Sadistic Glee, an old MTG card from the 1997 set Tempest, has risen tenfold, going from an extremely cheap $0.30 to $3.40 over the past two weeks, according to MTG Goldfish. While the card’s still very affordable, that’s a pretty impressive increase, a rise of 1033% in total.
The reason for this enchantment card’s sudden uptick is a new MTG combo enabled by Modern Horizons 3. It’s pretty straightforward to generate infinite mana, and gain an infinitely powerful creature in the process, using Sadistic Glee and one other new card.
That card is Basking Broodscale. This lizard makes mana-generating Eldrazi spawn tokens whenever it gains a +1/+1 counter. It can only put one counter on itself, though, using the MTG keyword Adapt.
You’ve probably spotted the combo already, but to quickly spell it out. If you put Sadistic Glee onto Basking Broodscale then you can immediately pop off. The first time the creature gets a counter, you make an Eldrazi token. Then you can sacrifice the token for mana, which grants your Broodscale another counter, which generates another Eldrazi token – and so on.
One of the exciting things about this two-card infinite combo is that both pieces are commons. That means you could feasibly pull this off in the Pauper MTG format – and we’re sure plenty of brewers are itching to try.
While only a common card, and therefore printed in high quantities, Sadistic Glee was probably more susceptible to a spike than most cards. It’s only ever been printed once in a proper MTG set, and that was in 1997, when print runs were far smaller than they are today.
Since the card has never been particularly valuable, it’s also likely that relatively few copies exist in good condition. But if you somehow happen to have a 27-year-old binder full of Sadistic Glees, now might be the time to offload it.
For more price spikes, check out this card boosted by Nadu, Winged Wisdom. And you can find out what’s coming up for Magic: The Gathering in our MTG release schedule guide.