Out of all the new mechanically unique Final Fantasy Commander cards, Sphere Grid is currently the most expensive. The enchantment certainly offers a lot of utility in the right deck, but considering how narrow it appears at first glance, it’s rather shocking to see the card this popular. Representing a character’s ability tree from Final Fantasy X, Sphere Grid has a lot more multi-archetype appeal than it appears.
Sphere Grid MTG
For two mana, Sphere Grid offers an enchantment that buffs your creatures upon dealing damage. The buffs scale since +1/+1 counters are cumulative, which means this card can generate a ton of value throughout a Commander game. Beyond just buffing creatures, Sphere Grid makes it even harder for your opponents to block, thanks to providing Trample and Reach to your creatures with +1/+1 counters.
Naturally, the +1/+1 counters that Sphere Grid provides will work wonders in any +1/+1 counter-themed Commander deck. Beyond just offering innate synergy, a major problem of these decks is also solved by Sphere Grid providing Trample. Typically, while these decks can go incredibly tall, they often lack this keyword, which makes blocking trivial for your opponents.
At just two mana, Sphere Grid is one of the cheapest ways to overcome this major hurdle in Commander. Getting this effect on top of counter generation and Reach makes Sphere Grid a really sweet deal, all things considered.
Interestingly, while Sphere Grid is undeniably best in +1/+1 counters decks, it allows the card to be decent in any green Commander deck where combat damage matters. Just for mono-green Commanders alone, Sphere Grid fits in six of the top 10 Commanders despite only three of them having +1/+1 counter synergies. The card is extra devious in Fynn, the Fangbearer, the most popular mono-green Commander, since the combination of Deathtouch and Trample basically ensures that your opponent will gain a lot of Poison counters.
Sphere Grid’s even interesting for go-wide decks. You can think of this enchantment like a repeatable board-wide buff once you start swinging in for damage. The keywords matter a lot less in these decks, but being able to chump block fliers remains an underrated feature.
To-date, Sphere Grid isn’t seeing any play outside of casual Commander, including Duel Commander and cEDH. Since Sphere Grid needs a lot of time to generate an appropriate amount of value, this makes a lot of sense.
MTG Sphere Grid Finance
Thanks to being a bit more versatile than expected, Sphere Grid is surprisingly expensive. While the market value has Sphere Grid at about $20, recent sales for it are actually approaching $30. Grid has experienced a 337% price spike from its nadir to its current sales average, going from $6.17 to $27 and higher over the last two weeks.
We’ve seen the sort of valley-like pattern for many new Final Fantasy cards, but Sphere Grid is a little peculiar. A massive surge in demand is seen for many of these cards right after the official release date, but Sphere Grid’s demand surge happened a few days later. On June 12th and 15th specifically, Sphere Grid saw its demand peak at 276 and 273 copies, respectively.
Either way, getting the cheapest variant of this card for anything under $27 is currently a challenge. Sphere Grid’s other variants, unsurprisingly, are even more expensive. Extended art Sphere Grids are generally retailing for about $30, while Surge Foil Sphere Grids currently have a massive price discrepancy between recent sales and price. While the card has recently sold for $40 at its highest, current asking prices surpass $75.
According to current trends, Sphere Grid is going to get even more expensive in the short term. It will likely cool down once the initial rush of demand fades, but this will likely be the most expensive Final Fantasy MTG Commander card for some time.
Sphere Grid has a lot of applications across some popular archetypes, but it isn’t valuable in every green MTG Commander deck. For that reason, I wouldn’t be surprised if Sphere Grid dropped a bit in price once the novelty wears off, but it will likely always have a decent secondary market value because of the high likelihood for it to be synergistic with future Commander releases.
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