How Expensive Will MTG Super-Staple Esper Sentinel Become?

Of all the new cards to come out of Modern Horizons 2, Esper SentinelEsper SentinelWhenever an opponent casts their first noncreature spell each turn, draw a card unless that player pays {X}, where X is this creature's power. is one of the most played across all Magic: the Gathering formats. It is EVERYWHERE and for good reason–it is an absurd source of card draw in white, a color that typically lacks such effects in MTG. There’s a high demand for Esper Sentinel which is naturally making the card more expensive.

Esper Sentinel

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Esper Sentinel is quickly approaching $30.00! When MH2 was first released, the card was about $13.00. It had a small spike in price in January and since then, continued to trend upwards as seen in the graph below.

At the time of writing the regular art printing is about $28.00 and the showcase printing reached $30.00. If you’re lucky, you can still find a few slightly cheaper listings on TCGPlayer.

Price history for Esper Sentinel (regular art) | TCGPlayer

What are the Best Decks For Esper Sentinel?

Wizards of the Coast designed MH2 specifically for the Modern format. But many cards, like Esper Sentinel, made big impacts on Commander too.

Commander

Esper Sentinel is like a mini version of Rhystic Study, a long-time Commander superstar. Pretty much every white Commander deck on the cEDH Database plays Esper Sentinel. (cEDH is considered to be the most competitive form of Commander.)

While any Commander deck will appreciate Sentinel’s efficient card draw, some decks have additional synergies with the Human Soldier. Strategies revolved around +1/+1 counters, such as Ghave, Guru of Spores, can increase Sentinel’s taxing ability. Death & Taxes decks like Grand Arbiter Augustin IV use sentinel as another way to imprison your opponents. And because Esper Sentinel is an artifact, it synergizes with Commanders like Oswald Fiddlebender.

best-mtg-control-commanders-grand — Wizards of the Coast

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Modern

Esper Sentinel is used in a variety of Modern decks such as Hammer Time, Affinity, Death & Taxes, Hardened Scales, and my personal favorite, Boros Midrange.

How Expensive Will Esper Sentinel Become?

You can still find MH2 packs on the shelves at stores. This is the one thing preventing Esper Sentinel from absolutely exploding in price.

But once Wizards of the Coast stops printing the set, many MH2 cards will start gradually creeping up in price. This holds especially true for ubiquitously played cards like Urza’s SagaUrza’s Saga(As this Saga enters and after your draw step, add a lore counter. Sacrifice after III.)
I — This Saga gains "{T}: Add {C}."
II — This Saga gains "{2}, {T}: Create a 0/0 colorless Construct artifact creature token with 'This token gets +1/+1 for each artifact you control.'"
III — Search your library for an artifact card with mana cost {0} or {1}, put it onto the battlefield, then shuffle., Ragavan, Nimble PilfererRagavan, Nimble PilfererWhenever Ragavan deals combat damage to a player, create a Treasure token and exile the top card of that player's library. Until end of turn, you may cast that card.
Dash {1}{R} (You may cast this spell for its dash cost. If you do, it gains haste, and it's returned from the battlefield to its owner's hand at the beginning of the next end step.), and Esper SentinelEsper SentinelWhenever an opponent casts their first noncreature spell each turn, draw a card unless that player pays {X}, where X is this creature's power..