Despite Tarkir: Dragonstorm’s spoiler season being right around the corner, but we have a series of unexpected spoilers to digest before the dragons completely take over. We got a Final Fantasy character that promotes land ramp in red, and now we have an unexpected reprint of one of the best removal spells in Magic’s history. The best part? The card has quirky artwork that should give a nostalgic Saturday morning cartoon vibe.
Fatal Push
Fatal Push appears to be an early spoiler for the Twisted Toons Secret Lair. Judging from another post on the page, this Secret Lair is likely to be spoiled with a bunch of others during the Tarkir: Dragonstorm spoiler season kickoff tomorrow.
Fatal Push is certainly a good start to a new Secret Lair. The card isn’t the most expensive reprint in the world, but it sees play all the way down to Legacy. Revolt happens to be a keyword that becomes easier to activate the older the format. This is thanks to the presence of Fetch Lands in Modern and Legacy. One mana to remove any creature with mana value four or less is a fantastic deal.
While Fatal Push sees tons of constructed play, it’s not as good in the Commander format. Threats become much more diverse than just creatures, requiring removal that can hit multiple different permanent types.
Despite Fatal Push’s prowess at various levels of play, the card isn’t very expensive. Currently, the cheapest printing sits about about $1.50 from Assassin’s Creed. That said, depending on the variant, Fatal Push can have an attractive premium.
Money in the Variants
Fatal Push does have some incredibly expensive variants out there, which suggests that this Secret Lair Push could be worth upwards of $20. That’s a far cry from the Secret Lair Play variant showcased above for $150, but this particular variant is very shortprinted.
Offered as a participation promo for Secret Lair Showdown events at past MagicCon events, this Fatal Push may not see any more printings. The sheer scarcity of the card grants it a very high price total.
A more realistic price for the new cartoon Secret Lair Fatal Push can be found in the full art variant for the card from Double Masters. This Fatal Push was also quite rare, but it was printed in a set, meaning that the supply between the two variants are worlds apart.
This Fatal Push goes for about $25. Interestingly, this is a premium price between the foil and nonfoil printings of the card, but the nonfoil is the card with the premium. Generally, the foils for cards like this are more expensive.
This is likely because Fatal Push is primarily a constructed card. Foils are risky to play in competitive formats because they can accidentally create marked cards due to their curling issues. For that reason, there is likely far more demand for the nonfoil version of the card.
Is the Nonfoil Secret Lair Better?
If Fatal Push is one of the more impressive cards for the Twisted Toons Secret Lair, this could be a rare instance of the nonfoil Secret Lair being better. This, of course, depends heavily on the other cards in the Lair that have not been revealed yet. That said, if Fatal Push is the card you’re most concerned about, a nonfoil Secret Lair is probably the way to go.
It may not be the most expensive reprint in the world, but if you’re going to reprint a $1.50 card with some wacky nostalgic artwork, it’s hard to pick a better candidate that Fatal Push.
