The Modern Horizons 3 MTG card Ocelot Pride has shot up in price in an extremely short period of time. In the course of just 24 hours, it’s gone from $22 to $60 (based on the MTG Goldfish price tracker). That’s a rise of 172% already, and we may only be at the very beginning of this price spike.
As you might expect, given the MTG set this card released in, Ocelot Pride is seeing plenty of play in the Modern format. However, we also shouldn’t discount a significant presence in Commander too. There are already 7,000 decks with this card logged on EDHREC, and honestly I’m surprised it’s not more – who wouldn’t want a one mana token doubler?
In the Modern MTG format, Ocelot Pride has started seeing play in the energy decks: Boros Energy and Mardu Energy. The strategy looks to be newly popular: there were 18 energy players in Pro Tour Modern Horizons 3, but only four or five of them ran copies of this card.
What does Ocelot Pride do for these (for the most part extremely similar) decks? Well, it’s an extremely powerful aggressive one drop, which shockingly seems to have replaced Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, one of the best MTG cards of all time, in these archetypes.
There’s plenty of synergy between Ocelot Pride and the rest of the Boros/Mardu Energy decklist, which has helped it find a happy home here. It’s a cat that makes cats, so it helps you flip Ajani and benefits from the powers on his planeswalker side. It’s a great creature to buff with Guide of Souls since this helps you gain more life while also ensuring you can safely create a token.
If there’s no good attacks for you in a turn, you’re still covered, as Phlage, Titan of Fire and Fury can gain you life to trigger Ocelot Pride while also removing a blocker.
These decks also have a few different tokens that you can copy if you manage to gain the City’s Blessing, like the treasure-making goblin from Fable of the Mirror Breaker. Intriguingly, Mardu Energy players have started sideboarding in Ob Nixilis, the Adversary, in the hopes of making extra copies of this unusual MTG planeswalker.
While this deck is a perfect storm of synergy, we doubt it is the last place Ocelot Pride will pop up. If you got in early on this card, you can give yourself a big pat on the back – this is one expensive MTG card we’d expect to stay pricey.
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Source: Wargamer
