While two weeks have passed since Marvel Super Heroes was officially released, it’s still early days for the set. Not only is much of it locked behind ongoing delays, but many of the set’s cards are still proving themselves. This is especially true for MTG cards like The Ten Rings, which has surprisingly been popping up in Modern recently.
On top of proving its competitive prowess recently, The Ten Rings has also been steadily gaining popularity in Commander. This, in turn, has made the artifact surprisingly in demand, resulting in a rather impressive price spike.
MTG The Ten Rings
Essentially, if you can land The Ten Rings, you never have to worry about card draw again. Refilling your hand to ten upon your end step, basically any deck can take advantage of this. Somewhat unsurprisingly, this has made the card especially popular in Commander, since fast mana is more plentiful there.
Realistically, any Commander deck that empties its hand quickly can do well running The Ten Rings. Artifact decks, Spellslingers lists, and even some typal brews can all easily benefit from the draw this card provides. While there’s almost no downside to it in Commander, it’s a much harder sell competitively.
At eight mana, The Ten Rings is almost unplayable in every competitive format, especially since it doesn’t do anything. Unlike game-ending threats like Portal to Phyrexia, The Ten Rings does nothing to the board state without extra support. As such, very few decks can even consider playing this card; however, one archetype can make it work.
Since it was released, The Ten Rings has popped up in Modern Eldrazi Tron lists surprisingly frequently. Here, the Tron lands, Eldrazi Temple, and Ugin’s Labyrinth make powering out this artifact remarkably easy. Notably, even in these lists, The Ten Rings is only found in the sideboard, which is accessed via Karn, the Great Creator.
Despite this downside, it’s no wonder that demand for The Ten Rings has been picking up recently. Not only is it a sure-to-be-staple in Commander, but Pro Tour Marvel Super Heroes is on the horizon, too. Since this uses the Modern format for the first two days, we’ll soon see just how powerful this card really is.
A Steady Spike
Since the prerelease events for Marvel Super Heroes began, The Ten Rings has steadily become more expensive. Initially, if you were quick, a near-mint non-foil copy would have set you back just $6.31. While The Ten Rings wasn’t exactly cheap at this initial price point, sadly, it didn’t last long here thanks to consistently strong sales.
With 55 copies of The Ten Rings being sold each day on average, it’s little wonder that prices are up already. The only slight dip happened when Marvel Super Heroes was officially released, but that didn’t last long. Now, if you want to pick up a near-mint non-foil copy of this card, you’ll have to spend at least $28.99.
Sadly, while the borderless version of The Ten Rings is slightly cheaper, it isn’t by much at all. On TCGplayer, a near-mint copy of this variant will still set you back $27.19 at the moment. Unfortunately, there’s a good chance that these prices will continue to climb, too, since supply is low across the board.
A Future Classic
While Pro Tour Marvel Super Heroes might be a big test for The Ten Rings, realistically, the results of this event don’t matter. Unless Eldrazi Tron manages to steal wins with this card and crush the tournament, it’ll likely just be sideboard tech. As such, it’ll be Commander that’s realistically driving demand going forward.
Considering The Ten Rings can slot into countless decks as a reliable source of card draw, this card’s prospects are very bright. It might not explode in play overnight; however, it’s definitely worth keeping an eye on. So long as it doesn’t get reprinted in a future Marvel set, demand for this card could easily eclipse supply.
For now, while the price of The Ten Rings continuing to climb does feel inevitable, nothing in MTG is guaranteed. As such, we can really only wait and see to find out what’ll happen to the price of this card.
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