Odds and Ends: Ricardo Cavolo’s twelve paintings, Yennett’s odd-numbered game plan, and what the cards are worth

Secret Lair’s Odds and Ends Commander deck is on sale for 24 hours from September 28 at $149.99. All twelve new Ricardo Cavolo foils, Yennett’s game plan, and what the 100 cards cost as singles.

Secret Lair Commander Deck: Odds and Ends is one 100-card deck, led by Yennett, Cryptic Sovereign, on sale from Wizards of the Coast for 24 hours from 9 a.m. PT on September 28, 2026, at $149.99. Twelve of the cards are new foil paintings by Ricardo Cavolo, twelve more are his foil basics, and the other 76 are non-foil reprints with a Planeswalker stamp.

Here is the honest headline on the money: the 76 reprints alone, bought as singles at their cheapest printing, cost $150.20 — twenty-one cents more than the box. On that arithmetic the twenty-four Cavolo foils are the free part. The whole 100, priced the same way, comes to $306.76, a little over twice the sticker. That figure needs the caveats further down — nearly two-fifths of it is three cards — but the shape holds: you are not paying a collector's premium for the paintings, at least not on the buying side.

This piece takes the art first, because that is what a Secret Lair is for. Then the commander and what the deck is trying to do — the name is a pun twice over, and both halves are the game plan. Then the money, and where to try the list for yourself before the sale window closes.

Price

$149.99 — 24-hour sale

New art

12 — Foil, plus 12 foil basics

Reprints

76 — Non-foil, Planeswalker stamp

Game Changers

0 — In all 100 cards

Odds and Ends at a glance. Counts from Manamancer’s precon catalog and card index on September 26, 2026; price, finishes and artist from Wizards’ announcement.

Twelve paintings, frame and all

Ricardo Cavolo does not paint an illustration and leave the frame to a template. Each of the twelve is one drawing from edge to edge: the name banner, the mana symbols, the type line and the rules text are all hand-drawn and hand-lettered in his capitals, and the text box usually carries a second, smaller picture of its own. Yennett's opens onto a temple doorway with a tiny figure walking in. Virtue of Persistence's Adventure half, Locthwain Scorn, is drawn as the left-hand page of an open book.

The palette is the other signature — pink, violet, tangerine and a hard sky blue — and there are eyes everywhere: in the stones, in the waves, on the wings. The jokes are literal ones. Swords to Plowshares is a farmer driving a plough whose tines are swords. Sol Ring is a burning ring with an eye at its centre, surrounded by suns with faces. Sensei's Divining Top spins over a pond, watched by a crowned frog.

The twelve new foils

• Yennett, Cryptic Sovereign — The commander: a winged, spotted sphinx with a three-eyed face, lying in the desert under falling comets.
• Void Winnower — A pink, tentacled Eldrazi with a bat’s wing and a beak, uncoiling over a mountain range.
• Esper Sentinel — A blue-armoured sentinel in a ram-horned helm, sword raised among the roses.
• Reconnaissance — A great bird with eyes on its wings, spread over a pink castle at night.
• Swords to Plowshares — The title, taken literally: a plough whose tines are swords.
• Weathered Wayfarer — A hooded, three-eyed wanderer beside a dolmen carved with eyes.
• Misleading Signpost — An octopus clinging to a signpost in a stormy sea, its arms pointing every which way.
• Breach the Multiverse — A skull splitting open into rainbow shards and patterned rays.
• Virtue of Persistence — A violet graveyard giving up its dead. The Adventure is drawn as an open book.
• Shadrix Silverquill — A horned, scaled Elder Dragon in cream and pink, beside a Gothic spire.
• Sensei's Divining Top — A golden top spinning over a pond, watched by a crowned frog and two fairies.
• Sol Ring — A burning ring with an eye at its centre, ringed by suns with faces.

The basics are the same hand in a quieter mood: arched frames of shells and pebbles, and a hand-lettered banner where the name would be. The Island is a horned head the size of an island, palm trees on its crown and fire in its eyes; the Swamp is a three-eyed skull sinking into a violet bog.

One honest cost of all that lettering is that it is harder to read. A hand-drawn Sol Ring is no problem — everyone knows what it does. Shadrix Silverquill's three modes, in small hand-lettered capitals, are a lot to read upside down from across the table. The other 76 cards are ordinary printings apart from the stamp, so the problem stops at the foils.

The foil basics

• Plains — A stone knight at sunrise, and an eye set into a boulder. Four in the deck.
• Island — An island that is also a horned head, rising out of the surf. Four in the deck.
• Swamp — A three-eyed skull sinking into a violet bog. Four in the deck.

The commander: Yennett, Cryptic Sovereign

Yennett, Cryptic Sovereign is a five-mana 3/5 with flying, vigilance and menace, and one ability that is the whole deck: whenever she attacks, reveal the top card of your library. If its mana value is odd, you may cast it without paying its mana cost. If you don't cast it, draw a card.

So every attack is worth something — a free spell or a card — and the list is built to make it the free spell as often as possible. Of the 99 cards, 57 are spells with an odd mana value. Another 37 are lands, whose mana value is zero, and zero is even, so a land on top is simply a card. Only five spells break the pattern: Arcane Signet and Talisman of Progress at two, Extinction Event and Space Beleren at four, and Time Stop at six. Attack with nothing arranged, and the odds that the top card is a free spell are 57 in 99 — a little better than even.

The body matters as much as the trigger. Flying and menace mean she can only be blocked by two or more creatures that fly or have reach, and vigilance means the attack costs nothing on defence: she stays home as a 3/5 flier either way. The one thing she cannot do is trigger without attacking, and that is where the deck's weaknesses start.

Odd spells

57 — Free off the top

Lands

37 — A card instead

Creatures

24 — Every one odd

Avg. mana value

3.69 — Of the 62 nonland cards

The 99, commander excluded, counted from the Odds and Ends list in Manamancer’s precon catalog against the card index, September 26, 2026.

The game plan

The odds are the engine: put an odd, expensive spell on top of your library, attack, and cast it for nothing. The ends are the toy box around it — a pile of oddball cards that make the table do strange things. Here is how the pieces fit, in the order they come up in a game.

1. Set up the top

The first job is making sure the card Yennett reveals is the one you want, and the deck has a real toolkit for it: Sensei's Divining Top, Brainstorm, Ponder, Soothsaying, Aminatou, the Fateshifter's +1, Doom Whisperer's surveil, three scry lands in Temple of Deceit, Temple of Enlightenment and Temple of Silence, and Vesuvan Drifter, which lets you look at your top card at any time.

The play pattern is the same every turn. Before combat, spend one mana on the Top, find the biggest odd card among the top three and put it first. Attack. Cast it for free. Brainstorm does the job from the other direction: draw three, put two back, and make the top one the seven-drop you could not have afforded this turn anyway.

2. Make the free spell a big one

Yennett's ceiling is set by what she can reveal, and the list has eight spells at seven mana or more. Every one of them is odd.

The big odd numbers

• Void Winnower — Nine. Shuts opponents out of every even spell — more on that below.
• Ethersworn Sphinx — Nine, with cascade — which still triggers on a free cast. Two spells for one reveal.
• Profane Transfusion — Nine. Two players swap life totals, and you get a Horror the size of the gap.
• Breach the Multiverse — Seven. Everyone mills ten, and you take a creature or planeswalker from each graveyard.
• Virtue of Persistence // Locthwain Scorn — Seven. A creature back from any graveyard, every upkeep.
• Enigma Sphinx — Seven, with cascade, and it goes back third from the top when it dies — ready to be revealed again.
• Toxrill, the Corrosive — Seven. A slow, one-sided wipe that pays you in Slugs.
• Approach of the Second Sun — Seven, and the cleanest win in the deck. Read the next paragraph first.

Two of these interact with Yennett in ways worth spelling out. Cascade triggers when a spell is cast, and a free cast is still a cast, so a revealed Ethersworn Sphinx or Enigma Sphinx brings a second free spell with it.

Approach of the Second Sun is subtler. It wins the game only if it was cast from your hand and you have already cast another Approach this game. Yennett casts from the library, so her free Approach does not win: it gains you 7 life and goes back into your library as the seventh card down. But it does count as the first cast. From there it is seven cards away, in a deck whose entire job is drawing and arranging the top of the library — draw it, cast it from your hand for seven, and the game is over.

3. Cast from anywhere but your hand

The second engine hides behind Vega, the Watcher: draw a card whenever you cast a spell from anywhere other than your hand. Every Yennett cast comes from the library. Every cascade cast comes from exile. And the deck carries a cluster of cards that cast other people's spells for you: Chaos Wand and Dazzling Sphinx dig through an opponent's library to an instant or sorcery and cast it free, Thief of Sanity steals one of the top three cards of any player it hits, and Planeswalker's Mischief gambles on a random card from an opponent's hand and, if it is an instant or sorcery, lets you cast it. With Vega out, each of those is also a card.

Aerial Extortionist is the mirror image. It draws whenever another player casts a spell from anywhere but their hand — which is exactly what its own exile effect makes them do when they want their permanent back.

4. Void Winnower and the even-numbered lock

Void Winnower is the best card Yennett can reveal. Once it resolves, your opponents cannot cast spells with an even mana value — and zero is even, so that covers their free spells as well as their two-, four- and six-drops. They also cannot block with creatures whose mana value is even, which includes every token on the table, since a token's mana value is zero.

It binds only your opponents, but it fits here better than anywhere: a deck that was already built odd gives up nothing by making evenness a liability. Extinction Event is the same idea as removal. Choose even, and it exiles every creature with an even mana value — and every creature card in this 99 is odd. Only your tokens go with the opponents' boards: Shadrix Silverquill's Inklings, Nadir Kraken's Tentacles and Toxrill, the Corrosive's Slugs.

5. And the ends

Then there is the other half of the title. Around the engine sits a pile of cards that do something strange to the table — odds and ends in the ordinary sense:

• Aeon Engine reverses the turn order.
• Exchange of Words swaps two creatures' text boxes.
• Space Beleren, an Unfinity card that is legal in Commander, divides the battlefield into alpha, beta and gamma sectors.
• Psychic Battle lets whoever reveals the highest mana value off the top of their library change the targets of any spell or ability. Stack Void Winnower or Ethersworn Sphinx on top first, and only a card at ten or more beats you; a tie changes nothing.
• Shared Fate has every player draw from their opponents' libraries instead of their own.
• Fatespinner makes each opponent skip their draw step, their main phases or their combat — their choice, every turn.
• Misleading Signpost flashes in to send a creature attacking you at someone else, and Inniaz, the Gale Force and Aminatou's ultimate pass permanents around the table.

None of these is efficient, and a few — Shared Fate, Aeon Engine — help the table as much as they help you. They are here because they are fun, and they make Odds and Ends a deck that plays differently every game, which for a $150 art product is the right call. If you want it to win more often, they are also the first cards to cut.

Where it falls short

Three things, in order of how often they will matter.

Yennett has to attack, and nothing protects her. There are no Swiftfoot Boots, no hexproof, no way to save a five-mana commander from a removal spell. The consolation is Reconnaissance: once her attack trigger has resolved, zero mana removes her from combat and untaps her, so a bad block never has to happen.

The mana is slow. Only 12 of the 37 lands are basics, and many of the rest enter tapped: Arcane Sanctum, Myriad Landscape, Path of Ancestry and the three Temples always, while Evolving Wilds, Terramorphic Expanse and Contaminated Landscape fetch a basic tapped. Six rocks help — Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Talisman of Progress, Commander's Sphere, Coalition Relic and Skyclave Relic — but a five-mana, three-colour commander will not arrive on turn three often.

Almost nothing answers a spell. Creatures are well covered — Swords to Plowshares, Rapid Hybridization, Skyclave Apparition, Imprisoned in the Moon, Oubliette, Fractured Identity, plus Extinction Event and Promise of Loyalty as sweepers. But in a blue deck the only answer to something already on the stack is Time Stop, at six mana.

None of the 100 cards is on Wizards' Game Changers list, and there are no extra turns, no tutors beyond lands and no mass land destruction. That puts the natural weight class of the shell in Bracket 2, where most modern precons sit. As always, that describes the list as printed, not your copy after the first upgrade — the stats panel in the builder is where to check.

The money

The box costs $149.99. What the cards inside cost depends on how you count, and the most useful count is the simplest one: the cheapest English paper copy of each card, in any finish, as a player buying singles would find it.

Twice the sticker price is a real number, and it needs three caveats before anyone quotes it.

First, it is concentrated. Three cards are $116.64 of the $306.76 — 38% — and all three are new-art cards, so in the box they are Cavolo foils rather than the printings priced here:

Past the top ten the list thins out fast: 54 of the 88 non-basic cards cost less than a dollar. Yavimaya, the most expensive reprint, is also the strangest inclusion — a green deck's favourite land, in a deck with no green cards.

Second, the reprints are not quite the printings priced here. Each of the 76 carries a Planeswalker stamp, and the stamped copies had no market of their own yet — Scryfall had not catalogued them when we read the index. Every reprint figure is the price of an ordinary printing, and a stamped copy may not trade at the same price.

Third, buying and selling are different numbers. $306.76 is what it would cost to buy these cards one at a time, from the cheapest copy of each. What you would get selling them is lower, usually a good deal lower, and nobody sells 54 sub-dollar cards one by one.

Why the precon page shows a different number

The Odds and Ends page in our precon catalog shows a singles value of at least $183.78, and the gap is method, not error. The precon pages count a card only when they can price the exact printing in the box. For the 76 reprints, that is the printing Wizards names on its decklist — Toxrill, the Corrosive from Innistrad: Crimson Vow at $17.22, rather than its cheapest printing at $14.65. For the 24 Cavolo foils, it is the new Secret Lair printings, which had no price at all on September 26, so the page leaves them out and marks the total as a floor. One reprint is left out too: Wizards names the Murders at Karlov Manor Commander printing of Marvo, Deep Operative, collector number 7, which Scryfall lists only in foil, so the non-foil copy in the box has no price to read.

That floor is the more striking figure. Before a single Cavolo foil is priced, the reprints as printed already come to $33.79 more than the box.

The old printings did not move

If a reprint were going to pull the older copies down, the most expensive cards are where it would show first. Over the summer it did not: from June 1 to September 26, 2026, Esper Sentinel's Modern Horizons 2 Timeshifts printing went from $55.71 to $59.91, Sensei's Divining Top's Mystery Booster 2 printing from $35.33 to $35.40, and Void Winnower's Battle for Zendikar printing from $19.58 to $21.33. Those are the cheapest printing of each today.

The mechanism is the shipping date. A reprint adds supply when it reaches players, not when it is announced, and beyond the limited first batch, Odds and Ends orders ship in July 2027. Whatever the new foils do to the older printings, it will not happen this autumn. We will revisit these numbers once the Secret Lair printings have a market of their own.

Try the deck before the window closes

The whole list is on Manamancer, every card at the printing in the box: the twelve Cavolo foils and the foil basics as their Secret Lair printings, the 76 reprints at the printings they reproduce. Open it, sign in and press Save to My Decks, and you have your own copy to work with:

• Change it. It is an ordinary deck in the builder. Cut the oddities, add your own odd-numbered bombs, and the stats panel keeps track of the curve.
• Playtest it. Goldfish Yennett's first few attacks and see how often the top card really is a free spell.
• Check what you already own. If you have imported your collection, turn on Show → Owned and the deck marks every card you have — green for the exact printing, grey for another one.
• Ask for a second opinion. The Agent tab reviews any Commander deck against deckbuilding quotas and only ever recommends cards that exist — the guide explains how.

The sale lasts 24 hours; the list does not expire. If it turns out the deck is what you wanted rather than the art, everything you need to build it from singles is on that page.

Open the Odds and Ends decklist — All 100 cards at the printings in the box. Save a copy to My Decks, then edit it or playtest it.

What to make of it

Odds and Ends is a Secret Lair that justifies itself twice. As an object, it is twelve cards drawn edge to edge by one hand, every frame lettered and every joke taken literally. As a deck, it has a real engine, a real lock and a real win condition, wrapped in enough table chaos that no two games will look alike. And on September 26's prices, the reprints alone covered the sticker.

What it is not is a bargain in the speculative sense. The value thins out fast past the top three cards, the stamped reprints have no market yet, and most copies arrive next July. Buy it for the paintings and the games; if you only want the games, the list is one save away.

May your top card always be odd, and may nobody at the table read Shared Fate before it resolves.