The MTG card Aura of Dominion has seen a rapid price spike. This card was worth just 60 cents a week ago, but over the past few days it's rocketed up to $3.30, and shows no signs of slowing down. Meanwhile foils, which started out around $2, have risen to $17 - an increase of 750%.
This fairly niche card from the 2004 MTG set Champions of Kamigawa has a rather interesting effect. It's an aura that lets you pay one mana to tap a creature and untap the creature you've enchanted with it.
That makes it a great card to play with powerful tap effects, such as the new Edge of Eternities MTG commander Kilo, Apogee Mind. This Robot Artificer, who for some reason puts me in mind of the robot steering wheel from Wall-E, has a simple but strong effect. Every time it's tapped, you get to proliferate, putting an extra counter on anything and anyone that already has one.
So it's obvious why this is great with Aura of Dominion - you can use it to keep untapping Kilo so you can proliferate over and over, perhaps using one of the new spaceship cards to keep tapping it down again. In fact, you don't even have to worry about the mana cost if you use something like Pentad Prism (already in the deck) as its charge counters will make you all the mana you need.
This is in fact a lovely infinite combo! You can use Aura of Dominion's ability on the enchanted Kilo, essentially paying one and tapping it to untap it. That wouldn't normally be a winning strategy, but with Kilo you're getting unlimited proliferates!
Aura of Dominion isn't the only card this works with - the combo also goes off with another card, Freed from the Real. However, Freed from the Real is already a well-known combo card with a heftier price tag and a few more reprints, which is why it's not spiking (yet). Most players are understandably opting for the cheaper option.
Every time we get a new batch of Commander precon decks there's usually one that has a much greater impact on the secondary market. For Final Fantasy, it was Scions & Spellcraft. For Aetherdrift, it was Eternal Might. And so far for Edge of Eternities, it looks to be Kilo's Counter Intelligence deck.
It's not hard to see why. This commander just has such a simple, elegant effect, and it's really not hard to find interesting and unique interactions for it. Aura of Dominion is just one of a number of cards getting pricier - other counter-based cards like Magister's Sceptre and Eternity Vessel also seem to be moving up in the world.
Which of the EOE precons has caught your interest the most? Let us know over at the Wargamer Discord. And for more Magic: The Gathering news, don't forget to check the MTG release schedule.