#ButWhy is this card so expensive... The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale

When a price changes drastically, there's usually a reason for that, for example an unbanning, spoiling of a new card that complements a card, or some new tech. But why are cards expensive that, well, already are expensive? That's what I'm going to try to explore in this article series. This instalment, we'll be talking about The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale.

Aim of this article

Many articles require (some) background knowledge about formats, the metagame and price history of a card and similar cards. We also like to serve newcomers, casual players and infrequent players in the community who would like to understand how or why a card got to where it is now. If you have been dealing with Magic finance for some time, this article probably contains a lot of information you're already aware of. A card with an insanely high price tag, which probably looks like a terrible card to new players. Why would you play a land that doesn't generate any mana and even taxes your creatures? Before we dive into the merits of this card, lets look at the price graph.

I actually considered buying a Tabernacle years ago, but I found the price tag of €120 (about $150) too high. Especially since I was a student and could really use the money for... you know... beer. Boy, did I wish I would have bitten the bullet and just gotten myself one of these. MTGStocks only started measuring card prices from June 2012 where the card was about $300. About a year later, it went up to $450, and then another year later to $730. Around May 2016 it broke the magical $1.000 barrier and sold for a while between $1.100 and $1.300. Recently, in the Reserved List crazy, it went up to where it is now, about $3.000. The market price currently sits at $1.625. So does this mean that the people offering the card ask around twice as much as people are willing to pay for it?

Prices have reached such a point, that even sellers on CardMarket.com have these kind of advertisements:

Legends

The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale was printed only in Legends. You are probably familiar with this set, since cards from this set have been popping up every single day in our Interests page. What is it with this set?

Legends was released in June 1994 as the seventh Magic set. It was the first set to contain multicolored cards. The print run was around 35 million cards. To put this into perspective, the print run from The Dark, the set after Legends, had a print run of 62 million cards and Fallen Empires had a print run of 350-375 million cards. Revised Edition, the set before Legends, had an estimated print run of 600 million range. So as seen, the Legends run was very small in comparison to other sets from that time. Fortunately, Legends was reprinted almost a year later in Italian, adding quite some copies to the supply.

As any other set, Legends was sold in boosters, but some boosterboxes only contained only one part of uncommons from this set, while other boxes contained the other part. This led to widespread complaints from frustrated players. This was "solved" by Wizards of the Coast with the Legends Exchange Program, which would allow customers to trade in up to 100 cards from one part of uncommons for an equal number from the other part.

The set obviously contained "Legends", later replaced by supertype "Legendary". Of these unique one-of-a-kind permanents, only one with the same name could exist on the battlefield at any time. Legends also introduced "Enchant World" cards, where the idea behind it was that they were magics so powerful, they transported the battle to another plane altogether. Only one "World" permanent could be on the battlefield at the same time.

Abilities

Not really an ability, but The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale is a land and therefore "free" and "uncounterable", making it actually very powerful. The fact that it's a Legendary land doesn't really hurt it, since one is usually enough. Tabernacle's actual ability is:

All creatures have "At the beginning of your upkeep, destroy this creature unless you pay ."

So, during each player's upkeep, they have to pay for each creature they control. If they don't, the creature is destroyed. Especially during competitive play, when the player goes too quickly through their upkeep and draws a card, indicating they have moved from their upkeep to their draw step, all their creatures are destroyed since the abilities have resolved.

Eternal play

The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale obviously is not Modern legal, but is legal in Vintage and Legacy. It sees most play in Legacy lands decks as a one-off. It has a good fit in this deck, since it's tutor-able with Gamble and millable (and retrievable) by Life from the Loam. Tabernacle is a symmetrical card, meaning it affects both players. Luckily enough, these land decks don't play any creatures, basically making the card asymmetrical.

The land decks also plays Wasteland and Ghost Quarter. Both are able to deny your opponent mana, and especially in a format like Legacy or Vintage where people barely play any basic lands and have greedy mana bases, that strategy works pretty well. Cutting your opponent's mana and then playing The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale to tax their creatures, is always fun. They have to choose between which creatures to keep and what spells they want to play. If you are able to destroy all their lands, you basically also wipe all their creatures.

Commander

I've seen Tabernacle come up on websites and lists where people are screaming for it to be banned in Commander. I can imagine that in Commander, and especially multiplayer, it is a great way to keep your opponent's mana taxed at all times. However, if it was me, I would be hesitant to have a card with this price tag in a casual deck. Then again, I've seen sufficient people having Power 9 in their cubes.

I can imagine that Tabernacle is an easy include in a Commander deck if it suits your strategy. Since it is a land, it is not restricted to any color and if your main strategy is to not have (m)any creatures, then by all means you should play it. A cheaper alternative to Tabernacle, for casual play, would be Magus of the Tabernacle, but being a creature, costing , having a color and being counterable makes this card far less powerful than the land. Also, since cards apparently tend to be judged by this, dies to Doom Blade...

So... #ButWhy is The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale so expensive? Like mentioned earlier, Legends only has a print run of about 35 million cards, meaning only 19.284 of each rare were printed, including Tabernacle. This is an insanely low number of supply, especially for a card seeing competitive and rich-folk casual play. It being on the Reserved List takes care of a possible influx of new copies. If you really want to own one, you could check into the Italian version of this card, which is notably cheaper.