The Magic: The Gathering card Indomitable Creativity has undergone a sizable price spike in the wake of last week’s Modern bans. Previously valued at $1.40 (according to the MTG Goldfish price tracker), it’s since risen quickly, all the way up to $11.20. That’s an increase of 700% and the most the card has cost all year. It’s still far below its value in early 2023, however, when it briefly hit $40.
Indomitable Creativity is a splashy spell from the MTG set Aether Revolt that tends to win the game on the spot if you’re able to resolve it. Essentially, it lets you destroy creatures or artifacts, and then their owner gets to play the same number of random artifacts or creatures from their library.
While you could use this on an opponent if you were really desperate, by far the most effective way to play Indomitable Creativity is casting it on your own creature or artifact tokens. You have to carefully build a deck with only one or two, very valuable, artifacts or creature cards, so that you’re then guaranteed to fetch these up and drop them on the battlefield.
So for instance, the popular Modern Indomitable Creativity deck plays Fable of the Mirror-Breaker or Strike It Rich for the tokens they create. You can then blow these up with your Indomitable Creativity, and then the only target in your deck is the eight mana creature Archon of Cruelty.
Archon is a massive flying beater that drains for three and leaves you two cards up on your opponent the turn it comes down. You’re guaranteed to find this, so playing Indomitable Creativity (especially casting it for five mana) is almost certain game over.
Creativity was one of the top decks in the format a couple of years ago, back when Living End not Energy was the scariest thing in Modern. However, Lord of the Rings changed everything. The One Ring, the Middle Earth set’s best card, spelled doom for this deck. First of all, Creativity players, gated from slotting artifacts into their deck, couldn’t benefit from the card’s awesome power. Secondly, with The One Ring in every deck, your opponent was usually protected on the very turn Archon would typically come down.
With The One Ring out of the way now, the Indomitable Creativity strategy is well-positioned for a big comeback. The unbanning of Faithless Looting may also help this deck. It might be possible to fit a slim reanimation package into the decklist, using Faithless Looting to dump an Archon into the graveyard. This then gives you two ways to get your win condition on the board.
Right now, Reanimator decks running four copies of Faithless Looting and four copies of Persist seem to be outperforming Indomitable Creativity decks in the meta. However, if they get too big for their boots, players will start to sideboard in more graveyard hate, which might be when we see Creativity start to gain the edge.
We should note that just because it’s spiked, a playset of Indomitable Creativity doesn’t have to break the bank. The Breaking News showcase version from Outlaws of Thunder Junction is still only about two dollars (though it used to cost less than one). If you don’t care what your cards look like, or like the art style used here, it’s definitely a good option.
It’s almost the end of 2024, so take a look at the MTG release schedule if you’re still unaware of next year’s releases. And don’t miss our guide to the most expensive Magic: The Gathering cards of all time!
Source: Wargamer
