Thanks to a novel April Fools Day product, Tarkir: Dragonstrom’s release has been somewhat overshadowed. Instead of being all excited about Dragons, it seems most MTG players online have been enamored with Deadpool, Trading Card instead. Considering how popular Deadpool is and how ridiculous their card is, this isn’t really a massive surprise.
From the moment that Deadpool, Trading Card was revealed on April 1st, many players have been leaning into the silliness. Even before deliveries made their way into players’ hands, there were plenty of powerful and combo-filled brews floating around. As usual, this quickly created plenty of impressive price spikes, which haven’t slowed down.
Orthion, Hero of Lavabrink
Hailing from March of the Machine, Orthion, Hero of Lavabrink has spent around two years being basically unplayable. In competitive formats, Orthion simply doesn’t have enough immediate impact to make a difference. Sure, copying a massive red haymaker like Terror of the Peaks is deadly, but that shouldn’t be necessary. After all, if you’ve got a threat like that on the board and the space to copy it, you should be winning already.
Thankfully, while Orthion, Hero of Lavabrink doesn’t see any competitive play, it does have some legs in Commander. In fact, in this format, Orthion can provide an obscene amount of value thanks to their second ability. While it is expensive, getting five token copies of a giant threat has the potential to completely end games.
Unsurprisingly, to create five tokens of a creature, even if only briefly, also enables all kinds of shenanigans. This makes them a perfect in color addition to any Deadpool, Trading Card deck that you might be brewing. Whether you’re copying Deadpool five times or just one per turn, Orthion makes repeatedly replacing text boxes a breeze.
While Orthion, Hero of Lavabrink can do a lot of work in a Deadpool deck, they’re no one-man army. Without something like Mirror Box or the recently spiked The Master, Multiplied, you’ll be hamstrung by the legend rule. If you can get around this, then the Deadpool tokens you create can dish out quite a beating.
Even without protection from the legend rule, Orthion, Hero of Lavabrink still does work. Even just neutering one opponent’s creature once per turn is a very powerful worst-case scenario option. Due to this, it’s little wonder that Orthion was quickly identified as a compelling spec for Deadpool decks.
The Spike
As you can see in TCGplayer’s handy dandy price graph above, Orthion, Hero of Lavabrink saw one hell of a surge in demand. On April 2nd, just after Deadpool was announced and released, almost 300 copies of this card were sold in a single day. While sales quickly settled down after that explosive start, it wasn’t from a lack of trying.
Following the immense surge in demand, there are now very few copies of Orthion left available for purchase. Right now, on TCGplayer, there are only seven near-mint examples left. Sadly, things don’t get much better if you’re not fussed about quality, as there are only 22 listings in total for the entire US region.
Thankfully, there is also an Extended Art variant of Orthion, Hero of Lavabrink, however, this is similarly rather scarce. At the moment, there are just 23 copies of any condition available for purchase on TCGplayer. Should the demand for Orthion continue, these limited copies of both variants may not last long at all.
Unsurprisingly, this surge in demand and the following lack of supply has caused a rather sizable price spike. So far, the price of near-mint copies has spiked over 380% in just a few days. Toward the end of March, this Orthion was selling for around $2.30, however, copies now start at $11.23.
If you’re quick, the Extended Art variant of Orthion, Hero of Lavabrink is currently selling for slightly cheaper. Near-mint copies of this variant start at $8.36 right now, although that sadly doesn’t include shipping. Due to a higher pre-spike price of $3.22, this variant has only spiked by 151%.
The Future
As much as Deadpool, Trading Card is very fun and exciting right now, we don’t have much hope for Orthion’s future. From a price perspective, at least, it seems there’s a very good chance this spike will be short-lived. As much as there’s a lot of powerful synergy here, it’s unlikely that long-term demand will keep prices this high.
Ultimately, the supply of Deadpool, Trading Card is going to be the problem here. While he is returning to LGS’ later this month, they’re bound to still be somewhat scarce. Hopefully, there will be enough Deadpools to go around, but MTG players aren’t hugely optimistic about that happening. As a result, a lot of players might not be able to properly enjoy this synergy.
Notably, even without Deadpool, Orthion, Hero of Lavabrink was somewhat expensive to begin with. While $2.30 isn’t massively expensive in the grand scheme of MTG, Orthion isn’t exactly draft chaff. This is likely due to their moderate appeal in Commander and overall scarcity. Since they’ve only been printed in March of the Machine, copies of Orthion aren’t exactly flooding the market.
Even with this somewhat low supply, the current price is bound to fall before too long. This surge in demand has been incredibly impressive, but interest will shift as new cards come along. Once we get into the spoiler season for Final Fantasy, for instance, Deadpool may end up being largely forgotten.