Crazy week! A lot of stuff happening around Innistrad: Midnight Hunt cards, and especially zombies and werewolves. It took a bit longer than I anticipated for this latest set to have such an impact on prices, but it's happening. This week we had to do our top winners a bit different than we usually do because of this. Now read on and see what the last week has brought us.
Like every week, just in time for FNM, I'll now tell you about the cards that will be the talk of the town tonight!
Come discuss this week's price movements with us on Reddit.
#1 Zombies!
Instead of picking the top 3 this week, where we would only discuss zombies that all have gone up because of the "zombies matter"-theme, I will simply choose the ones with the larger spikes and briefly discuss them and show you the price fluctuations. So this week we're choosing "Zombies" as the number one winner.
Somehow I am kind of surprised it has taken this long for Undead Warchief to spike. Zombies have mattered for some time now, but with the new Innistrad sets it received some extra attention. In this week's article you'll see more zombies show up because of this development. We received several new zombies in the past set, and more are likely to come in the next. A friend of mine has built a zombie deck years ago, also playing Undead Warchief, but more notably also playing Korlash, Heir to Blackblade to get these swamps out of his deck with the little known Grandeur ability. Wondering whether Korlash will also go up for the memes, or that it simply isn't good enough to make the cut. Obviously Korlash doesn't work well in commander since you need multiples.
Undead Warchief is a good upgrade to the Undead Unleashed commander deck or if people want to build a different zombie deck around its commander Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver. But there obviously are sufficient other zombie commanders to build around.
Another spike because of the recent, and upcoming, zombie tribal support. The Scarab God isn't new and even before the spike it was already $17 and saw some quite some play in commander and occasionally in Pioneer. Again this is a good upgrade to the Undead Unleashed commander deck from Innistrad: Midnight Hunt.
As you can see the clear theme this week continues and its more zombies. Also Plague Belcher, that maybe should have been marked as the number one winner this week, saw a huge price increase of 249% going from $1.95 to $6.80. Whenever a zombie you control dies, each opponent loses one life. If there's one thing zombies are good at, it's dying. To be fair, not always as good as Goblins, but that's not the point I guess. Especially with the new "Decayed" mechanic from Innistrad: Midnight Hunt we see zombies die automatically after a good attack. Besides that, there are probably plenty of combo's that let you sacrifice your zombies and let them return to the battlefield.
Lets also mention Rot Hulk. This card was fairly obvious that it would benefit from the zombies-matter theme and it also having a fairly low supply, since it was only printed in the special Game Night set, the price more easily goes up. These sets revolve around multiplayer cards, which obviously make these cards popular for commander pick up.
And another zombie that goes up. Gravecrawler also sees play in Modern and Legacy decks because it's a creature that's really easy to recur.
One of the more played Mythics from Innistrad: Midnight Hunt in Standard sees quite some play. When looking at sales we can see that the card is gaining popularity and have even seen it being called "the next The Great Henge" on Reddit. While I think this is not a good comparison, I do get where they're coming from.
The Meathook Massacre does it all! It wipes the board, it has a Blood Artist effect, and it far harder to get rid of than a creature. It can be used in several types of strategies and besides seeing a lot of play in Standard, I can see this becoming a popular commander card. However, this early in the set release it means that the supply haven't even really got started yet, meaning more copies will enter the market soon. I expect the price to come down the coming weeks a bit, but after the new Innistrad set releases and less packs will be opened, there's a good chance the price will crawl up again.
#3 Werewolves
And again we have to take a few cards at time because of the same reason. With the printing of Tovolar, Dire Overlord along with plenty of support there now are viable strategies for the werewolf tribal. Because of this, just like with zombies, we see some extra support for these cards.
The spike on Mayor of Avabruck is the least percentage wise of the three, but the largest one in absolute dollar value. Except for its obvious synergies with the werewolf tribal it was played in a Tovolar, Dire Overlord on Game Knights, and we all know what that means. A lot of eyes on the card, and immediately spiking the price. But Mayor of Avabruck also sees play in decks with Katilda, Dawnhart Prime, Sigarda, Champion of Light, and Kyler, Sigardian Emissary.
Cheap Pickups
Please note: for our 'record low' we consider the price of the card over the past 7 years. Many cards have been even cheaper (a) decade(s) ago. Also note: some cards are still going down, and might be even cheaper pickups next week.
| Chatterfang, Squirrel General |
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| Tinybones, Trinket Thief |
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| Gideon, Ally of Zendikar |
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