The Magic: The Gathering card Mortuary is rising in price - jumping from $6.20 to $15 in the last two weeks. With only a single printing in 1998, this rare enchantment card was well and truly primed to spike - just waiting for the right combo to come along to trigger its rise.
That combo has appeared in Spiderman with the MTG commander Gwenom, Remorseless. Let's back up a sec, and explain what Mortuary does so we can see how these two spells interact.
A black enchantment from the MTG set Stronghold, Mortuary triggers whenever one of your creatures is killed. Instead of your graveyard, the deceased creature will go right back on top of your library.
This makes it the perfect combo card to play with Gwenom - which, if you've blanked on this Universes Beyond set so far, is basically Bolas' Citadel in the command zone. When Gwenom attacks, she unlocks the ability to play cards from the top of your library for the rest of the turn, paying life for their cost instead of mana. With Mortuary putting cards back on top of your library, there are all sorts of combos you can do with this, especially if you have a sac outlet.
The smoothest, three-card combo is with Death Cultist, which can sacrifice itself to drain an opponent. With Mortuary and Gwenom on field, that's an instant game over as you replay the cultist again and again.
You can also win the game with Mortuary and Gwenom plus any sac outlet and Gray Merchant of Asphodel. Or with Blood Artist and Viscera Seer, sacrificing the Seer to itself over and over to secure the win.
Of course, these combos all work with Bolas' Citadel too, but guaranteed access to Gwenom makes them much more reliable.
According to EDHREC, only about 35% of players are actually using the Mortuary combo in their deck. There's a surprising amount of variety in Gwenom decks - a lot of combo, but also tron lists looking to load her up with equipment and good-stuff decks full of all the best black cards.
Gwenm, Remorseless is one of the most valuable cards from the Spiderman set, and despite that is still worth less than $20 - it's basically The Soul Stone or bust for Spiderman collectors - just another way in which this release is failing to make a splash.
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