Just over a week ago, all five Secrets of Strixhaven Commander precon decklists were revealed in their entirety. As usual, each deck brings its own unique charm, along with a healthy mix of potent reprints. Despite this, there’s still a lot of room for upgrades in each deck, and especially the Silverquill Influence precon. This aura-themed strategy is all the rage right now, causing missed reprints like Retether to spike in price.
MTG Retether
Originally printed in Planar Chaos, Retether is a simple design that addresses a major weakness of auras decks. Since you spend so much time investing in enchanting your creatures, board wipes can feel especially devastating.
Fortunately, Retether solves this problem by resurrecting all of your dead auras at once. Unsurprisingly, this makes it a staple in Voltron decks like Light-Paws, Emperor’s Voice or Uril, the Miststalker. On top of this, the card is naturally fantastic in the new Silverquill Influence precon, which revolves heavily around auras.
Not only does this deck feature Constellation payoffs like Archon of Sun’s Grace and Doomwake Giant, but Killian, Decisive Mentor, also provides a bonus each time an aura enters. Thanks to these cards, Rerether can become an amazing offensive tool, rather than just a sorely needed catch-up spell.
With these synergies in mind, it’s no surprise that Retether has been preemptively added to 915 out of 1,750 Killian Commander decks, according to EDHREC. Technically, this isn’t a massive increase to the card’s play rate, as it already appeared in over 40,000 other decks. Despite this, the latest surge in demand has still been more than enough to push the card’s price up significantly.
The Spike
Although Retether was a decently popular Commander card prior to the reveal of the Silverquill Influence precon, it was never super expensive. Near-mint copies from original Planar Chaos printing, for instance, could be picked up for $4.25, back in late-March. Thanks to the low supply for this variant, however, it didn’t take much for prices to jump up dramatically.
Since April 1st, only 32 near-mint Planar Chaos copies of Retether have been sold. Despite this low volume, it still managed to push prices up to $15.69 before it effectively sold out. This marks a 268% price spike in less than one month, which isn’t bad at all. Now, there are only two near-mint Planar Chase listings left on TCGplayer, which are priced at $1,007.97, not including shipping.
Thankfully, if you’re in the market for a copy of Retether, you don’t have to spend nearly this much money. Not only are worse condition copies from Planar Chaos available, starting at $17.99, but there’s another printing too. This card’s sole reprint, from Wilds of Eldraine Commander, has much better supply, with reasonably priced near-mint copies still available.
Currently, a copy of Retether from the Virtue and Valor Commander deck will set you back $16.99. While this does appear to be the best bet right now, copies from this set have been selling much faster, so it might not last long.
The Future
Ultimately, while there’s no indication that Retether’s value will decrease much in the short term, there is reason to believe that its price tag will settle given enough time. Like many Commander precon-driven spikes, Retether’s increased demand is heavily tied to the popularity of the Silverquill Influence precon. While this deck is the new hotness right now, as more intriguing Commanders get revealed in the coming months, the deck’s hype is bound to decrease.
Furthermore, even though Retether has plenty of utility in other aura-themed Commander decks, the sorcery’s appeal is still quite narrow. After all, the card has no value in decks that don’t feature a boatload of auras. So, once the attention surrounding the Silverquill Influence precon’s aura theme inevitably dies down, Retether’s price could easily settle back down.
Still, this could take some time, as Secrets of Strixhaven hasn’t officially been released yet. This could mean that Retether will continue to get more expensive in the coming weeks, but that remains to be seen. For now, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens, and hope that this card gets reprinted again eventually.
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