It’s another week, and that means it’s time to take a look at the Magic: The Gathering Crashers and Climbers as we close in on the release of Spider-Man less than two months since Edge of Eternities.
This time around, our climbers are a nice eclectic mix of cards from sets from 2024 and 2025, as well as a rapidly climbing space dragon. Intrigued? You should be. Let’s go!
Climbing
Let’s start with the space dragon, then, with Nova Hellkite available for just a few cents the other day and now reaching almost $3 in market value in climbing.
Why the climb? Well, as TCGPlayer points out, the card featured in a mono-red deck that won the Magic Spotlight Series: Planetary Rotation, and it’ll likely keep doing well until it’s rotated out of standard eventually.
That same deck also featured our second climber, the Razorkin Needlehead from Duskmourn, House of Horror (a set that doesn’t get enough live in my humble opinion).
This creepy customer has first strike on your turn and deals 1 damage when your opponent draws a card, meaning you’re constantly pinging them for damage with a card that costs two red to cast.
It’s now up to over $8, having been less than $3 not long ago.
Next up, a bit of an ‘odd couple’. Temur Battlecrier is, as we say in the UK, ‘cheap as chips’. It’s a three-cost card that lowers the cost of your spells if you have some big creatures out, but its value is on the up thanks to an appearance in an MTGO Standard Challenge.
It pairs with Outcaster Trailblazer, which is likely to see a spike as a result. This other half of the dynamic duo gives you mana when it enters, triggers the four power requirement of Temur Battlecrier to make spells cheaper, and as you bring in additional cards with four or more power, you get a card to draw, too.
If you want to put this combo together, Outcast Trailblazer will cost you under a dollar right now, but expect it to climb.
Finally, for our climbers this week, Seize the Spotlight is seeing what could be described as a meteoric rise.
The sorcery, which can allow you to take control of opponents’ cards or draw and create treasure, was $4 not long ago but is now around $9 and could climb further.
Crashing
As we approach the end of Edge of Eternities, cards from this year’s sets are starting to drop in value.
The first one that’s worth mentioning is the Mythic rarity Ugin, Eye of the Storms from Tarkir: Dragonstorm.
This powerful colorless Planeswalker has a lot to like, and it’s dropping from over $30 to just over $20 at the time of writing.
Sticking with dragons, I wanted to point out Atarka, World Render. She’s a 6/4 dragon that was my first ever Commander, but she’s now just 35 cents.
Given there’s always some fun to be had with dragons, that’s a low cost to give them double strike.
Icetill Explorer from Edge of Eternities is finally dropping, having been over $20 in recent weeks, and you can grab it for just $12 right now.
Ragost, Deft Gastronaut was the talk of the town not long ago, but he’s down to just $5 now if you want the slick borderless art version.
Finally, he’s still causing carnage in standard, but at least Vivi Ornitier is now just under $35.
Lloyd Coombes is an experienced freelancer in tech, gaming and fitness seen at Polygon, Eurogamer, Macworld, TechRadar and many more. He's a big fan of Magic: The Gathering and other collectible card games, much to his wife's dismay.