Reality Fracture has hit MTG finance fast and hard, causing all kinds of cards to spike in price. Sphinx and Planeswalker support were the two most popular categories, but they aren’t the only cards rising in price. Agatha of the Vile Cauldron is also spiking in price thanks to a new infinite combo with an interesting Reality Fracture Commander.
MTG Agatha of the Vile Cauldron
Agatha of the Vile Cauldron‘s appeal comes from her first ability, which reduces the cost of activated abilities of creatures by an amount equal to her power. While she can never make these abilities free, Agatha is already a part of a fair few existing infinite combos, all of which can win the game easily.
If you get Agatha’s power to Seven, for example, you can easily go infinite with Silvanus’s Invoker, turning all of your lands into 8/8s. If you have something that can make a land tap for two mana, like Utopia Sprawl for example, this combo also generates infinite mana. With infinite mana, you can activate Agatha’s second ability infinitely, making all your lands infinitely big with Haste and Trample.
While most of Agatha’s infinites include Silvanus’s Invoker, they’re far from the only combos the card has. Gilder Bairn and something that lets creatures tap for mana, like Elven Chorus, for example, creates infinite Proliferation. Agatha even goes infinite with some new cards from Reality Fracture, with Aerid Konstrari
Aerid KonstrariFlying
When Aerid Konstrari enters or dies, create a Heartwood token. (It's a red and green artifact with "{T}: Add {R} or {G}.")
{6}: Create a Heartwood token. Then Aerid Konstrari gets +X/+0 until end of turn, where X is the number of artifacts you control. being the most powerful.
As long as you can get Agatha’s power to 5, she creates a two-card infinite combo with Aerid, allowing the Sphinx to gain infinite power and create infinite Heartwood Tokens. With 5 power, Agatha will reduce Aerid’s ability to 1 mana, which can be paid repeatedly by the Heartwood Tokens the ability makes. If you have a token doubler in play, like Doubling Season
Doubling SeasonIf an effect would create one or more tokens under your control, it creates twice that many of those tokens instead.
If an effect would put one or more counters on a permanent you control, it puts twice that many of those counters on that permanent instead., this combo even creates infinite green and red mana.
Given how powerful this combo is, it’s no shock that Agatha of the Vile Cauldron is seeing play in over 1,800 Aerid Konstrari decks, according to EDHREC. You do need to buff Agatha’s power for this to work properly, but with green in Aerid’s colors, you have access to tons of +1/+1 counter support. Interestingly, this combo is even leading to some Standard brews using Agatha.
Notably, Agatha of the Vile Cauldron also creates infinite combos with Kiora of Fire and Ashes, another new reality Fracture card. This time, if you have Agatha, Kiora, and Ganax, Astral Hunter in play, you can create infinite Dragon tokens, so long as Agatha’s power is 7 or more. Frankly, though, since Kiora isn’t a very impressive Commander card and you have the extra hurdle of raising Agatha’s power, this combo isn’t very exciting.
The Spike
Although Aerid Konstrari was revealed during the Reality Fracture spoiler season kickoff on September 8th, it took time for Agatha of the Vile Cauldron to gain interest. Demand increased temporarily between September 9th-17th, but it took until October for Agatha to see a truly notable demand spike. Since the beginning of October, 90 near-mint copies of Agatha have exchanged hands.
While plenty of supply remains, with 55 near-mint listings available on TCGplayer, demand has still driven a price spike for the card. Currently, the cheapest near-mint copy of Agatha on TCGplayer is $6, more than double its $2.14 market average from a month ago. Notably, copies of Agatha are already selling for over $6.50, more than tripling the card’s price.
Unfortunately, if you’re looking to grab Agatha on the cheap, you’re out of luck. $6 is the cheapest you’ll find this card on TCGplayer, and even that can be considered a steal right now. Other variants are more expensive, too, with Extended art copies of Agatha going for over $8 non-foil and $18 foil.
A Reliable Spike?
Looking ahead, Agatha of the Vile Cauldron has some potential. Unlike Vronos yesterday, which had a massive outlier sale, demand for this card has been relatively constant over the last month, suggesting that this is an organic, player-driven spike rather than an investor-driven one.
As an activated-ability reducer, Agatha also has a lot of use in Commander, appearing in popular decks like Kenrith, the Returned King and many niche decks like Redshift, Rocketeer Chief. Any Commander with an activated ability and a Gruul color identity could easily run this card, not to mention the infinite combos Agatha could create in the future.
While Agatha is unlikely to stay at its elevated price point forever, it wouldn’t be surprising if the card settles at a higher price than it was pre-spike. With a decent chance of synergizing with a future Commander, Agatha could spike again, too.
With all this in mind, grabbing a copy of Agatha of the Vile Cauldron for your Commander collection might be a good idea, but, as always, MTG is impossible to predict. There’s always a chance that Agatha could see a reprint, after all, or something else that’s strictly better than the Warlock could get printed.
With either of these actions likely to plummet this card’s price, anything is truly possible. With that in mind, we’ll just have to wait and see how long this combo keeps Agatha’s price up.
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