Thanks to Magic Online, Premodern has been on a tear lately. After players could try the format online, the community format broke out in a massive way. Thanks to this, tons of players joined the Premodern community, even prompting the first ban the format has seen in three years.
With so much attention on Premodern, paper play for the format has also picked up, causing all kinds of forgotten staples to spike in price. Thanks to being an annoyingly persistent threat, Anurid Brushhopper is the latest addition to this long line of cards.
MTG Anurid Brushhopper
Anurid Brushopper offers a rather unimpressive evasive ability. More often than not, discarding two cards to save a 3/4 is a bad trade to make. That said, when enabled properly, Anurid Brushhopper can dodge any form of creature removal, making it a sticky threat.
Despite its expensive discard cost, Anurid Brushhopper is quite efficient in Premodern Terrageddon decks. Utilizing cards like Armageddon and Cataclysm, the goal of this deck is to land a massive Terravore, or another persistent threat in play after restricting your opponent’s lands. You’re often stuck with a lot of cards in hand prior to a land wipe, giving Anurid Brushhopper lots of fuel to use.
Sadly, outside of Terrageddon decks specifically, Anurid Brushhopper doesn’t see much play, especially outside of Premodern. Honestly, outside of the very niche use case of Terrageddon, this card just isn’t very good.
The Spike
Unsurprisingly, since it saw no play outside of Premodern, Anurid Brushhopper wasn’t an expensive card until about a month ago. Before then, the Beast was only worth $0.84 in near-mint condition. Things changed, however, after Parallax Tide was banned in Premodern.
Following this ban, Terrageddon’s position in the metagame was strengthened, causing an increase in demand for Anurid Brushhopper. This caused the supply of near-mint copies of Anurid Brushhopper to deplete quickly, leading to an intense price spike. Now, there are only 35 near-mint copies left on TCGplayer, with prices starting at $6.49.
Fortunately, if you’re looking for cheaper copies of this bizarre beast, you’re in luck. So long as condition isn’t a concern, you can find damaged copies for as little as $2, and lightly played ones for $4. If, for whatever reason, you want to spend even more on Anurid Brushhopper, the foil copy of this card is quite expensive. Thanks to the extremely limited supply, the cheapest foil for this card available is a staggering $75.
Looking Forward
Like many of the Premodern MTG spikes, predicting what will happen to Anurid Brushhopper is quite difficult. Terrageddon remains a consistent archetype following the Parallax Tide ban, but that doesn’t mean Anurid Brushhopper’s future is secure. Recently, fewer and fewer Terrageddon decks have been using this card, which could cause this spike to fall off sooner than expected. That said, until now, the card’s market value has been remarkably consistent.
Whether or not this actually happens, of course, is impossible to truly predict. Anurid Brusshopper’s market average has been consistent after its post-ban spike, so there’s a real chance that the card just stays the same.
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