If you’ve been watching the MTG finance world recently, you’ll know that Ally cards have been all the rage as of late. This is thanks to the San Diego Comic-Con promo, Katara, the Fearless, which many MTG fans were able to take home. Avatar: The Last Airbender won’t release for another few months, but that won’t stop players from building Katara herself. Panharmonicon effects have always been exciting, and Allies now get one of their own to try.
Past that, judging from early spoilers, Allies have a very strong chance of being a major player in the Avatar crossover. It’s not only flavorful, but also a rather interesting callback to an infamous mechanic we haven’t seen in years.
Kabira Evangel
Kabira Evangel synergizes wonderfully with Katara, the Fearless. This is particularly interesting since most of the other Ally cards spiking, like Harabaz Druid and Sea Gate Loremaster, don’t exactly synergize with Katara. Instead, they just support the overall theme that she’s interested in building.
For starters, when used with Katara, Kabira Evangel can give Allies protection from two colors instead of one. At worst, this should make your Allies a lot harder to block, but the ceiling is much higher. With Leyline of Anticipation or High Fae Trickster on the board, you can Allies at instant speed, allowing you to use Kabira’s protection for protection.
Notably, while this protection effect is especially useful, Katara doesn’t particularly make it better. Getting protection from one color is usually enough to nullify a spell, after all. That said, this synergy will definitely be useful whenever you want to sneak attacks, though, especially against multiple opponents.
While Kabira Evangel isn’t quite as strong as other spiking Ally cards, According to EDHREC, Kabira Evangel does have an exceedingly high play rate in Ally-themed Commander decks. Currently, Kabira is played in around 85% of Ally Typal decks, and that number is bound to increase soon. With Katara looking like a future stable, it’d be a waste not to lean into her trigger doubling ability, after all.
The Spike
Like many of the Ally-related spikes, Kabira Evangel saw a huge surge in interest right after Katara, the Fearless was revealed. Before the debut of this new promo, near-mint copies typically sold for around $0.43. As you can see above, there were very few sales before Katara’s reveal, since Ally Typal isn’t a hugely popular deck.
As with the other Allies we’ve seen spiking recently, a short surge in sales was all it took to drain the supply of Kabira Evangel. Thanks to being from Worldwake and having never been reprinted, there weren’t a huge number of copies to go around. This has left the card susceptible to a buyout, likely from investors trying to get ahead of the game.
Following the recent rush of demand, prices have now been pushed up by over 660%. The average for recent sales appears to be around $3.29, while peak prices have topped out at $5. Currently, if you want a near-mint copy of Kabira Evangel, you’ll have to pay at least $4.45. With only 15 near-mint listings available, these prices could soon soar even more.
Thankfully, if you don’t care about the condition, you are able to save a bit of money, although not too much. A heavily played copy of Kabira Evangel will still set you back $2.73 at the moment, and prices only increase from there. It looks like it won’t be long before you can’t get any condition copy of Kabira for under $3.
Will it be Reprinted?
When discussing the future of Kabira Evangel and the other Ally cards, the above question looms over them like a specter. If any of these cards get reprinted in the Avatar: The Last Airbender crossover, Kabira included, their prices will crash. Until a reprint gets announced, or disproven, demand might be somewhat stable, but that’s hardly a sure thing.
At the moment, we do not yet know if Avatar: The Last Airbender will have Commander preconstructed decks. If it does, there’s no telling what themes these decks might have, but Ally Typal could easily be one. Should this hypothetical Commander deck exist, then Kabira Evangel, along with the other staples, will likely be reprinted.
If this does happen, prices will likely crash, potentially to below their past $0.43 lows. This would also happen if Kabira is reprinted in the main set, although this does seem a lot less likely. Ultimately, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens. Thankfully, we shouldn’t have to wait too long for more information, as we should be hearing more about the set on August 12th.
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