pass has also been roundly criticized for not offering enough value (poor quality items, no premium currency back). And the limited supply stickers, which you can place on your weapons, can’t be applied to all your weapons.

Without going into specifics, Bungie said it was aware of the feedback on Marathon’s cosmetics. “We want to ensure that when you spend in Marathon you feel like you are getting great value and discussing ways to improve this experience,” it said.

Meanwhile, Bungie outlined early patch notes for Marathon’s first update, due out next week. All the changes seem designed to make the extraction shooter an easier experience. The highlight for me is the increased number of Med Cabinets and Munitions Crates that can spawn on the Perimeter map, and the increased amount of starting ammo in the free Sponsored Kits.

Marathon is a very difficult game in which it’s easy to run out of ammo. The enemy AI feels particularly powerful, too, so one wrong turn can end your run in the blink of an eye, especially if you don’t have the ammo to fight back.

Marathon first update early patch notes:Increased the distance objective nav points appear from 10m to 20m.Increased the number of Med Cabinets and Munitions Crates that can spawn on Perimeter.Increased the amount of starting ammo in MIDA, CyberAcme, and Arachne free Sponsored Kits.

I've seen plenty of debate about these balance changes, with some saying they're much needed, others expressing concern that what's important about the Marathon experience - this ultra challenging extraction loop and the slow but rewarding power climb - is diminished by what they believe is an effort to make the game more palatable to casual players.

As I've mentioned in previous reporting, part of the challenge comes from the very nature of Marathon as an extraction shooter. If you die, you lose all your gear. And not just what you looted while out on the battlefield, but what you brought in. And given how easy it is to die in Marathon, it can feel like a brutally punishing video game.

Are people bouncing off Marathon because of this? Are some put off by its steep learning curve? In the two days Marathon has been live, it hit a peak Steam concurrent player count of 88,337. While that's an impressive start for most video games (and let's not forget Marathon is also out on consoles), is it enough for Bungie, which is under pressure to deliver for its owner Sony after recent financial failings?

We’ve got plenty more on Marathon, including one Bungie developer’s commitment to “fontslop,” and Bungie’s words of reassurance on Marathon’s difficulty curve. Check out IGN's Marathon review so far to find out what we think.

If you're jumping into Marathon, check out IGN's Beginner's Guide and Tips guide to familiarize yourself with how the game works (and don't forget to check out the Things to Do First!). You'll likely find yourself running out of inventory space pretty fast, so find out how to get more in our How to Unlock More Backpack Slots guide, and if you're playing with a controller, make sure you're applying the Best Controller Settings.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

On its Early Access launch day, before I'd unlocked anything, I was struck by how much Slay the Spire 2 felt more like a remake of the original Slay the Spire than a sequel. The tutorial didn't tell me – someone with over 1,000 hours in the original – anything I didn't already know. The map where you choose your path and whether to aim for riskier battles with higher rewards or potentially lower-stakes encounters (which can still turn wild on you) is exactly the same, and the turn-based combat follows basically all the old rules of how you spend your allotted energy points to play cards that build up your armor and hack away at the enemy's defenses and health until one side or the other is dead.

That's not a bad thing when your starting point is one of the all-time greats – just a few months ago I lavished praise on another deckbuilding roguelike sequel, Monster Train 2, for a similar approach. And as I've progressed and unlocked some of the new content over the first eight or so hours of runs, this follow-up has come more into its own: Two entirely new characters – the Regent and the Necrobinder – join three revamped ones, and loads of new enemies, bosses, artifacts, and random events make Slay the Spire 2 feel worthy of being called a sequel, even if it's extremely familiar in its opening hours. It also has a new art style that's very quickly won me over with its larger characters and less subtle animations (including more elaborate enemy deaths) that make it a bit more lively even though everybody's holding still most of the time.

What we said about Slay The Spire (2019)

Slay the Spire takes some of the best parts of deckbuilding games, roguelikes, and dungeon crawlers and mixes them into a wholly new and extremely satisfying package. It encourages experimentation, gives you time to make mistakes, and will challenge you immensely as you navigate your way through floor after floor of entertaining, puzzle-like fights. It’s an idea so good that it’s inspired a dozen games like it before it even left early access, but is executed so well that none of them even come close to matching it. - Tom Marks, January 25, 2019

Score: 9

Read the full Slay the Spire review.

Since we're still so early, I've been concentrating my progression efforts on my old favorite character, the Defect. This faulty robot is a lot chunkier-looking this time, but his orb-summoning and evoking mechanic is carried over almost unchanged. However, balance is different enough that as someone who routinely blasts through Daily Climbs in the original, I've only managed to win a couple of runs thus far – my first, as the Ironclad (which is probably kinda rigged to make us feel powerful), and one more since as the Defect. Part of that is that there are quite a lot of new cards to unlock that will certainly make things a bit easier than when I'm working with just the basics, and part of it is me cockily charging head-first into battles with elites and bosses I've never seen before and getting my butt handed to me as a learning experience. But it's not like I go into a roguelike of any type expecting to win runs early on – losing and then improving is a big part of the fun.

One area developer Mega Crit has definitely gotten a little more inventive is with special events, some of which can give you a sort of quest that can span across acts (think a more formal version of the first game’s Red Mask interaction). I've gotten a map in Act 1 that led me to a huge treasure pile in Act 2, and a key in one act that opens a chest in the next. There's also a bird egg that must be hatched at a rest site (so it comes at the opportunity cost of not healing yourself or upgrading a card). Those are represented by unplayable cards until their quest is resolved, so there's at least a minor consequence to carrying them with you because they take up space in your deck and hand that could've gone to something useful in the moment.

I've also seen a bit more willingness to let us tweak how cards work beyond simply upgrading them. A few new modifiers like letting you re-use a card, making defense cards exhaust but gain +1 after use, giving you an extra energy the first time you play a card, making a card retainable, etc. – these all have the potential to make builds a lot more flexible than in the original.

The big feature that truly sets Slay the Spire 2 apart is the up-to-four-player co-op mode, and in the couple of runs I've done with others, it's been more than a little chaotic. Within each turn of combat, it's a real-time free-for-all where everybody plays their cards at once, so if you're not coordinating your attacks over voice chat it gets crazy extremely quickly as the cards stack up and wait their turns for their animations to play out. If you plan on getting anywhere as a team you'll definitely want to make sure you're working together, because Slay the Spire 2 balances out the presence of multiple players by dramatically increasing enemy hitpoints (and their attacks hit everybody at once), so you'll need to focus fire to take out priority targets quickly. Given there's no matchmaking to find random people to play with, though, it's safe to say you'll be in some form of communication with your teammates.

So far the new co-op mode has been more than a little chaotic.

Things are made a little more forgiving in co-op in that downed players are automatically revived to 1HP after a battle and you can use your rest site action to heal a teammate instead of yourself. You also get the same number of random artifacts as you have players each time they're handed out, which lets you choose the best fit for each of your builds (with any disputes settled randomly). I can see that giving you a major leg up over simply taking whatever pops out of a chest. I've also gotten a few co-op-specific cards that allow me to boost my teammates, such as giving them a random card to play in combat.

Of course, I expect that the difficulty will ramp up pretty dramatically as well, and require even more planning of your order of operations than you have to do alone. It's deliberately designed to make you and your teammates hash things out in conversation: You can't see a teammate's entire hand, but they can mouse over one card at a time and it'll be displayed over their character's head so you can see what they're talking about. I also love how you can draw on the map now, plotting out where you're going or just doodling. (That works in single-player as well, if you want to leave yourself a note.)

I will say that it would be great if Mega Crit could find a better solution for what happens when someone in your party has to bail mid-run, because right now that person's character just stops and you have to abandon your game with nothing to show for it. To be fair, a typical run isn't going to go more than an hour and everybody should know what they're getting into before setting out on a group adventure, but things happen.

After just one day of playing there's certainly a lot more here to cover, especially since it at least appears to be largely "complete" in terms of how much content is here (though who knows how much bigger Mega Crit plans to make it before 1.0). Outside of the balance changes we've been told to expect, the only real indication that this is an early access game is the goofy MS Paint-style placeholder art you'll see on a handful of cards and in the progression tree that serves up bite-sized bits of lore as you unlock new cards, potions, and artifacts.

So how long will it take me to wrap up this review? Hard to say: this isn't really the kind of game that you ever fully "beat," and if the first one is any indication I'll likely still be doing the randomized Daily Climbs in Slay the Spire 2 well into the 2030s. But I expect I'll be able to form some coherent thoughts about its new ideas within the next week or so of bashing my head against its various bosses and figuring out how to generate the star currency the Regent uses to cast his spells and how to manage the Necrobinder's pet skeleton hand. So check back next week for more impressions, and tell us how your early runs have been going so far in the comments.