The MTG card Tree of Perdition has gone from $7.90 in late June to $21.12 today, a price spike of 167%. This unusual plant creature from the MTG set Eldritch Moon has the unique ability to swap its toughness with an opponent’s life total, which has helped it see a reasonable amount of play in Commander.
But this particular price spike comes from another MTG format altogether. There’s now a wacky Pioneer combo deck that tries to use Tree of Perdition to score a kill.
The key cards in this Rakdos Pioneer deck are Tree of Perdition and Agatha’s Soul Cauldron. If you exile a Tree of Perdition with the Soul Cauldron, you can give its ability to another creature – ideally one that doesn’t have thirteen toughness. This allows you to instantly put an opponent down to two – from any life total – after which, finishing them off should be no problem.
It sounds like a completely goofy deck, but players are seeing surprisingly good results with this strategy – it’s even won a few Pioneer Challenges on MTG Online recently. It seems like the novelty of the strategy was what initially drew people to the card and caused it to start rising, but it really started to spike when it turned out to be more than a meme.
Perhaps further driving up the price, Tree of Perdition is also a great fit for a popular new MTG commander – and it’s not who you might expect – Ezio Auditore da Firenze, the breakout star from MTG Assassin’s Creed.
It’s not an obvious fit for the deck – Tree of Perdition is not an assassin, after all. But if you activate the tree, then land a hit with Ezio, you immediately put your opponent down to ten life. If you can then pay five mana on the combat trigger, you instantly knock them out of the game: a true assassination.
For more MTG content, check out the Magic: The Gathering release schedule – or our guide to upcoming sets Bloomburrow and Duskmourn.
Source: Wargamer
