Every new MTG set brings hot new Commanders into contention, and Reality Fracture is no exception. We’ve seen multiple new legends from the set take names in Duel Commander, and plenty more are stirring things up in regular high-bracket play as well.
Perhaps the best of these so far is Dack Fayden, Helping Hand, which has single-handedly enabled a new, cEDH-viable Mono-White deck in the format. Thanks to its surprising early success, Radiant Solar, a key MTG card in the strategy, is now seeing a sizable price spike.
Radiant Solar MTG
Prior to Reality Fracture, Radiant Solar was a solid, if niche, role player in Commander. As probably the easiest way to repeatedly venture into the Dungeon outside of broken Acererak, the Archlich loops, it naturally saw a lot of play in Dungeon-focused Commander decks. Lists like Sefris of the Hidden Ways and Hama Pashar, Ruin Seeker absolutely loved it, for example, as a way to get through each Dungeon in a reasonable time.
Radiant Solar wasn’t just a one-trick pony, mind you, as its abilities also lent themselves well to other archetypes. Since Solar’s ability triggers when other creatures enter, it was fantastic in Blink decks like Brago, King Eternal as a value piece. Thanks to its second ability, which lets you pitch it early for value, it also proved a great Reanimator target, showing up in lists like Celestine, the Living Saint
Celestine, the Living SaintFlying, lifelink
Healing Tears — At the beginning of your end step, return target creature card with mana value X or less from your graveyard to the battlefield, where X is the amount of life you gained this turn. as an early play you can bring back later.
While these applications earned Radiant Solar a reasonable amount of Commander play, it was still a fairly niche card until recently. With the advent of Dack Fayden, Helping Hand, however, Radiant Solar is back in the spotlight in a big way. Solar is actually the main win condition of the deck’s funky instant-win combo line, letting you Venture into the Dungeon infinite times once you’ve cheated out two blink creatures via Dack’s enters ability.
To pull this combo off, you need to start by limiting the creatures in your deck to a very small pool, consisting solely of blink creatures, Radiant Solar, Preston, the Vanisher, and Bronzebeak Foragers
Bronzebeak ForagersWhen this creature enters, for each opponent, exile up to one target nonland permanent that player controls until this creature leaves the battlefield.
{X}{W}: Put target card with mana value X exiled with this creature into its owner's graveyard. You gain X life.. When you cast Dack, you’ll get three of these creatures out, and you can then use their abilities before they’re donated to opponents. Since you’re guaranteed a blink creature, you can then blink Dack to keep going, and repeat until every creature in your deck is out. From here, Bronzebeak Foragers can steal your combo pieces back, and you can close out the game.
Though it looked like a bit of a funny gimmick at first, this new Dack Fayden deck is quickly becoming a major force in Commander. Players are seeing real success with the deck in tournament settings, and there are even some calls for bans due to the easy one-card wins it enables. Thanks to all this newfound attention, Radiant Solar, which is probably the second-most important card in the deck after Dack itself, is naturally getting a lot of newfound attention.
The Spike
In early October, Radiant Solar was readily available in near-mint condition for around $3.17 on TCGplayer. Around October 5th, however, the card saw a significant spike in sales, with 14 copies shifting in a single day. This surge lines up perfectly with popular cEDH content creator ComedIan’s post about the Dack Fayden deck, so it’s reasonable to assume that was the catalyst.
After this spike, Radiant Solar sales peaked at 19 on October 6th, then kept hitting double digits over the next few days. As expected, its price rose in turn, climbing steadily to around $6 yesterday. Today, if you’re looking to pick up a near-mint copy, it’ll run you $9.73 at the low end, a 206% jump in just a couple of weeks. These are the cheaper copies, too: TCGplayer currently has only 11 near-mint Radiant Solars in stock, and most are $11+, so prices are trending up.
Unfortunately for those looking to grab a bargain, Radiant Solar only has one other printing, that being its extended art version. Because it’s Collector Booster exclusive, this printing is significantly more expensive, with near-mint copies starting around $22. You can snag some minor savings if you’re willing to accept worse-condition copies, with moderately-played base copies of Radiant Solar going for around $9, but for the most part this is now a $10 card period.
The Future
Moving forward, Radiant Solar’s financial destiny will almost certainly be tied directly to how well this new Dack Fayden deck performs. The Angel definitely had homes before this, but it only saw minor gains before this development, so it doesn’t have much demand outside this combo.
As for how likely Dack Fayden, Helping Hand is to stick around, I’d err on the side of caution. It’s definitely powerful and can win very early with fast mana, but it’s also a total glass cannon. If Dack gets countered, or even removed with its trigger on the stack, the deck’s whole plan falls apart, essentially knocking the pilot out of the game.
While Mono-White has some tools to prevent this, such as Silence, Dack’s deckbuilding constraints mean it can’t run better options like Voice of Victory, so it’s inconsistent.
For these reasons, Dack Fayden seems unlikely to take over cEDH, or any other Commander bracket for that matter. It’s also in an awkward spot where it has unfun play patterns as a Commander, which means it could genuinely end up catching a ban or Game Changer designation, both of which would affect its popularity.
On the other hand, Radiant Solar is a single-printing card with decent utility and limited supply. Even if Dack drops off, price memory could let it retain some of its inflated value, at least until Wizards decides to reprint the card. Given that it references an incredibly parasitic mechanic in the Dungeon, the chances of that are low outside of another D&D set or Mystery Booster product.
Overall, as with all financial developments in MTG, it’s impossible to predict where Radiant Solar will end up. While its tie to a wacky, up-and-coming Commander deck makes it fairly volatile, it’s also solid enough on its own that it could succeed even if that falls through. For now, we’ll just have to wait and see how it goes, though I personally don’t have high hopes.
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