The Magic: The Gathering legendary creature card Rielle the Everwise is spiking in value right now. This card cost $1.10 the week before Aetherdrift got its global release but in the last month its price has more than quadrupled. It’s up to $5.30 at time of writing, an increase of 380%.
Released in the MTG set Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths in 2020, Rielle is an Izzet card designed for spellslinging decks. It’s a 0/3 that gets an extra point of power for each instant and sorcery card in your graveyard.
But it’s the human wizard’s other effect that’s far more important for this price rise: whenever you discard a card for the first time in a turn, Rielle replaces it, drawing you a card.
This plays very nicely with MTG Aetherdrift’s discard and draw theme, which is also in the Izzet color combination. There are loads of red/blue cards in the racing set that encourage you to pitch cards into the yard for value, and Rielle plays very nicely with all of these.
The specific cause of this spike though is just one of those cards: Captain Howler, Sea Scourge. This is one of the most popular MTG commanders in Aetherdrift, the second favorite outside of the Commander precon decks going by EDHREC, and Rielle is a perfect inclusion for this salty sea dog’s deck.
Captain Howler gives a buff to a creature when you discard, boosting their power and giving them the ability to draw when they hit a player. So you’re going to be wanting to discard at least once on all of your turns, and probably multiple times.
There’s no shortage of discard outlets in Magic: The Gathering, but there aren’t a ton of cards that gain you repeated value for discarding. Rielle is particularly useful in this regard, since drawing helps to negate the obvious downside of throwing your cards in the bin.
As a result, of the 4,311 Captain Howler decks logged on EDHREC, Rielle is found in 2,112 of them. That’s a pretty big uptick in demand for this card, which has never seen much play anywhere apart from as a moderately popular wheel-themed commander in her own right. Since Rielle has never been reprinted, the increased demand would seem to be more than enough to trigger a spike.
For more price spike stories, check out one of the biggest winners from Tarkir Dragonstorm. And don’t miss out handy guides to the MTG release schedule and the best MTG Arena decks.
Source: Wargamer
