Even though the card pool for Pioneer is significantly smaller than Modern, it still feels like a turn-four format. With Amalia Life, Rakdos Vampires, and other combo decks plaguing the top ranks of the format, games can end in the blink of an eye.
Thanks to the competitiveness of Pioneer’s metagame, MTG players are often quick to jump on new combos and decks. This, in turn, can cause some immense price spikes, even though Pioneer is hardly the biggest format. Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord, for instance, almost quadrupled in price once their competitive Pioneer potential was revealed!
Recently, another new combo deck has been making waves in the Pioneer format. Built around Tree of Perdition of all cards, this new deck is posting promising results and drawing a lot of attention. Thanks to this, it’s no wonder that the price of this card has been shooting up and blossoming recently!
Tree of Perdition
Tree of Perdition is a four mana Plant that has a very bizarre ability. The ability to exchange toughness and life total is a fascinating one. Since Tree of Perdition’s life total is 13, you’ll be setting your opponent’s life total to that number. Lethal combo with Triskaideckaphobia aside, Tree of Perdition setting an opponent’s life to 13 is… not that useful. Not only does the Tree having summoning sickness mitigate its impact, but all you’re going to accomplish is a life total swap with the tree. It doesn’t do much else.
Things change, however, if you can give Tree of Perdition’s ability to another creature. That’s exactly what’s causing this card to spike in price. Agatha’s Soul Cauldron can give any old small creature the ability to swap your opponent’s life total with its toughness. 13 life may be a lot, but what about two or three?
A deck has emerged utilizing this strategy in the Pioneer format, and it appears to be pretty effective. Use Blood Tokens and Fable of the Mirror Breaker to get Tree of Perdition in the graveyard, and use Agatha’s Soul Cauldron to exile it, granting all of your creatures with +1/+1 counters the ability to swap life totals. That swap will generally mean the death of your opponent.
For that reason, Tree of Perdition has increased in price explosively. Worth around $7 pre-spike, the card is now pushing the $30 mark for all its nonfoil variants. You can still find copies of the card for a bit cheaper, but anything under $25 is unlikely at this time.
Edward Kenway
As an added piece, Edward Kenway is gaining a ton of secondary market value. It appears this Assassin’s Creed mythic is a popular Commander to build around! If you’re interested in trying out this Commander for yourself, we wrote an article discussing some strong options for your 99.
Over the past few days, Edward Kenway has jumped from $6 to about $30 across variants. There may be more value in the Assassin’s Creed set than players expected!
Whether you’re building Assassin Commanders or comboing with dead trees in the Pioneer format, expect to pay a premium for your cards. In both cases, we expect the price of these cards to come down a bit after some stabilization is seen.
