The Streets of New Capenna MTG card Ob Nixilis, The Adversary is the latest price spike on our radar. After failing to find a place in Standard, even when Rakdos decks were all the rage, the card slumped in value down to $4. Now it’s jumped up 225%, rising to $13 over the past two weeks.
The reason for this price spike, which comes just as the card is about to rotate out of Standard, is pretty straightforward. Ob Nixilis is being played in Modern, where it has great synergy with a new card released in the MTG set Modern Horizons 3. That card is Ocelot Pride, which also saw a recent price spike when it became a mainstay of Modern’s new aggressive Energy decks.
Ocelot Pride can make copies of tokens, provided you have enough permanents around to trigger the City’s Blessing. In Boros Energy, you’re limited to copying cats, which at least work well with Ajani, or a goblin shaman token that can produce treasures.
However, in the three-color Mardu variant of the deck, players are siding in Ob Nixilis. This card is good for matches against Jeskai Control and other slow decks. It can’t easily be countered, since you can make a copy as you cast it, and it won’t be hit by creature-based board wipes that could otherwise leave you in ruins. With Ocelot Pride on the field you also get to make an additional copy of this MTG planeswalker, which will be super tricky for your opponent to handle.
Mardu Energy, which also runs staples like Orcish Bowmasters and Thoughtseize, as well as the black Energy card Chthonian Nightmare, is less popular than the Boros deck right now, but it seems to be catching on, becoming a larger part of the meta over time.
Though we haven’t seen many price spikes in anticipation of upcoming set Bloomburrow yet, Modern Horizons 3 is easily looking to be the most impactful Magic set of the year, warping metas and producing lots of new expensive MTG cards.
Check out our MTG release schedule guide to see what releases remain for 2024, and stay tuned – we’ll be updating our MTG Arena decks guide post rotation with all the best new decks.
Source: Wargamer
