The MTG card Freestrider Lookout is currently spiking in price. This cheap green creature has leapt from the mere $0.80 it cost last week to $5.40 already, and shows no signs of slowing down just yet.
A new card released in the latest set, MTG Outlaws of Thunder Junction, whenever you commit a crime Freestrider Lookout can grab a land from among the top five cards of your library and pop it onto the battlefield. It’s therefore a good source of MTG mana ramp, as well as quite an efficiently statted creature: a 3/3 for three with reach.
The reason for this 575% price spike seems to be the card’s place in one of the best MTG Standard decks right now: Golgari Midrange.
While it’s one of the top five decks in Standard, it doesn’t seem like there’s one clear, settled ‘list’ for Golgari Midrange right now. Instead, lots of variants of the deck exist.
Right now, many Golgari players forego Freestrider Lookout for more established staples such as Glissa Sunslayer, Mosswood Dreadknight, or Preacher of the Schism. But it seems like there’s also a clearly distinct variant of the deck that seeks to push the new crime mechanic as far as humanly possible.
It’s this Golgari Crimes deck that runs Freestrider Lookout, as well as multiple copies of Hostile Investigator – another card that’s started spiking recently. It packs in cards that refer to the ‘commit a crime’ rule – cards like Gisa, the Hellraiser and Kaervek, the Punisher – and then relies on the removal spells you’d probably be playing anyway, as well as Graveyard Tresspasser, to trigger them as much as possible.
Who knows where, or indeed if, this deck will eventually settle in the meta, but since multiple cards from its list are rising in price, there’s definite interest in this Golgari Crimes variant. We hope it succeeds: it’s much more fun when Standard is full of decks that have a clear synergy or gameplan, rather than just soupy goodstuff midrange decks.
For more decks wot are good in Standard right now, check out our guide to the best MTG Arena decks. And if you’re a new Arena player, you might want to see if you’ve missed out on any MTG Arena codes.