The Magic: The Gathering card Goblin Lore is spiking in price. 10th edition copies were selling for just $1.30 shortly before Aetherdrift launched, but now they’re going for as much as $9.45 – a considerable price hike. It’s all thanks to an unassuming new shark pirate creature, who has propelled a fun Modern build back into the competition.
First printed in the 1998 MTG set Portal: Second Age, Goblin Lore is an unusual card draw spell with a massive downside. It lets you draw four cards (incredibly strong) but then you have to discard three at random. Usually, that’s a terrible deal. In the final reckoning, you’re only left up by one card, and pitching cards without getting to pick what you lose is a recipe for a grip filled with garbage.
But there’s a popular Modern deck, R/B Hollow One, which relies on this card, because it cares more about the discard than the draw…
The strategy is named after Hollow One, a 4/4 artifact creature that can be played out for free if you’re able to discard three cards first. The rest of the deck is a combination of discard outlets to ensure that’s super achievable, cards like Flameblade Adept that also benefit from discard, and other cards like Flamewake Phoenix that can rise from the graveyard.
In this shell, Goblin Lore becomes, not a liability, but actually a crucial part of your engine: filling the grave, pumping your creatures, and helping you get Hollow Ones onto the board as early as turn two.
And Hollow One is back on top in the Modern MTG format. Though it’s probably never going to have an easy time challenging the current format leaders like Boros Energy and Grinding Station, a new card that came out in MTG Aetherdrift has helped Hollow One gain some traction in the meta.
That card is Marauding Mako, a one-drop that gets a +1/+1 counter each time you discard a card, allowing it to get very scary very quickly. It’s a great turn 1 play in this deck, able to apply more consistent pressure than Flameblade. Plus, it even has cycling, so if you draw one when it’s not useful, you can turn it into more discard and draw.
It’s worth noting that Hollow One has also been given a lift thanks to Faithless Looting getting taken off the MTG banlist. At the time, other cards like Mox Opal had more impact, but this is one of the archetype’s very best cards, and having it unbanned certainly makes the deck more viable.
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Source: Wargamer
