The MTG card Coalition Victory has spiked in price, as a cohort of players continue to buy up banned Commander cards in the expectation that Wizards is going to make them legal once more. On September 30, the day Wizards of the Coast announced it was assuming control of the Commander format, foil copies of this card were priced at $20.40. Now they’re $48.90!
Coalition Victory is a fun alternate win condition that was added to the Commander banlist way back in 2007. The problem with this card, which lets you win the game if you have a land of every type and a creature of every color, is its unpredictability.
The card stands apart from other powerful win conditions which remain legal in the format. Unlike Thassa’s Oracle, Coalition Victory is super easy to set up for, and unlike Mechanized Production or Revel in Riches, it always comes out of nowhere.
According to the RC’s explanation for the ban “tapping out at a healthy life total against an opponent with nothing but any 5-color Commander in play shouldn’t cause you to lose the game, unless you have signed up for that kind of experience.”
If I were to design a ‘fair’ version of Coalition Victory, it would require every color and every land to be accounted for by a different card. That way you’d have to have five different lands and five creatures, instead of a couple of triomes and your MTG commander. Then I’d make it cost five mana.
Players speculating on these banned cards leave us scratching our heads. It’s possible a few cards may be struck off the list, but unless Wizards axes this MTG banlist altogether, it seems like there’ll be way more losers than winners. And yet so many banned Commander cards are rising in price.
At least Primeval Titan, one of these cards that spiked in the past few weeks, is the basis for a popular Modern shell; Coalition Victory can’t be played anywhere. Well, that’s not technically true. It’s legal in Modern, Legacy, and Vintage, but obviously no one’s jumping through the hoops required to make this 8-mana card work in those high-power formats.
I suppose if you read into the RC’s explanation, Coalition Victory might make sense for an unbanning. Wizards’ new tiers system will allow players to sign up to face off against busted or unpopular cards like Armageddon, after all, and perhaps Coalition Victory could be another one of those cards you opt into. But there’s no guarantee the company is going to be unbanning anything at all, so it’s a bit of a risk.
For more Magic: The Gathering content, check out the MTG release schedule and our list of every MTG set in order.