The MTG card Darksteel Monolith is spiking in price, going from $6.30 to $14.60 in the past ten days, according to MTG Goldfish’s tracker. This card, released just last year in Commander Masters, is an eight-mana artifact that lets you play one colorless card for free each turn.
The reason this card is on the rise is pretty clear. Players are snapping up copies to upgrade their Ulalek, Fused Atrocity decks. This MTG precon has proven to be the most hyped up of the Modern Horizons 3 decks; it seems Magic: The Gathering players can’t get enough of those noodly boys.
Darksteel Monolith obviously makes sense in an Eldrazi deck. While it has an enormous upfront cost, you could use this artifact the turn you play it to plonk down a terrifying nine or ten mana creature for free, and then each card you lay after that is just gravy.
So given that we’ve known Modern Horizons 3 featured the Eldrazi for a long time, why wasn’t this card already trending upwards? In fact, its price had slowly been decreasing in the past few months before this sudden spike.
Presumably the answer is: because people thought it might be reprinted in the current set. Perhaps players thought it would be a shoe-in for the Eldrazi precon, or else the main set, so were holding off in case the price dipped.
Anyone who picked up Gonti’s Aether Heart when it spiked earlier in the year might wish they’d chosen this tactic. That card has tanked since it was reprinted in the Creative Energy deck, though in fairness it does seem to have leveled off at about double its previous value.
We’d actually question whether Darksteel Monolith is a brilliant fit in the new precon. Ulalek’s deck, Eldrazi Incursion, has relatively few enormously costly spells, with only five cards at eight mana or more.
But we assume lots of players will be using the precon as a starting point, then throwing in as many big Eldrazi titans as they can get their hands on, which will make Darksteel Monolith much more attractive.
It could also be the case that a significant number of players are building decks using some of the other new legendary Eldrazi cards – such as the brand new titans – as their MTG commander, and that these players are also driving the spike.
For more great content, check out our cEDH Tier List, or catch up on the MTG release schedule.