The MTG Merfolk card Vodalian Hexcatcher is seeing a sudden price spike after the release of Lost Caverns of Ixalan. While this card, printed in Dominaria United, is still very cheap right now – at $3.90 on TCGPlayer – it’s up significantly on its previous value of just 94 cents.
The MTG card has seen a price spike of 315%, and it doesn’t seem to have stopped its upward trajectory just yet. The reason for its climb is pretty obvious if you’ve paid attention to the MTG release schedule: it’s because Lost Caverns of Ixalan came out at the weekend, on November 17.
Ixalan has lots of support for the MTG creature types Dinosaur, Vampire, Pirate, and Merfolk, with each tribe being a focus of one Lost Caverns of Ixalan Commander deck. And so, Vodalian Hexcatcher is riding a wave of revitalized interest in fish folk.
Vodalian Hexcatcher is a very nasty MTG counter spell on a stick. Not only is it a lord creature that makes all your merfolk stronger, it also lets you sacrifice a merfolk to counter a spell unless its caster pays one mana. Provided you have a lot of little merfolk tokens, you can probably counter any spell.
The real subtle power of this card is how it provides a chilling effect due to the threat of activation. Your opponents can never afford to tap out, need to have extra mana for anything they want to cast, and can’t focus their efforts on you, or you’ll counter whatever they want to play. Mean!
Vodalian Hexcatcher released in the MTG set Dominaria United in 2022, and has seen some play in Merfolk decks in Modern and even Legacy. But it’s MTG Commander that dominates the LGS these days, and so it makes sense that it’s when players start getting interested in Merfolk Commander decks that we see the card’s price go up.
Obviously, the precon Commander Hakbal of the Surging Soul is the main reason people are playing merfolk (and therefore playing Vodalian Hexcatcher) but 150 Kumena, Tyrant of Orazca decks were also uploaded to EDHREC in the last 30 days.
We’ll be interested to see if Merfolk can make it, and if more cards in the creature type start to rise – just like faerie cards did after Wilds of Eldraine came out. For more creature news, or if you’re looking to kit out your precons, check out the best MTG dinosaur cards and the top MTG vampires.