Thanks to Universes Beyond, MTG has a lot of strange cards nowadays. Crossovers with Fortnite, Hatsune Miku, and even SpongeBob SquarePants have made Magic a very different game. Thankfully, every Universes Beyond product isn’t this wild, as crossovers with The Lord of the Rings, Final Fantasy, and Fallout all make some sense.
The Doctor Who Commander decks, meanwhile, sit in a bit of a strange place. On the one hand, Doctor Who is definitely a sci-fi property that isn’t too far from the usual vibes of MTG. On the other hand, this show is full to the brim with recognizable actors and celebrities. Thanks to this set, for instance, Kylie Minogue has an MTG card: Astrid Peth.
Beyond just being a weird oddity of MTG’s current era, this card is well worth paying attention to right now. Thanks to a new legend from Edge of Eternities, Astrid Peth has been spiking significantly in price.
Astrid Peth
At her core, Astrid Peth is a fairly simple MTG card. Boasting two abilities for a reasonable cost, Astrid can make Food and gets buffed when a Food or Clue Token is sacrificed. Unsurprisingly, these abilities make Astrid a shoo-in for Food and/or Clue-themed decks. The former of which is usually the popular choice.
In particular, Astrid Peth is typically an upgrade to the Food and Fellowship precon from The Lord of the Rings. This deck often has no shortage of Food Tokens in play, which means plenty of potential Explore triggers. This should either get you to useful cards faster or quickly turn Astrid into a major threat.
While Astrid Peth isn’t a fantastic Commander herself, she obviously works wonders with Academy Manufactor. Thankfully, this card tends to be a staple in Food or Clue-themed decks, giving you even more scaling potential. Due to this potential, Astrid has already seen play in around 15,000 Commander decks, which is respectable.
Thanks to Edge of Eternities, this number has now jumped up to 16,076 decks, at the time of writing. In particular, the new Lobster Citizen, Ragost, Deft Gastronaut, is the cause of this increased interest, which isn’t too surprising. Not only does Ragost make each artifact you control Food, but he’s a compelling damage-dealing sacrifice engine too.
The real trick of this is that Astrid Peth doesn’t care how Food or Clue Tokens get sacrificed. This allows her to have fantastic synergy with Ragost and other sacrifice engines, who can sacrifice Food for cheap. This, in turn, allows her to Explore more, turning her into an even bigger threat and value engine.
The Spike
Thanks to the fantastic synergy between Astrid Peth and Ragost, Deft Gastronaut, MTG players were quick to jump on this combo. When Ragost was first announced, there was a huge surge in sales of Astrid, as you can see above. Despite over 500 copies being sold in four days, the price didn’t immediately explode.
It has taken until the past week for the price of Astrid Peth to really start climbing. This is thanks to the supply almost running out following consistent, albeit slower, sales in recent weeks. At the moment, there are only 16 near-mint listings for Astrid on TCGplayer, although some of these do have multiple copies available.
Previously, before Ragost was revealed, you could easily pick up a copy of Astrid Peth for $0.51. Currently, that low price feels like a distant memory, as recent copies have been selling for as much as $4.98. Thankfully, new listings are slightly cheaper; however, the difference is negligible, as prices start at $4.79.
Mercifully, if you’re in the market for a copy of Astrid Peth, there are some cheaper ones available. Near-mint copies of the Extended Art variant, for instance, are still available for around $3. Recent sales for these copies have been rather slow; however, it might not stay that way for long.
Should you wish to spend more, for whatever reason, Wizards of the Coast has you covered. Astrid Peth has two Surge Foil variants. The default Surge Foil variant now starts at $9, while Extended Art Surge Foils are $10.
The Future
For better or worse, Commander-based price spikes rarely last forever. Ragost, Deft Gastronaut might be hugely exciting at the moment, but tastes always change over time. When new sets and cards come out, we tend to see the value of once-spiked cards falling. This can be seen exactly in another Doctor Who MTG card that spiked fairly recently, in fact.
Thanks to all the new Summons in the Final Fantasy MTG set, Barbara Wright spiked up to $4.42. Considering Barbara was once a $0.18 MTG card, this is an absolutely meteoric increase over the past few months. That said, since this spike, the price of Barbara Wright has been falling steadily.
Since reaching a peak price of $4.42, prices have now fallen to $3 after around seven weeks. In theory, since they’re from the same set, Astrid Peth could follow a similar trajectory. That being said, Astrid does have more long-term potential in Commander, since she’ll always be good in Food and Clue-based decks.
With this synergy in mind, it’s entirely possible that the price of Astrid Peth will continue to increase. Beyond this, her price may be more resilient than past spikes, as demand for her should be more consistent. Whether or not this will actually be the case, however, remains to be seen.
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