History, Restapled - No Warhammer Time Like the Present

Welcome back for another History, Restapled, a Commander-focused column which attempts to validate a newer card’s status as a staple by looking at how cards that are similar, synergistic, or competing have fared in the past financially.

The Universes Beyond: Warhammer 40,000 preconstructed decks provided Commander players with a plethora of novel, interesting, and powerful game pieces, but many of them are likely to find themselves trapped in the purgatory of Universes Beyond, unable to find their way to a reprint until Wizards of the Coast ventures beyond the meager infinite universe within which it plays. Thankfully, these decks were popular and sold well, so there’s a non-zero chance some Warhammer cards will be back in some form or another.

For those who want to add these cards to decks right away, and especially for those who missed the decks when they were widely available, now’s your chance to snag some of the more affordable cards before supply dwindles and prices begin inching up. Here are a few to prioritize:

 

Bone Sabres

 

There are cheaper ways in green to put four +1/+1 counters on a creature than Bone Sabres, but to be fair, there are also many, far more expensive ways to do it as well. And six mana for a repeatable effect isn’t the worst around, especially one not stapled onto a creature. Hell, that’s a Strength of the Tajuru rate and you only get it once. With Bone Sabres, six mana casts the equipment and gets it on your best creature for an immediate attack, and if nothing changes, next turn provides a free roll for four more counters. Worst case, you pay three more to equip on a different creature, increasing the math to nine mana for eight counters, which still isn’t bad. Yes, there are hoops, but they’re quite unimposing, like trying to dunk on a child’s plastic basketball hoop.

As an equipment, Bone Sabres stands largely alone in what it provides, though some version of its effect exists cheaply at the moment. Fractal Harness is close and costs only a dollar, but can’t put counters onto a creature that previously had none—a huge differentiator, especially in the late game. Armory of Iroas, a common, provides only one counter a turn and costs almost as much mana to cast and equip.  

 

However, the price gulf between those cards and ones that provide multiple counters at a time, including those providing an addition or doubling effect like Hardened Scales and Branching Evolution, is quite wide. Just look at the new Ozolith, the Shattered Spire, currently at six dollars, or Kalonian Hydra’s confounding eight dollar price tag despite a recent reprint. Is there really that much difference between doubling the counters on a permanent and adding four of them? In Magical Christmasland (or, as I call it, MTG Chanukah Chaven), sure, but I’d argue that four counters is generally enough to shake things up, even if they’re only put onto a single creature. There seems to exist a healthy appetite for redundancy on anything between, say, Fractal Harness and Doubling Season, so take a bite out of some Bone Sabres before we reach the expiration date on price control.

STATUS: Not a top-tier staple, but not a bottom-tier one, either

 

Bone Sabres
Universes Beyond: Warhammer 40,000		TCGPlayer $5.02
Universes Beyond: Warhammer 40,000: Extras		TCGPlayer $14.28

 

Primaris Eliminator

 

Ravenous Chupacabra is the gold standard of ETB unconditional creature removal, and thus has made its way into a wealth of reanimator and flicker decks. According to EDHREC, the card can be found in almost 70,000 decks across a variety of archetypes. Shriekmaw, Nekrataal and Big Game Hunter simply can’t manage as many corner cases. After a slew of reprints, Chupacabra is cheap, too.

 

However, Ravenous Chupacabra simply cannot hold a candle to Primaris Eliminator. For only one more mana, players are given the choice to either destroy a creature or eliminate one player’s token army or collection of utility creatures. Sure, five mana versus four mana is certainly something to consider, but not when you’re going to be reanimating or flickering the card. On a crowded board, having options is of paramount importance, made even more essential when the game gets down to 1v1.  

 

Primaris Eliminator is an uncommon and currently only running about 50 cents. But, when trying to snag a card from a precon, rarity becomes less important, and there’s no telling when this flexible and powerful card is going to come back to save us from our Chupacabrous monotony.

STATUS: Staple, even if you don’t know it yet

 

Primaris Eliminator
Universes Beyond: Warhammer 40,000	CardKingdom $2.99	TCGPlayer $0.68
Universes Beyond: Warhammer 40,000: Extras		TCGPlayer $5.49

 

Assault Intercessor

 

In Commander, your opponents’ slow deaths can be quite the profitable endeavor. Aristocrats strategies, plentiful and cheap, drain opponents when their creatures die, ensuring that each fatality drags them closer to their own zero-life grave. The vast majority of such cards, including the renowned Blood Artist, ping for one at a time. But Assault Intercessor hits opponents for two each time one of their creatures dies, and has first strike and menace stapled on its body to quickly facilitate creature deaths while leaving itself intact.

 

For only one dollar, Assault Intercessor is a steal if your Orzhov deck wants to kill opposing creatures—and, let’s be honest, they all do. The card isn’t mechanically unique, but it streamlines an already strong effect and offers twice the life-losing power to decks looking to win via non-infinite death. It makes for an excellent blocker, too, likely resulting in fewer attacks in your direction and, thus, virtual lifegain.

STATUS: One-of-many staples

 

Assault Intercessor
Universes Beyond: Warhammer 40,000	CardKingdom $2.99	TCGPlayer $1.05
Universes Beyond: Warhammer 40,000: Extras		TCGPlayer $3.41

 

March Madness

I had planned to cover a few March of the Machine cards in this column, but time got away from me and I think these Warhammer 40K cards are more in danger of rising in price in the short term. Tune in next time for MOM analysis—no Aftermath just yet—and some thoughts on cards that seem like staples from the outside but amount to nothing short of hot air.

 

Check out these other articles:  

Reinventions by Jason Alt  

A Penny Saved, a Renegade Earned by Ryan Cole  

The Big Things: Foil Etched Divisions by Harvey McGuinness