Marvel’s Spider-Man might be the next MTG set on the horizon, but all eyes are on Avatar. Following its recent First Look and Beginner Box reveal, hype for the Avatar: The Last Airbender set is at an all-time high. In particular, there’s a lot of excitement surrounding Toph, the First Metalbender, who has some truly insane abilities.
Not only does Toph turn nontoken artifacts into lands, but she also has Earthbending for good measure. These two abilities naturally have a ton of synergy together, and it’s especially easy to break them. Whether you lean into Landfall or protecting your Artifacts, Toph is an insane Commander to build around.
Given her potential, it’s no wonder that many cards that support Toph are already starting to spike in price. In the case of Terra Eternal, however, there’s a weird amount of anti-synergy that makes things somewhat suspect.
Terra Eternal
On the surface, Terra Eternal seems insane within a Toph, the First Metalbender deck. It may as well read “nontoken artifacts you control have Indestructible,” since that’s what it’ll do when Toph is in play. Naturally, this is an insane effect to have, as it’ll offer fantastic protection to your artifacts, allowing you to not worry about removal.
In theory, Terra Eternal also works wonders at keeping your nontoken artifacts protected once they’re animated with Earthbending. Each turn, you’ll steadily animate more lands into 2/2s, building a difficult-to-remove go-wide army. Once again, this sounds all well and good; however, this is where the synergy stops.
Once Toph uses her Earthbending ability, your lands/nontoken artifacts will already be protected. The final, seemingly easy-to-overlook, clause in Earthbending states that upon dying, Earthbended lands are returned to the battlefield. Impressively, this even happens if the Earthbended land is exiled.
At this point, the protection offered by Terra Eternal is a lot less useful, but it’s not entirely unusable. Since Toph only triggers Earthbending once per turn, Terra helps keep things protected until then. On top of this, Terra will also keep them protected after dying and returning to the battlefield.
While Terra Eternal definitely has some uses, the actual effectiveness of this card is somewhat suspect. On her own, Toph may take time to animate everything, but she’s only one Earthbending time. When the full set is spoiled and revealed, Terra may simply not be needed. Still, that hasn’t stopped it from spiking in the meantime.
The Spike
Historically, Terra Eternal has been a very cheap MTG card that’s basically seen no play. According to EDHREC, a little over 4,100 Commander decks use this card. Out of these, 247 are new Toph decks getting prepared for the set’s release.
With very little demand propping up the market, copies of Terra Eternal could be picked up for $0.50 in early August. Prior to Toph’s reveal, only a handful of sales happened each week; however, that all changed very quickly. As soon as the Avatar: The Last Airbender First Look happened on August 12th, a massive surge in sales started to move the market.
Since the First Look, over 125 near-mint copies of Terra Eternal have been sold already. While this might not seem like much, copies of Terra are actually rather scarce. To date, this card has only been printed in Worldwake, 15 years ago, so good-condition copies aren’t exactly common. This led to a rather impressive spike occurring over the past few days.
Currently, the market price for Terra Eternal sits at around $1.49; however, recent sales and listings are significantly more expensive. At the moment, the least you’ll pay for a copy of Terra Eternal is $4.99, and recent sales have hit $5.50. This marks a clean 1000% price spike since August 12th.
Looking Ahead
Right now, it’s impossible to say whether or not Terra Eternal is a good spec. Depending on what cards are in the Avatar: The Last Airbender set, this card might not even be needed. Technically, there’s a non-zero chance that it could be reprinted; however, this does feel somewhat unlikely.
The bigger issue comes from the fact that a lot of MTG players might not be interested in building around Toph, the First Metalbender. While there’s no denying she’s a powerful card, it’s no secret that individual legendaries aren’t as popular as Commander precons. Since Avatar: The Last Airbender doesn’t have any precons, the demand for synergistic upgrades could be subdued.
On top of all this, it’s worth noting that Terra Eternal has spiked before. When Zendikar Rising was released in 2020, Terra Eternal hit a peak price of around $2.50. Since then, the spike has steadily been falling, though it did take several years. It wasn’t until 2023 that Terra Eternal was worth a dollar again.
With this past precedent in mind, there’s a good chance that the current spike will retain its value for quite some time. Unless Terra Eternal is suddenly reprinted, the lack of supply won’t give players many other options. Ultimately, we’ll just have to see how popular Toph is once the Avatar set releases, and how good Earthbending is as a whole.
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