Officially, the spoiler season for Secrets of Strixhaven doesn’t start until March 31st, next week. Despite this, we’ve already seen plenty of new cards this week, most of which have been on purpose. Between the set’s story chapters and PAX East giving us a new cycle, there are already a fair few official spoilers to digest.
For better or worse, these weren’t the only Secrets of Strixhaven cards we’ve seen recently, as there was also one hell of a leak. While only one card was revealed this way, Witherbloom, the Balancer, it’s an absolute monster. Thanks to this, we’re now seeing a card from Future Sight spike massively in price.
MTG Sprout Swarm
On the surface, Sprout Swarm looks like a very simple and pretty boring MTG card. The payoff of getting a 1/1 Saproling really isn’t that exciting, but breaking this card is comically easy. With a handful of token doublers, for instance, you can easily pop off and create an infinitely large board.
Thanks to having Convoke, if you can get five or more Saprolings into play off one cast, you can go infinite. Combining Doubling Season, Primal Vigor, and Parallel Lives is an easy, albeit expensive, way to do this. Alongside this, you can also use cost reduction effects, like Spellbinding Soprano, to reduce the number of tokens you need to create.
Due to this impressive combo potential, Sprout Swarm already sees respectable play in Commander. With around 14,800 decks using this card, it’s not a staple, but it’s hardly a long-forgotten gem, either. Given what’s just been leaked from Secrets of Strixhaven, however, this card’s play rate is bound to increase very soon.
By giving all your spells Affinity for creatures, Witherbloom, the Balancer creates a new two-card combo with Sprout Swarm. With four other bodies on the board, you can easily reduce Sprout Swarm’s cost, including its Buyback, to just one green mana. Since this can be paid for using Convoke with the Saproling it creates, making infinite tapped tokens is trivial.
While this combo won’t win you the game on its own, having infinite of anything enables tons of wincons. Sacrifice engines like Phyrexian Altar can get you infinite mana instead, or Altar of the Brood can Mill each opponent out. Unsurprisingly, thanks to this combo’s power and the ease of accessing it, Sprout Swarm is seeing a lot of extra attention right now.
Sprout Swarm Price Spike
Despite having a ton of combo potential even before Witherbloom was revealed, Sprout Swarm was surprisingly inexpensive. Yesterday, you could have easily picked up a copy of this card for as little as $0.67. Considering Sprout Swarm has only been repritned once since its debut, via The List, this budget price point is honestly somewhat surprising.
Sadly, if you’re still in the market for a copy of Sprout Swarm, we’re long past that point now. Since yesterday, over 560 near-mint copies of the card have been sold on TCGplayer, across both variants. This massive surge in demand has completely stripped the market of supply, leaving only 10 near-mint listings remaining.
Now, a near-mint copy of Sprout Swarm will set you back around $7.47, including shipping. Thankfully, if you don’t care about card condition, there are a few cheaper copies available, but supply is very limited. Technically, you can snag a moderately played Sprout Swarm for $0,56 right now, but that singular copy is bound to sell out soon.
While the price spike to Sprout Swarm is already impressive, the foil prices for this card have gone absolutely insane. Since foil copies are only available from Future Sight and are naturally rather rare, prices have skyrocketed from $10 to $77. That’s only for lightly played examples, too, since all of the near-mint foil copies have already been bought out.
All or Nothing
As much as Sprout Swarm was ripe for a price spike, it’s not a sure thing. Given it’s such an amazing fit for this new Secrets of Strixhaven legend, there’s a non-zero chance it could be reprinted. Admittedly, it’s unlikely this would happen in the main set, but the Mystical Archive is returning alongside it.
Additionally, Secrets of Strixhaven is also getting five precons, one for each of the school’s colleges. In theory, Sprout Swarm could easily be reprinted into the Witherbloom Pestilence deck, depending on its game plan. From what we’ve seen so far, the deck’s Commander, Dina, Essence Brewer, could use Sprout Swarm somewhat effectively, but that doesn’t guarantee a reprint.
While it does feel like a reprint is a real possibility, if it doesn’t happen, prices could explode even more. Not only will some players be holding out now, but if it’s an upgrade to the precon, then demand will soar even higher. Whether this will happen, however, remains to be seen.
Unfortunately, given the potential for a reprint, predicting Sprout Swarm’s long-term future is rather difficult. That said, even if a reprint doesn’t materialize, it’s unlikely this card will be expensive forever. While it does have potential, the number of combo pieces required to make it work is a rather large hurdle. Ultimately, as always, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.
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