At long last, Outlaws of Thunder Junction officially launched last Friday! Following on from prerelease a week prior, now the set is significantly more accessible for many players. With Play and Collector Boosters available to be cracked en masse, it’s common to see prices tumbling down rather quickly.
While Outlaws of Thunder Junction Draft chaff may be getting left on tables worldwide, the set is causing some major waves. Providing new tools to decks new and old in multiple formats, there’s no denying the power on display. For better or worse, thanks to new breakout decks and staples some pieces are spiking insanely hard.
With one card seeing a colossal 3000% price spike, it’s safe to say these new breakout MTG cards are a big deal!
Skorpekh Lord
Previously: $0.25 | Now: $7.96 | Increase: 3084%
To kick off with the big ticket item, Skorpekh Lord is now an insanely expensive MTG card. Having utterly exploded in value over the past few days, copies of this once boring card are now nowhere to be seen. On TCGplayer, the card has been almost completely bought out with only seven listings remaining.
Considering Skorpekh Lord is a rare MTG card from the Necron Dynasties Commander deck, this price spike is undeniably impressive. That being said, however, Skorpekh Lord isn’t actually as rare as you might first think. Since the Warhammer 40,000 Commander decks are only available as decks, rarity doesn’t mean anything.
Since every Warhammer 40,000 card is as rare as each other, every single one has the potential to skyrocket. Thanks to a new breakout MTG deck, in Legacy of all formats, we’re seeing exactly that happen. With buyouts across the board, players are racing to pick up as many expected Affinity staples are possible.
As we covered recently, Legacy Affinity decks have been supercharged by Simulacrum Synthesizer from The Big Score. Propelling the deck to surprise recent wins, players are now racing to pick up the component pieces of this deck. One of the new additions within the new Affinity list is, obviously, Skorpekh Lord.
Providing your other Artifact Creatures with Menace and +1/+0, Skorpekh Lord makes Affinity significantly more scary. Not only is each threat given a little more toughness to swing in with, but they also gain invaluable evasion. Skorpekh Lord also synergizes perfectly with Simulacrum Synthesizer, making it an obvious boon in the deck.
As if the non-foil price surge wasn’t impressive enough, foil prices have also surged even higher, jumping from $0.86 up to $20!
Sicarian Infiltrator
Previously: $1.80 | Now: $13.99 | Increase: 677%
As if one wasn’t enough, there’s another Warhammer 40,000 card seeing an insane price explosion right now. Similarly, this card’s impressive price climb has been caused by the new Affinity deck that’s turning heads. In the deck, Sicarian Infiltrator is surprisingly stellar thanks to being a card-drawing mana sink.
Considering that Sicarian Infiltrator also synergizes withSimulacrum Synthesizer, it’s no wonder they’ve become so popular. Just like Skorpekh Lord, incredibly few copies of this card remain on TCGplayer for purchase. Almost all copies left available are $10+, however, recent sales top out at an impressive $14!
Unsurprisingly, alongside the normal variants of Sicarian Infiltrator spiking, the Surge Foil variant has also been climbing hard. Previously selling for as low as $4, now copies are going for as much as $20!
Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that the spiking Necron cards will keep climbing for too long. Unless Affinity becomes the most popular MTG archetype in the entire format, this price spike will undoubtedly peter off. Once this initial spike in demand fades away, it won’t be a surprise to see the average price drop off.
Currently, Triumph of Saint Katherine is the most expensive card from the Warhammer 40,000 set. Despite seeing play in multiple Legacy Beanstalk decks, copies only sell for around $12 on average. Depending on how popular Affinity becomes in the format, it’s likely that Sicarian Infiltrator and Skorpekh Lord could end up at this price point.
Ultimately, we don’t know what’s going to happen to the MTG markets going forward. Since the price of these cards is intrinsically tied to Affinity, we’ll just have to see how the archetype performs going forward.
Simulacrum Synthesizer
Previously: $16.77 | Now: $44.00 | 166% increase
Unsurprisingly, on top of the Warhammer 40,000 cards spiking in price, Simulacrum Synthesizer is also going up and up. Upon release, copies of this card were selling for around $15, which isn’t half bad for a brand-new Mythic. Now, thanks to revitalizing the Affinity archetype, this card is selling for around $44!
Providing the new core to Legacy Affinity, the power of Simulacrum Synthesizer isn’t to be understated. Quickly providing an army of stealing scaling Artifact Construct tokens, Simulacrum Synthesizer synergizes with almost every creature you play. Thanks to Legacy’s abundance of low-cost Artifacts, these constructs quickly get incredibly scary, so it’s no wonder the new deck is successful.
Beyond proving itself in Legacy right now, Simulacrum Synthesizer is also being experimented with in Modern and Commander. Thanks to this multiformat appeal, the price of Simulacrum Synthesizer should be a lot more reliable. Rather than depending on the changing tides of the MTG metagame, this card is quite simply just good.
While Simulacrum Synthesizer should be more stable, it’s currently unclear where its price may end up. Unlike the other cards we’ve covered today, this one hasn’t been completely bought out just yet, but sellers are nonetheless capitalizing on demand. Ultimately, we should have a much clearer picture after just a few days.
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