At long last, Final Fantasy MTG cards are finally out in the wild. Now that prerelease weekend has been and gone, players can properly start to enjoy the set’s staples and synergies. While there are a few constructed gems, Commander players are really living it up with all the new iconic legendaries.
Somewhat unsurprisingly, many of the best new Commander options in the Final Fantasy set are faces that you’d expect. Sephiroth, Kefka, and even The Wandering Minstrel are all iconic and more than deserving of a powerful card. Choco, on the other hand, feels like a bit of an unusual addition when placed alongside that esteemed company.
Despite this, there’s no denying that Choco, Seeker of Paradise has plenty of MTG players excited. Players are excited enough, in fact, that we’re seeing one of Magic’s classic Bird Typal support pieces spike in price.
Keeper of the Nine Gales
Now that we’ve seen and banned the likes of Nadu, Winged Wisdom, it’s safe to say Keeper of the Nine Gales isn’t the strongest Bird in MTG. Admittedly, Nine Gales wasn’t a strong choice even before Nadu, only seeing play in around 6000 Commander decks. Unsurprisingly, basically all of these are Bird-Typal decks helmed by Kastral, the Windcrested and Derevi, Empyrial Tactician.
For the most part, in Bird Typal decks, Keeper of the Nine Gales is just a semi-decent way to get a threat off the board. Typically, you’d want to do this just before your turn starts so you’re not sitting around with a bunch of tapped Birds. Thankfully, getting a bunch of Birds into play tends to be fairly easy nowadays, as there are plenty of cheap cards and tokens.
Speaking of creating tokens, Hermes, Overseer of Elpis helps to do exactly that. With Hermes in play, you should always have fuel to keep bouncing something off the board each turn cycle. Alternatively, you could also use these tokens to attack with Choco, Seeker of Paradise to find even more Birds.
Sadly, while amassing birds is easy, you can’t use all your Bird army as a Bird-based board wipe. Since you have to tap Nine Gales to bounce something, it’s difficult to get too much value out of this card. That said, there are a few sneaky synergies that are worth watching out for.
If you’ve got two birds and Keeper of the Nine Gales in play, Stasis becomes abhorrent to deal with. All you have to do is play Stasis on your turn, forcing your opponents to skip their untap step, and then bounce it before your turn starts. Then, on your next turn, you can simply play Stasis again to avoid dealing with the negatives yourself.
The Spike
Despite not being the best bird in MTG, Keeper of the Nine Gales has still been spiking in price recently. Extra attention from Hermes and Choco has made this card worth picking up once again. Doing this, however, is easier said than done thanks to the implicit rarity of this 22-year-old MTG card.
Outside of the original Legions printing, Keeper of the Nine Gales has only been reprinted once via The List. Curiously, this reprint has a long history of selling for a lot more than the original printing. While prices have been falling over the past few months, near-mint copies of this variant sold for $12 in March.
Now, these copies are only selling for around $7.70 on average, according to TCGplayer’s Market Price. Curiously, this is roughly the same price that the classic Legions variant has spiked to recently. In early May, this printing was selling for around $1.50, but it has since spiked to around $7.50, based on recent sales.
Notably, this price spike is best seen in lightly played copies of Keeper of the Nine Gales. Technically, near mint copies have sold for the same price recently, but supply is a real issue here. Speaking of supply, new listings for copies of Nine Gales have all but disappeared, as there are only nine Legions copies left on TCGplayer.
Sadly, The List copies are suffering from an even worse lack of supply, as there are only 5 copies left. Prices for these copies start at $15+ for The List printings and $12+ for Legions copies.
The Future
While copies of Keeper of the Nine Gales from Legions have been selling surprisingly steadily, we do expect that to slow. Even though Choco and Hermes are Commander legal now, Nine Gales isn’t good enough to justify the current prices. Sure, there are some Stasis shenanigans, and synergy with The One Ring, too, but $12+ is a lot of money. For that price, you don’t even get a near-mint condition copy anymore.
Due to this gulf between price and performance, we doubt many MTG players will be rushing to pick up Keeper of the Nine Gales anytime soon. The same is true for Flurry of Wings and Airborne Aid, which we have highlighted previously when Soulcatchers’ Aerie spiked. While these Bird support cards do have some synergy, it’s hard to say they’re worth the prices being charged.
For better or worse, we’ve come a long way since Legions, and there are a lot of Birds in MTG nowadays. Due to this, it’s easy enough to avoid these cards in favor of other options, so it’s not like they’re must-haves or anything. Still, if you’ve got a few of these Bird support cards kicking around in storage, it may be worth digging them out.
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