The Lost Caverns of Ixalan has impacted Magic in a way some players did not expect. It turns out that the ‘fixed’ broken mechanic turned out problematic after all. After appearing as over 40% of the aggregated metagame for the Japanese Championship, Discover is the real deal.
Competitive MTG formats are not the only ones being impacted by new cards. It appears that the Commander exclusive MTG cards appearing in The Lost Caverns of Ixalan’s four Commander preconstructed decks are better than players expected. Many of them are tripling in price this week, while causing other cards from their Typal or Kindred strategies to increase even more!
Wrathful Raptors
Wrathful Raptors is one of the ten exclusive Commander cards released as part of the Veloci-Ramp-Tor Lost Caverns of Ixalan Commander deck focusing on the Dinosaur creature type. Notably, Pantlaza broke the Historic format last weekend as well, taking down the MTG Arena Qualifier without a single match loss.
Wrathful Raptors happens to be quite potent when combined with the infinite combo dino Polyraptor. Since infinite combos involving this card can easily lead to a draw, a way to end the game is needed. Wrathful Raptors turns the damage that is being dealt to Polyraptor to trigger its Enrage ability into a win condition.
Even outside of infinite combos, Polyraptor is great in a Dinosaur Typal deck. Essentially granting your Dinos an extra layer of protection, players will reconsider trying to contest your Dinos in combat, as Wrathful Raptors will turn all the combat damage they deal into removal effects. Heck, you can even kill opponents with them if life totals are low enough.
There is no experimentation happening for Wrathful Raptors happening in any competitive formats. This makes sense, as five mana for a narrow ability like this could be a bit too much to ask in faster formats like Legacy and Vintage.
Wrathful Raptors appears to have spiked from $2 to $9 over the course of the past week, but the top end of the spike could be even greater. This card does appear to be losing some value at the moment, trying to find its new price. As a result, a little pit of patience could reward players who are looking to purchase this card.
Bizarrely, players looking to find Wrathful Raptors for a deal may want to consider the extended art variant of the card. Currently on TCGplayer, these are only going for $2.50. Combine this with the 10% store credit back on the day of writing, and you can get these for pretty cheap at the moment.
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Broadside Bombardiers
Broadside Bombardiers have hit the scene running. This new Commander card from the Ahoy Mateys Commander deck looks seriously powerful. Even though the deck overall performs rather poorly, there are some really powerful singles available. Between Black Market Connections, this, and the new Partner Commander, Ahoy Mateys may have a pretty poor performance, but at least the cards are cool.
Unlike the Wrathful Raptors, Broadside Bombardiers are affecting more than just Pirate Typal decks in Commander. This card is also showing up in the Legacy format in various ‘stompy’ strategies.
Broadside Bombardiers have the potential to deal a lot of damage quickly. Between a fast body that is difficult to block and a sacrifice ability that can deal a ton of damage out of nowhere, the Bombardiers double as removal and a ton of burst damage. As a result, the Bombardiers are seeing play in some slower stax-y strategies trying to win a longer game of Legacy. The most meta-defining archetype under this umbrella is Boros Initiative, but the strategies stretch to less commonly played archetypes like Goblins, Mono Red Prison, and other generic midrange strategies that have a red-heavy focus.
Over the past week, Broadside Bombardiers have spiked from $3.43 and are floating around the $14-15 range. That said, players are still ordering multiple copies of the card for these prices, so there may be some speculation that this card could jump in price further.
Interestingly, there are very conflicting reports of prices for Broadside Bombariders’ extended art variants. At the moment, these appear to be the cheaper alternative on TCGplayer.
Pirated Copy
This is perhaps the least shocking spike on the planet. Pirated Copy has all the trends of a spiking Commander card. Pirates are hot because of all the new support in The Lost Caverns of Ixalan, so that is going to bring some interest to this card. Pirated Copy also has an incredibly powerful effect in Commander, able to copy much more powerful things your opponents are doing for just four mana. On top of all that, the Copy can easily grant you card advantage based on your opponents actions.
To top it all off, Pirated Copy is a Mythic Rare with only one printing. Exclusively available in Jumpstart 2022, any interest that this card receives may impact the price more heavily thanks to a lack of supply.
All of this said, Pirated Copy’s price spike has been a bit more gradual than our other features. Worth about $10 at the end of October, Pirated Copy’s price spike really started to pick up mid-November. Right now, the card is retailing for as much as $50 on TCGplayer! This seems to be a somewhat consistent outlier, however, as a majority of cards are selling for around $30.
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Vodalian Hexcatcher
In another episode of ‘incredibly predictable price spikes,’ Vodalian Hexcatcher makes an appearance. Merfolks are another common point of interest for many MTG players, competitive or casual, thanks to the additions to the archetype provided by The Lost Caverns of Ixalan. This time around, though, multiple cards are being added for both Commander-legal and Standard legal formats. Tishana’s Tidebinder, in particular, is making a very big splash in Modern.
Vodalian Hexcatcher, as a result, has seen increased interest for Pioneer, Modern and Commander. The Merfolk lord has always been a payoff of choice in the Modern format. A Merfolk that buffs your team at instant speed and can turn your other creatures into Force Spikes is incredibly powerful.
The Hexcatcher has also seen a more gradual spike that began at the end of October. Worth about $1.31 at the beginning of November, Vodalian Hexcatcher now demands prices between $10 and $14, with the most recent sales, as of the writing of this article, consistently falling slightly under $14. That’s a 964% price spike!
This is Not the End
While this article features some of the most noteworthy spikes for the week and, by extension, the month, there is a much wider variety of typal or Kindred cards that spiked thanks to The Lost Caverns of Ixalan. Between random Vampire, Pirate, Dinosaur, Merfolk, and the sudden increase of various cards related to the new Discover combo breaking out in the Pioneer format, prices for various MTG cards are all over the place this week.
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