Hatsune Miku is returning to Magic: The Gathering for a second bite of the pie

Hatsune Miku, surrounded by flowers — (Image credit: Wizards of the Coast)

As the only vocaloid anyone can name, Hatsune Miku is a big enough star to make her way onto Magic: The Gathering's bundles of reskinned cards with new art, which they call Secret Lair drops, alongside such luminaries as Godzilla and the cast of The Walking Dead.

And not just once. Following the previous spring-themed Hatsune Miku set that convinced our Elie Gould to finally start collecting Magic cards, there's a summer-scheduled set on the way, with two more drops to follow after that.

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Called Secret Lair × Hatsune Miku: Digital Sensation, this next series of six cards is apparently all about "the power of music" and includes a rethemed version of Child of Alara from the Conflux set originally released all the way back in 2009, here called Miku, Child of Song.

You also get new versions of Diabolic Tutor, Chord of Calling, Song of Creation, Thespian's Stage, and a Sol Ring card that makes it look like Miku is reaching for one of Sonic the Hedgehog's gold rings. (I liked the Fallout-themed version better, which depicted the ring as the circle of light when a Vault door cracks open. That's clever!)

I'm sure Hatsune Miku stans will help this Secret Lair drop just as well as the first one did, regardless of what's actually on them. It goes on sale at 9am PT on June 24, and will be available through to 11.59pm PT on July 14 if it doesn't sell out faster than that, which it almost certainly will.

Magic's next full crossover will be with Assassin's Creed, a set featuring a card that is literally just a haystack. Its current non-themed expansion is Modern Horizons 3, which won me over even though I normally don't normally play the Modern format.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.