Honestly, I’m surprised it took Ripples of Death this long to start showing signs of a price spike. The card isn’t quite as good as it’s green counterpart, but anything that can be compared to Sylvan Library is incredibly efficent as far as Commander goes.
The card is finally beginning to see recognition because it has tons of synergy with the new Sultai Commander cards releasing alongside Tarkir: Dragonstorm. Anything that moves cards in and out of the graveyard is valuable, and Ripples of Death creates tons of value while furthering your gameplan.
Ripples of Undeath
Ripples of Undeath, essentially, offers an extra draw and some card selection every turn. For two mana, this is a massive steal. The singular mana isn’t a big deal a lot of the time, and Commander players have more than enough life to pay to get cards back from the graveyard.
Instead of putting the cards back on top your deck like Sylvan Library, Ripples of Undeath mills them and pulls one out of the grave. Graveyard Commander deck synergies aside, this is even more powerful with the various tools from the Sultai Arisen precon. That Commander deck specifically cares about you moving cards out of your graveyard.
Using Teval, Balanced Scale and Teval’s Judgment alongside Ripples of Undeath creates a ton of value. Teval will make Zombie Druids as long as you move a card to your hand with Ripples of Undeath, while Teval’s Judgment can draw cards, create treasures, or create more creature tokens.
Sultai Arisen aside, Teval, the Balanced Scale is the second most popular Commander this month, and the most popular this week. Tons of players are also building Teval from scratch, and Ripples of Undeath’s synergy with the Commander is undeniable.
This is enough reason for Ripples of Undeath to see a significant price spike. The card is already fantastic in any black Commander deck, but the card functions as the perfect upgrade for the Sultai Arisen precon.
The Spike
Ripples of Undeath has been a very popular since January. Over the past three months, Ripples of Undeath has never sold less than 38 copies per three days. That’s an obscene amount of cardboard.
So, despite lots of demand, why has it taken so long for Ripples of Undeath to spike? It appears that demand has finally outweighed supply. Only 11 listings of the traditional Ripples of Undeath are available on TCGplayer, while only eight extended arts are currently listed. Two prerelease foils round off only 21 copies of Ripples of Undeath across the platform.
Despite this immense popularity, Ripples of Undeath only started spiking near the end of March. Spiking from $4 to $13.50, Ripples has experienced a 237.5% price spike so far. The card is still selling strong daily as of the writing of this article, so there’s a decent chance that this spike isn’t over yet. A majority of the currently available traditional variant Ripples of Undeath are over $20.
All of Ripples of Undeath’s other variants have a noticable premium over the traditional one. The Extended art Ripples of Undeath are going for $15-20 for the nonfoil variant, and $25+ for the foil one. Current asking prices for the card start at $35 at the time of writing.
This Could Get More Expensive
While Ripples of Undeath has additional synergies with the current Commander craze, it’s just a good Magic card and boasts an effect that should probably retail for more than $4. The card is likely to retain some value from this spike as a result, but it’s very likely that Ripples of Undeath will settle at a price below where this spike ends.
Ripples of Undeath won’t always have additional synergies with the Commander flavor of the month, but any black deck that uses the graveyard will at least consider using this card. Even black decks that don’t care about milling may still want this card solely due to the card selection it grants.
So, while we expect Ripples of Undeath to settle a bit, we wouldn’t be surprised if it never quite got back down to where it was before this spike. Sylvan Library is a Commander all-star for a reason and, while Ripples of Undeath isn’t quite as good as its source material, it is very comparable.