A very strange, very old Magic: The Gathering card is seeing some unexpected price movements - rising from $1.50 to $5.30 over the past month. That's despite it not seeing play in any format, or deck - not yet, anyway.
The card is Equinox, an aura enchantment from the 1994 MTG set Legends. This bizarre 31-year-old card can enchant a land and it then protects all your other lands. You can tap that enchanted sentinel to counter any spell that would destroy one or more of your lands, making this a decent defence for your mana base.
Unfortunately (well, not really) mass land destruction isn't something you really run into anymore. Wizards doesn't tend to print it, so it's only legal in eternal formats, and playing mass land denial will catapult your deck into bracket 4 in Commander - so if you're going to try it, you'd better hope the rest of your deck is powered up to match.
But where this card could work well is the upcoming Avatar the Last Airbender set. Players are going to be animating lands all over the place with the new earthbending keyword, which pops +1/+1 counters onto lands and turns them into creatures.
In particular, it could be very strong with the set's most prominent MTG commander so far, Toph the First Metalbender. That's because Toph turns all your artifacts into lands. So any spell that would destroy one of your artifacts can be countered with Equinox.
That's some really nice board wipe and spot removal protection. All you have to do is keep one land untapped and you can keep all your artifacts safe, turn after turn.
We had a few weeks off from Toph price spikes amidst all the Spider-man and not-Spider-man excitement, but now she's back. This creature has such an unusual combination of mechanics that all kinds of janky pieces are spiking in anticipation - whether or not they actually work properly in the deck.
Are you excited for the Avatar set? Come let us know on the Wargamer Discord. And you might also enjoy our guide to the most expensive MTG cards of all time.