The Magic: The Gathering card Winged Hive Tyrant has seen a pretty neat little price bump, jumping from the cheap and cheerful $0.80 one month ago to $3.60 today. Surge foils have gotten even more pricey. In early July, this variant of the card was selling for $1-2, but now it's fetching $15-20 on TCGPlayer.
Released, as you might expect, in the Tyranids Commander precon deck as part of an early Universes Beyond product, Winged Hive Tyrant is an Izzet creature that plays well with +1/+1 counters. It's a 4/4 beater with flying and haste, and it gives any creature you control with a counter on it those same keywords, letting you strike from the skies with impunity.
While the most-played Warhammer cards have gotten quite pricey, since they're only found in quite a hard-to-obtain product, Hive Tyrant has remained pretty niche. It's played in some Temur decks that use counters, such as Animar, Soul of the Elements, but that's about it.
Now it seems to be rising up, thanks to - of all things - the Sonic the Hedgehog UB cards. It seems to be a good fit for the Sonic MTG commander itself because Sonic gives every hasty creature you control a +1/+1 counter. Sure, that means you don't really need the haste from Winged Tyrant, but giving your already-hasty creatures flying is a massive boon, typically allowing you to push through damage with impunity.
The synergy really works because Sonic hands out his counters on the attack trigger, not when he deals combat damage. That means your entire speedster army will take to the skies before anyone can get in their way. It also makes it extremely easy to attack safely with Sonic, ensuring you can keep stacking counters every turn, and don't have to sit back for fear of losing him.
There doesn't seem to be that much hype around Sonic, so we'll have to wait and see if this spike has legs or will stop shortly. Meanwhile you should check out our handy MTG release schedule guide, or join our Discord server for giveaways, designer AMAs, and tabletop discussion.