A relatively unknown Magic: The Gathering card just saw an enormous price spike, thanks to a recent MTG ban. Ardent Plea was previously priced at just $1.80, only seeing play in a few niche decks. It’s now gone up to $16 – according to MTG Goldfish – spiking by an outrageous 789% in just one day.
This is all thanks to an MTG banlist change imposed on March 11, which took out Violent Outburst, a key part of the dominant Modern deck Temur Rhinos. This has left this deck’s advocates scrambling for the next best three-mana MTG Cascade card… which just so happens to be Ardent Plea.
While Ardent Plea lacks the instant-speed feature that made Violent Outburst so nutty, it’s one of only four three mana Cascade cards printed in Magic, so options are severely limited. The Rhinos deck badly relies on cards in this category, which can fetch up Crashing Footfalls early. If the mana cost were any higher, then spells that weren’t Crashing Footfalls would be Cascaded up, and the deck’s strategy would fall apart.
There are only four viable cards in the whole of Magic: The Gathering that could make it into the deck. Violent Outburst is now banned in MTG Modern. Shardless Agent is already included, another vital card for Rhinos. So that only leaves Ardent Plea and Demonic Dread.
Demonic Dread, a Cascade card that makes a creature unblockable, has gone up in price a tad – and foil copies are suddenly super expensive – but it looks like most Modern players are sticking with the Azorius option. There’s the disadvantage with either card of having to incorporate an extra MTG color into the deck, but Demonic Dread also requires there to be a creature before you can target it.
It’s likely that, after such a sudden surge, the price for Ardent Plea will go down a little bit soon. But, unless the Temur Rhinos deck drops out of the meta altogether, it’s likely to remain pretty pricey.
For more MTG price news, check out the card bumped in price by its synergy with a Fallout MTG Commander precon.