The MTG card Goryo’s Vengeance has shot back up in price after taking a significant hit to its value in the months before and after Modern Horizons 3’s release. The card was down to $9 by the end of June, but over the last three weeks, has steadily clambered back up to its previous heights, reaching $27.30 on Wednesday (according to MTG Goldfish’s price tracker).
Goryo’s Vengeance is the key card in a popular Modern archetype, which might have the edge against the dominant Nadu deck. It’s a reanimation strategy that relies on this card to cheaply bring back massively impactful legendary creatures like Atraxa or Griselbrand, giving them haste so you can attack right away with an enormous flying lifelinker. It then uses blink effects to keep those beaters around, while doubling the ETBs of Atraxa, and also the elementals Grief and Solitude.
We’re not quite sure why this card, which spiked earlier this year when it saw a great tournament result, went down in value so much before and immediately after Modern Horizons 3 came out.
It may have simply been that people were more excited to try fresh archetypes from this MTG set like Energy and Ruby Storm. It may have been that players lacked confidence in this highly meta-dependent and volatile archetype, which can easily be destroyed by a little graveyard hate. It may have been that Goryo’s Vengeance didn’t get many new toys – with the notable exception of Psychic Frog.
Goryo’s Vengeance didn’t make big waves in Amsterdam, but it was truly a sleeper hit of the June Pro Tour. There weren’t many Goryo’s decks in the competition, and none made the Top 8. However, Matt Sperling came ninth with this strategy, just narrowly missing a Top 8 finish. Five of the eight best-performing decks at the tournament were Nadu, a card that is almost certain to be banned in late August, so that’s surely a good sign for Goryo’s graveyard decks.
It’s also worth noting that another player, Adriano Moscato, made the Top 4 in the Amsterdam 75k Modern Open, a smaller competition that took place on the same weekend as the Pro Tour. In this article he’s written about the deck, he argues that it actually has a positive matchup against Nadu – which is surely something many Modern players are desperately seeking right now.
With Nadu not catching a ban until midway through the RCQ season, anything that has a chance to take out this big blue bird is worth a try. Perhaps this is the real reason why Goryo’s Vengeance has jumped back up in value.
For more MTG content, take a look at our MTG release schedule guide, or our cEDH tier list.
Source: Wargamer
