The Magic: The Gathering card Nether Traitor is in the midst of a spike that doesn’t yet seem to have reached its peak. Previously, Time Spiral copies of the card were valued at around $7.80 according to price checkers like MTG Goldfish, but since then they’re gone up by 68% to a more substantial $13.10.
As with any price spike in the last two months, we immediately look to the latest MTG set for the cause, the much-hyped, best-selling MTG Final Fantasy release. In particular, this set has some of the most popular commanders in years, as fans of the video game series are desperate to build a deck around their favorite characters – so long as they have a mechanically sweet card.
While Y’shtola and Vivi Ornitier’s cards have had the most major impact on card prices, this is the first spike we’ve seen for Sephiroth – the best-known villain across the entire series.
His card, Sephiroth, Fabled SOLDIER, lends itself to a pretty straightforward mono-black sacrifice deck, as he functions as a Blood Artist in the command zone that can also sacrifice stuff himself. When he flips, you get a Blood Artist emblem which your opponents will never be able to get rid of.
Nether Traitor is a strong card for this deck, thanks to its ability to repeatedly jump out of the graveyard whenever something else on your board dies. Since your goal with Sephiroth is to flip him as soon as possible, and you need four death triggers in a turn to make that happen, Nether Traitor can help you achieve that with three creatures rather than four.
But it’s the Blood Artist effect itself, that ability to drain opponents’ life away, that makes Nether Traitor a really good inclusion. Whenever you sacrifice a creature, you’ll be able to revive your Nether Traitor, as long as you have the mana, and sacrifice him too. Having creatures that come back to life makes it way easier for this sort of deck to close out the game, and Nether Traitor is one of the easiest to get repeated use out of.
For instance, if you have a Phyrexian Altar or Warren Soultrader in play, then you automatically generate the mana to pay for Nether Traitor whenever you sacrifice something. With enough tokens that should be an easy game over, and you can use something like Pawn of Ulamog to form an infinite combo that spells instant death.
That’s not so special for this MTG commander – just look at the number of infinite combos using Blood Artist – but while you do have plenty of other ways to form a deadly loop, and some like Gravecrawler and Forsaken Miner are even better than this, there are only a finite number in mono black.
Plus, don’t forget that Nether Traitor has Haste and Shadow, so can hit someone for one damage each turn. You might scoff, but I bet there’ll be games where those extra hits are the difference between winning and losing.
While Sephiroth is super popular, the fact Nether Traitor is easily replaced in the deck by other cards that do a similar thing may limit the potential of this spike. It’s probably not going to reach the heights it did when Phyrexian Altar first came out in 2019 – when the card briefly hit $30.
I’m always initially drawn to mono black commanders like Sephiroth, but in practice they often seem to get shut down by the other players. If you’ve seen success with a Sephiroth list, let us know via our Discord.
For more great stories, check out the best MTG Arena decks and most powerful Commander precon decks.
Source: Wargamer
