I'll admit it, folks: as far as MTG commanders go, the Spider-Man set's Mister Negative is a bit too brainy for me. It doesn't just lean hard into Black's predilection towards risky tactics that cost your own life points; it makes you do math, too. But the MTG megabrains playing this two tone terror as their commander have discovered a naughty combo with the 23 year old Black Instant False Cure. And the resulting deck has pushed that card's price up from a fiver one week ago, to over 12 bucks today!
According to price tracking data on MTGGoldfish, False Cure was selling for $4.90 on Monday, October 20. At press time, it's valued at $12.50, an increase of $7.60, or 155%. That's a pretty impressive surge for a card that's old enough to drink in bars, and which, on its own, does nothing except switch off life gain for a single turn.
It's simply not that useful a card. In order to really make its effect hurt your opponent, you've got to force them to gain a lot of life, all in one lump, and use False Cure to turn that into damage. That's tough to pull off, and so it doesn't see much play.
So, why is Magic's ever turbulent and burgeoning commander scene driving up its price by buying up singles? Because if you're deft enough, False Cure can give the volatile, thinky MTG Spiderman commander Mister Negative a bit more reliable.
Here's how it works: Mister Negative's enter the battlefield (ETB) ability forces you to swap your life total with another player's - and if you lose life in the process, you draw that many cards. It's a classic Black play: pay life, get cards.
And of course, it also has the familiar, commander-friendly virtue of being well set up for Flickering out of the game and back again, to trigger the ability a second time. Bring Mr. N. in while you're ahead on life, to get a big card advantage, then Flicker him to trigger it again, swapping the life totals back. Now you have more life and more cards. Black is white, white is black, reverse the polarity, and so on.
But here's where False Cure comes in. As reported by MTGStocks, there's already been a key ruling on that ability to clarify that, for rules purposes, Mister Negative's 'swapping' process means that players actually gain or lose life (as necessary) to get to their new total.
So if you play False Cure right before bringing in Mister Negative, changing all life gain into life lost, it's becomes a win/win. You gain cards and your opponent loses life. Flicker Mister Negative on the same turn, and you get to do it twice - a pretty huge bomb that gets bigger, the bigger the gap in your life totals at the beginning of the turn.
Is this a super competitive combo that'll catapult Mister Negative to the top of the commander stakes? Is this price spike data the beginning of a soaring flight towards False Cure joining our list of the most expensive MTG cards of all time?
Absolutely not, no. Actually, it kind of sucks, and not just for arithmetically challenged, mediocre players like me. Like all combo plays requiring one specific card to work with your commander, you'll need to draw your False Cure or use a Tutor to get it first, and while you're messing about with that, simpler, more powerful decks are already ravaging you. Which, of course, can knacker the whole show - because you need to be ahead on life points for the combo to work.
But, like Mister Negative himself, it's a fun high wire trick to pull off - and so much of the fun of Commander is winning games with fun doohickeys like this (even if it only happens one game in 20).
Would you try and play this one out at your table? Or do you have another favorite weirdo Commander combo you prefer? Come join the free Wargamer Discord community and let us know; we love talking about obscure, silly deck tech things.
Alternatively, you can always catch up with the latest upcoming cards in our fully updated guide to the MTG release schedule, or take a history lesson using our complete list of all MTG sets released to date.