It’s not uncommon for Magic players to miss powerful cards during the spoiler season to a new set. Cards like Ledger Shredder back in Streets of New Capenna didn’t have much discussion until players finally got their hands on it and realized just how powerful it was. Conniving on your second spell, while punishing opponents for casting theirs, is an incredibly powerful option in faster formats like Pioneer and Modern. That said, Connive was a new mechanic at the time, which made it more difficult to assess.
While Ledger Shredder may have caught many players by surprise, it did not have players hating on it before its potential was realized. That’s not the case for one of the sleeper cards in Outlaws of Thunder Junction.
The Big Score is one of the stranger stories from Outlaws of Thunder Junction. Wizards of the Coast realized just how poorly the last Epilogue set performed and decided to make a change. That change resulted in The Big Score being crammed into where The List is supposed to go. Unfortunately, since Outlaws of Thunder Junction already had a Bonus Sheet, this made things rather confusing…
Beyond just being confusing, this change bafflingly gave every card in The Big Score a mythic rarity. Not only did this cause huge problems for MTG Arena players, but it also had some cards being ridiculed before release. One such card that received more than its fair share of hate was Ancient Cornucopia. Upon its debut, this card certainly didn’t look deserving of its rarity, however, we may have all been too quick to judge.
Ancient Cornucopia
The Big Score’s worst Mythic Rare is seeing play in Pioneer and Standard. It turns out that Ancient Cornucopia is a great catch-up ramp tool against faster strategies if you’re casting multicolored spells. In Pioneer, this card is fantastic in the rising Niv-Mizzet archetype. Thanks to playing both Omnath, Locus of Creation and various five-color Niv-Mizzet cards, Cornucopia can provide a ton of life gain, helping to stabilize against faster strategies.
In Standard, Ancient Cornucopia has seen a lot of success in the Domain archetype. First shown off by Andrea Mengucci winning the Pro Tour requalification tournament, Cornucopia does a better job of ramping and keeping you alive than Topiary Stomper does. Thanks to this, Ancient Cornucopia is seeing a surprisingly large amount of play nowadays.
Ancient Cornucopia is spiking across its variants, but the more expensive alternatives are the ones seeing the biggest price spikes. On the top end of things, the Showcase Foil variant of Ancient Cornucopia that is only found in Collector Boosters is spiking to $50! While there are cheaper sales for the card at the time of writing, the cheapest available copy of this card on the market is $70.
If you’re looking to get this for as cheap as possible, the nonfoil variant found in Play Boosters is up from a dollar to about $5 at the higher end of things.
It’s pretty remarkable for the MTG community to get a card this wrong. Ancient Cornucopia went from being the butt of everyone’s jokes to becoming a card seen in multiple formats. Mind you, the presence of powerful multicolored spells helped the playability of the Cornucopia a lot.
Vaultborn Tyrant
Vaultborn Tyrant is also seeing a price spike, but players may be a bit less surprised about this one. Not only does this massive Dino want to be in every green Dinosaur Commander deck ever, but Vaultborn Tyrant is even starting to see some competitive play! Specifically, this dino is starting to see play in Indomitable Creativity lists in Pioneer, causing some competitive players to start picking up playsets of this card. Considering that it is currently Pioneer RCQ season, this new innovation may spark more interest than many expect.
Using Vaultborn Tyrant over Atraxa, Grand Unifier allows an Indomitable Creativity for 2 or more to have a much greater impact on the board. Two Vaultborn Tyrants entering the battlefield at the same time gains you 12 life and draws four cards! Not only that, you have two massive, sticky threats on board.
Sadly, for players who want to try this Creativity variant, Vaultborn Tyrant is rather expensive. Since early April, Vaultborn Tyrant has risen from about $9 to around $25. Realistically, Vaultborn Tyrant is selling for a wider range – between about $22 and $30, but a majority of sales are around the $25 mark.
Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover
Hopefully, the rise of Ancient Cornucopia showcases that even the most seemingly useless effects have their place in the right decks. Combined with powerful multi-colored spells, the Cornucopia can give slower archetypes a lot of survivability. Vaultborn Tyrant also may have seemed like a Commander-only card, but this threat can do a lot of damage in constructed formats as well!
When the next spoiler season comes around the corner, try to keep this in mind. Modern Horizons 3 is next, and a lot of cards are likely to look absolutely incredible, so this may not apply too well there. Once Bloomburrow comes around, just because the MTG community may be hating on a critter that seems special to you, that doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t make it work.
