Quietus Spike is a Magic card from Shards of Alara quietly enjoyed a rise in price from around $2 to $4 over a couple of years. However, with a reprint in Commander 2017 and later in Planechase Anthology, the original printing fell under $2. Quietly, it's been a very solid Equipment for quite a long time.

Appearing first in Shards of Alara, and also included in a Planechase pre-constructed deck, Quietus Spike is a 3-drop Equipment that gives a creature deathtouch. Also, whenever that creature deals combat damage to a player, that players loses half of his or her life, rounded up.

Voltron strategies, those that involve loading up one creature with a bunch of Equipments and/or Auras, are extremely popular in Commander. This would explain why a great many Kemba, Kha Regent decks have included this equipment. A card like Quietus Spike is especially good on a Commander like Rafiq of the Many, who much of the time has double strike. That means the effect of Quietus Spike activates twice, which means a ton of life lost.

Quietus Spike is also fun on any creature that has trample or otherwise gains trample. This is because when you assign damage on a trampling creature, only 1 of that damage has to be dealt to a defending creature. Now, not only can you deal more damage, but greatly sap your opponent's overall total, as well.

Sadly, the Spike's ability doesn't trigger Gisela, Blade of Goldnight's double damage dealing ability. This is since the Spike's ability is life loss, not damage. The Spike also doesn't grant you additional combat damage when totaling the 21 Commander damage (also known as general damage) necessary for an invididual Commander to take out a player. It also doesn't double infect damage, which is a good thing, because 10 Poison Counters to kill a player is a low enough total to begin with.

The Spike was also quite good in the short-lived but massively popular Tiny Leaders format, the 50-card Commander variant in which you can only play cards with converted mana cost 3 or less. With how prevalent Voltron strategies are in that format, and the lack of lethal Commander damage, having an Equipment like this can end games quickly. Your opponent only starts with 25 life in Tiny Leaders, so it won't take much for any creature equipped with this to land a heavy blow.

The Tiny Leaders format didn't last all that long, but a lot of people bought Quietus Spike that didn't have use for them before. The price has been on an even steadier rise since then. It took a big jump from $3 to almost $4 between February and April of 2016 and the price has been wavering between $3 and $4 since then.

Even without Tiny Leaders, Quietus Spike sees play in a wide variety of Commander decks. Interestingly, the Commander who utilizes it the most is not one with Double Strike. It's actually Olivia Voldaren. Olivia is usually a Vampire Tribal Commander who is definitely focused on life loss, so you could see the Spike fitting into that strategy quite well. Another Commander bent on life loss is Vela the Night-Clad, so it's little surprise that the Quietus Spike shows up in some of her decks, as well.

Also, both of these decks have access to an Enchantment called Wound Reflection. This card has a player-killing combo with Quietus Spike, since it causes each opponent to lose  life equal to the amount of life lost that turn at the end of each turn. It's probably the best combo available with Quietus Spike.

Quietus Spike is a fairly valuable equipment in a wide range of Commander decks. While it hasn't become a staple in the format, it's widely played. You can't really go wrong picking this card up if you're fond of Equipment-based decks.

The Pact cycle from Future Sight is pretty good for the most part. Technically, they are all "free" spells. While they have a pretty big drawback of having to pay a certain amount of mana during the next upkeep or you lose the game, they are usually worth it. Pact of Negation, Slaughter Pact, and Summoner's Pact are all cards that see play in Modern and other formats.

Even Intervention Pact sees occasional play and saw a spike when Madcap Experiment decks began to be brewed. But the red Pact, Pact of the Titan, hasn't seen much play since being a part of some Hive Mind Legacy lists back in 2011 to 2013.

What Hive Mind does is make a copy each instant or sorcery spell that a player casts for each player. With the Pact spells, if you cast a Pact that the opposing player can't pay for during his or her upkeep, that player instantly loses. All the Hive Mind player had to do was cast the Pact that the opposing player had no way of being able to pay for. It's a mean way to win. While Pact of the Titan wasn't close to the best of the 5 pacts for this purpose, it did see play in some lists.

Hive Mind decks aren't really much of a part of the Legacy metagame anymore, so Pact of the Titan went by the way side. It's easily the weakest of the Pacts. While creating a 4/4 creature at instant speed for no mana sounds awesome, having to pay 4R at the next upkeep is rarely worth it. However, when Pact of Negation, Slaughter Pact and Summoner's Pact were reprinted in the original Modern Masters sets, Intervention Pact and Pact of the Titan were not. This meant that their supplies have remained relatively low.

So it was only a matter of time before Intervention Pact's price spiked. But while that spike make some sense, when Pact of the Titan was bought out on TCGplayer on 10/29/16, many heads were scratched. The TCG Player mid price hit almost $7 before falling to about $6 a couple days later. But no one is really biting at this price, which means it's pretty clear that this was an intentional buyout for speculative purposes.

Is this card ever going to be good enough to justify more than its original price of about $1? It's doubtful. This was really just a case of someone buying out a card that had low supply that may see play again at some point. This card is fine for what it does, but it's not something that most decks want. Some Commander decks will play it, but it's not something that you're going to see on a regular basis. This is one I'd sell high on if you happen to have any copies laying around. There should be a race to the bottom sooner or later, but this card will now always be worth more than it was before.

June 2017 Update: Pact of the Titan still has a market price of almost $5 on TCGPlayer. I would still recommend selling this card, as I can't see it maintaining this high of a price long-term. Although, after being at this price point for a long time, it's not anything you have to sell in a hurry.

Intervention Pact is one of the cycle of five (mostly) powerful Pacts from Magic the Gathering's Future Sight set. Pact of Negation, Slaughter Pact, and Summoner's Pact are the ones that many Magic players know about. There's the also unplayably bad Pact of the Titan in Red, but Intervention Pact is actually playable. It has seen occasional pay in Modern Eldrazi & Taxes and in Commander. However, in late September of 2016, Intervention Pact went from being a $1 rare to having a TCGPlayer Mid price of nearly $12! What happened!? 

Many price spikes occur due to what are known as "price corrections" meaning that the card's price relative to its demand finally normalizes as supply diminishes. However, many other price spikes occur to the dreaded buyout, as in one or a few speculators buy out the internet of a particular card with low supply that may or may not actually have future demand. In the case of Intervention Pact, it doesn't seem that many people were willing to actually pay more than $5 for this card when the price spike occurred. So in this case, we can assume this was a buyout target.

by Richard Rowell, Gaming Successfully Staff

Gilt-Leaf Archdruid has been a part of Elf decks in Commander for quite sometime. He's even popped up in competitive formats once in awhile as part of a combo deck built around his second ability: the one to gain control of all lands a target player controls.

But for the most part, the Archdruid is a role player in Elf decks like Ezuri, Renegade Leader, Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury, and Rhys the Redeemed. They run enough Druids that the draw a card ability on the Archdruid is enough reason to run him. The Archdruid is also part of the win condition for the ultimate Druid Tribal Commander, Seton, Krosan Protector. The ability to steal all those lands is just a bonus in an Elf deck. With a dedicated Druid build, this creature becomes very un-fun to play against very quickly.

The interesting thing about this card is that its sell price seems to hover between $3 and $4 depending on who you ask. It's a card with only one printing, Morningtide, but since most people are only picking up a copy at a time, the price has never really taken off. But recently, buylists have jumped from $2 to $2.50 and even $3.50. It's really just a case of supply finally running low on this card.

This card is definitely a strong pick-up right now. It's hard to say where this card's price goes. But as it hasn't been above $4 for years, Gilt-Leaf Archdruid is definitely due for some price growth. Definitely watch the buylist prices on this card, as soon there may be some chances to buy these at arbitrage prices (as in buy them from one vendor and sell them to another for a profit).

Twilight Shepherd is a useful Angel originally printed in Shadowmoor. She has seen three other printings including the Duel Decks: Divine vs Demonic and the subsequent reprint in the Duel Decks Anthology, plus in Commander 2014 and the Forged in Stone Commander deck featuring Nahiri, the Lithomancer. Considering that this is pretty much a card you can get for under $0.50 due to the Commander 2014 printing, you'd be surprised to discover that the Shadowmoor printing has been on buylists recently for as much as $1!

Before the C14 reprint, Twilight Shepherd actually was a $2.50-$3 card due to her usefulness in Commander. In particular, she's seen a lot of play in Kaalia of the Vast and Avacyn, Angel of Hope Commander decks. Her ability to return cards to your hand that died that turn is very useful, especially for only six mana. Having Persist means that she can do it once again, as well. Plus a 5/5 vigilant flying body is definitely nothing to laugh at. This is a solid Angel, albeit best at home in Commander.

But being reprinted in a popular Commander deck, plus the second (albeit limited) reprint in the Duel Decks Anthology really hurt her value. However, the Shadowmoor version is still sought after due to being the rarest version. Still, unless you really want the original printing, sending your Shadowmoor copies off for $1 and rebuying the C14 ones at $0.50 seems like a solid plan. If you're going to invest in Twilight Shepherd, the cheaper Duel Deck Anthology and Commander 2014 versions seem to be the way to go.

Typically, cards like this that do have real demand, but only a limited audience, tend to see all of their printings eventually find some sort of price equilibrium. So if the Shadowmoor copies eventually crawl back up towards $3, then expect the cheaper copies to steadily follow suit.

by Richard Rowell, Gaming Successfully Staff

Dictate of Erebos has been a hit among Commander players in Magic the Gathering since its release in Journey into Nyx. It hit an all-time low price of about $0.50 in January 2015 and has been on the rise ever since. In late July 2016, it reached $3. Meanwhile, store buylists have remained around $1 cash for the card. For a card with the casual demand of a functionally better version of Grave Pact, this seems like an awfully large spread.

Recently, one buylist posted a buy price of $2.25 for Dictate of Erebos. This is quite a jump, but it should not be surprising. Unless this card gets reprinted, this card could easily be selling for $5 or more in the near future. The card that this is most similar to, Grave Pact,  has 4 different printings and is $12!

While Grave Pact only costs 4 mana to cast, 3 of that has to be Black. Dictate of Erebos costs 5 mana, but only 2 needs to be Black. Plus, Dictate of Erebos and the other Dictate enchantments from Journey into Nyx have Flash. This means you can actually cast it on your opponent's turn at a time that would be advantageous to you. Perhaps your opponent plays In Garruk's Wake, which only destroys opponent's creatures. If you cast this in response, that player will have to sacrifice as many creatures as yours were destroyed. It's also just fun to cast this if you had mana open anyway.

Dictate of Erebos has never been, and probably never will be, a Constructed staple. However, this enchantment is so good in Commander that pretty much every deck that has some sort of sacrifice theme - and plays Black - in it will include it. Our recommendation is to hold this Enchantment as long as possible, as the buylist price should only rise with time. If you're looking to buy, you're probably never going to get this cheaper. It's not a card with an obvious place to reprint. Even if it gets reprinted in some supplemental product, as we've seen with Grave Pact, the limited new supply won't hold down its price for long.

Sadistic Sacrament is a rare from Zendikar that has graced many sideboards in the past. In late 2010, this card was worth as much as 0.8 event tickets on Magic Online. It’s consistently been a $1 rare for years in paper, reaching as high as $1.50 recently. Being a rare from a now long out-of-print set, and being a card with kicker that isn’t likely to be reprinted, it can’t hurt to buy a few copies of Sacrament at 0.03 tix a piece online. In paper, it’s not a bad investment either. It has been listed on eBay for $3 or more recently.

On the surface, Sadistic Sacrament is an efficient way to deprive your opponent of 3 cards for only 3 mana. But the kicker which costs 7 extra mana lets you absolutely ruin your opponent’s deck, by allowing you to exile up to 15 cards of your choice from their library. While that’s a lot of mana, having that option in the late game is pretty sweet.

Most recently, Sadistic Sacrament has seen play as a two-of in some decently competitive Vintage lists on Magic Online. While it’s hard to say if Sacrament will ever find itself in a Modern Mono-Black control list is hard to say. But a big winner in a major Magic Online Vintage  tournament using it could cause a bunch of copies to be bought up in a hurry.

On the paper side of things, this is a card that’s been worth $1-$1.50 for a very long time. They simply aren’t printing more of these. It sees a fair amount of play in EDH, as well. While Vintage isn’t really a big deal in paper Magic anymore, if it even sees a hint of play in Modern at top tables, speculation could cause it to potentially spike in price. Otherwise, it's just a nice rare card to have in your Magic collection.

Today, we'll be taking a look at a commonly played land from Shards of Alara: Swamp #238... Wait, what?

One of the most important things about Magic: the Gathering is having lands to play your spells. This is why full art basics from Zendikar, Unglued, Unhinged, and now Battle for Zendikar are such good investments. It's why foils are even more so. It's why fetchlands fetch such a premium. Shock lands retain good value because they're the best nonbasic mana-producing lands in Modern. But remember that some decks are mono-color and therefore need a crap-ton of basic lands.

Enter Swamp #238 from Shards of Alara.

Kudos to MTG Goldfish tracking the trending price winners and catching this one. Turns out this has been a fairly "expensive" basic swamp for a bit, though. It was about $1 before a couple of recent price jumps.

How about the foil?

Admittedly Chippy does some awesome artwork on basic land arts, and it's not unusual to see some players buy up basic lands of particular arts. Turns out this already gorgeous art is already popular in foil, and has been for quite some time. It hasn't dropped below a TCG Player mid of $4.31 since Goldfish started tracking cards!

If you think this is interesting, check out this Swamp from New Phyrexia:

The non-foil doesn't nearly approach the foil here, but notice that this has been over $3.50 for some time, too. Because foil basics apparently are bought in bunches to fill up mono-colored decks, you tend to see some interesting price fluctuations.

There are a handful more over $2, and this is just looking at Swamps! I'll say one thing: I can never look at basic lands the same again! Some players really, really like particular arts on their basic lands. While I don't necessarily suggest raiding your local game store for the non-foil basics over $1, it's just a good idea to watch what basic lands are actually worth some money. Most buylists don't consider them, but you can always EBay them, Heck, you can even try to trade them off on PucaTrade!

So remember, if a particular land art looks super sweet in foil, look up the pric.e. It may be worth more than you'd ever expect.