The Magic: The Gathering card Phyrexian Soulgorger has seen a pretty big 200% price rise in the past month, thanks to Lorwyn Eclipsed. Since late January, this card has climbed in value from $4.60 to $14, according to MTG Goldfish's tracker.
A snow artifact creature from Coldsnap, Phyrexian Soulgorger is one of several snow artifact construct creatures from this MTG set, each one depicting a Phyrexian monstrosity thawed out of the ice like a Captain America with pointy teeth.
Most of these are nothing special by today's power-crept standards, but Phyrexian Soulgorger is a pretty interesting exception. It's a three mana 8/8, which even today, would only get printed with a significant downside.
Phyrexian Soulgorger's is pretty crippling, which is why this is a popular creature to 'donate' with that horrible Jon Irenicus commander. It has a cumulative upkeep cost of sacrificing a creature. This means on the first turn you can attack with Soulgorger you have to sacrifice one creature, but the next turn you must throw two into the fire, then three, and so on.
However, a new MTG commander that came out in Lorwyn Eclipsed gets rid of this problem entirely. Abigale, Eloquent First-Year is a bird bard with flying, first strike and lifelink which - when she enters - puts those keywords onto another creature as counters and then strips it of all other abilities.
In other words, play Soulgorger followed by Abigale and you'll have yourself a low-cost 8/8 with lifelink that's extremely difficult to block effectively.
Abigale decks seem focused around playing big creatures with downside like this, combined with blink effects so you can keep triggering her ability and either removing the negative effects on your own creatures or shutting off your opponents' busted abilities. Phyrexian Soulgorger is in 77% of Abigale decks listed on EDHREC.
This card has seen more of a steady climb than a sudden spike and presumably it's among the last of the price spikes off the back of Lorwyn that we'll be writing about. Since TMNT is right around the corner though, and the cards have been revealed, we'll now be looking out to see if any Ninja or Turtle tribal effects start ticking up in value.
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