For players who enjoy collecting beautiful alternate-art cards and opening unique MTG products, Festival in a Box: Atlanta has you covered. This assortment features a Mystery Booster Commander Edition box, a new Secret Lair, and a handful of promo cards to boot. Boasting multiple first-time reprints, the card selections are very juicy this time around.
Secret Gallery: Atlanta
Featuring illustrations by artists from Atlanta, the Secret Gallery: Atlanta Foil Edition Secret Lair drop is a guaranteed inclusion in this Festival in a Box. While this drop features four reprints, Parallax Tide stands head and shoulders above the rest in terms of financial value.
Debuting back in Nemesis, Parallax Tide is a brutal piece of land destruction. When combined with an instant-speed way to get the enchantment off the board or a Stifle effect, you can convert this enchantment into a quintuple Stone Rain. This interaction was enough to get the card banned in Premodern earlier this year.
While this ban ultimately caused the card’s price to plummet due to lack of demand elsewhere, Nemesis copies still hold a $15 non-foil value due to overall scarcity. Notably, though, foils sit at a whopping $200, mainly due to scarcity, meaning that this Parallax Tide could be rather valuable. That being said, this reprint being worth $200 is extremely unlikely.
Interestingly, Parallax Tide isn’t the only card to earn a first-time reprint in this Secret Lair, as it’s joined by Viridian Revel. This uncommon is a slam-dunk inclusion in Ygra, Eater of All
Ygra, Eater of AllWard—Sacrifice a Food.
Other creatures are Food artifacts in addition to their other types and have "{2}, {T}, Sacrifice this permanent: You gain 3 life."
Whenever a Food is put into a graveyard from the battlefield, put two +1/+1 counters on Ygra. and Jolene, the Plunder Queen Commander decks that ensure your opponents will have artifacts going to the graveyard. Otherwise, it functions as a decent hose card for Treasure decks, letting you draw lots of cards. That said, its narrow applications elsewhere have kept the card below $1.40, but it’s still a neat inclusion.
The other two card choices, Assassin’s Trophy and Regrowth, are unfortunately not worth much, either. Despite being Commander staples that fit in a wide variety of decks, they sit at just $1.20 and $0.50, respectively. This brings the total reprint value of these cards to $18, which does admittedly fall short of expectations for most Secret Lairs. Still, there’s a good chance these variants will ultimately be worth more, especially in foil.
Promo Cards
Beyond the Mystery Booster box and Secret Lair product, this Festival in a Box also includes four textless, full-art foil promos, and it offers a ton of value. Leading the way, we have Dance of the Dead, which helps add redundancy to Reanimator Commander decks.
Given its massive wall of oracle text, it’s a rather hilarious choice for a textless promo. From a reprint value perspective, though, this is a strong choice, valued at $15 in non-foil. This is also the first time the card will be available in foil, which is great for EDH players looking to add pizzazz to their decks.
The other two textless promos, Tymna, the Weaver, and Tana, the Bloodsower, are both strong Partner Commanders. Tymna is definitely the better of the bunch and sees lots of cEDH play alongside Kraum, Ludevic’s Opus. In a more casual setting, however, this duo actually works very well together.
Tymna’s price ultimately fell to $11 following its appearance in the Final Fantasy bonus sheet, while Tana sits at $5. That said, since both are premium variants for extremely powerful Commanders, there could be a serious premium here.
In addition to the textless promos, players will also get an Auspicious Aquarium playtest card. While it doesn’t have a specific value and isn’t tournament legal, it makes for a funky alternate win condition that could be a fun goal in casual Commander pods.
All of these goodies will be available for $249.99 when Festival in a Box: Atlanta goes live on October 19th on the Secret Lair website. Admittedly, this is a $50 increase from the previous Festival in a Box, but it may still be a solid deal if Mystery Booster Commander Edition boxes sell for a lot. After all, the Secret Lair and promo cards make up around $50 in reprint value, and the Mystery Booster box could easily be worth $200+.
Given past precedent, don’t be shocked if this product sells out very quickly.
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