The Pioneer metagame is adapting to the renewed attention for the format. And as the metagame changes, so does Magic’s secondary market, as we’ve seen ever since Wizards of the Coast announced the upcoming Pioneer Pro Tour. Pioneer price spikes keep happening, and this weekend, eyes were on Collective Defiance when its price jumped 400%.
Collective Defiance
As indicated by the steep rise in the graph below, Collective Defiance rose from $1.00 to $5.00+ at the time of writing. Collective Defiance was originally printed in Eldritch Moon and has never been reprinted since, limiting the overall supply of the card. But its price spike can mostly be attributed to a Pioneer deck gaining recent popularity, in which a full playset of Collective Defiance is commonly used.
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Why Did Collective Defiance Rise in Price?
Collective Defiance can do a bit of everything. It can refresh your hand, kill creatures, and burn opponents. But actually, its first mode is useful when targeting your opponents too. Why would you want to refresh your opponent’s hand? Well, you generally don’t unless you have Narset, Parter of Veils on the battlefield.
Narset, Parter of Veils
If you have Narset in play and use Collective Defiance to make your discard and draw a new hand, Narset will restrict your opponent to only drawing one card. You can use this synergy to potentially strip your opponent’s hand away.
Izzet Control – Pioneer
Together, Narset and Collective Defiance are played in Izzet Control. This deck has fantastic card-draw outlets in the form of
Expressive Iteration
Expressive Iteration
Look at the top three cards of your library. Put one of them into your hand, put one of them on the bottom of your library, and exile one of them. You may play the exiled card this turn.
and
Treasure Cruise
Treasure Cruise
Delve (Each card you exile from your graveyard while casting this spell pays for {1}.)
Draw three cards.
. It clears the board with
Bonecrusher Giant
Bonecrusher Giant
Whenever this creature becomes the target of a spell, this creature deals 2 damage to that spell's controller.
,
Fiery Impulse
Fiery Impulse
Fiery Impulse deals 2 damage to target creature.
Spell mastery — If there are two or more instant and/or sorcery cards in your graveyard, Fiery Impulse deals 3 damage instead.
, and Collective Defiance. And it closes out the game with
Thing in the Ice
Thing in the Ice
Defender
This creature enters with four ice counters on it.
Whenever you cast an instant or sorcery spell, remove an ice counter from this creature. Then if it has no ice counters on it, transform it.
or
Niv-Mizzet, Parun
Niv-Mizzet, Parun
This spell can't be countered.
Flying
Whenever you draw a card, Niv-Mizzet deals 1 damage to any target.
Whenever a player casts an instant or sorcery spell, you draw a card.
.
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