Standard cards have been spiking heavily in price lately. Considering that the next few Regional Championship Qualifier seasons are in the format, including this one, there’s certainly some demand for paper copies of the cards played. We’ve seen Standard cards spike all week, making Elspeth’s Smite just another card in a long line.
Compared to the one-mana removal commonly seen in Commander, Elspeth’s Smite is awful. This card is strictly spiking because it sees play in Standard, and thanks to an incredibly powerful burn package being legal, one-drops are everywhere.
Elspeth’s Smite
Elspeth’s Smite is popular simply because it’s a one-mana removal spell that deals with most early threats in the Standard format. Interestingly, the card’s exile clause is much more important than you think. This is thanks to the Bloomburrow Mouse package being a popular aggressive choice.
Heartfire Hero is one of the core parts of the aggressive Mouse package. Not only does the card scale quickly, but Heartfire Hero deals damage equal to its power to your face when it dies. Since Elspeth’s Smite is capable of exiling what it kills, Heartfire Hero’s death trigger won’t happen. This can easily save you games.
As a result, Elspeth’s Smite may be seeing Standard play out of necessity. It’s common to die as early as turn three when Heartfire Hero is combined with Fling effects like Callous Sell-sword‘s Adventure effect. Even if the Smite fails to kill Heartfire Hero, it will still be exiled on death if it dies in the same turn.
Smite does effectively deal with most one and two-drops in the Standard format. Sure, you can use pump spells to get out of range of it, but Cut Down, the premier one-mana removal in Standard, has the same problem.
The Spike
Thanks to Elspeth’s Smite seeing lots of Standard play, the card has experienced a significant spike. Like many other uncommons, this card was worth less than 50 cents just a few months ago. The card is now consistently selling for about $2.50, a bit above Smite’s current market average.
On the high end, the card is selling for as much as $4.50, but most copies of Elspeth’s Smite are selling for between $2 and $3. There is still the occasional copy of the card selling for between $1 and $2.
At the time of writing, only one copy of Elspeth’s Smite is available on TCGplayer for under two dollars. The rest are around the current market average of the card listed here.
Many uncommons currently seeing Standard play have experienced similar spikes. Anoint with Affliction and Pawpatch Formation are just a few examples. This is a great sign for MTG’s flagship format. People want to play it, so prices are going up.
Even online events are skewing in this direction. That said, there is a lot of effort being put in by Wizards of the Coast to try and make Standard feel special. The marketplace suggests that efforts to popularize the format are working, and we hope to see Standard succeed further.
