It’s been nearly a week now since preview season for Lorwyn Eclipsed came to its abrupt end, and the set is still making waves on the secondary market. For the most part, these are being driven by the set’s two Commander precons. Both Dance of the Elements and Blight Curse are seriously shaking things up right now, due to their resonant themes and powerful face Commanders. Thanks to its role as a powerful infinite combo enabler for Blight Curse, Quillspike has experienced a significant MTG price spike over the last week.
Quillspike MTG
At first glance, you’d be forgiven for dismissing Quillspike as a typical MTG Draft chaff uncommon. Three mana for a 1/1 is awful, for a start, and the ability, while potentially powerful, is quite situational. It offers decent synergy with mechanics like Persist, but not to the point where you’d consider running such an inefficient body in your deck.
Unsurprisingly, this low power has translated directly into poor performance for Quillspike. According to EDHREC, just over 3,300 decks run the card, which is a paltry sum by anyone’s standards. Most of these are Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons lists, which makes a lot of sense. Prior to Blight Curse, this was the most popular -1/-1 counter Commander, and therefore the natural place for Quillspike to ply its trade.
With the advent of Blight Curse, however, Quillspike now has a new lease of life. Alongside the deck’s face Commander, Auntie Ool, Cursewretch, the card enables a number of powerful infinite combos. With Devoted Druid, for example, you can place a -1/-1 counter on it to generate a green mana and draw a card with Auntie Ool. You can then spend that mana on Quillspike’s ability to remove the counter, then rinse and repeat to draw your whole deck. Devoted Druid is even included in Blight Curse right out of the box, meaning Quillspike is the only missing piece.
You can pull off something similar with Putrid Goblin and Phyrexian Altar, which adds some welcome redundancy. If the ludicrous card draw doesn’t quite get you there, these combos will also get you a very large Quillspike. With this, a simple Soul Immolation or Chandra’s Ignition can close out the game.
The Spike
Like most of the other precon-related price spikes we’ve seen recently, MTG players first started looking into Quillspike when the Lorwyn Eclipsed face Commanders were leaked. Thanks to the clear synergy with Auntie Ool, the card immediately saw a small jump in sales, with 27 copies moving on TCGplayer. After these things didn’t pick up again until the full precon reveals, which confirmed that Quillspike wouldn’t be getting a reprint in Blight Curse. At this point sales quickly skyrocketed, with 63 sales in a single day at the peak.
Naturally, Quillspike’s price climbed during this time as well. Back in December, copies could be had for around $0.57. Today, they’re going for around $3.10 on average, marking a 443% price spike. The card has seen sales above this as well, with several copies selling in the $5-6 range over the last few days.
Thanks to the massive demand increase, supply for Quillspike is beginning to dry up. There are currently only 11 near mint copies available on TCGplayer. These could easily sell in the next few days at the current rate, too. If this happens, the card has no alternative printings to cushion the fall. If the current supply runs out, then, we could easily see much bigger gains on the card if demand persists.
One Blight Only?
Looking forward, the price on Quillspike could easily go one of two ways. If Blight Curse proves popular, as early signs certainly indicate, then the price will most likely keep climbing. With no reprints and limited supply, this is almost inevitable. Long-term it’s a reasonably safe bet, too, since Quillspike is not the easiest card to reprint in a future set.
On the other hand, we’ve seen plenty of flash-in-the-pan Commander price spikes over the years. Every time a new precon comes out, a handful of cards inevitably see a lot of attention, which then drops off when the next exciting legend comes along. Once Blight Curse fades from the limelight, the price on Quillspike could easily die down again since it can’t really see play anywhere else.
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