Laughing Jasper Flint was an absolute menace in Outlaws of Thunder Junction Limited. Unless you remove the Outlaw immediately, Jasper Flint will start accumulating a ridiculous amount of card advantage. Considering that this card only costs three mana, it’s not hard to imagine that it could be a roleplayer in competitive formats.
Laughing Jasper Flint
- Mana Value: 1BR
- Rarity: Rare
- Stats: 4/3
- MTG Set: Outlaws of Thunder Junction
- Card Text: Creatures you control but don’t own are Mercenaries in addition to their other types. At the beginning of your upkeep, exile the top X cards of target opponent’s library, where X is the number of outlaws you control. Until the end of turn, you may cast spells from among those cards, and mana of any type can be spent to cast those spells.
Laughing Jasper Flint has increased in price over the past month and a bit. In mid-July, Flint was going for about 50 cents. Now, the card is commonly selling for $2.50. Outlier sales push this card as far as $4.
Looking at where this card is seeing play outside of Commander, it appears that Laughing Jasper Flint’s price spike, or at least its increase in demand, is directly being caused by Standard. Flint is a rather popular addition to the Rakdos Lizards aggro deck. Commonly seen as a four-of in the strategy, Rakdos Lizards does not seem to be taking down any massive events, but the deck is certainly competitive, and is a heck of a lot of fun for players looking to try and take the new Bloomburrow Typal themes for a ride.
Notably, Rakdos Lizards was mentioned yesterday in Wizards of the Coasts’ massive ban announcement. The deck was mentioned as a new entry into the format caused by Bloomburrow’s cards, which was received positively when looking at the format. This mention may have caused curious players to take a stab at playing the archetype.
Not only does Flint enable all of the Lizard payoffs that came out of the Rakdos archetype in Bloomburrow, but many of the Lizards in Bloomburrow are also Outlaws. This bizarrely harmonic value-based enigma allows Laughing Jasper Flint to be a massive force in the Lizards deck.
Read More: Spooky Typal Board Wipe From Bloomburrow Jumps 289% In Price
Flint’s Commander Appearances
Besides being a rather potent Commander itself, Laughing Jasper Flint appears in a few new Commander decks. Gev, Scaled Scorch commonly employs Laughing Jasper Flint in its 99, and a few different Assassin’s Creed Commanders are also interested in Jasper Flint’s shenanigans. Ezio Auditore da Firenze and Edward Kenway are the two most common employers from this weird crossover.
Otherwise, Laughing Jasper Flint got a ton of new toys for its own 99 from Bloomburrow. Everything from The Infamous Cruelclaw to all kinds of Lizard Typal friends are decent inclusions in the Jasper Flint deck. Not only are their mana values small, but they can connect easily, allowing you to create a pressing clock. On top of this, many of the new Rakdos additions from Bloomburrow are Outlaws, so you don’t really need to worry about card advantage either since Laughing Jasper Flint takes care of that.
All in all, Laughing Jasper Flint is a surprisingly effective MTG card. The combination of being aggressively costed and generating a ton of card advantage makes this card a remove-on-sight threat. I highly encourage anyone who hasn’t given Laughing Jasper Flint a try to do so in Standard or Commander.
Read More: Problematic MTG Super Staple Just Got Even Worse
