Over the past few months, the Premodern format has been on one hell of a tear. Despite being locked, with no new cards entering the format, there’s still a surprising amount of innovation. Thanks to this, and the rapidly growing popularity of the format, Premodern has been responsible for multiple price spikes recently. Now, the same is happening to Meditate, thanks to its incredible draw potential.
MTG Meditate
Thanks to its insane downside, Meditate is a rather unusual MTG card. Getting to draw four cards for three mana is insanely good, especially since this effect typically costs seven mana. That said, the downside of skipping your next turn is hugely damning, although there are ways around it. Cards like Seedborn Muse, for instance, can let you keep casting spells on your opponent’s turns to mitigate the downside.
Despite the potential to play around it, Meditate is not a popular card in Commander. According to EDHREC, just 626 decks use it at the time being, which is understandable given its risk. That said, the card does seem to deserve more play, especially in Storm-focused Spellslingers decks. In these lists, winning on one big explosive turn is common, meaning the turn afterward doesn’t matter.
Through this lens, Meditate becomes a three-mana draw four with no downside. As if this wasn’t good enough, you can even use Sapphire Medallion and Helm of Awakening to bring its cost even lower. At one mana, this card is even better than Ancestral Recall, although that does require the stars to align. In Commander, this is a bit of a pipe dream, but in Premodern, it’s remarkably possible.
With an entire playset of each cost reduction spell, Meditate becomes a remarkably efficient card draw engine. This makes it the perfect fit for Storm decks in Premodern that want to play tons of draw spells before using Brain Freeze for the win. Recently, Storm decks have been running three, if not four, copies of Meditate, leading to a serious spike in demand. This, in turn, has led to a significant price spike over the past few weeks.
The Spike
While Meditate hasn’t been a popular MTG card for very long, in the grand scheme of things, it’s never been that cheap. Thanks to being a card on the Reserved List, supply for this card has always been rather low. Near-mint supply, in particular, is incredibly scarce, making it hugely vulnerable to sudden surges in demand.
Due to the low supply, even when it was practically never played, MTG Meditate sold for at least $5. More recently, thanks to Premodern, copies have been going for closer to $8 back in late December. As demand ramped up, however, it has only taken 138 near-mint sales to push prices up significantly.
Currently, a near-mint copy of Meditate will set you back around $22. With only copies left in this condition on TCGplayer, there’s a very real chance this spike will continue. Thankfully, if you do want to save a bit of money, there are still worse-condition copies of Meditate for sale.
With damaged copies starting at $13, prices are up across the board somewhat. Similarly, moderately played examples are now going for $15, and lightly played ones are up to $17. Notably, since Meditate is from Tempest, there aren’t any foil copies available as ultra-fancy premium variants.
Up and Down
For better or worse, Meditate may be reaching the peak of its price spike at the moment. It’s impossible to predict the future, of course, but this isn’t the first time that Meditate has spiked. Since 2012, this card has spiked three times in the past, each one peaking at between $20 and $30. In theory, this may simply be the ceiling that players are willing to pay, so Meditate’s current climb could stop soon.
While it does look like the ceiling for Meditate is somewhat low, this card does deserve to see more play. Not only is it possible to play around its intrinsic risk, but it’s huge if you don’t care about your next turn. Due to this, it feels possible that Meditate’s price could climb a little further than usual if more players give it a chance. That said, $22+ is a good chunk of change to part with on a punt that might not be viable.
Ultimately, as always, we can’t predict the future, even with this past precedent in mind. As such, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens over the coming weeks and months. Until then, it’ll definitely be worth keeping an eye on Meditate, as it certainly feels like an MTG card that’s worth watching.
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