The March of the Machine spoiler season has finally ended, and players have had a few days to digest the full contents of the set. Unlike last week, now that players know what’s going on in MTG’s newest set, cards are being purchased to prepare for the release of March of the Machine. Interestingly, a lot of cards going up drastically this week are ones that we already pointed out in some of our other articles talking about MTG Battle cards. Hopefully, you noted those and bought these MTG cards before they started skyrocketing in price!
Vampire Hexmage
In one of our recent articles following the reveal of the new MTG Battle card type, we looked at a few cards that synergize extremely well with the mechanic. The one that has gained the most traction financially is cards that remove counters from permanents.
For those who don’t know, the new Battle mechanic has Defense Counters, which function similarly to Loyalty on a Planeswalker. These replace a sort of toughness or health total that doesn’t regenerate at the end of a turn. The flip side is that, instead of the player casting the Planeswalker being concerned about its toughness, it’s instead a chosen opponent who doesn’t want a Siege Battle to hit zero Defense Counters. Should a Battle hit zero Defense Counters, its owner (not the one defending it), gets to cast its transformed side for free. If you want to learn more about the new MTG Battle mechanic, take a look here.
Because Vampire Hexmage can immediately reduce all of the counters on a Battle, it can, essentially, flip your Battle immediately. This looks particularly powerful with Invasion of Ikoria, which, for just four mana, can search for a Vampire Hexmage and use its ability to immediately flip into an 8/8.
Normal copies of Vampire Hexmage don’t have a huge financial increase behind them, but premium ones have seen a major uptick in price this past week. The $1 Timeshifted version from Time Spiral Remastered is now going for as much as $20! Admittedly, this is a massive premium on the card. Most are going for around $6 at the moment.
For those unaware, the Timeshifted cards on Timespiral Remastered have a huge foil multiplier because of their scarcity. Vampire Hexmage in foil from the set was going for about $12.50 prior to the spike, but is now going for as much as $33!
Hex Parasite
Hex Parasite is spiking for a similar reason to Vampire Hexmage, but unlike the previous card, every iteration of this one is seeing a massive spike. Hex Parasite cannot reduce all of the counters on a permanent in one fell swoop for free, but its counter reducing ability doesn’t cause it to be sacrificed either. This allows the Parasite to fell multiple of your own MTG Battle cards in a unique way.
Even better for Modern and Commander players is that this little guy is searchable via Urza’s Saga. While that card is a big player in Legacy and Vintage as well, chances are this cute little interaction is not quite good enough for those formats.
Hex Parasite, notably, only has one printing from New Phyrexia. This set has been out of print for quite some time, which means that a small increase in interest will reflect as a bigger price spike because the card is harder to find nowadays. Hex Parasite, as such, has jumped from about $3.50 to $9. Prices fluctuate heavily depending on condition – anywhere between $5 and $12 – but $9-10 seems to be the average.
Hex Parasite already had some interest from the Modern community thanks to a rogue Insect tribal deck featuring Grist, the Hunger Tide. That deck did not end up taking off in any way, but it was fun to play.
Dandan
Dandan has seen a massive uptick over the past week thanks to Rhystic Study’s video highlighting the format named after the forgetful fish. We already wrote a pretty in-depth article on that topic, so we won’t talk too much about it here.
Dandan’s price has increased across all of its variants, but the actual pricing varies heavily depending on what set you want your Dandan from. Before Rhystic Study’s video, you could find Dandans for less than a dollar to about $13, depending on the version (excluding foils). It can now cost you as much as $25 for a nonfoil version of this card, but the cheapest copies on the market go for around $4. Foil copies of Dandan can go for $50 or more.
Crystal Spray
Why on earth is this bizarre Invasion card suddenly seeing a spike!? No, color matters haven’t suddenly become a competitive deck – Crystal Spray is another card needed to play specific variants of Dandan. There is only one printing of this weird card, meaning any interest in it will increase the price massively.
Nonfoil copies of the card have increased from about $3.40 in early January to as much as $23 nowadays. Notably, Crystal Spray has seen a steady increase over the past few months, but recent events regarding the Forgetful Fish format have caused a massive spike.
On another note, prices surrounding Crystal Spray are rather inconsistent. The cheapest iterations that sold successfully in recent days went for as low as $9, so you may be able to find a deal on this one if you’re in the market.
For those who want to foil out their Dandan deck, not many foil copies of Crystal Spray are even selling at the moment, but you can find copies on eBay listed for more than $50 – a $20 increase from where it was just weeks ago.
Sleeper Agent
We mentioned this bizarre MTG card as a potential one to watch in the coming weeks. A new Rakdos burn deck is making its way around Modern, and it plays a lot of bizarre bulk-bin cards that weren’t on anyone’s radar just a few weeks ago. Signaled by the insane price spike to Soul Spike, players and investors now seem to be keeping track of cards from the decklist. You can read more about that here.
Sleeper Agent, for now, was worth a dollar a few months past. The card is selling for rather inconsistent prices but can now be found going for as much as $10. Soul Spike has also increased significantly once again over the week.
Cards to Watch!
A new Standard deck with an infinite combo finished first in Swiss in MTG’s largest Standard tournament in quite some time. Dreamhack San Diego hosted the US Regional Championship series with more than 900 players! The new cards from this deck are shown above, and the marketplace has already established a massive interest increase for the three cards (this has not yet translated into financial price increases). These three cards combine to create infinite tokens, infinite mana and can exile infinite cards (that can be played until your next turn) from your library. If you’re interested in figuring out how this combo works, we will cover it in more detail in a future article (linked here). For now, these cards have a high potential to see some price increases in the coming weeks – if paper Standard continues to be a popular format.
Read More: MTG Players Request Monumental Missing Story Feature
