The black removal MTG card Force of Despair is rising in price, going from $4.60 to $10.70 in the past couple of weeks. That’s a 130% rise, but it’s nothing compared to the jump we’ve seen for foil copies of the card. Foils have gotten ridiculously pricey, rising from about $30 a couple of days ago to $90 today – according to MTG Goldfish.
Released in the first Modern Horizons MTG set, Force of Despair is a niche but rather interesting removal spell. For three mana, it lets you destroy all creatures that entered the battlefield that turn – or you can exile a black card from your hand to play it for free.
Often you’ll only hit one creature with this spell, which for three mana is a pretty bad rate, especially in Modern. But it’s really useful for situations where your opponent plays a bunch of creatures in one turn, or when you don’t want to or can’t target your opponent’s creatures.
This makes it a sideboard card that can deal with some very specific matchups. The reason the card is spiking is likely that one of those matchups is Nadu, Winged Wisdom.
Nadu decks can play a bunch of lands and creatures in one turn, and if you target an opposing creature while Nadu is on the field, they get a free trigger. So Force of Despair is useful to neatly wipe the board clean against a Nadu deck.
Everyone’s pretty sure that Nadu will be the next card added to the MTG banlist – even the Pro Tour winner – but there are other decent targets in the format right now. For instance, Force of Despair is a good way to deal with Emrakul, the World Anew, which has protection from all spells, and it can deal with other combo decks, like Living End, that play multiple creatures in one decisive turn.
Which decks are playing Force of Despair? It looks like it’s found a spot in the sideboard of the popular new Mono Black Necrodominance decks. This makes sense. Those decks can draw an endless stream of cards, so in a Necordominance strategy you’ll usually be able to exile one of your own spells to play Force of Despair for free.
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Source: Wargamer
