Over the past few weeks, a multitude of common and uncommon Standard removal spells have risen in price by a pretty significant margin. This includes Elspeth’s Smite, Sheltered by Ghosts, and Anoint with Affliction. Having the ability to exile opposing threats really comes in handy in this Standard format.
Interestingly, yet another exile-based removal spell has spiked recently. This time, it’s a red common from Wilds of Eldraine that is seeing a ton of play, even down to Pioneer. This card is quite strong and very well-positioned, so its increased demand certainly makes sense.
Torch the Tower
- Mana Value: R
- Rarity: Common
- Card Type: Instant
- MTG Sets: Wilds of Eldraine
- Card Text: Bargain (You may sacrifice an artifact, enchantment, or token as you cast this spell.) Torch the Tower deals 2 damage to target creature or planeswalker. If this spell was bargained, instead it deals 3 damage to that permanent and you scry 1. If a permanent dealt damage by Torch the Tower would die this turn, exile it instead.
Torch the Tower does a lot of things in Standard and Pioneer that make it much stronger than a typical Shock effect otherwise would be. At minimum, even without utilizing Bargain, Torch the Tower functions like a Magma Spray that can hit Planeswalkers, and Magma Spray has seen play in the past.
The exile effect is incredibly important. In Pioneer, decks like Izzet Phoenix and Rakdos Demons will often utilize Torch the Tower as a way to permanently get rid of Enduring Innocence.
Once you factor in Bargain, though, the card becomes even stronger. Many decks have incidental token generation and don’t have to give up too many resources to maximize Torch the Tower.
For instance, Convoke decks in Standard can simply sacrifice a Map token or 1/1 from Gleeful Demolition at little cost. Red aggro decks can do the same with tokens generated by Urabrask’s Forge post-combat.
Temur Prowess can even use Torch the Tower as a way to protect their copies of Enduring Vitality from opposing exile removal. Simply sacrifice Enduring Vitality in response, target an opposing creature, and Enduring Vitality will come back as an enchantment. All these little details add up, making Torch the Tower a great tool to have access to.
The Spike
Back in early November, Torch the Tower was quite cheap. Its cheapest point in the last month came on November 16, where the card just reached 30 cents. As you can tell by the TCGPlayer market price history data shown above, the card didn’t really start spiking much until last week.
Currently, non-foil near-mint copies sit at $2.18. This represents a 627% price spike since November 16. $2.18 may not sound like much, but for a common from a premier set, it’s actually rather substantial.
Notably, the traditional variant of Torch the Tower isn’t the only version seeing a price increase. The Wilds of Eldraine promo pack copies also show a pretty drastic rise. The market price for non-foil promo pack copies of Torch the Tower is now at $9.08.
This number has been steadily increasing since September when the card was valued at less than $1. While there haven’t been many sales made in December for the promo pack version, the last few sales made all exceeded $10. Make sure to check your collection to see if you have any Torch the Towers lying around.
