The Magic: The Gathering card Grinding Station has risen in price slowly but steadily over the past month. Priced at $11.40 on December 20, 2024, it has since climbed to $30, and shows no signs of stopping. That’s a pretty significant increase of 163%, and a nice bit of value added to the card.
Released in the Mirrodin-block MTG set Fifth Dawn, Grinding Station is an interesting mill card that lets you sacrifice an artifact to have a player dump three cards in their graveyard. You have to tap Grinding Station to achieve this, but when an artifact enters play, you get to untap it – allowing for some intriguing possibilities.
For years, Grinding Station was a combo piece waiting for its combo to arrive, but Theros Beyond Death changed that, bringing Thassa’s Oracle and Underworld Breach to the table. The latter sets up an infinite combo when you play any zero-cost artifact alongside Grinding Station. You can continuously sac and replay the free artifact, milling yourself and then exiling the three cards you just milled from your grave. Finish off with Thassa’s Oracle, and it’s game over.
This deck was around for a good long while before Grinding Station saw a price spike. It rose in price in late 2022- early 2023, when Modern Izzet Breach had a spree of tournament success. But it soon fell again, as the deck turned out to be quite easily countered once people were wise to it – more niche than people expected.
Now Grinding Station Breach decks are back on top in Modern once more, thanks to the dramatic MTG banlist changes that came in December. Mox Opal, now legal in the format, is a real gamechanger for the deck. Its requirement – that you have three artifacts on board – is incredibly easy to achieve in a deck filled with zero cost artifacts, so you can quite comfortably make a ton of colored mana.
While the Grinding Station deck lost a little with the banning of The One Ring, that was more than made up for by Mox Opal’s unbanning. Now it’s no longer so reliant on Mox Amber, which made the combo vulnerable to removal, as if a legendary creature got hit, you could find yourself unable to cast your Oracle.
Temur Breach is now among the most-played decks in the Modern MTG format, and the combo seems to be only attracting more players. Right now, it’s an exciting time for fans of this niche combo deck that could, but if it manages to hold on to the number one spot, I predict the fanbase will tire of Breach before long – and perhaps even start clamouring for another ban.
But that’s looking way too far ahead into the murky future. For now, the sudden success of the Breach deck, plus the scarcity of the card – only ever printed in one set – has kicked off a great little price spike.
For more stories, check out our list of the most expensive MTG cards ever sold. And to rack up some wins, check out the best MTG Arena decks right now.
Source: Wargamer
