Faerie Macabre, an unassuming common creature originally printed in the 2008 MTG set Shadowmoor, has doubled in price from $2.50 to $5.00 in the last week, according to price tracking website MTG Goldfish. On the surface this card is draft chaff, but it allows for targeted graveyard hate in a way that makes it an essential sideboard card in any eternal Magic the Gathering format where graveyard based strategies are powerful - and at the moment, Reanimator has the run of Legacy.
A 2/2 black creature with flying that costs one generic and two black mana to cast, Faerie Macabre is a below-rate Wind Drake when it's on the battlefield. But the decks that run it have no intention of casting it. Its main utility comes from an alternative way to use the card: you may discard it and exile up to two cards from graveyards.
This utility ability means that Faerie Macabre has always been relevant as a sideboard cards in MTG formats where reanimator decks or graveyard-based combos are a big part of the meta. Its main home is Legacy. It can shut down Graveyard combos like Cephalid Breakfast or Oops All Spells! by exiling their win condition, and it can exile the colossal threats that Reanimator decks recur to the battlefield.
The fact that Faerie Macabre only needs to be discarded, not cast, is particularly helpful, as it evades many of the powerful free counterspells in Legacy. If your opponent wants to protect their combo or reanimation threat against the Faerie they have to sideboard in Consign to Memory to stifle its discard ability.
Faerie Macabre's price on MTG Goldfish actually tracks pretty well against the strength of graveyard strategies in Legacy. The Faerie Macabre actually rose to $5 earlier this year, peaking in April, as Dimir Reanimator became the bogeyman of the meta. An update to the MTG Banlist at the end of April stripped Reanimator of the extremely useful Troll of Khazad-dûm - and prices for the Faeirie began to slide.
The price bottomed out at $2.50 in August 12, then began to rise again. Reanimator has recovered from its bannings by adopting a bigger selection of blue cards, like Tamiyo, Inquisitive Student, and Murktide Regent, which provide a secondary game plan getting advantage from the instants and sorceries the deck runs anyway. Faerie Macabre even shows up in the sideboard of Reanimator - the fact that, after you discard it to exile your opponent's reanimation target, it turns into fuel to Delve out a Murktide Regent, is just gravy.
Reanimator has about 16% of the Legacy meta, according to MTGDeck.net - not a catastrophically high number, but clearly a dominant force in recent MTGO Challenges. Is that okay? Are bans needed - and if so, which cards? Tell us what you think in the Wargamer Discord community.
With the MTG Spider-Man release date imminent, we would normally expect to see a lot of card price movements driven by the upcoming set - but so far, it's weirdly quiet. We'll update you when that changes. To know what's coming out when, see our guide to the MTG release schedule.