The MTG card Flayer of Loyalties has seen a major price spike, going from $9 a week ago to $48.80 today, according to MTG Goldfish. That’s a whopping 433% increase in value, and as you might guess, it’s all thanks to the release of the super popular new Eldrazi Commander, Ulalek Fused Atrocity.
We’re seeing a lot of Eldrazi cards leaping in value right now, since Wizards has given us two Eldrazi Commander precon decks in as many years. But Flayer of Loyalty is the eldritch horror to rise the most off the back of Ulalek’s release, and it’s not hard to see why. You just get so much value out of cloning this thing.
You need a ridiculous 12 mana to pull it off, but activating Ulalek with Flayer of Loyalties on the stack can end Commander games in style. First up, it lets you steal your opponents’ two best creatures for the turn, turn them into hasty 10/10 titans with the Annihilator keyword, and wreak havoc straight away. Plus, you get two copies of Flayer of Loyalties, itself a titan-sized creature with Annihilator.
Compared to the previous Eldrazi deck from Wizards, Eldrazi Incursion is slightly lacking in stompy creatures, with only four cards weighing in at eight mana or greater. That makes perfect sense, since Ulalek has a mana-hungry ability, but people don’t play Eldrazi decks for sense, they play them to run enormous game-shattering creatures with mana costs in the double digits.
Flayer of Loyalties is the perfect top-end for this deck. It’s a better fit than the very popular Eldrazi titans in fact, because those are legendary creatures, so you can’t have multiple copies.
Since the only place Flayer of Loyalties has been released is the Commander Masters precon deck Eldrazi Unbound, copies are likely to be in short supply, which will have only helped to fuel the spike.
To see what other cards players are buying out this hot Eldrazi summer, check out this artifact and this enchantment which have both seen big changes. And if you like Magic finance stories, don’t miss our guide to the most expensive MTG cards of all time.