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Top Deals We Found On Wizards’ New Online Asia Store For All Things Magic: The Gathering

Christmas is coming early for Magic players in Singapore and asia – Wizards of the Coast has opened their very own store page on the hugely popular Shopee shopping platform! For those who have managed to stay clear of online shopping, Shopee and Lazada are arguably the two biggest platforms in the region. As the Covid-19 pandemic took hold in early 2020, many local game stores (LGS) took the opportunity to set up Shopee pages, and some have seen robust sales.

One of the draws of Shopee is that they give out tons of discount vouchers, often to help stores increase sales while helping their ecosystem at the same time. Low cost or even free shipping is also a frequent highlight of using Shopee. Why trudge all the way down to an LGS just to pick up some new packs when you can order them online and have them shipped to your door?

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Although Singapore’s amazing lineup of LGS constantly offer great deals and preorder prices, Wizards is certainly trying their hardest to lure players to their Shopee Mall page. After factoring prices and focusing on products more suitable for beginners to the game, we are recommending some of the top deals to be found there. Some of them are just too good to miss, so we will even get some for ourselves!

Stranger Things x Secret Lair Foil Edition

By far the biggest surprise of their Shopee launch is the availability of Secret Lair bundles. Way back in 2019 when Secret Lair was first released, it was only available in limited territories and naturally Singapore was not one of them. When Wizards finally added the tiny red dot to the list of possible destinations, Magic players here had to content with siginificant shipping costs.

Now Shopee makes things much smoother, and with any purchase above S$30, you get free shipping. Let’s do a quick comparison with the freshly-announced Stranger Things foil edition. If you head on to the official Secret Lair site, you can order one for US$66.60 (US$50 + US$16.60 shipping fee), which roughly translates to S$89.50.

But on Wizards’ Shopee page, the set is selling for S$77 – a cool S$12 savings since you’re paying nothing for shipping. They also carry all the other October Secret Lair releases, so even if Stranger Things isn’t your…thing, you can always pick another Lair that appeals to you.

In recent months, some stores and a couple of entrepreneurial players have been collating orders to reduce the impact of shipping costs. But if you want to avoid the hassle of meetups or meeting minimum orders, then buying through Shopee is a clear winner.

“Phantom Premonition” Commander Precon Deck

For a S$20 price, Commander preconstructed (precon) decks don’t get better than this. Although not as popular as its Elven Empire counterpart, Phantom Premonition is actually pretty fun to play and formidable in its own right.

Commander is the top casual format now in Magic, so rather than spending hours mulling over deck lists or purchasing singles, a precon deck puts everything into one neat package, including any tokens or life counters you might need. Currently you’ll be hard pressed to find any precon deck or store (online or physical) that offers such an attractive.

Perhaps the only downside of the low price is that you’re still short of the S$30 needed for free shipping, but if you and a friend can share purchases into a single receipt, then both can enjoy zero delivery fees.

Azorius Control Challenger Deck

Now that we’ve established that Commander is the top casual format of the moment, let’s talk about the other format great for beginners – Standard.

Standard is the ‘easiest’ format because its pool of cards is also the smallest, making it easier for beginners to pick up the game. Even so, it can be a headache trying to find the best synergies among cards for your deck, and that’s where Challenger Decks come in.

These are purposely built for high optimisation while keeping costs low. In this case “Azorius Control” has already been highly rated by Tap & Sac’s full review, and it even includes some money cards that can be sold individually in case you ever get bored of this deck.

At S$25, this challenger deck offers immense value since it contains copies of Skyclave Apparition and Shark Typhoon. Even on Amazon.sg you wouldn’t be able to get a price this good (its lowest ever was around S$30).

Innistrad: Crimson Vow Bundle

With the release of the new Innistrad: Crimson Vow coinciding with the Shopee launch, it might be a good idea to get some of the new cards there. However since their Draft Booster boxes and Set Booster boxes are still at least S$20 more expensive at Shopee compared to local game stores, your best takeaway would be the Bundle box.

At S$45, it’s neither cheaper nor more expensive than buying at the LGS, but you do automatically get free shipping on Shopee with just this package.

The newly-repackaged Bundles also offer more value than the older versions. Today they each come with an oversized spindown die that is only found in the Bundle, plus they’ve swapped out the regular 10 Draft Booster packs for 8 Set Booster packs. Set Booster packs have been growing in popularity lately because of the higher chance of getting multiple Rares, so this is definitely a welcomed change.

End Step

The lure of free shipping and direct Secret Lair purchases is making Magic players sit up and it’s truly hard to ignore the benefits of buying at least some items from the Wizards Shopee Mall store.

Sure some products are still notoriously overpriced, including the basic Draft Booster boxes, and the catalog is still somewhat thin, but this is only the beginning and who knows what they’ll offer in the coming months.

Our hopes are they’ll unload the stock of some older Commander precon decks, and perhaps the newer Pioneer Challenger Decks (even if the format is somewhat dying).