As many MTG players are aware, it’s normal for new Commander precons to cause price spikes. New Commanders require different synergistic pieces, causing obscure cards that haven’t seen the light of day to suddenly reappear.
Despite the Final Fantasy Commander precons being announced a few weeks ago, cards are still spiking in price as players find atypical cards to use with the new Commanders. Today, a 26-year-old instant is rising in price thanks to some unintuitive synergies with Y’shtola, Night’s Blessed.
Slaughter
Printed all the way back in Exodus, Slaughter is a rather uninteresting removal spell in many situations. Regeneration is rarely relevant anymore, and destroying one nonblack creature is a horrible deal for four mana. In many ways, this card is worse than Murder, a run-of-the-mill Limited removal spell. The only thing that sticks out about Slaughter is its Buyback cost.
Slaughter does become a lot better when it can be recurred, especially in a format that offers as many threats as Commander. That said, paying four life for such a subpar piece of removal is generally not worth it… except when you have additional synergies.
Y’shtola, Night’s Blessed cares about players losing four life, but it doesn’t care who loses it. That means Y’shtola will trigger when the Buyback cost of Slaughter is paid. This turns Slaughter into a card advantage spell alongside the Final Fantasy XIV precon face Commander.
Even better, Y’shtola, Night’s Blessed triggers at every end step, not just yours. That means Slaughter can draw multiple cards over a turn cycle as long as you have the mana to cast it repetitively. Y’shtola’s triggered ability even helps stem the bleeding a bit, draining the table for two when you cast Slaughter. This points to the Exodus uncommon being a surprising engine for Y’shtola, Night’s Blessed decks, as long as you have targets to remove with it.
The Spike
Near mint copies of Slaughter have shown a very distinct price spike from about 30 cents to about $4, occurring over the last few weeks. Demand for the card spiked massively on May 15th, right at the beginning of the spike. Considering that Commander precon lists were spoiled around this time, it makes a lot of sense.
What’s a bit more unusual is that demand for Slaughter died off rather quickly after the initial spike. This is unlikely to be a true reflection of current demand, however. Slaughter printing is noticeably scarce, suggesting the supply for this card is seriously dwindling at the time of writing.
So far, because this card has only been printed in Exodus, the uncommon currently does not have a foil variant. It also means that, in addition to there being very few copies of Slaughter to go around, there’s also going to be a lot of damaged copies of the card.
If you’re looking for some less-than-near-mint copies of Slaughter, you might be able to save a little bit of money. A majority of moderately played copies of Slaughter have sold for about $3.50, but there are copies available for $3 as of the writing of this article. Heavily played copies of Slaughter have sold for as little as 25 cents, but $2 is the cheapest copy of the card currently available.
Will Slaughter Continue to Rise?
Admittedly, Slaughter does a lot in tandem with Y’shtola, Night’s Blessed, and genuinely seems like a decent upgrade for the Final Fantasy XIV precon, at least for those who are willing to take a loss on the deck’s flavor. That said, as has been strongly established, price spikes caused by new Commander pieces are typically temporary. Slaughter, in a void, is not a good card, which means that once players aren’t interested in building Y’shtola, the demand for Slaughter will likely plummet.
On the other side of things, the supply for Slaughter is seriously limited, which could cause the card to rise further in price if demand continues. While that’s generally off the table at this point in a set’s lifespan, Final Fantasy’s Commander-related spikes have been noticeably tardier than usual, throwing things into a bit of disarray.
If you want to grab a copy of Slaughter for yourself, but don’t want to pay these higher prices, waiting until Magic’s next wave of new Commander cards hits the internet is probably your best bet. If you want to find Slaughter for your Y’shtola deck in the meantime, be prepared to pay a premium.
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