Preconstructed Commander decks are some of the most highly anticipated releases alongside a new MTG set. While the ten mechanically unique eternal legal cards often dictate what many players will be building for months to come, they can occasionally impact formats beyond Commander.
These cards weren’t built to mix up formats like Legacy and Vintage, but when they do, EDH precon cards often have a major effect. After an unexpected run to the top four of the North American Legacy Eternal Weekend, hundreds of copies of Eumidian Hatchery, another Commander precon card, are getting snatched up.
Eumidian Hatchery MTG
Eumidian Hatchery is quite the powerful land, but getting value out of it requires some specific strategies. Because you need to pay life to use the land, this is strictly worse than a Basic Swamp unless you can get Eumidan Hatchery into the graveyard. Doing this rewards you with Insect Tokens, which is a lot more relevant than it may seem. In the World Shaper precon, Eumidian Hatchery offers additional rewards for various sacrifice synergies from cards like Hearthhull, the Worldshaper, and Szarel, Genesis Shepherd. While what Hatchery offers these decks is essentially a free bonus, because of Commander’s exponential value-based nature, it takes far too long for this reward to be meaningful. The same, however, is not true for two-player formats.
This weekend, a rogue Golgari Smallpox deck finished fourth in the North American Legacy Eternal Weekend with a full playset of Eumidian Hatchery in the 75. This deck wasn’t considered a serious meta contender up to this point, but Eumidian Hatchery proved to be a massive upgrade, allowing the deck to shine at Legacy’s toughest tournament of the year.
In Golgari Smallpox, Eumidian Hatchery helps break the parity of the deck’s namesake card. Smallpox normally causes both players to, essentially, lose three cards. Your Hatchery can flood the board with Insects on death, and their value becomes much greater on a barren board state. Besides just outright winning the game over time, the tokens can then be used to help pay for other costs in the deck, like Convoking MTG boogeyman Hogaak, Arisen Necropolis, into play, or paying the creature cost for future Smallpox casts. It’s not uncommon for your opponent to have no lands in play with this strategy, allowing your Insects to swing for damage over the course of a few turns.
Outside of Legacy Smallpox, Eumidian Hatchery sees some very rare cEDH play with Commanders like Hearthhull, the Worldseed and Korvold, Fae-Cursed King. Of all the Commanders you can play Eumidian Hatchery with, Korvold offers the biggest rewards. While Hearthhull only cares about sacrificing lands, you can get some additional value out of sacrificing the Insects for cards. That said, almost all of this card’s play comes from Legacy Smallpox, and that is undeniably the cause of the card’s spike this week.
The Spike
After Eumidian Hatchery’s successful top four placement this past weekend, demand for the card skyrocketed, with 93 copies selling on October 12th alone. This sudden surge in demand caused Eumidian Hatchery’s market average to jump from 55 cents to $1.75 in just 11 days, representing a 218% price increase.
All of that said, actual sales for Eumidian Hatchery are all over the place. The card has been selling for anywhere between $0.45 and $5 over the past three days. Despite that, it’s impossible to find a near-mint copy of Eumidian Hatchery for less than $1.75 at TCGplayer at the time of writing, excluding shipping. Lightly played copies appear to be available for about a dollar, and consistently have sales around that number.
While traditional Eumidian Hatcheries can only be found in World Shaper, there are also extended art versions of the card that appear in Edge of Eternities Collector Booster packs. Right now, these are actually the cheaper variant available, but it’s unlikely to stay that way for too long. You can find near-mint nonfoil copies of Hatchery for as little as $0.60, but most copies of the card are available for about a dollar, excluding shipping. Both variants of Eumidian Hatchery do not have foil copies associated with them, but considering that the main appeal for this card is due to tournament play, this isn’t really a bad thing.
The Future
Eumidian Hatchery’s future price will likely depend on how well Golgari Smallpox adapts to higher levels of play in Legacy. As players plan to pick up and play against the deck, Eumidian Hatchery’s resilience will be tested. If Smallpox can’t keep up, Eumidian Hatchery’s price will likely fall. For the time being, however, it’s likely that Hatchery will keep creeping up in price.
This is especially true for the extended art variant of Hatchery. That variant has doubled in price so far, and will likely continue to climb until it meets Eumidian Hatchery’s other market value. There are three times the supply for the extended art variant at the time of writing, however, which could keep the extended art variant’s price a bit lower.
As always, it’s impossible to truly predict the future, but the Legacy Eternal Weekend is the ultimate test for any Legacy deck. I would expect Smallpox to continue having moderate success in the coming months. It pairs well against many of the popular Legacy decks at the moment and seems to have a friendly learning curve. All of that said, demand from Legacy isn’t always the most consistent since it’s not a properly supported format. Once everyone playing Golgari Smallpox finds their Hatcheries, the card could start to stabilize, finding its new price point.
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