Foil copies of the Magic: The Gathering card Disrupting Shoal have risen in price from $5.90 in early October to $19 on October 22, according to MTG Goldfish’s price tracker. Non-shiny specimens remain much cheaper, but have also been bumped up in value a fair ways, going from $1.80 to $4 in the same period.
First released in the Betrayers of Kamigawa MTG set in 2005, Disrupting Shoal is a potentially powerful, but also highly situational counterspell. It’s another of those cards that you can optionally play for free if you exile a card from your hand. Those have traditionally been really, really powerful in Modern, but Disrupting Shoal has some serious drawbacks.
The main problem is that to play this MTG counterspell for free, you have to give up a card that has the same mana value as whatever you’re trying to counter. If you don’t have a card of the right CMC, or can’t bear to part with one, you’re stuck paying the cost of the spell you’re countering, plus two blue mana. That’s not really where you want to be, as in that situation you’ll be giving up more resources than your opponent.
Usually, it’s not going to be a great card then, but it’s seeing play right now in the hot new (disgustingly nicknamed) Mono Blue Belcher deck. In this combo deck, only a few cards are really important. You want to keep hold of your Goblin Charbelchers, Lotus Blooms (a ramp spell that also recently spiked), and a few other select spells, but much of the deck is just filler.
Or to be more specific, much of the deck is made up of DFCs that have lands on their backs, to enable Charbelcher’s instant kill. In this specific archetype, then, where you have no lands and therefore a higher density of spells you could discard, and where most of your spells are disposable, you have a much better chance of getting good value out of Disrupting Shoal than you normally would.
Mystery solved! For more Magic: The Gathering price stories, check out our guide to the most expensive MTG cards. And don’t miss our MTG release schedule – it’s about to get a serious update on Friday.
Source: Wargamer
