Two Magic: The Gathering cards from the 2004 set Fifth Dawn have been moving up in price over the last month. The first, Clock of Omens, is still available pretty cheap thanks to a Magic 2013 reprint. But according to MTG Goldfish's price tracker, Fifth Dawn copies of this card have shifted from $2 to $8.50 in the past half a month, a rise of 325%.
Clock of Omens has a pretty straightforward effect. It can tap two artifacts to untap another one. What's certainly not simple, however, is how this card is typically used as a combo machine.
For instance, there's a popular combo with the MTG commander Magda, Brazen Outlaw where you make Magda an artifact using Liquimetal Torque, then tap her and another artifact to untap herself, making a treasure in the process. From there you can go infinite, tapping Magda and the treasures she makes to keep standing her up and turning her sideways over and over again.
This highlights an important point about the card, which might not be obvious at first glance. The artifact you untap with Clock of Omens' effect can also be one of the artifacts you tapped to activate it. That's key to the reason this card is spiking, which is the face commander of the new MTG precon deck Counter-Intelligence.
Kilo, Apogee Mind wants to be tapped as often as possible to get your proliferate triggers, so an untap effect like Clock of Omens is obviously pretty valuable in the deck. You can actually run the Magda combo alongside Kilo - simply use Maskwood Nexus to turn Kilo into a dwarf - but it is pretty clunky.
The main reason for this card spiking is that it's simply a great way to keep untapping Kilo so you can tap it back down again and keep building up your counters. Imagine playing this alongside something like Unwinding Clock, for instance. Now you untap all your artifacts on each end step and can use each one to get another free activation out of Kilo. Because Kilo can be one of the artifacts you tap and also the artifact you untap, Clock of Omens is way more efficient in this deck than it looks.
The other Fifth Dawn card we've spotted spiking is Energy Chamber. This uncommon artifact is more affordable than Clock of Omens, but it's seen a similar leap in value, going from 80 cents to $4.25 in the past few weeks.
This card places charge counters or +1/+1 counters onto artifacts, and its spike is caused by the same Counter-Intelligence deck. But this time it's the alternate commander, Inspirit, Flagship Vessel, that's mainly to blame.
That's because Inspirit is all about charge counters, placing them on other artifacts at the end of turn. It can also grant +1/+1 counters, so Energy Chamber basically has a miniature version of its effect. In EDH it's always good to have built-in redundancy!
Cards like Magistrate's Scepter and Lost Jitte get way better when you have a guaranteed source of charge counters, and Energy Chamber is a good battery to help power your deck.
It's particularly great because it can provide Inspirit with its very first charge counter, which brings it online and lets it start dishing out two of them a turn. That's ideal if you don't have any creatures on the battlefield to Station it - say if you're recovering after a board wipe for instance.
And because Energy Chamber triggers on upkeep and Inspirit on combat step, you don't even have to wait a whole turn cycle to get things moving.
Energy Chamber is a pretty neat card alongside any spacecraft, actually, which is why it also sees play in Dawnsire decks. That's likely contributing even further to the spike!
If you have 15 Clock of Omens in your collection, come let us know in the Wargamer Discord. We can also teach you all about the best MTG Arena decks for Standard, and show you the MTG release schedule.