An MTG card no one's talked about for 10 years suddenly spikes 400%

The forgotten Magic: The Gathering card Diabolic Revelation has ballooned in value, thanks to synergies with a Strixhaven Elder Dragon.

A grimacing cultist with glowing eyes surrounded by glowing fiery skulls.

The Magic: The Gathering card Diabolic Revelation was considered a pretty decent EDH card for black decks… about 10 years ago, but it's really fallen by the wayside since then. Being able to tutor up multiple spells through one card is a pretty sweet deal, on paper, and you'd think it'd be ideal for combo decks. But the trouble is you have to pour six mana into this thing before you can even fetch one.

As a result, the card has seen very little play outside of the rare black deck that makes a ton of extra mana, and has remained cheap, despite never seeing a reprint after its first arrival in the Magic 2013 core set. But now, it's shooting up in price, swiftly rising from less than $1 to $5 for a near mint copy, and it's all thanks to a popular new Strixhaven MTG commander.

That Secrets of Strixhaven commander is Witherbloom, the Balancer. This elder dragon gives all your spells affinity for creatures, so the natural way to build the deck is with loads of token generators and some big spells to finish out the game.

Diabolic Revelation is a great card in a Witherbloom deck because, assuming you have laid the groundwork and built up a high density of creatures, it can immediately fetch you several X-cost spells that you can then use to win the game.

Let's say you had a mere six creatures on board, you could cast Diabolic Revelation for X=3, paying just two black mana, then grab Awaken the Woods, Torment of Hailfire, and Exsanguinate. You make six tokens with Awaken the Woods, then cast the other two spells with X=12 to (most likely) win the game. And all for eight mana in total!

You could also just remove all doubt and find the Sprout Swarm combo, giving your spells an infinite discount and making the other two spells 100% guaranteed kills.

The MTG cards Awaken the Woods, Torment of Hailfire, and Exsanguinate

The Witherbloom deck really wants to go for the win in one decisive turn, I think, because if you set yourself up as the threat and then pass the turn, you're at risk of getting blown out. While the deck is less fragile than some of the new dragons, since your commander also gets to enjoy the affinity discount, your reliance on tokens does make you very vulnerable to a board wipe.

Diabolic Revelation is therefore a good way to seize the win out of nowhere, tutoring up multiple cards you can deploy at once when the blue player is tapped out and no one can do anything to stop you. And that's why this card is spiking!

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