Despite all the leaks, the MTG finance markets have been pretty slow to jump on the new Edge of Eternities cards. This might have something to do with the fact that these cards aren’t officially confirmed just yet. Alternatively, the majority of cards just might not be strong enough. Station, in particular, looks like it’s far too slow to be viable in most formats.
Thankfully, this lack of market movement should end soon. In the next couple of days, we’re going to see both of the set’s precons be revealed. Before then, however, a set that’s over four months away from release is making the biggest waves. We might only know about one card, but the Avatar: The Last Airbender MTG set is already proving popular.
Fist of Suns
On its own, Fist of Suns is a pretty terrible MTG card. While it technically does allow you to cheat out high-cost creatures for just five mana, even that isn’t exactly easy. Since you need the full WUBRG of mana to cast anything, it’s not easy to ramp into success. Even if you do manage this, cheap spells become woefully inefficient and overly expensive.
Thankfully, Fist of Suns is an MTG card that’s made to be broken. This has been possible for a long time thanks to cards like Morophon, the Boundless. So long as you choose the right creature type, Morophon can let you play any creature for free. Due to this, Morophon is one of the most popular generic Typal and five-color Commanders in MTG.
While this synergy is very powerful and popular in Commander, it’s not exactly perfect. Non-creature spells won’t have their costs reduced, so you’ll still be potentially overpaying for cheap utility cards. Thankfully, there is a new card coming along that solves this problem entirely.
Avatar Aang, from the upcoming Avatar: The Last Airbender set, offers a WUBRG cost reduction to all spells you cast. This even applies to generic costs, which opens up some spicy infinite combos. As you might expect, getting to cast any spell for free is an obscenely powerful effect; however, there is a catch.
To get to Aang’s cost reduction, you’ll need to flip them into Aang, Master of Elements. To do this, you’ll need to Water, Earth, Fire, and Air bend in a single turn. Currently, we have no idea how you do either of these mechanics, or how individually powerful they are. Subsequently, the power level of Avatar Aang is rather suspect.
That said, Aang is more than exciting enough to stir up an impressive price spike.
The Spike
As soon as Avatar Aang was revealed, on June 21st, interest in copies of Fist of Suns began to dramatically increase. Things were a little slow going to start with, as you can see above; however, it didn’t take long for the synergy to become clear. As time went on, the speed of sales continued to ramp up, especially for The List variant.
With the speed of sales increasing, it didn’t take long before prices began shooting up. This price spike can be seen across all variants; however, it’s most visible on the Commander 2017 printing. This time last month, this printing was worth around $2.77 on average, but it has shot up since July began.
Currently, near-mint condition copies of this printing have sold for upwards of $15. This is now the starting price for new listings of any condition. Even if you only want a lightly played copy, you’re still going to have to shell out $14.49 at the moment. Unfortunately, if you are after a copy of Fist of Suns on a budget, there are very few affordable copies remaining.
Outside of a couple of copies listed at around $5 and $9, Fist of Suns is now selling for at least $14. Considering most variants of this card used to be less than $3, this is quite the leap. Notably, the Borderless printing from The Lost Caverns of Ixalan Commander has long been the most expensive variant.
Back in June, this Borderless variant, which notably has unique art, was selling for around $8. Now, however, the market price is up to $18.79. As if that wasn’t high enough, some MTG players have even paid $50 for a single foil copy. Remarkably, there are multiple sales at this price, proving it’s not just a one-off.
The Future
If you ask us, Fist of Suns is way too expensive right now. $15 might not be an immense amount of money in the grand scheme of MTG, but we don’t know how good Avatar Aang is. There’s a non-zero chance this card is just not good in Commander, and flipping it is overly taxing.
Until we know more about the four bending mechanics, it’s impossible to say whether or not this is a good investment or not. That said, it still makes sense that people are investing now. After all, if the card does turn out to be good, then the price of Fist of Suns may skyrocket even more in the future.
Ultimately, we’re just going to have to wait and see what happens, as it’s far too early to tell now. Thankfully, we shouldn’t be left waiting for too long, as Wizards has confirmed the set’s First Look will happen on August 12th. This First Look presentation should hopefully reveal the set’s mechanics, so we’ll have to wait and see what happens then.
Just don’t be surprised if we see a major change in Fist of Suns’ price after this announcement. If things look good, we might be due for another major spike pushing prices to the extreme. Alternatively, if the bending mechanics are too cumbersome, then prices may crash hard.
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