Unsurprisingly, the MTG financial markets have recently been dominated by unban speculation, most of which turned out to be misplaced. With the actual banned and restricted announcement being surprisingly tame, only a couple of cards are likely to stay expensive. That said, while the recently unbanned Commander cards have been dominating headlines, other cards have been quietly climbing in the background.
Vodalian Wave-Knight, for instance, has slowly been on the up and up over the past few months. With steady sales driven by Lorwyn Eclipsed, the value of this card has climbed over 500%.
MTG Vodalian Wave-Knight
Released as part of the Cavalry Charge precon from March of the Machine Vodalian Wave-Knight is a very simple MTG card. As a Merfolk Knight that can buff other Merfolk and Knights, it seems just okay on the surface. Thankfully for fans of these archetypes, however, Vodalian Wave-Knight isn’t just a typical lord with a boring anthem effect.
Rather than providing a flat +1/+1 buff, Vodalian Wave-Knight dishes out +1/+1 counters whenever you draw a card. At the very least, this means you’ll get to buff each relevant creature once per turn, which likely means buffing your entire board. Considering Merfolk decks are heavily blue-focused, getting tons of value out of Vodalian Wave-Knight is realistically pretty easy.
If accumulating steady value over the course of a game isn’t good enough, there’s even an infinite combo with Vodalian Wave-Knight. Alongside Benthic Biomancer, you can create an infinite loop where Biomancer loots, gets a counter from Wave-Knight, and then loots again. Admittedly, while powerful, you do need a way to stop this combo, as otherwise you’ll end up decking yourself.
While exploiting this combo is effective, Vodalian Wave-Knight has recently seen an uptick in demand thanks to Sygg, Wanderwine Wisdom. Thanks to enabling card draw as Wanderwine Wisdom and providing protection as Wanderbrine Shield, Sygg pairs perfectly with Wodalian Wave-Knight.
Thanks to this synergy, according to EDHREC, Vodalian Wave-Knight is being played in around 57% of Sygg decks right now. While this has caused a significant price spike, curiously, it’s not a massive shift in Vodalian Wave-Knight’s play rate. With only 629 Sygg decks making up the 22,083 decks on EDHREC, this new demand is technically just a drop in the bucket.
The Spike
Curiously, while the uptick in demand for Vodalian Wave-Knight is already fairly low, sales of the card have been even lower. Across the past three months, only 268 near-mint copies of this Merfolk Knight have been sold. Despite this, the price of Vodalian Wave-Knight has still been climbing steadily.
Winding the clocks back a few months to before this slow spike started, copies of Vodalian Wave-Knight typically sold for around $0.90. Now, however, near-mint non-foil copies of this card are selling for $5.48 on average. With new listings starting at $5.82, this card has seen a 546% price spike so far.
Unfortunately, if you’re after a copy of Vodalian Wave-Knight, there’s no escaping this price spike at this point. Even if you’re not fussed about card condition, all of the cheaper lightly, moderately, or heavily played copies have been bought up. The same has happened to the Extended Art variant of Vodalian Wave-Knight, which has also been climbing.
Currently, an Extended Art version of Vodalian Wave-Knight will set you back at least $7.60. Considering the increased rarity of this Collector Booster exclusive variant, this higher price point is to be expected. The same is true of this price spike in general, since many Commander precon cards can be rather scarce. After all, when they’re very synergistic in their home precon, the market rarely gets flooded with supply.
The Future
Typically, we’re pretty sceptical about Commander-based price spikes, since they tend to follow the same pattern. These cards can spike quickly due to a massive surge in demand and investor interest, but those levels aren’t sustainable. As such, when new sets and precons come along, the price of these upgrades tends to fall fairly quickly.
In theory, Vodalian Wave-Knight could easily follow the same trajectory, but its slower spike makes that less likely. Since investors are less likely to be buying out copies, it’s unlikely that much of the recently-sold supply will return to the market. On top of this, Vodalian Wave-Knight benefits from supporting two typal archetypes, unlike many of the recent typal-based spikes.
Thanks to this dual support aspect, Vodalian Wave-Knight could easily stay relevant for longer than usual. At the same time, the chances of it spiking again in the future are somewhat higher, although its color identity may prove somewhat restrictive. Ultimately, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens, as Vodalian Wave-Knight could go either way.
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