Morcant's Blight Top 10: AI Predictions for -1/-1 Staples to Spike with Lorwyn
- Jace
- Dec 14
- 5 min read
Updated: 4 minutes ago
Lorwyn's only a month away and the spoiler season is kicking off! A few days ago we got to see High Perfect Morcant, who offers Golgari elves a -1/-1 AND proliferate engine.
She's already caused a 40x price spike in Fluorishing Defenses:
So, here we apply our AI tools to have a quick delve into what other cards across the Magic marketplaces she might also give a cheeky price spike to.
Green-Black elves is already one of the top 10 most played commanders on EDHRec and so is Atraxa Praetors Voice. Consequently, my underlying assumption when I ran the algorithms wasn't that it would be less the elves side (or poison counters) that would spike - more that it would be this new addition of -1/-1 counters to that elfy archetype. I.e. Priests of Titania and Imperious Perfect already have plenty of demand for them, so this isn't going to change their price massively. So whenever the AI picked out 'classic elves' or an Infectious Inquiry I ignored it. Similarly, it looks like I ran it a couple days too late for Crumbling Ashes and Harbinger of Night (both of which the AI liked a lot), and have already sold a huge chunk and rocketed in price, so I've ignored those and just included the stuff that still has availability etc.
A final note: Your opponent places the counters with blight, so some of the cards below don't necessarily directly synergise with Morcant, but more generally with a broad plan to place -1/-1 counters on your opponents creatures.
Having said this, I think this is comfortably the best our (continuously tweaked) AI has done so far. Right, lets go:
Nest of Scarabs: Doesn't work with Morcant on her own (your opponents place the counters with blight), but in any generalised -1/-1 strategy you're going to be making scenes that look like something from the Mummy. It has a single printing and its less than $1 with a few 10s of copies left on TCGplayer.
Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons: A single printing and a reasonably popular commander in her own right (top 500). She synergises well with -1/-1 Morcant plan, but much like Nest of Scarabs you will need other cards that let you place -1/-1s.
Massacre Girl Known Killer: Gives you new elves for every creature you blight off your opponents side of the board (assuming your deck is loaded with elves). From a finance side, she only has the one printing and a few 10s of copies left on TCGplayer.
Generous Patron:Â A cheap elf for Morcant with just 2 printings. It's hard to see much down-side at $0.18 and with the next card on our list it could give you oodles of card draw (although it doesn't with Morcant's blight).
Blowfly infestation: has already sold a lot of copies on TCGplayer since Morcant dropped, but with a few more sales it doubles again. It lets you keep the -1/-1 loop going and going and going...
Dionus, Elvish Archdruid: Ok, I did include a couple elves (its going to be an elf deck!!). People just don't open that many Jumpstart boxes so we perhaps won't be drowning in supply of it and Morcant might be the catalyst for a lot of the last 20 copies to sell through.
Spitting Dilophosaurus: again has a single printing but already commands a chonky price point. But every Morcant player's going to need their pet dinosaur. This feels pretty hard to reprint and its going to mean your opponents won’t be blocking your elf horde very much…
3. Necroskitter: What’s better than killing all your opponents' creatures? How about stealing them? This feels so essential to the deck and has such limited supply. It just has the 2, already in high demand, printings. It's hard to see someone building a Morcant deck and not wanting this in it.
Obelisk Spider: Another card that's not great with Morcant on her own (your opponents place the -1/-1s with blight), but this is a great win con for any -1/-1 engines that you build with wither creatures and blowfly infestations, and its currently less than $1 with only 1 proper printing.
So I've gone rogue here and its bold (stupid?)
Kulrath Knight: Obviously right now you can’t play this in your Golgari elves deck (only in rakdos). BUT: a few months ago a certain MtG panel floated the idea that they might change the commander rules and hybrid colours might become playable by either colour affiliation. If that rule does change soon, then Kulrath is going to be a dream pick for this deck….
Honoroable (interesting) Mentions:
Carnifex Demon: There are lots of other routes to making -1/-1 tokens and this is one that is particularly good with e.g. Generous Patron. So, while it might accidentally kill quite a few of your elves it also could well draw you many many more of them. Similarly, if the deck goes down this more generalised -1/-1 route then cards like Nest of Scarabs.
Quillspike: whether this is the AI assuming Morcant rises to popularity and everyone else at the table needs an answer or just missing that Morcant’s not going to be putting -1/-1s on your own creatures, I'm not sure (maybe you end up playing Carnifex?). Plausibly every pod gets sick of all the -1/-1 shenanigans and decide they want an answer - well Quillspike gobbles a lot of -1/-1s and his single printing is pretty old now... I'm personally not going to be picking up Quillspikes but near mint copies are $0.5 a copy at the moment.
THE HUGE CAVEAT: This whole article comes with the caveat that one of the 2 precons for Lorwyn is a -1/-1 counter deck called Blight Curse, so it might be that a lot of this is already reprinted in there (a lot of it looks very reprintable there...) and that crashes the price. But there's no list for that precon yet so I'm going with what is available and the second that list is revealed I'll be attempting to Golgari grab the rest of this. We'll do an updated version of this with the precon list release.
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Jace & Garruk