The Magic: The Gathering card Overlord of the Balemurk is spiking in price, and has quickly become one of Duskmourn’s most valuable cards, overtaking its pal in charge of the Hauntwoods, as well as big 9-mana boss demon Valgavoth.
This Duskmourn card was valued at $7.30 when the MTG set was released, but it’s since shot up by 324% to a price of $30.95, according to MTG Goldfish. That puts it just a few dollars behind the set’s current best card, the giant eyeball Abhorrent Oculus. Of course, if you’ve got one of the shiny Japanese variants it’s worth even more than that.
Like the other Overlord cards, this is a creature that can comes down as an enchantment if you play it for its cheaper ‘Impending’ cost. It has a powerful ETB effect when first played, and then if your opponent can’t deal with it fast, it eventually becomes a creature and gets to reuse that effect over and over as it attacks.
In Overlord of the Balemurk’s case, that ability is mill and reanimate. You get to dump four cards in your graveyard and then bring a creature or MTG planeswalker back to your hand.
In all honesty, if you weren’t looking closely, this seemed like one of the more underwhelming Overlords during spoiler season. In fact, Overlord of the Balemurk has proven super efficient. Decks that mess about with the graveyard want everything it’s doing, and the fact that it eventually can be played as or turn into a relevant threat is just gravy.
One deck in particular is having a blast with this strange horror and that’s Greasefang in Pioneer. In case you’re not familiar, this is the archetype that seeks to dump expensive MTG vehicles like Parhelion II into your graveyard, then cheat them into play with Greasefang, Okiba Boss.
Balemurk is really useful in this deck because it can fill the graveyard, and also bring back any Greasefangs that get milled or blown up. The whole deck centers around one creature, so having some way to get copies back or search for them (if you squint, you’ll see that Overlord of the Balemurk’s ability is basically card selection) is really useful.
Greasefang is not a Tier 1 deck in Pioneer, but as a straightforward and fun strategy, it still has plenty of fans.
For more Magic: The Gathering articles, check out our MTG release schedule guide and our list of the best MTG Arena decks.
Source: Wargamer
