some context for non-dorks:
Wizards of the Coast (WOTC) makes Magic the Gathering, and has had a product line for the last few years called Secret Lair. these are limited-run print-to-order products, meaning that they're only available for a week or so via WOTC's website, and they will never print those cards ever again outside that week. this is kind of a skeevy business model to begin with (especially since the price is usually $50 for 5 cards) but people were okay with it because Secret Lair cards were either a. new art on existing cards or b. silver-bordered new cards that are meant as jokes and are not legal in literally any format. for example:
bitterblossom, a staple in competitive formats, got a reprint with sexy new art and 4 tokens to use with it
this is... yeah. they printed this. it's a completely new and original card that had never been printed before, BUT! crucially it's just for fun and is banned in LITERALLY EVERY FORMAT. this is important for later.
so these new Walking Dead cards get announced, aaaand... they're black bordered (i.e. legal everywhere). and original ("mechanically unique"). and only available for a week. and cost $50.
the cards themselves aren't even the issue. they're pretty decent but not obviously broken. the issue is that WOTC has decided that it's okay for them to print entirely new cards that can be played anywhere, set the price for those cards unilaterally, and serve as the only possible way of buying them (Secret Lairs completely bypass local game stores). this is obviously Not a Good Thing.
there are three other particularly stupid parts to this. firstable, they very easily could have released these cards in "real" sets before changing their names and art for a Walking Dead themed Secret Lair. they did this two sets ago to allow them to work Godzilla tie-ins into a real set.
secondly, they've LITERALLY HAD THIS EXACT ISSUE BEFORE WITH THE EXACT SAME RESPONSE. MULTIPLE TIMES. in 1994 they released a card named Nalathni Dragon. it sucked, but people were mad because it was a mechanically unique card only available to a specific subset of the community for a limited time. WOTC agreed and promised not to do that again in 2001.
then in 2018 they released this card.
except it wasn't released normally. the only way you could get it was by buying an entire box of cards, with one of these bad boys guaranteed per box. then it turned out to be the cornerstone of a meta-breaking deck. whoops! who could have possibly foreseen this! WOTC banned the card and pinky promised they had learned their lesson this time.
the final issue is that Mark Rosewater, the community outreach guy at Wizards, has said that if the Walking Dead cards end up being good and people want a reprint, they could reprint mechanically identical cards under different names in a "real" Magic set sometime in the future. besides never actually committing to reprinting them, this is EXTRA stupid because the format these are designed for, Commander, only allows you to have one copy of each card (other than basic lands) in your deck, determined by its name. that means that if they do end up reprinting these later, the people who bought this first Secret Lair will be able to run twice as many copies of the good card as people who didnt spend $50.
the sole ray of hope here is that Wizards completely forgot that the rules committee for Commander is technically a completely separate entity from WOTC and can set its own banlists. people are SCREAMING at the rules committee to put their foot down and ban these cards before they even get printed to send a message that this kind of shit doesn't fly, because if they don't, WOTC is going to keep doing this with more and more overpowered cards.
also: who the actual fuck still watches The Walking Dead? hello?????
