A decades old Magic: The Gathering card is spiking in price thanks to its inclusion in a hot new Modern deck. Coldsnap copies of Allosaurus Rider were selling for $1.70 a couple of days ago, but now they're being snapped up for a whopping $16.20. A surge of interest in a 19-year-old card with very low supply is a perfect recipe for this sort of sudden jump. Other versions of the card haven't moved at all, but the Coldsnap variant is soaring.
Like most creature cards from the early 2000s, Allosaurus Rider's stats and impact on the battlefield are laughably below the modern rate. And yet it's that overcosted mana value, combined with the crucial fact you can cheat Allosaurus Rider into play by discarding two green cards from your hand, that makes it the lynchpin of a Modern deck, one that's been generating some buzz over the last week.
The deck, Neobrand, is a strategy that seems too janky to work as well as it does. Basically, the gameplan is to cheat out an Allosaurus Rider, then use a Birthing Pod type card like Neoform to sacrifice it and plonk down a huge eight-mana creature like Griselbrand.
This strategy has actually been around for a while in a pure combo form that used Griselbrand and Laboratory Maniac to win the game. But this was a very fragile line, and was soon power crept out of viability by cards from straight-to-modern MTG sets like Modern Horizons 2 and Tales of Middleearth.
The new version of the deck is less tricksy - it wins by swinging at the opponent with gigantic creatures. Your powerful MTG tutor cards like Neoform and Eldritch Evolution (which, handily, can fetch creatures of lower mana values) provide a grab bag of useful creatures for every eventuality. You can plonk down a Tersatadon to deal with tricky permanents, a Disciple of Freyalise for redrawing and gaining lots of life, or even a Xenagos, when you just need to immediately hit your opponent very hard.
Another fun interaction worth highlighting involves Consign to Memory. This new card from Modern Horizons 3 can be a useful counterspell for disrupting your opponent's gameplan, but it can also be used on Summoner's Pact's 'lose the game' trigger, allowing that card to essentially operate as a free spell.
This deck has seen decent success on MTG Online since a player called Capriccioso piloted it to 4th place in a Modern Challenge on May 16. In the last few days its not done as well in the Challenges - perhaps the surprise factor has worn off - but it's still scoring 5-0s in Modern Leagues.
I have a soft spot for Allosaurus Rider, because I'm fairly sure it was the first Magic: The Gathering card I ever saw - when I was perhaps about 8 or 10. The artwork is firmly lodged in my mind, even though at the time I'm sure I had no idea what I was looking at.
What's your earliest Magic memory? Come share over at our Discord. If you want a trip down memory lane you can take a look at our list of the best MTG cards in the game's history. Or if you're looking to the future, do it with our MTG release schedule guide.