The planeswalker card Chandra, Awakened Inferno is the latest in a long series of MTG cards to be boosted in price by the popularity of the Duskmourn Commander decks.
Right now the cheapest available copy comes from the recent Commander Masters set. It’s selling for $7.96, up 298% from the $2 value it held two weeks ago. Meanwhile, Core Set 2020 copies have risen to almost double that figure, currently fetching a price tag of a whopping $14.80.
I still have a soft spot for this version of Chandra, after playing her in Big Red decks in Standard a few years back. This MTG planeswalker is pretty unique in that it creates emblems for your opponents. These slowly deal damage to them, whittling their life totals away in an unavoidable fashion.
That makes it perfect for the Valgavoth group slug deck, Endless Punishment. In this precon, your MTG commander wants you to deal damage to each opponent, each turn, and Chandra basically guarantees that this happens. You only have to uptick her once and from that point on Valgavoth will trigger every single chance he has while he’s on the board, no matter what happens to the rest of the battlefield.
That means in just one turn cycle, you’ll draw three cards and turn your Commander into a flying 7/7 which can knock out a player in just three hits.
That’s obviously nice, but it’s not where this Chandra card’s utility ends. First up she can remove all kinds of threats with miniature board wipes and targeted removal. Secondly, she has tons of loyalty, so she can shield your life total while slowly winning you the game.
And though she only deals a little bit of damage each turn, using her +2 ability a couple of times can create a very real threat your foes can do nothing about, and it gets especially dangerous in conjunction with your other life loss cards.
Of the four Duskmourn Commander precon decks, Endless Punishment is looking like the clear winner overall (though all the new commanders are popular except for Winter). This is far from price spike created by synergy with Valgavoth. In fact, in the past few weeks there’ve been several, from this mean little goblin to this big Warhammer demon.
For more magical MTG content, check out our guide to the best MTG Arena decks, and our picks for the best cards to upgrade the Duskmourn precons.