Another day, another MTG card price going through the roof because of something printed in Modern Horizons 3. This time it’s Soul Spike, a life drain sorcery that’s integral to the Modern deck Black Burn, which has soared from $4.50 on June 8 to $37.50 on June 12.
Soul Spike has only been printed in the 2006 MTG set Cold Snap, as a rare, so its price is extremely susceptible to surges in demand. It already has a home in the MTG ‘Black Burn’ Modern archetype, a deck built around draining the opponent’s life to zero as fast as possible. Soul Spike costs four generic and two black mana, deals four damage to any target, and gives you back four life.
Paying six mana for that effect is atrocious, but Soul Spike has an alternate casting cost – you can exile two black cards from your hand instead of paying its mana cost. Since black has no shortage of ways to pay life to gain cards, Soul Spike can be cast more or less for free much of the time, draining your opponent and refilling the life you need to draw more cards.
The card has spiked once before, hitting $19 at the end of April 2023. At the time we weren’t able to pick one unifying cause for the surge except for its general popularity.
This time the culprit is a lot more obvious. Modern Horizons 3 has brought with it a truly hideous new mythic for Modern, Necrodominance. This enchantment costs three black mana. It causes you to skip your draw step, limits your hand to just five cards, and causes any cards you put into the graveyard to be exiled instead.
In exchange for those drawbacks, at each end step you are able to draw any number of cards, at a cost of one life each. This fits into Black Burn like a dagger into a back.
A YouTube video by SaffronOlive showing off this new tech dropped on Wednesday, along with an article on the front page of MTG Goldfish. We have to assume this has resulted in lots of eager Modern players bidding for the cards they need to sleeve up the deck. The deck certainly looks absurd in SaffronOlive’s video, below:
You won’t face any MTG Arena decks running Soul Spike just yet, as it’s not yet part of the platform, but everything from Modern Horizons 3 will be legal in Timeless and Historic. Whether you’re dreading this new card-draw engine or love the straight-to-the-face nonsense it enables, check out our guide to MTG Arena codes to ensure you’ve got all the free packs and wild cards you can muster.
Source: Wargamer
