Avatar: The Last Airbender’s prerelease has passed, but the set is still getting out of the starting gates. At the time of writing, Avatar hasn’t appeared online yet, which means that most MTG players haven’t had time to test the set yet. Until results start showing up online, Avatar cards are unlikely to have a significant impact on financial markets. Fortunately, old trends are still creating some action.
The PlayStation cards being a market mover is no secret. Not only did this Secret Lair drop offer a wide array of crossovers to potential fans, but the themes explored mechanically have also proven popular. This week, yet another old card is spiking in price to new demand created by MTG PlayStation Commanders.
Keranos, God of Storms
Originally from the Nykthos block, which first introduced the God creature type, Keranos, God of Storms follows the traditional templating of God creatures. Despite the card’s difficulty to turn into a creature, Indestructible is undeniably a boon, protecting your God from removal, regardless of whether it’s a creature or not. That said, the last ability is the most interesting thing that this card offers.
Keranos offers you removal or extra card draw every turn, depending on what happens to be on the top of your deck. You can use topdeck manipulation tactics with cards like Brainstorm to control what benefit you get, but it’s more important to make sure you’re drawing a card every turn when using Keranos.
While this card will trigger on its own during your turn, Keranos cares about the first card you draw on every turn. So long as you have a way to draw cards on other player’s turns, Keranos essentially offers four extra instances of card draw or removal. Any number of cantrips, from Consider to Opt, can easily trigger Keranos extra times. Heck, Rhystic Study, a card that the community is debating banning right now, is extremely efficient with Keranos.
While all of this is exciting, Keranos, God of Storms is currently soaking up the spotlight due to the new Kratos, Stoic Father and Atreus, Impulsive Son Commander deck. Of course, because Kratos cares about Gods, almost every MTG God that can see play in Kratos will show up there, but the synergies don’t end there. Thanks to drawing cards on another player’s turn, Keranos also plays well with Atreus. Better yet, if you can turn Keranos into a creature, it will help scale up the buffs and the card draw that the Commander duo is capable of dishing out.
The Spike
After players started picking up copies of Keranos for their Kratos and Atreus decks following its reveal at the end of September, Keranos spiked from about $2.03 to about $6.43, resulting in a 216% price spike. While the market average chart seems to have malfunctioned in November, the card has multiple recent sales at $6.43 and, outside of the occasional outlier, near mint copies of Keranos are listed for $7.00 and up.
The good news is that, because Keranos is an older card at this point, there are many worse-conditioned copies of the card circulating. Even lightly played copies of Keranos are noticeably cheaper, selling for around $3.50, but they seem to be accompanied by substantial shipping costs. Heavily played Keranos copies, comparatively, are selling for around $2.30, but they also have massive shipping costs attached, which somewhat ruin the deals. Regardless, if you want to save some money, there are cheaper copies of Keranos out there if you’re willing to be patient. The same, however, goes the other way.
There are only two printings of Keranos, God of Storms, which certainly impacts its pricing somewhat. The only version from a main set is the card’s original printing from Journey Into Nyx, a set printed 11 years ago. That, plus a Secret Lair printing, are the only copies of Keranos on the market.
While Keranos’s printings certainly has an effect on the card overall, it’s much worse news for foil lovers. $9.79 is the cheapest copy of Keranos available with reasonable shipping attached. The Secret Lair variant, in comparison, makes the entire Journey into Nyx spike for Keranos, God of Storms, look like child’s play. The card has spiked from $7 to $20 in the same time period, and is exclusively available in foil.
The Future
While Keranos, God of Storms is certainly seeing a rush of demand thanks to the Kratos and Atreus Partner decks, outside of that, the God is a pretty efficient card. Keranos has a reasonable place in any Izzet deck that’s consistently drawing a card every turn, and also commonly finds a place in various ‘big stuff’ strategies like The Prismatic Bridge. Heck, the card makes for a reasonable Commander itself.
Like any Commander spike, Keranos will likely drop in price after the spike in demand settles down. That said, I wouldn’t expect Keranos to return to its pre-spike prices, either. A sudden spotlight is sometimes all a card needs for players to discover its potential, after all, and Keranos plays well with a lot of strategies.
All of that said, spending five mana on an effect like this means you really do need to be triggering it multiple times a turn rotation for Keranos to be worthwhile. The mana value could prevent Keranos from seeing play in a lot of places that it could, meaning that it might not catch fire outside of Kratos decks. It’s impossible to tell the future for sure, but I’m optimistic that Keranos will see a bit more sunlight as a result of this spike.
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