The Magic: The Gathering card Tortured Existence has spiked in price by 300%. Just ten days ago it was valued at a meagre $3.30, but since then its price has dramatically increased. Now copies are selling for $13.10, while versions from The List go for almost $30.
A rather retro card from the 1998 MTG set Stronghold, Tortured Existence is a cheap black enchantment with an intriguing activated ability. You can pay one black mana to dump a creature from your hand into the graveyard and return a different creature from the graveyard to your hand.
We saw a slight rise in demand for this card late last year after Modern Horizons 3 came out – presumably because it was a good way to get some value out of the MTG commander Disa the Restless, with her goyf graveyard shenanigans. But at the time this wasn’t enough to cause a big price jump.
The reason this card is spiking now is quite plain to see. It’s all thanks to the new Commander precon deck for Aetherdrift: Eternal Might. Sure enough, Tortured Existence began to spike the day that Eternal Might was revealed on January 24.
Eternal Might is a zombie tribal deck with quite a few subthemes – from token making, to drawing cards, to discarding. The basic deck has a little bit of synergy with Tortured Existence – it lets you get more juice out of your Archfiend of Ifnir or Lazotep Chancellor for instance – but few players are buying up the card to simply slot into their precons.
Instead, it’s the deck’s alternate commander – Hashaton, Scarab’s Fist – that is attracting players to this card. Hashaton is way more popular than the face commander Temmet. In fact, he’s looking like the standout commander of the entire Aetherdrift set. Already, there are 1,194 Hashaton decks logged on EDHREC, whereas the next most popular commander, the god card Ketramose, has just 437.
Hashaton’s synergy with Tortured Existence should be obvious. This zombie wizard can make 4/4 copies of whatever you discard, so having a discard outlet always available is essential. What’s more, bringing stuff out of your graveyard with this enchantment will give you the opportunity to discard it again, letting you make multiple copies of the same powerful creature.
This is the second old Magic card to spike this week – and both price rises were triggered by the Eternal Might deck. If you want to find out more about the first card, we can fulfil that desire for you. You might also enjoy our guide to the most expensive MTG cards ever sold.
To stay up to date on the latest Magic: The Gathering news, why not explore the best MTG Arena codes and the upcoming MTG release schedule?
Source: Wargamer
