Hi again! Matthew Hodgins here, director of Secret Lair. Last time you heard from me, I told you about an experiment we were running with Secret Lair Commander Deck: Hatsune Miku: a 24-hour limited order window.

How'd It Go?

The short version is that it went incredibly well!

The longer version is that the 24-hour order window did exactly the job we wanted it to do. If you ordered inside the window, you're getting a deck. That's the whole point, and it's the part I'm happiest about. Your feedback on Goblin Storm and the Secret Lair Dandân deck came through loud and clear, and it has us rethinking how we approach our more playable-out-of-the-box releases. I'll say more about that below, but first, thank you to everyone who took the time to show up for this experiment.

Room for Improvement

Even with all the positivity around the sale, I don't want to pretend there isn't room for improvement.

Throttling the Queue: Due to high traffic and order volume as we transitioned to backorder, we had to throttle the queue for a little more than 20 minutes. If you regularly take part in Secret Lair sales, you may have noticed that your queue time starts out high and then falls sharply over the first few minutes. That is the result of a lot of work to reduce your time in line, scaling our infrastructure and increasing throughput the moment the sale opens. The Hatsune Miku sale gave us new numbers to work with, and we're using them to rebuild our projections and keep improving this part of the experience.

New Shipping Methods: We recently rolled out new shipping rates and carriers in our North America store. That change came directly from your feedback about shipping costs, and we've been working to offer more affordable options without giving up reliability. We know the rollout hasn't been perfect. We're making near-term fixes, like making sure order confirmation and shipping notification emails reliably reach every customer, updating the tracking portal so links point to your actual final-mile carrier, and making sure your order status and carrier are clear throughout your order history.

Backorder Fulfillment: It's great that everyone who wanted a deck was able to buy one, but if you landed in the backorder group, waiting until next year to receive it is a bummer. That's one of the bigger problems in front of us. It will take time to solve, but we agree it should be better, and we're working on it.

These are a few of the experiences we're working to improve, and there are many others. Keep the feedback coming.

What Comes Next

We're going to sideboard, shuffle, and run it back in a few weeks with Secret Lair Commander Deck: Odds and Ends, which we'll share more about in the future. This will be the same structure: a 24-hour limited order window, with an initial print run backed by our promise to fulfill every order placed inside that window. We'll have more to share on exact timing shortly, and we'll give you as much lead time as we can.

On the dedicated storefront idea I floated last time: it's still on the table, and this sale made it more likely rather than less. You deserve a clear understanding of what to expect from these sales going forward, so we're going to use this next one to gather more data on what that storefront should look like and how much stock we should print ahead of a 24-hour window.

We'll check back in on this topic shortly after the Odds and Ends sale wraps up.

Experiments

Speaking of experiments, you've read about our upcoming collaboration, Secret Lair x MSCHF: The Zeta Set. It's been great to see your reactions to cards like Eternity Vessel, Wild Nacatl, and, my personal favorite, Path to Exile. One of my favorite things about Secret Lair is that, in a single thread, I can watch one fan declare their undying love for a card or an art style while the next makes it clear they wouldn't let that same card touch their side of the board. This is no different. It's cool, it's weird, it's polarizing, and it connects with everyone differently. The Zeta Set is a unique release, and we're always going to look for fun and unusual things to do.

I've also seen a lot of discussions around "Secret Lair booster products" and "slippery slopes." Wanting to be transparent in a way that you're likely not used to, I'll share that there are no plans on our current roadmap to do anything like that. I know the word "current" looks like it's doing some heavy lifting there. All I can say is that I can only see the future we've mapped out, and this isn't on it. What is on it is genuinely exciting, and exciting in a lot of different directions at once. Some of it is the kind of thing you'd expect from Secret Lair. A chunk of it isn't, and those are the things I keep thinking about on the drive home. I can't say more than that yet, but stay tuned.

I'll be back with more in the near future!