At Pro Tour Marvel Super Heroes, green Combo decks broke out in Modern, punishing the abundance of popular fair strategies in the format. Of course, after such a dominant performance, many MTG players rushed to adopt these new strategies in preparation for future Modern events. Thanks to this, Disciple of Freyalise, which sees play in multiple trending Modern decks, has started to rise in price.
MTG Disciple of Freyalise
Like any MTG MDFC card, Disciple of Freyalise offers an incredible amount of flexibility, functioning as both a land in the early game and a threat later on. The body isn’t impressive for six mana, but in a big stompy deck, Disciple of Freyalise can refill your hand with ease, getting you back into the game.
This card is, notably, a big part of Modern’s new Mono-Green Slumbering Trudge offering redundancy for Hideaway cards like Fight Rigging and Mosswort Bridge. Using Slumbering Trudge as a way to trigger these effects in the opening turns, this deck can cheat Eldrazi Titans like Emrakul, the Promised End into play as early as turn two. If you don’t find your Eldrazi Titans off Hideaway, Disciple of Freyalise is a plan B, sacrificing your Trudge to draw tons of cards and gain tons of life.
Outside of Slumbering Trudge, Disciple of Freyalise is also a part of Modern Neoform combo decks, functioning as both a land and a pitch card for Allosaurus Rider. Since the entire deck revolves around getting an early Riders into play, any increase in consistency is welcome. In a pinch, you can also tutor this card up with Summoner’s Pact as a missing land drop, or turn Ghalta, Stampede Tyrant into a mitful of cards.
While Modern is the driver for this price spike, like many MDFCs, Disciple of Freyalise is also extremely popular in Commander, appearing in over 260,000 decks according to EDHREC. The card most frequently appears in Etali, Primal Conqueror decks, where it can easily refill your hand by sacrificing your Commander. Since Etali is all about its enters effect, putting it back in the command zone can often be a positive.
The Spike
Thanks to Disciple of Freyalise’s rise in Modern, the card started seeing a spike in demand following Pro Tour Marvel Super Heroes. With 198 near-mint copies selling that weekend alone and approximately 790 more after that, the card still has healthy demand over a month later.
Thanks to this, Disciple of Freyalise’s $1.21 price tag a few weeks prior to the Pro Tour is now long gone. Nowadays, a copy of Disciple of Freyalise typically costs about $4.50, representing a 255% price increase. The card’s current market average is even higher than that, suggesting prices may continue to rise.
At the time of writing, there is one copy of Disciple of Freyalise available for $2.38 before shipping, but once that card leaves the market, $4.50 is the absolute cheapest you’ll find this card for. Notably, because this card is just uncommon, there’s only one variant available.
MDFCs Are Incredible
Unless you direly need to fix your mana in multicolored decks, MDFC cards are, generally, upgrades to their basic land counterparts. Having the flexibility of both a land and a threat is extremely helpful in a mana flood situation, meaning that this card is increasing the consistency of all kinds of different Commander decks. Thanks to this, Disciple of Freyalise could easily maintain healthy demand, keeping prices high.
That said, since this particular spike is due to Modern, its price point may depend heavily on how it continues to perform. New decks could easily rise to counter Slumbering Trudge and Neoform, decreasing Disciple of Freyalise’s playability there. Of course, the opposite is also possible should Neoform and Slumbering Trudge continue to deliver incredible performances.
Ultimately, between metagame developments, Commander demand, and the constant but unlikely reprint possibilities, predicting the future in MTG is impossible, especially for a card like Disciple of Freyalise. While the card certainly has the demand to keep prices up, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.
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