Magic: The Gathering Is Officially Reprinting a Despised $35 Artifact With Dazzling David Bowie Art

Trinisphere has spent more than two decades turning cheap spells into three-mana headaches, making it one of Magic: The Gathering's most notorious Stax artifacts along the way. Now Wizards of the Coast is bringing the roughly $35 card back in Secret Lair x Jim Henson's Labyrinth, where it has been transformed into "I've Brought You a Gift," featuring the likeness of David Bowie as the film's Jareth, the Goblin King, clutching one of his dazzling crystals.

Wizards revealed the full Secret Lair: Corn Maze Superdrop on Sept. 30, including three separate drops devoted to Jim Henson's Labyrinth. The most sinister of the bunch is Fear Me, Love Me, which centers on Jareth, the Goblin King, and contains six reskinned Magic cards based on scenes and characters from the 1986 fantasy classic.

Trinisphere becomes "I've Brought You a Gift," with Jareth dramatically holding three glowing crystals beneath an appropriately enormous 1980s hairdo. The flavor text even pulls from the film: "It's a crystal, nothing more. But if you turn it this way and look into it, it will show you your dreams."

Those dreams apparently involve paying three mana for everything.

Why Trinisphere Is Such a Notorious Magic Card

First printed in 2004's Darksteel, Trinisphere costs three generic mana and forces every spell that would otherwise cost less than three mana to cost three instead, so long as it remains untapped. That makes it one of Magic's more infamous mana-taxing effects and a natural inclusion in Stax and prison strategies designed to make casting spells substantially more difficult. Trinisphere is powerful enough that it remains restricted to a single copy in the game's most powerful format, Vintage.

It isn't particularly cheap, either. The original Darksteel printing is currently hovering around $35, while several other nonfoil versions are similarly priced. Beyond that, the Kaladesh Inventions Masterpiece version will set you back over $166 on the secondary market.

That makes the reprint particularly notable when the entire non-foil Fear Me, Love Me drop costs $29.99, although anyone expecting instant cardboard arbitrage should temper those expectations: adding another limited-edition printing to the market is precisely the sort of thing that can drag a card's secondary market price downward.

Expensive older cards have been having quite a moment lately. A previously overlooked planeswalker and a widely unplayable enchantment both recently surged in price thanks to new combos, while another old card found new life as protection for The Hobbit's Beorn the Fierce.

The rest of Fear Me, Love Me includes Muxus, Goblin Grandee as "Jareth, Goblin King" (aka Bowie) with stunning art by Rebecca Guay; Boggart Shenanigans as "Call Out the Goblins!"; Dance with Calamity as "Dance with Goblins"; Goblin Rabblemaster as "Goblin Cradle-Thieves"; and Claim the Firstborn as "The Kidnapping of Toby." The foil edition costs $39.99.

The eight-drop Corn Maze Superdrop goes on sale Oct. 12 at 9 a.m. PT. Customers who spend $199 will also receive a foil Maze of Ith reskinned as "The Labyrinth" while supplies last.