Unholy Annex/Ritual Chamber, the Demon Typal Room from Duskmourn, is one of the strongest cards to break out of the set. It has knowingly taken over the Pioneer format for weeks now, and it appears to have taken over the Standard format as well. Congratulations to Javier Dominguez for winning Magic World Championship 30 and becoming a two-time World Champion in 2024! He utilized a unique Dimir Demons deck to do the job in Standard, and, of course, that deck played four of this new Room.
Unholy Annex/Ritual Chamber
This is a hell of a Magic card. Unholy Annex/Ritual Chamber isn’t just good because of what it’s capable of, there are also a ton of MTG cards that synergize with this one extraordinarily well. As long as you have a Demon in play, Unholy Annex becomes a difficult engine to stop. Combine that with Bloodletter of Aclazotz, and Unholy Annex gives you card advantage while hitting your opponent for four damage! Of course, Bloodletter of Aclazotz also has an instant death combo with Unstoppable Slasher, so the deck feels like it builds itself.
The combination of pressure, stabilization, and card advantage makes Unholy Annex a difficult MTG card for fair/aggressive strategies to beat. It does precisely what Midrange decks are looking for, which has enabled the strategy in Standard and Pioneer.
While Mono Black Demons and Rakdos Demons in Pioneer were the main decks enabling this card, Javier Dominguez’s bizarre took it in a new direction. Dominguez’s Dimir Demons used an Inverter of Truth-inspired combo finish, which gave the card a ton of attention over the weekend. The World Championship-winning deck can win a fair game and create situations that demand your opponent to have an answer or die.
Unholy Annex is the half of this card seeing lots of play. Ritual Chamber is just the icing on the cake. If you run out of things to do, you can create a 6/6 Demon as an add-on to the other card. This portion of the Room sees a lot less use since Unholy Annex is the star of the show, but being able to just create a 6/6 Flying Demon that turns on the life drain part of Unholy Annex as an attached action is ridiculous.
Of course, Demon Typal Commander decks are also interested in Unholy Annex. Because Duskmourn had intense Demon support in the set, interest in building Demon-based Commander decks is at an all-time high. Phyrexian Arena is an all-timer in the Commander format, and Unholy Annex is a cracked version of Phyrexian Arena. Heck, even non-Demon Commander decks might want this card.
The Spike
As the title suggests, Unholy Annex/Ritual Chamber has seen an absurd spike from its market average nadir at the beginning of October. Once worth 33 cents a card, Unholy Annex/Ritual Chamber is now commonly selling for $17.37 on TCGplayer. At the time of writing, the cheapest copy of the card available on TCGplayer is $29, which suggests the demand for this card is rather high at the moment.
The borderless variant of Unholy Annex is selling for a little less than the normal variant in its nonfoil iteration, but prices appear to be quickly correcting themselves. These will likely be a similar price soon.
Foils are going for a bit more than the nonfoil variants of Unholy Annex. Notably, one foil sale seems to have created an outlier on TCGplayer. This could be why the current asking prices for Unholy Annex are so high. For reference, the cheapest borderless version of Unholy Annex on TCGplayer is currently $20.
This Card is Worth it
The sales price for Unholy Annex is somewhat unstable, which suggests that the card could continue to rise or fall slightly before finding its real post-hype price point. However, the card has an insanely powerful ability that multiple formats want, so it will likely continue to see a lot of attention. This, in turn, may keep the card’s price at current highs, but that remains to be seen.
I wouldn’t count on Unholy Annex getting significantly cheaper until it dies out in either Pioneer or Standard. In Pioneer, that’s a possibility. Standard, however, will likely have to deal with Unholy Annex/Ritual Chamber for quite some time.