The Magic: The Gathering card Hansk, Slayer Zealot has seen a huge price spike, going from just $2.80 when the last MTG set came out in November to $29.70 today, on December 17.
This card is actually the in-universe version of Daryl, Hunter of Walkers, from the Walking Dead Secret Lair that kicked off the whole Universes Beyond experiment. And it's spiking thanks to another UB Secret Lair featuring a zombie-filled franchise. This time it's The Last of Us. Turns out Joel and Ellie from the recent Playstation collection have great synergy with Daryl/Hansk.
Hansk gives one opponent three zombie tokens on each of your turns. He has a tap ability that lets him zap one of those zombies, and crucially, he lets you draw a card whenever a zombie an opponent controls bites the dust.
Ellie, Brick Master and Joel, Resolute Survivor can be played as partner commanders, and their effects work incredibly well with Hansk. Ellie makes your enemies create zombie tokens whenever they attack each other. Those tokens are just 1/1s and they come in attacking, so it will often be trivial for your opponents to block them.
With Hansk on the field, Ellie could let you draw up to six extra cards a turn cycle, on top of any other zombie death that takes place. Hansk basically serves as a better version of Joel, who gets stronger and draws a card when any token dies, but can only trigger once per turn.
With all these cards out your opponents are going to be making a ton of zombies and you'll be drawing a ridiculous number of cards. The only danger is if they quickly identify you as the threat and stop attacking each other. If that happens, they'll stop getting free zombies from Ellie, and you'll soon be facing a lot of pain.
That's the perfect time to drop a board wipe. It'll be sad to lose your value engine, but you do get a hefty severance package as you draw from all the zombies that were still in play.
It's worth pointing out that the Secret Lair version, Daryl, Hunter of Walkers has also jumped up in price by a similar amount, going from $5.50 to $34.80. That's about what I'd expect. Besides price, the only reason to opt for Hansk over Daryl is if you don't like Universes Beyond cards. And since this price spike is caused by a synergy with crossover cards, that can't be a factor here.
Did you grab that Walking Dead lair when it came out? Do you wish Wizards was still making in-universe versions of UB cards? Let us know over at the Wargamer Discord.