While Avatar: The Last Airbender’s spoiler season has been filled with competitive and Commander delights, the set’s financial impact has been rather muted. Outside of Toph, the First Metalbender, who caused multiple price spikes following Avatar’s First Look, things have been surprisingly quiet. That doesn’t mean that the wide world of MTG finance has been totally dormant, however.
Recently, we’ve seen many of the new PlayStation legends cause spikes of their own, for instance. On top of these, it seems one surprisingly competitive cEDH card has been quietly climbing in the background. Now, as supply starts to properly dwindle, prices have suddenly shot up. It might not be the best ritual in MTG, but Geosurge is now making a name for itself.
MTG Geosurge
For four red mana, Geosurge grants you seven temporary mana to use before the phase ends. Due to Geosurge’s mana value and mana restrictions, the card only works when executing very specific game plans. Considering how narrow this card is, it’s no surprise that Geosurge has failed to see significant play for quite some time.
Fortunately, there are some very strong cEDH Commanders that have the perfect use for Geosurge. Both Muxus, Goblin Grandee and Etali, Primal Conqueror offer extremely powerful enters abilities behind some massive mana costs. Geosurge speeds cEDH players up three turns towards casting their Commander.
Etali, Primal Conqueror is, by far, where Geosurge is seeing the most play. This deck wants to power out its Commander as quickly as possible and, from there, leverage the immense value Etali’s ETB effect generates. After cheating out Etali with spells like Geosurge, the archetype leverages copy effects like Molten Duplication and Heat Shimmer to repeatedly net ETB triggers from the Commander. Since Etali essentially gets four free cards off of each enters ability, it doesn’t take long before your opponents are buried in value.
Geosurge has been seeing play in Etali, Primal Conqueror decks for quite some time, but over the last few months, Etali lists leveraging Geosurge have won some massive cEDH events. While Geosurge started seeing noticeably more play back around June and July, the highlight event that Etali took down was back in August, where the Commander would take down a 516-player $20,000 tournament.
The Spike
To date, Geosurge only has one printing, in New Phyrexia as an uncommon 14 years ago, but it only started seeing play semi-recently. The card experienced a massive demand spike after achieving a top 16 finish back in July. Following this, demand for Geosurge became more consistent after it took down the 518-player Steel City Spectacular in Pittsburgh a month later. Over the past three months, the card’s market value has climbed from $0.81 to $3.75, representing a 375% price spike.
Despite all this, at the time of writing, the sales for near mint copies are quite varied, selling from anywhere between $1.53 and $15 over the past week. Notably, the high end of sales are due to TCGplayer Direct, which has swayed the market price average somewhat. Currently, the cheapest near-mint listings available on TCGplayer offer Geosurges at a price below market averages, at $1.85, excluding shipping costs.
If you’re looking to spend a little less on Geosurge, there are some cheaper lightly played and heavily played copies of the card available. Finding the card for just $1 for worse conditions is, while infrequent not impossible. On the other hand, if you’re looking to bling out your EDH deck, thanks to Geosurge being exclusively from an older set, the card has a wicked foil multiplier. The cheapest copy of this variant currently available on the market has a ridiculous asking price of $85.
The Future
Looking ahead, the trouble with Goesurge is that it’s a bit of a one-trick pony. While it does provide a good kick of extra mana, its casting cost and extra caveats make using that rather difficult. Subsequently, there is a fairly small subset of Commander decks that want to use this card regularly. Etali is a great place for it, for instance, but it’s hardly a staple in every Mono-Red deck.
This means Geosurge’s financial value basically rides or dies on how popular the few strategies that use it remain in their respective formats. While Etali, Primal Conqueror is a rather popular cEDH Commander, it’s still a step down from the various Partner decks that plague the format. Despite this, the Commander still manages to put up regular top eights in smaller events on a weekly basis and sees tons of play despite middling results.
Considering Etali’s continued popularity, Geosurge has a strong chance of maintaining some light, consistent demand; however, this may not support the recent price spike it has seen. While I would be surprised if Geosurge drops back down to sub-$1, I also don’t think the card will remain at its current market value, especially considering the involvement of TCGplayer Direct premiums.
All of that said, as always, it’s impossible to truly tell the future, as anything could happen. It’s very possible that a new Commander that takes advantage of Geosurge gets printed in a future set, or that the card gets reprinted as a flavorful nod to an upcoming crossover. All we know for now is that Geosurge excels at getting Etali, Primal Conqueror into play ahead of time.
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