Magic The Gathering’s Stranger Things Secret Lair Cards, Ranked

Some of the Stranger Things MTG cards are incredibly powerful, and could easily run your next Commander deck.

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Wizards of the Coast has partnered up with Netflix to release a limited-edition collection of Stranger Things crossover cards for Magic the Gathering. Stranger Things x Secret Lair includes nine cards – eight creatures and one token – and will only be available through the Secret Lair site until early November.

Whether you’ve already pre-ordered your Stranger Things Secret Lair, or are curious about which ones you might want to build for down the line, here is our ranking of every card in the collection.

9 Clue Token

Although Jenn Ravenna Tran’s art is brilliant, showing the fairy lights on the wall Will’s mother Joyce used to try and communicate with him while he was missing, it is still just a clue token.

Token cards like these aren’t parts of the game in the same way other cards are, they’re just pieces to represent that a Clue token is in play. You could just as easily use a sticky note, a coin, or anything else, and it wouldn’t make any difference.

8 Max, the Daredevil

Max, the Daredevil is a 3/2 Human that costs one generic, one red, and one green. She has Haste and Friends Forever, and whenever you cast your second spell each turn, untaps a target creature and investigates.

There are ways to use Max’s ability: untapping a big mana dork like the Circle of Dreams Druid or Alena, Kessig Trapper could easily let you produce large amounts of mana, or it could let you attack with a large creature and untap it after to have a blocker open.

But the problem is it’s so limited. Max only lets you untap one creature each turn, provided you’ve been able to play two spells before that; it’s a massive cost for an ability that isn’t all that great.

As an aside, despite being in the same colour identity as the recent Innistrad: Midnight Hunt’s Werewolves tribe, Max is incredibly anti-synergistic with them. For Werewolves to stay transformers, it needs to be night. For it to stay night, you need to not cast any spells on your turn. Max wants you to cast spells to untap one creature, making her worse than useless in any Gruul (red and green) Werewolves-focused deck, which should be more popular by the time Max is out there in the wild next January.

7 Dustin, Gadget Genius

Artifacts are Commander’s most popular deck archetype, and Dustin does do a lot of good for it. A two generic, one white, and one blue 2/3 Human with Friends Forever, he can tap to add two generic mana that can only be used to cast artifact spells or activate abilities of artifacts.

Dustin fits in well with other Stranger Things cards that produce token artifacts, like Chief Jim Hopper or Will the Wise, as he can tap to pay that token’s mana cost all by himself. There are lots of artifacts that cost just two mana that are worth considering Dustin for, too, like Arcane Signet, Scroll Rack, or any of the Medallions.

The downside to Dustin is that he’s effectively a worse Sol Ring. He’s expensive for what he does, and the limitation of only being able to use the mana for artifacts makes little sense in a game where we have Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Thran’s Dynamo, Worn Powerstone, Sissay’s Ring, or basically any other colourless mana rock.

If Dustin had Partner over Friends Forever, so could team up with creatures outside of the Stranger Things Secret Lair, maybe things would be different. Or maybe even if he could produce mana of any colour to enable things like Cranial Plating. But right now, he just serves a supporting role to a limited pool of Stranger Things cards.

6 Lucas, the Sharpshooter

A 1/3 human that costs one blue and one red, Lucas the Sharpshooter has Friends Forever and can tap and sacrifice an artifact to deal one damage to a creature, then goad it.

There’s a lot to like about Lucas, the Sharpshooter. It’s a big flavour win, with Lucas picking up objects he finds on the ground to fire from his slingshot. Goad is also a fun mechanic to introduce a bit of havoc to the game. It’s also a novel take on an Izzet Commander that isn’t yet another Spellslinger Storm-style deck.

It’s just that Luca’s ability is a bit small, and relies on you having a lot of artifacts lined up to use it with. This year introduced Kardur Doomscourge, a Commander that can goad every creature your opponents’ control just by entering the battlefield. In comparison, tapping to goad only one creature at the cost of an artifact that could be used for something else is a little on the underwhelming side. It also has a similar problem to Dustin, where he’s railroaded into partnering up with one of the artifact token producers to ensure he’s got enough ammunition to fire off.

5 Chief Jim Hopper

Fittingly for a commander based on a cop, Chief Jim Hopper is a human that costs two generic, one white, and one red. He’s also one of the best cards in this set for creating clue tokens, letting you investigate for each non-token creature that attacks whenever he does.

In a combat-heavy deck, Chief Jim Hopper could be an incredibly useful tool for card draw. With the Friends Forever ability, he also pairs nicely with Lucas, the Sharpshooter to supply Lucas with the artifacts he needs. Creatures don’t even need to actually deal combat damage for Hopper’s ability to trigger, they just need to have been declared as attackers – letting you Maze of Ith or Labyrinth of Skophos a creature to get them out of harm’s way but still get that clue.

The reason Hopper isn’t higher on this list is that, despite being one of the first two cards to introduce Investigate to the red colour identity, he doesn’t have any ways on his own to use them effectively. He makes a lot of clue tokens, sure, but the only thing you can do with them is sacrifice them to draw a card. He feels like another Commander that has to be teamed up with through Friends Forever to be effective.

4 Mind Flayer, the Shadow

Minda Flayer, the Shadow is the only creature in the Stranger Things Secret Lair to not have Friends Forever. After all, it is the big, bad, extra-dimensional terror causing all the problems in the show. However, for its limited colour pie, it has one heck of an ability.

Mind Flayer, the Shadow is a mono-black legendary enchantment horror that costs four generic and three black. As long as you don’t control three or more permanents owned by other players, it is simply an enchantment. When you do control at least three of other people’s permanents, it turns into a 9/9 creature, which is scary enough on its own.

Its main ability is so cool, though. At the beginning of each end step, you exile the bottom card of each player’s library face-down. You can look at them and cast any permanent from among them, and pay mana of any colour to do so.

On the one hand, this is such a cool space for black to be exploring. Stealing cards from other players is always popular, hence why Etali, Primal Storm is so common in Commander, but stealing from the bottom of a library is something that doesn’t appear all too often. It’s a rarer situation, but Mind Flayer is probably one of the most potent answers to a Grenzo, Dungeon deck that likes to play things from the bottom of its library.

However, it does have the slight downside of the bottom of the library being where most players want to put stuff they don’t want. If a player’s scrying a lot, or using cards like Aid from the Cowl, Adventure Awaits, Adventurous Impulse or Collected Company, and there’s a decent chance you’ll be getting the leftover chaff rather than the really good, game-winning pieces. It also lacks any evasion, meaning that big 9/9 horror can be easily blocked by a 1/1 squirrel token.

3 Will the Wise

Unfortunate original art aside, Will the Wise is a super interesting Orzhov (white and black) Commander. Costing only one white and one black, whenever he enters or leaves the battlefield, each of your opponents can either investigate (create a clue token), or lose one life. You then make one more clue token than the total amount your opponents made.

While the choice for an opponent to make a clue token is obvious at first, it can easily turn into a problem without them seeing it coming. For example, infinitely flicker Will the Wise with Grinding Station out, and you can stack the triggers to mill the entire table out in a single turn. The addition of Friends Forever can also let you team up with anyone with blue, like Dustin or Lucas. Make an obscene number of clue tokens, and then animate them with Rise and Shine to flood the board.

Will the Wise is just a fun Commander, occupying a similar faux-group-hug space as Kwain, Itinerant Meddler or Breena, the Demagogue. Much like other Group Hug commanders, though, the drawback is that there is a chance you could be helping another player quicker than you can close out the game. Giving someone dozens of clue tokens isn’t something to completely disregard.

2 Mike, the Dungeon Master

Mike, the Dungeon Master is a 2/2 human that costs one generic, one green, and one white, and he is an absolute powerhouse

You can pay two generic mana and tap Mike to return a creature that was put into your graveyard this turn straight onto the battlefield. This ability is wild, as it lets you circumvent mana costs, Commander tax, and most counterspells (aside from ones like Tale’s End) for just two mana. With an Ashnod’s Altar, you can easily go infinite: pull a Hyrax Tower Scout or Sparring Mummy from the graveyard, use its enter trigger to untap Mike, sacrifice the Hyrax to make two colourless mana, use it to pay for Mike’s ability, rinse and repeat. Do the same with a Great Oak Guardian and you could make all your creatures infinitely big at the same time.

Mike’s so high up on this list because he fills a role that white has been needing for a while now: good, unconditional creature reanimation, and this ability alone makes him an incredibly powerful Selesnya (green and white) Commander. On top of that, he’s one of the two Stranger Things commanders who can pair up to give you access to all five colours.

1 Eleven, the Mage

Eleven is arguably Stranger Things’ most iconic character, so it’s no surprise her card is also ridiculously powerful.

Eleven, the Mage is a Grixis 3/5 Human Wizard, costing one generic, one blue, one black, and one red. She has Friends Forever and is the only card in the Stranger Things crossover to have more than two colours, immediately making her an appealing Commander.

Her ability makes her even better. Your hand size is increased to eleven, and whenever she attacks, you can draw a card and lose one life. Then, if you have eleven or more cards in your hand, you can cast an instant or sorcery without paying its mana cost.

Thanks to Eleven’s Grixis colour identity, she already has access to the extensive card draw capabilities of blue and black, making getting above eleven cards ridiculously easy without her built-in draw. From there, you simply have to read the words “without paying its mana cost” to know how wild it is. Enter the Infinite, Volcanic Salvo, Apex of Power, Time Stretch, Mnemonic Deluge, Rise of the Dark Realms, Worldfire, most of the game’s most expensive, game-winning instants and sorceries are free to her.

With an ability as powerful as that, Eleven, the Mage maybe didn’t need Friends Forever. And yet, she can still partner up with any of the other humans in this set – in particular, partnering with Mike, the Dungeon Master gives you access to the entire colour pie, only pushing Eleven’s limits even further.

Ridiculously powerful and aggressively costed, Eleven is by far the best card in the Stranger Things x Secret Lair drop.

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