Disrupting Shoal
23, Oct, 24

Bizarre 19-Year-Old Free Counterspell Spikes Over 400%

Free spells are always a recipe for success in MTG. Getting value for nothing, or rather almost nothing, is always a sweet deal, no matter the effect. Free counterspells, in particular, have long been exceptionally powerful in the wide world of MTG. A long legacy including Force of Will, however, doesn’t guarantee constant success.

In the grand scheme of free spells and counterspells, Disrupting Shoal is hardly the most exciting card. Released almost 20 years ago in Betrayers of Kamigawa, this free spell has long since faded into obscurity. Over the past month, however, this card has had somewhat of a resurgence in an unexpected and surprisingly popular deck.

Thanks to this new competitive appeal, the price of Disrupting Shoal has been climbing hard.

Disrupting Shoal

Disrupting Shoal
  • Mana Value: XUU
  • Rarity: Rare
  • Card Type: Instant – Arcane
  • Card Text: You may remove a blue card with converted mana cost X in your hand from the game rather than pay Disrupting Shoal’s mana cost.
    Counter target spell if its converted mana cost is X.

If you play your cards right, Disrupting Shoal can counter any spell an opponent casts on turn one. Considering you can do this even when you’re on the draw, it’s safe to say this card has serious potential. That being said, there’s the obvious downside that you need to exile a card of equal mana value to the one you’re countering.

Sadly, this seemingly simple downside actually makes Disrupting Shoal pretty terrible. Unlike Force of Will which allows you to exile any Blue card, being forced to match mana costs can be seriously disruptive. If you only have a single relevantly costed spell in hand, you could be forced into a very difficult decision.

As good as a counterspell can be for disrupting your opponent’s plans, two-for-one-ing yourself is hardly ideal. Force of Will and Force of Negation see ample competitive play and do this, but they can counter almost anything they come across. Disrupting Shoal’s picky nature is what prevented the card from seeing play for some years. That all changed in 2024, however, as Mono Blue Belcher is back in Modern and doing surprisingly well.

Capable of routinely topping league events, while also performing well in challenges, Mono Blue Belcher is the real deal. Built around the titular Goblin Charbelcher the deck runs zero lands and plenty of double-faced cards like Sea Gate Restoration. This is great news for Disrupting Shoal, as it means you’ll always have a hand full of spells with varied mana values.

Thanks to this detail, Disrupting Shoal goes from being a risky value engine into a surprisingly versatile spell. In Mono Blue Belcher, it’s practically a must-have counterspell, with most lists running four copies in the main deck. Thanks to this ubiquity, there has been a lot of attention on Disrupting Shoal, and players looking to pick it up.

The Spike

Disrupting Shoal

Technically, Mono Blue Belcher decks have been hanging around in Modern since the release of Modern Horizons 3 in June. With new modal double-faced cards to play with, this archetype started putting up decent results. It was even surprisingly good against Nadu, Winged Wisdom, precisely thanks to Disrupting Shoal.

Now that Nadu has been banned, thankfully Mono Blue Belcher hasn’t gone anywhere. If anything, the deck has only gotten more popular since now it’s turn-four kill potential isn’t as comparatively slow. This has steadily increased the deck’s popularity, putting a lot more eyes on Disrupting Shoal.

Since the start of October, the price of Disrupting Shoal has really begun to climb. If you didn’t care about quality, prices technically started at around $0.67, but even heavily played examples are now around $3.50. Should you want better quality, you’ll unsurprisingly have to pay a fair bit more. Lightly played copies from Betrayers of Kamigawa for example, have gone from $1.11 to $5!

Thankfully, Modern players don’t just have to resort to buying original copies of Disrupting Shoal from 19 years ago. In 2018, the card was reprinted as part of Ultimate Masters, dramatically increasing the available supply. While near-mint copies of this variant are more available, they’ve also seen a similarly dramatic spike throughout October.

At the start of the month, near-mint Ultimate Masters copies of Disrupting Shoal were around $1.50. Now, whoever, these pieces have jumped up to around $5 in some cases, with listings now starting at similar prices. Technically, the price of lightly played copies has jumped to a similar amount, but players aren’t so readily buying these copies.

The Long Game?

Right now, the price spike to Disrupting Shoal could really go either way. While Mono Blue Belcher is unlikely to completely disappear from Modern, demand will surely dry up once players acquire their copies. Should this happen, we’d likely see the card’s price falling over the coming weeks or months.

Alternatively, should Mono Blue Belcher only become more popular, players may continue to snap up copies and further deplete the supply. This would cause prices to skyrocket even further than they have already, especially for Betrayers of Kamigawa copies. Admittedly, this does seem rather unlikely since the card doesn’t have any appeal outside of Modern, even in Commander.

Realistically, the most likely scenario seems to be that the Betrayers of Kamigawa variant keeps some value, but Ultimate Masters falls faster. Since foils aren’t favored by competitive players, this older variant should stay popular by being the fancy show-off-y version. With limited supply available, especially high-quality copies, it’ll be much harder for supply to match the demand.

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