Price of Knowledge - Cyclonic Rift
Hello everyone! Most of my time here at MTGStocks is spent delving into the depths of our backrooms looking for Penny Stock cards I can smuggle away, or keeping an eye on the movement in a card’s price from a year ago. But every once in a while one of us here gets a brainworm about a card and I’m the one who gets to pull that brainworm out, refine it, and send it out to all of you as a history on one specific card.
This time we have our Editor and Content Manager Andy to thank as the idea man. His suggestion of
Overload
Man I loved looking into this one. The earliest article I could find about it was from 2017 (a whole five years after its release!) and it was a list of reasons why it should be banned, so we know it was seeing play in a major way, whether that be the original [set]Return to Ravnica[/set] version, one of the two [set]Double Masters[/set] versions, [set]Commander 2014[/set], or [set]Modern Masters 2017[/set].
Cyclonic Rift has become blue’s answer to
Overload itself was a mechanic that was the brainchild of Ken Nagle. During the Great Designer Search in 2006 (see article here) he was one of the three finalists who could possibly become a designer for Wizards of the Coast. Though he did not win this contest, Ken was hired a year later and once Return to Ravnica began to take shape his Overload idea was put to action and changed the power of some simple cards to make them mighty!
Beasts and Treasures
Cyclonic Rift, if seen as only the printed mana cost, is a functional and yet clunky card. If you’re playing in the Commander, Modern, or Pioneer format and you want a permanent off the board, there are better ways to get the job done than to only remove a single target for two mana. This is where Overload becomes a valuable resource. When you pay the requisite six colorless and one blue mana to play Cyclonic Rift, you no longer have to worry about that pesky
Other cards have Overload as well, like
The other added bonus to this is that if you play it late game, it’s likely that your opponents will have too little mana to play back some of their threats onto the field, especially if their larger quantity of mana production was in the form of mana rocks/dorks. If you played it as a Hail Mary you’ll more than likely get to watch your opponents discard away a large number of the cards that were just looming over you a turn or two before when they move to their end step. Feels good to see that, doesn’t it?
War of the Spike
It started seeing a rise in price (going from around $5 to almost $10) right around the release of [set]Dominaria[/set] in 2018, and it's easy to see why players were picking them up no matter the price - having a Cyclonic Rift hidden up your sleeve to bounce some of your opponents best cards is a wonderful feeling.
It continued on a subtle yet smooth rise in price, from $10 to $20, between Dominaria and [set]War of the Spark[/set]. Then in 2020 it saw its first major price hike during the time of Dinosaurs with the release of Ikoria (going from $20 on Jan 1st to just under $40 on May 25th), putting all those Dino players down a peg, and all the Dinosaurs themselves out of commission. With the exception of one small dip back down to around $20 that lasted just under a year (thanks to its Double Masters reprints in both normal and full art) this card’s versatility is obvious and the price has done nothing but rise ever since.
At this moment a Cyclonic Rift can be picked up for right around $40 for the Return to Ravnica printing (nearly the same for the ‘14, ‘17, and Double Masters versions, but the borderless Double Masters version is a whopping $70!) For what it can do for your decks, it’s worth it! Or at least that’s what TCG player says in a Top 50 Best Cards for EDH list, as well as EDHREC showing it as being played in 31 percent of all decks listed with them. This card isn’t a must, but if you want to kick the board hard and fast in blue, Cyclonic Rift is where it’s at.
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I hope all of you enjoy this as well as the other articles on our site. We have a whole team of great writers working hard to give you tons of great information about the cards we all love, so I hope you go and read those as well. And our Premium area is a great place to get the tools you need to really monitor your cards the right way, so sign up. You won’t regret it!
Check out these other articles:
Modern Times: The State of Modern Speculation by Corey Williams
Kidnapped By Yetis by Jason Alt
Hidden Gems - Lords of the Rings: Tales of Mr. Moth by Adam Berg
Ryan Cole lives in Canton, Ohio with his new wife Julia. He began playing magic in 1995 with cards he bought with money he found odd jobs for, just to play the game. At 35 he is happy at home and living as full a life as is possible. He is starting a career in freelance writing and works as a cook while he pursues that dream.
