The etched-foil printing of MTG card Karlach, Fury of Avernus, has more than tripled in price on reseller MTG Goldfish since August 4, rising from $3.30 to $10.29 at time of writing. Printed in MTG set Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur’s Gate, the card’s price had been on the decline since February, but it seems that with the release of Baldur’s Gate 3 Karlach is back at the table.
Only the rare, etched-foil variant of Karlach’s MTG card has spiked, suggesting the increase is driven by new Karlach fans who want to sleeve her up for a Commander deck, and not a newly-discovered combo for the MTG Modern format.
Baldur’s Gate 3 released on August 4 and – as our Baldur’s Gate 3 review attests – it’s excellent. Karlach is a BG3 companion characters who can join your party in the game’s first act. A Tiefling barbarian, she has a sense of humor, raging temper, and a dark history that means she has a burning furnace in place of her heart.
Karlach is a legendary 5/4 creature that costs four and a red mana. She has an ability that grants you an additional combat phase each turn, and grants all your creatures first strike on your first combat phase.
She has the useful ‘Choose a Background’ ability, which lets you pick an aura enchantment with the ‘background’ subtype to be another commander, effectively making her a two-color commander.
Karlach makes for a compelling Gruul stompy or Boros go-wide commander, and prices for her card haven’t ever fallen below a dollar on MTG Goldfish. But as we know how many people visit our BG3 romance guide every day, we suspect the sudden interest is driven by people who’re just really into Karlach.
We’ll keep our eyes open for more price spikes from the Battle for Baldur’s Gate MTG set, though we expect the upcoming MTG Wilds of Eldraine release date will have far more impact on the card market. You never know when a new card will make an old one spike in price.
The MTG Lord of the Rings set introduced the powerful Orcish Bowmasters to Modern which then created new combos, like turning the seemingly useless MTG card Flumph into a bizarre win condition; and Tom Bombadil suddenly made Saga Commander decks feasible, in turn boosting prices for powerful Sagas.