At this point, it’s no secret that Premodern is all the rage right now. This community-driven format has experienced a major surge in popularity over the last year, especially following its launch on Magic Online. Naturally, as more and more players have flocked to the format, demand for Premodern staples has risen significantly. As a result, cards like Powder Keg have skyrocketed in value.
MTG Powder Keg
Printed back in Urza’s Destiny, Powder Keg has a lot in common with Ratchet Bomb and The Filigree Sylex. Each turn cycle, you can charge up Powder Keg before using it to destroy creatures and artifacts of the desired mana value. While powerful, notably, this card is much worse than the modern retrains, as it doesn’t grow as quickly, or hit as much.
Despite these downsides, this artifact plays a crucial role in Premodern. Decks like Stiflenought that lack other elite sources of removal can lean on Powder Keg as a way to keep smaller creature decks in check. Since many of the format’s best threats have small mana values, it doesn’t take long to get enough fuse counters. Alternatively, it can also easily kill tokens and animated Manlands, giving Powder Keg tons of utility.
Unfortunately, outside of Premodern, Powder Keg’s applications are very narrow. With better options avaialble in every other eternal format, there’s only vague Commander synergy to fall back on. While it can blow up lands alongside Kamahl, Fist of Krosa, EDHREC states this card only appears in 705 decks total.
The Spike
Even though Premodern has only risen in popularity fairly recently, Powder Keg has been fairly expensive for a little while. Since this time last year, in fact, near-mint copies of this card have been selling for around $40 on average. While things fluctuated here and there, as normal, recently the price of Powder Keg has surged dramatically.
Following 39 near-mint sales over the past three months, copies of Powder Keg have spiked from $39.98 to $85. While this might not seem like a ton of sales, this card’s age makes it naturally rather rare. On top of this, Powder Keg is also on the MTG Reserved List, so Wizards isn’t able to reprint it to increase supply.
Unfortunately, if you still need a copy of Powder Keg, the low supply has pushed prices up across the board. Even moderately played copies are now selling for $67 and that’s the cheapest non-foil copy on TCGplayer. Should you not mind having a foil copy, then the Magic Player Rewards version is technically the better purchase right now.
With damaged copies available for $47 and near-mint copies starting at $79.90, this variant is slightly more affordable right now. This is likely due to the fact that foil cards aren’t preferred for tournament play, due to pringing issues. So long as you don’t mind that risk, however, it’s a compelling cost-saving option.
The Future
Unfortunately, predicting which way this Powder Keg price spike will go is rather difficult. Technically, this card is on the Reserved List, so the lack of reprints could easily keep prices high. At the same time, however, the complete lack of demand, outside of Premodern, so a metagame shift could easily kill current demand.
While this technically is a concern, realistically, the Premodern metagame appears rather stable. Since no new formats will be entering the format, either, there’s a good chance Powder Keg’s current price will last. The only real trouble would be if something from Stiflenought gets banned, but that doesn’t look hugely likely right now.
Either way, as much as we might try, it’s impossible to predict the future of MTG. As such, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens to Premodern and Powder Keg.
Stick with us here at mtgrocks.com: the best site for Magic: The Gathering coverage. Be sure to check out our deckbuilder for your next big brew!