Even before Final Fantasy spoilers were first revealed much earlier this year, everyone knew this set would be massive. Unprecedented demand has caused unprecedented sellouts, record-high prices, and a huge number of price spikes. To put it lightly, it seems both MTG players and Final Fantasy fans can’t get enough of this new set.
In particular, new cards like Vivi Ornitier are quickly proving to be multi-format all-stars. While Vivi and other Final Fantasy legends are proving to be great fun, Commander is a multiplayer format. Due to this, there will always be players trying to disrupt and answer the fun things that you’re doing. If this is your goal, Gleeful Arsonist definitely needs to be on your radar.
Gleeful Arsonist
First released in the Endless Punishment precon from Duskmourn: House of Horror, Gleeful Arsonist is potentially brutal. At worst, Gleeful Arsonist will occasionally ping an opponent thanks to the prevalence of noncreature spells in Commander. Thankfully, Arsonist can easily get better than this rather low value floor, thanks to its own Undying ability.
While Gleeful Arsonist is decent enough on its own, this card obviously gets better with synergistic support pieces. Buffing Arsonist makes each ping hurt that much more; however, that’s not usually the preferred game plan. Most group-slug decks use a death by a thousand cuts strategy with Valgavoth, Harrower of Souls leading the charge.
Thankfully, there’s a new Commander in Final Fantasy that does let Gleeful Arsonist dish out more damage. Currently, the sixth most popular Final Fantasy Commander, Kuja, Genome Sorcerer works wonders with Arsonist. Not only is Kuja a spell-slinging group-slug Commander, but they can double Arsonist’s damage too.
Once flipped into Trance Kuja, Fate Defied, Kuja will double all the damage that your Wizards dish out. At worst, this means Arsonist will be pinging opponents for two or four, with no extra support. While useful, this is admittedly just alright on its own; however, the current state of Commander makes Arsonist even better.
In the past week, Y’shtola, Night’s Blessed and Vivi Ornitier have been the most popular Commanders in MTG. Both these Commanders largely revolve around casting a bunch of spells, which Gleeful Arsonist punishes heavily. Due to this, they’re rising in popularity as a piece of casual anti-meta defence tech that’s better than usual right now.
The Spike
Unlike most of the Final Fantasy-based price spikes, which happened during spoiler season, Gleeful Arsonist’s rise is much more recent. In fact, this card didn’t really explode in popularity until after the set was officially released on June 13th. After players got a taste of this and realized what counterplay would benefit, Arsonist quickly shot up.
Before the release of the Final Fantasy MTG set, on May 25th, Gleeful Arsonist was worth around $0.93 on average. This fairly low price has been consistent for quite some time, as group-slug decks aren’t the most popular archetype in Commander. Even if Arsonist is a good include within the 99 of these lists, there simply isn’t enough demand to overwhelm supply.
Thanks to the condition of Commander right now, however, there has been a substantial surge of demand. Over 1800 Kuja decks are already running Gleeful Arsonist, and many other decks are running this card too. As you can see on the graph above, since Final Fantasy’s release, there has been a significant sales surge.
Right now, the market price for Arsonist has risen to $3.36; however, many recent sales are for much more. Thanks to TCGplayer Direct, players have been paying upwards of $4.99 for near-mint copies. In this past month, this is a 436% price increase, which isn’t bad at all. That said, it’s unclear which way this price will go in the future.
While Gleeful Arsonist is benefiting from strong synergy right now, group slug is unlikely to remain popular forever. As such, it wouldn’t be a surprise if the price of this card falls off before too long. Thankfully, while the future might not look so bright for Arsonist, a few other cards have more potential.
A Wizard to Watch
Curiously, Gleeful Arsonist isn’t the only Wizard that has spiked in price recently. Modern Horizons 2’s Harmonic Prodigy has over doubled in price within the past month. Rising from around $5.20 to $11.90, Prodigy is now decently expensive, which isn’t at all surprising given their synergy.
For starters, Harmonic Prodigy works great with both Kuja, Genome Sorcerer and Gleeful Arsonist. By doubling Kuja’s Wizards creating trigger Prodigy helps flip them significantly sooner. This means Gleeful Arsonist can dish out even more damage, and they’ll also get their triggers doubled by Prodigy.
On top of this synergy, Harmonic Prodigy is also fantastic with Vivi Orniter and Kefka, Court Mage. As mentioned, Vivi is one of the most popular spell-slinging Wizards right now, and Kefka is tearing it up in cEDH. Being able to double both of these cards triggers increases their value massively, so it’s no wonder Harmonic Prodigy is getting popular.
While Harmonic Prodigy has a great deal of synergy with Magic’s most popular Wizards, its future isn’t entirely certain. Supply for this card is already rather low, so a further price spike is definitely possible. There’s even strong demand from cEDH, which could support this card being worth even more in the future.
Ultimately, for both Harmonic Prodigy and Gleeful Arsonist, we’ll just have to wait and see what the future holds. Commander-based price spikes are notoriously fickle, so nothing is guaranteed.
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