It may be nearly a year old at this point, but there’s still plenty of life in Wilds of Eldraine yet. The set is still in Standard ’till 2026, so there’s a lot of time for new, or rather old, staples to emerge. This week, Restless Cottage has done exactly that and has seen an impressive price spike as a result. Over the past few days, top MTG creature land Restless Cottage is up by 300%. In addition, Song of Totentanz is up by nearly 170%. Clearly, players are enjoying the Rat-making goodness it provides.
Restless Cottage (+300%)
- Mana Value: N/A
- Rarity: Rare
- Text: Restless Cottage enters the battlefield tapped. Tap: Add B or G. 2BG: Restless Cottage becomes a 4/4 black and green Horror creature until end of turn. It’s still a land. Whenever Restless Cottage attacks, create a Food token and exile up to one target card from a graveyard.
Restless Cottage is part of a ten-card MTG supercycle of creature lands that spanned both Wilds of Eldraine and The Lost Caverns of Ixalan. All ten are solid fixers that can become decent creatures when needed. What set this cycle apart from its predecessors was the fact that every creature land involved had an attack trigger, which added a lot of extra value.
If you had to pick the ‘best’ land from this cycle, Restless Cottage would take the title easily. Becoming a 4/4 for four mana is solid, and the attack trigger providing incidental graveyard hate is useful in multiple formats. So too, surprisingly, is the Food said trigger also provides. Especially now, with Bloomburrow bringing Forage and other Food synergies into Standard.
Restless Cottage is also notably in Golgari: the colors of the best Midrange deck in Standard right now. Its abilities are ideally suited for grindy decks, and as such it’s seeing a lot of play there. Because of this, the card’s price has jumped from around $1.70 to around $6.70 in the last couple of weeks, which marks a roughly 300% price spike.
This makes perfect sense since Restless Cottage is part of a top-tier deck in the flagship format of MTG. It also sees play in both Pioneer and Commander, however, so its price isn’t purely driven by Standard. Because of this, I’d say this was a stable shift as MTG spikes go. This is a card that will always have a home, and therefore always have a decent price tag as well.
Song Of Totentanz (+170%)
- Mana Value: XR
- Rarity: Rare
- Text: Create X 1/1 black Rat creature tokens with “This creature can’t block.” Creatures you control gain haste until end of turn.
Song of Totentanz is a much trickier spike to pin down. While the card sees a lot of play in both Commander and Brawl, that’s about as far as it goes. A smattering of Standard play in Boros Token Control notwithstanding. Despite this narrow usage, the card has jumped by 170% over the past couple of weeks, going from around $1.10 to around $3.10.
This is most likely down to Bloomburrow. The set introduced a lot of new Rats and Rat support cards, perhaps most notably Wick, the Whorled Mind. Rat decks typically care about going wide, and creating as many Rats as possible to scale up the stats of their creatures. In such decks, Song of Totentanz is absolutely ideal. It lets you sink all of your available mana into 1/1 Rats and even gives them all Haste to boot.
We’ve seen quite a few Commander spikes post-Bloomburrow, and as with the rest of them, Song of Totentanz comes with a caveat. Once the hype around Rat decks dies down, and players start building whatever Duskmourn has to offer, demand for Song of Totentanz will likely collapse. At that point, this new high price will come back down in turn. Unlike Restless Cottage, I really don’t see this one as a stable long-term value holder. This feels like a classic sell now, buy later situation to me. Unless Rats prove themselves viable in high-level Commander play.
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