The MTG card Phyrexian Crusader has spiked in price by 192%. It only cost $5.70 two weeks ago, but now on October 15, the cheapest version goes for $16.70, according to MTG Goldfish’s price tracker.
Printed in the MTG set Mirrodin Besieged in 2011, Phyrexian Crusader has never seen a real reprint, only a List copy and a special showcase version released alongside Phyrexia: All Will Be One last year. That means the supply is pretty low, which will have made the card more susceptible to a spike.
Where is the Crusader seeing play? Well, there’s a Golgari Infect deck kicking around in Modern, which did alright in Modern Challenges over the last two weeks. This aggressive deck is super straightforward. It runs a bunch of cheap or evasive Infect creatures, plus plenty of cards to buff them up in order to deliver the magic ten poison counters.
But this strategy is pretty niche, and easily countered thanks to a lack of removal or any card draw aside from The One Ring.
Instead of Infect, it’s the Phyrexian Crusader’s protection from Red and White that is causing it to blow up in price. That’s because the best deck in Modern right now is Boros Energy, a Red/White deck that has gone from strength to strength ever since Modern Horizons 3 released, and now makes up a huge portion of the meta.
This strategy is technically a midrange deck, but it leans aggressive, relying on beating down with creatures while clearing a path with efficient removal. The Phyrexian Crusader is a surprisingly solid wall against it. It can’t be dealt with, and it can block all day, unable to be hurt by any of Boros Energy’s creatures.
Even if your Phyrexian Crusader can’t kill anything, it always has an impact on an attacker’s board state, weakening their best creatures thanks to Infect placing -1/-1 counters in combat.
As a result, loads of black decks with no need for Infect are grabbing Phyrexian Crusaders for their sideboard. We’ll see how high it rises, but be warned this might be a short term spike, especially if Boros Energy catches bans in the next MTG banlist update.
Source: Wargamer
