Magic the Gathering (MTG) - Is Volatile Chimera's Foil Price Held Up by Cube?

by  Gaming Successfully Staff

Volatile Chimera is one of the "draft matters" cards from Conspiracy: Take the Crown. While it may be a bulk rare worth little over a dime on the secondary market, the Chimera is a nearly $3 foil! While its effect is neat, it's pretty terrible outside of draft. It's not a card that even finds a home in the most casual of EDH decks!

Fortunately for the Chimera, there is a very real casual draft format known as Cube. Essentially, a cube is a collection of 360 cards or more that are split into "packs" for drafting purposes. Every cube is different, and the cards from both the original Conspiracy and Take the Crown that center around draft have often been popular among cube builders. 
 
What makes Volatile Chimera  so valuable? With it, you're able to choose three creatures that you drafted that couldn't make your deck for any number of reasons. The beauty of having a card like this is being able to intentionally draft creatures you couldn't otherwise play. Paying 1R to choose one of those creatures at random and make the Chimera become a copy of it is great value. And if that creature isn't the one you want, you can just pay 1R again until you get the one that you want. Chances are, though, in a cube draft, the creatures you choose to exile with the Chimera will all probably be ones that you want in most situations. 

 Is the $3 foil price on  Volatile Chimera  going to hold long-term? Foils are more common in Conspiracy sets due to one being included in every pack. If you don't play Cube and happen to come across one of these, you're best off selling it. There's very limited demand for Cube-only cards, but there's enough that this won't ever be a worthless foil. Cube builders love to foil out every card possible, and this is one of the best "Draft Matters" cards there is. 

 To learn more about the Cube format, visit cubetutor.com.

Updated 6/20/2017

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