Magic's mini-sets called Secret Lairs, which are usually short-run reprints of old cards with new art aimed at collectors, have really been leaning into the joke over the last couple of years. The cards starring Dwight from The Office were a perfect example, and the upcoming Secret Lair called Cats are the Best seems like another, including as it does 15 Garfield cards to slide into your Commander decks to the bafflement of your friends.
The cards come in three "drops" of five, with the first based on the question: What if some of the original Magic: The Gathering cards created by Richard Garfield were reinterpreted with panels from the other famous Garfield instead? And so classics like Swords to Plowshares and Counterspell are no accompanied by panels where Garfield pushes Odie off a table or slaps Jon in the face.
The Motivationally Challenged drop takes workplace motivational posters as the other half of its inspiration, reskinning Ponder as Hang in There and Beast Within as I Hate Mondays. Things get real weird in the third drop, called Our Only Thought is to Entertain You, which lets the artists cut loose and reinterpret Garfield in more psychedelic styles for cards like Molten Collapse and Maddening Hex.
Given how often games of Magic involve people bringing their homemade alters that swap the official card images for horny manga art or whatever, I'm all for giving people an official way to rock up to a Tuesday night game with a card where everyone's favorite lasagna freak is an Eldrazi.
Garfield comes to Secret Lair as part of the Cats are the Best superdrop, which goes live at 9am PT on June 15. You can sign up for an alert at the Secret Lair website to try to get in before they sell out.
