Magic: The Gathering has collaborated with many different IPs over the years, and its latest crossover brings one of gaming’s most recognizable characters to the TCG: Sonic the Hedgehog. Many of the Sonic series’ characters and iconic items will be added to Magic: The Gathering on July 14, 2025, as part of a Secret Lair Sonic Superdrop. This is great news for fans of both series, but could also be a worthwhile starting point for MTG newcomers looking for a reason to start playing.
The Sonic the Hedgehog Secret Lair is set to include 3 drops of cards, each containing seven Sonic-themed cards. Players who want the most bang for their buck may want to consider the Friends & Foes bundle, but Sonic fans wanting to complete should also try to pick up the Turbo Gear and Chasing Adventure drops. Each card features unique artwork, including some by artists for the IDW Sonic comics, making them essential for players and collectors alike.
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Sonic MTG Secret Lair: Friends & Foes
Legendary Creatures
Of the seven cards in the Friends & Foes drop, six of them are Legendary Creatures based on characters from the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. Of course, this includes Sonic himself, a Hedgehog Warrior built for decks with Flash and Haste in mind. As a Jeskai card, Sonic’s blue, red, and white mana color allows for synergies with Tails, Knuckles, and Amy’s cards, giving players the opportunity to build a deck featuring all four Sonic heroes known so far.
As a character known for flying and his machine-building prowess, Miles “Tails” Prower is a card focused on Flying and Vehicles. As well as the card having Flash and Flying abilities itself, it is also capable of letting players search for other flying cards and providing vehicles with flying counters.
Knuckles the Echidna is an interesting card. Rather than playing on the character’s strength, it takes inspiration from his treasure-hunting capabilities from Knuckles' role in Sonic Adventure games. A deck built around this card will want to prioritize artifacts, as Knuckles has a unique win condition depending on how many the player controls.
Players using the Amy Rose card will want to keep buffing her with Equipment to benefit the rest of the creatures they control. With each attack, equipment can be attached to her, and for each time this happens, the total of Amy Rose’s power can briefly be added to an attacking creature until the end of the player’s turn. Amy Rose can be one of the strongest cards on the battlefield, while also offering a lot of support to other creatures.
Shadow the Hedgehog’s abilities mirror those of Sonic in both the game series and in these cards. Where Sonic buffs cards with Haste or Flash, Shadow instead draws a card whenever a card with Haste or Flash dies, including the Shadow card itself. Shadow’s card’s best ability is Chaos Control, which has the potential to give the Split Second ability to all players who cast spells if the mana spent was from an artifact. This can shut down opponent strategies in Magic: The Gathering, making Shadow a worthy contender for a Rakdos deck.
Dr. Eggman is the last Legendary Creature in the Sonic Secret Lair, and it has a lot of potential because of the “villainous choice” presented to opponents. Players using Dr. Eggman draw a card at the beginning of their end step. After this, all other opponents must each decide whether to discard a card or allow the player to place a Construct, Robot, or Vehicle card onto the battlefield from their hand. As this happens at the end of the player’s end step, opponents will be making these difficult choices frequently thanks to Sonic's villainous Dr. Eggman.
Legendary Enchantment
The final card in the Friends & Foes set is Super State, a legendary enchantment that can imbue a creature with many new abilities. The artwork depicts Super Sonic, so the enchanted creature gains similar abilities to what players may expect from this form, such as Haste and Flying. Where this card truly shines is in its last ability. If the creature enchanted by the Super State card deals combat damage to an opponent, the same amount of damage is also dealt to other opponents. Magic: The Gathering Commander players could get a lot of value out of this card.
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Sonic MTG Secret Lair: Turbo Gear
Unlike the original cards in the Friends & Foes set, Turbo Gear contains seven skinned cards, reprints of existing Magic: The Gathering cards complete with Sonic the Hedgehog art. The seven artifact cards are all reflective of iconic Sonic items, such as the Power Sneakers card based on Sonic’s shoes. This card is functionally identical to the Lightning Greaves card, but also features a quote from Sonic as additional flavor text. This artifact equips creatures with Haste much like the Sonic the Hedgehog card, but also grants Shroud, meaning it would still be useful for Sonic to equip.
Tornado, Sonic’s Biplane is a reprint of Weatherlight. The Vehicle can become an Artifact Creature because of the Crew ability, meaning it can enter combat when the necessary number of creatures are tapped. This would fit well in a Tails-centric deck.
The Knuckles’ Gloves card adds Sonic art to The Reaver Cleaver card, and could hide a great Sonic reference. As was the original card’s ability, damage dealt to a player or planeswalker lets the player create a number of Treasure tokens equal to it. The Treasure token in the Chasing Adventure drop is a ring from the Sonic series, and in these games, the player drops rings when damaged. This is reflected by the ability of the Knuckles’ Gloves card.
Piko Piko Hammer represents Amy’s trusty hammer she has carried with her throughout the series. A reprint of Hammer of Nazahn, when it is played, the Piko Piko Hammer or another Equipment can be attached to a creature for free, only costing mana to be equipped on the player’s next turn.
Shadow’s air shoes have become just as recognizable as Sonic’s and, as such, they are a card of their own. With a familiar Shadow the Hedgehog quote as flavor text, the Air Shoes card equips creatures with Haste like the Power Shoes, as well as Hexproof, meaning the card it is equipped to cannot be targeted by opponent spells or abilities. This is identical to Swiftfoot Boots.
Named after the Sonic Heroes enemy, Egg Hammer is a skin of Myr Battlesphere. It enters alongside four Myr tokens, being Egg Pawns in the Turbo Gear set, and these can potentially be used to upgrade the Egg Hammer’s power.
Egg Pawn is not one of the strongest enemies in Sonic, and in Magic: The Gathering, it is a Token Artifact Creature. It is of the Myr creature type, a series of metal automatons. This is a fitting card for Dr. Eggman’s disposable series of robots from the Sonic games.
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Sonic MTG Secret Lair: Chasing Adventure
The Chasing Adventure set similarly features reprints of existing Magic: The Gathering cards, albeit without new names to match the Sonic theme. The first is Generous Gift, which features artwork that depicts Sonic selflessly freeing an elephant animal buddy from a Prison Egg Capsule. This lines up well with the card’s ability, which creates an Elephant creature token when a permanent is destroyed.
Open the Armory is a tutor card, letting players search their library for an Aura or Equipment to add to their hand. This pairs well with the four Equipments in the Turbo Gear drop, such as the Piko Piko Hammer, which is also rendered in Open the Armory’s art, but can also be an easy way for players to access Super State.
Fabricate offers a similar ability, focusing instead on searching the deck for Artifacts. Both the artwork and quote describe Tails’ engineering skills that he is best known for. Another Instant offered by this collection is Deadly Dispute, which costs the sacrifice of an artifact or creature as well as mana. In return, the player can draw two cards and create a Treasure token. Shadow is at the center of this card’s art, utilizing the power of a Chaos Emerald.
Unexpected Windfall shows Knuckles doing what he does best: protecting the Master Emerald. Like with Deadly Dispute, this card also requires an additional sacrifice. After discarding a card from their hand, players can draw two and create two Treasure tokens. Sol Ring is a staple MTG card. Tapping this Artifact rewards players with two colorless mana, making it useful in any deck, but the art of Sonic speeding through a Rainbow Ring is the card’s main appeal in this Secret Lair drop.
The Treasure token features an image of a ring from the Sonic series with Green Hill Zone in the background. The Sonic the Hedgehog Legendary Creature card has the ability to create Treasure tokens, so players wanting to keep their deck Sonic-themed might want to pick this card up.
The collaboration between Magic: The Gathering and the Sonic the Hedgehog series is full of references for dedicated fans, with abilities that allow for elaborate strategies while staying true to the characters.
These known cards are sure to excite players of the TCG and Sonic fans, but there could still be more to look out for. As with its previous promotions, the Sonic the Hedgehog Secret Lair will likely include some random bonus cards for players to collect that have yet to be revealed. These cards will drop on July 14 at 9 AM PST in limited quantities, so players looking to collect these cards won’t want to miss this date.
Magic: The Gathering
- Original Release Date
- August 5, 1993
- Publisher
- Wizards of the Coast
- Designer
- Richard Garfield
- Player Count
- 2+
- Age Recommendation
- 13+