The Magic: The Gathering card Helm of the Ghastlord has seen an enormous 566% price spike. According to MTG Goldfish’s price tracker, the card cost $1.50 a week ago, but now it’s skyrocketed up to $10.
This Shadowmoor aura card gives its wielder the ability to inflict unpleasant hand disruption on opponents or draw cards for you, depending on whether the creature you enchant with it is black or blue. It’s spiking thanks to synergy with an upcoming MTG Final Fantasy card, Y’shtola, Night’s Blessed.
One of the MTG commanders from the coveted Final Fantasy Commander precon decks, Y’shtola draws you cards on your end step if a player lost four or more life that turn. But more importantly for this interaction, she deals damage to each opponent whenever you cast a non-creature spell worth three or more mana.
Because Y’shtola’s effect is direct damage rather than life drain, this makes her the perfect bearer of an aura like Helm of the Ghastlord (she’d also be great with Curiosity). She’s both blue and black, so gets to double-dip, hitting both triggers.
And her effect deals damage to everyone at once. In a regular Commander game, once you have the aura on her, each three mana spell you cast draws you three cards and makes every opponent discard one. Not bad.
It’s a bit expensive, but I guess the good thing about Helm of the Ghastlord being four mana is that it will itself also activate Y’shtola. Just to make sure there’s no confusion: you won’t get all the drawing/discarding value from that, since it won’t be on the battlefield when the trigger resolves.
Helm of the Ghastlord is a card that’s often paired with Nekuzar the Mindraiser, another blue-black commander that does lots of direct damage to players. But according to EDHREC, it’s only played in 9% of Nekuzar decks. That’s probably because it’s so risky throwing expensive auras like this around.
If you run this combo, it will certainly make your commander a lightning rod for a removal spell. From my experience, Commander players will happily let you draw as much as you like, but they hate it when you make them discard stuff. And since Y’shtola needs to prioritize expensive non-creature spells, you’re not going to have room for stuff like Not Dead After All. Instead, counterspells like Unwind and Rewind are going to be crucial.
Even with the associated risks, I can see the combo of Y’shtola and Helm of the Ghastlord being quite potent. You only really need to pull off one set of triggers to make it worthwhile.
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Source: Wargamer
