The price for the MTG card Slaughter, a niche black removal spell that has been trading for under 50 cents for as long as the market tracker on MTG goldfish has existed, has shot up to $3.70 in just fifteen days. The cause is simple – it works very nicely in the 99 cards for Y’shtola, Night’s Blessed, the highly anticipated new face commander for the Final Fantasy XIV precon.
Slaughter is a black MTG instant that costs two generic and two black mana, and has an optional Buyback cost of four life – pay the Buyback fee, and the card returns to your hand instead of going to your graveyard after it resolves. It destroys one target nonblack creature, which cannot be regenerated.
Slaughter has only been printed once, as an uncommon in the 1998 MTG set Exodus, so supply is very constrained. It has kept a very low price up until now because there simply hasn’t been much reason to run it – although it’s a removal spell you can cast repeatedly, it’s just too mana intensive and target-restricted for that card advantage to be worth the cost.
The card would actually work well in a Vilis, Broker of Blood deck, a commander who lets you draw cards for every point of life you lose, giving you four cards each time you pay Slaughter’s Buyback cost. Problem is, Vilis costs eight mana, which is just far too slow for most people to consider running.
But what if you dealt two damage to each opponent and gained two life every time you cast Slaughter, you drew an extra card at the end of any turn you cast it, and that ability was attached to a four mana Commander? Now we’re cooking.
Y’shtola, Night’s Blessed is the face commander of the ‘Scions and Spellcraft’ Commander precon releasing alongside the MTG Final Fantasy set. She costs one generic, one white, one blue, and one black mana, and has the kind of stats that survive a lightning bolt but obviously aren’t why you’re playing her.
She’s in the command zone for her two triggered abilities: whenever you cast a noncreature spell with mana value three or greater, she deals two damage to all opponents and you gain two life; and during the end step of any turn in which a player lost at least four life, you get to draw a card.
Her deck is the perfect home for Slaughter, which lets you reliably trigger both her abilities repeatedly, while mucking up your opponent’s best (nonblack) creatures. And even though she’s still on the MTG release schedule rather than on store shelves, there are already five times as many Y’shtola decks on EDHREC as Vilis decks.
Are you building an Y’shtola deck? Do you prefer the version from the main set? Do you have your own cute ways to ensure you lose life every turn, without just dying? We’d love to hear about them in the Wargamer Discord community.
Slaughter is never going to make our guide to the best MTG cards, but one of the wonderful things about Commander is how it turns niche cards into powerhouses. For another recent example, check out what’s happened to Artificer’s Intuition.
Source: Wargamer
