Despite being announced and released over two weeks ago, Deadpool, Trading Card is still dominating the MTG finance markets. Some may feel that copying this card over and over and over again is a tired gimmick, but the numbers don’t lie. No matter which way you look at it, Deadpool is still an incredibly popular card, and players can’t get enough of breaking them.
Delina, Wild Mage
In theory, Delina, Wild Mage is an infinite copy engine, all on their own. If you get really really lucky, then you can copy any creature an endless number of times. Thankfully, in Commander, you’ll only need to copy Deadpool 24 times, at minimum, to have lethal damage across the board.
Sadly, the odds of this happening aren’t very realistic. The odds of rolling 24 dice, all of which land on 15 or more, are roughly 1 in 3,540,706,161,472 (0.00000000000028%). Basically, don’t hold out hope that Delina, Wild Mage will get the job done all on her own. While this may be somewhat disappointing given their technically infinite potential, Delina is still a good card.
At the very least, Delina, Wild Mage can copy Deadpool, Trading Card once per turn without issue. She does need to be attacking to make this happen, putting her at risk, but making one copy is at least guaranteed. Notably, you will need a way to turn off the legend rule, like Mirror Gallery, if you want these Deadpools to stick around.
As has been well established at this point, you don’t technically need to stop the legend rule with Deadpool. Since you still get to exchange text boxes before sacrificing, copying Deadpool can still shut down and hurt your opponents. While this does technically work, obviously, it’s more fun to give Deadpool staying power so they can run rampant.
Notably, unlike many of the other copy engines that have spiked recently, Delina, Wild Mage’s token copies don’t stick around. These tokens are always exiled at the end of combat, which means no fancy graveyard-related triggers either. Despite these drawbacks, Delina’s potential for multiple copy triggers still makes her a great pickup for a Deadpool, Trading Card deck.
The Spike
As with all the Deadpool-related spikes we’ve been seeing recently, this all started on April 1st. From the moment that Deadpool, Trading Card was revealed, people immediately knew that copy engines were big business. This caused an immediate spike in demand for Delina, Wild Mage, across all her variants.
Unsurprisingly, the Showcase variant has seen the biggest spike to date, but not for the reason you might think. Before the spike, this variant was actually selling for slightly less than the normal variant. On March 31st, near-mint copies of this variant were going for $3.07. Meanwhile, the normal variant was selling for $4.84 at the same time.
Despite this price difference, both variants of Delina, Wild Mage saw a surge in sales immediately after Deadpool’s reveal. Curiously, as you can see above, the initial spike to Delina’s Showcase variant was short-lived, however, low supply soon caught up. Now, there are only 10 near-mint copies left available for purchase on TCGplayer, which has driven prices up significantly.
Currently, the Showcase variant of Delina, Wild Mage is selling for $10.98 on average. While there have been some high TCGplayer Direct sales, in excess of $29, current listings do match the market price. The same is true for the normal variant of the card, which is selling for $11.16 on average.
Notably, unlike the Showcase variant, there’s still a decent amount of supply for the normal variant left available. Since sales for this variant have been dropping off in the past few days, there’s a chance that prices will fall soon. This would follow the trend that we’ve been expecting to see for a while now.
Making it Work
As with all the Deadpool, Trading Card spikes, the price of Delina, Wild Mage will inevitably fall over time. Considering that Deadpool was a Secret Lair card, meaning supply is limited, the current demand is simply unsustainable. Once new, exciting Commanders come along, interests will shift, and prices should fall.
Considering the number of Deadpool-related spikes we’ve seen recently, this expected trend is really nothing new. As a result, it’s worth focusing back on Delina, Wild Mage, to see if we can make them more broken. Thankfully, this is very much possible to do, even within the limited confines of Deadpool’s color identity.
In total, there are currently ten Commander-legal MTG cards that can affect the outcome of a dice roll. Out of these, only four are in color or relevant, which doesn’t give us a lot to work with. That being said, Barbarian Class and Wyll, Blade of Frontiers can improve your odds significantly.
With both of these cards in play, you’ll be rolling 3 dice per Delina trigger, rather than just one. This bumps up the odds of rolling a 15 or above massively, giving you a 65% chance of success. On top of this, having both Night Shift of the Living Dead and Xenosquirrels can push the odds up to 78% when activated.
Unfortunately, Night Shift of the Living Dead can only be activated once each turn. Without infinite +1/+1 counters, you’ll also struggle to get multiple activations out of Zenosquirrels. Frustratingly, this makes the math incredibly messy, so we’ll just have to stick to the 65% odds with OTK success. With both Wyll and Barbarian Class in play, you’ve got a 0.004184% chance of rolling right 24 times in a row.
The Meme Returns
At the end of the day, Deadpool, Delina, and these dice rolling shenanigans are definitely in the meme category of decks. While this doesn’t stop them from being popular, it does dampen their long-term staying power somewhat. That being said, it won’t be long before Deadpool is back in fashion.
On April 25th, Wizards of the Coast could be making Deadpool, Trading Card available at Local Game Stores. While it’s unclear how much the non-foil copies of this Secret Lair will cost, it should nonetheless increase overall supply. Ideally, this will cause the price of Deadpool to drop while allowing more players to get in on the fun.
Sadly, it’s unclear exactly how much supply Wizards will release and how effective the additional release will be. We’ll just have to wait until April 25th to see what happens. Just don’t be surprised if Deadpool ends up causing even more price spikes in the coming weeks.
