The Magic: The Gathering card Magebane Lizard has become a premium uncommon in the past couple of weeks, jumping up in price from $0.60 in late August to $2.20 – a rise of 267%. Check your bulk boxes for these Thunder Junction cards, chances are you’ve got a couple of them lying around. Foils are even better value, having shot up from $0.80 to $3.50.
Released in the MTG set Outlaws of Thunder Junction, Magebane Lizard is a two mana creature card that’s the bane of any deck which relies on chaining together instants and sorceries. Whenever a player casts a noncreature spell, it zaps them, dealing one damage for each noncreature spell they’ve cast that turn.
That makes it a valuable tool against Storm decks like Ruby Storm. One of the more popular decks seeded by Modern Horizons 3, this archetype opts to run out a ton of instants and sorceries, discounting them with Ruby Medallion or the MTG planeswalker Ral Leyline Prodigy and ultimately finishing the game with a Grapeshot.
When Magebane Lizard is on the field, you simply can’t do that. This creature deals exponentially more damage the more spells you play, and thanks to its big four toughness, Ruby Storm decks just don’t have a good answer for it. Their best bet is some combination of Abrade and Grapeshot, at which point they’re going to be taking a ton of damage.
As we pointed out when Obsidian Charmaw rose in value one week ago, these hate cards designed to counter a specific archetype are finding their way onto the sideboard in part because Nadu’s exorcism has left room for them. You no longer need to pack in cards that can handle Nadu, so you can afford to try and counter some of the other top decks in Modern.
However, Modern sideboards aren’t the only reason Magebane Lizard has shot up in price. Another big part of the story is Pioneer. The latest MTG banlist update on August 26 really shook up the Pioneer meta. There were three big decks when it hit: Amalia Combo, Rakdos Vampires, and Izzet Phoenix. The bans gutted the first two and left Izzet Phoenix unscathed, allowing it to dominate.
And what does Izzet Phoenix do? Well it dumps Arclight Phoenixes in your graveyard, and then gets them out by playing a ton of instants and sorceries. Once again, Magebane Lizard is a game-ending threat for this archetype, so red Pioneer decks like Red Aggro and even the combat trick-heavy Gruul Aggro are sideboarding it in.
For more Magic: The Gathering content, check out the MTG release schedule and our guide to the best MTG Arena decks.
Source: Wargamer
