The 15 Most Valuable Saviors of Kamigawa Cards

Pithing Needle | Art by Pete Venters

Hey, everyone! Today I'm wrapping up my series on the original Kamigawa block with Saviors of Kamigawa. If you're a completionist like me, then you probably want to check out my lists on the most valuable cards from Champions of Kamigawa and Betrayers of Kamigawa before diving into today's set.

SOK is a small set notable for introducing "flip cards", like Akki Lavarunner, that might have been the first instance of Magic: The Gathering putting two cards on one piece of cardboard. Maybe the mechanic itself didn't make too much of a splash, but it certainly paved the way for much more popular mechanics, like double-faced cards and even Adventures!

15. Rune-Tail, Kitsune Ascendant

Market Price: $4.63

Given that Saviors of Kamigawa missed out on being Premodern-legal by about two years and an entire border design, you'd imagine that cards from this set would hold value due to some combination of being absolutely iconic, enjoying membership in the Never Been Reprinted Club (NBRC), seeing play in competitive Constructed formats, like Modern and Legacy, or boasting some role to play in Commander. Speaking of the latter, if you get this into play early enough, you can flip it immediately, which makes this less a poorly statted 2/2 and more a Mark of Asylum/Dolmen Gate mashup. That can be useful in aggressive or stax-style decks, so you'll see it nearly half of The Archimandrite and Eight-and-a-Half-Tails decks on EDHREC.com. It's also been reprinted once, in The List.

14. Mikokoro, Center of the Sea

Market Price: $5.72

Utility lands are awesome in Commander, whether they produce colored mana or not. Deck-builders are usually more interested in whether it comes into play untapped or not. This does, so that's already a good start, but Mikokoro's ability is also well-suited to group hug decks that like to spread extra resources around. Popular commanders for this archetype include Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis and Kwain, Itinerant Meddler.

Now, if you want to hurry games a long instead of hoping your opponents will kill each other instead of turning their attention to you, group slug decks, like Nekusar, the Mindrazer, can use global card draw effects like this and Wheel of Fortune variants to drop life totals low.

13. Reverence

Market Price: $6.23

I'm not really in awe of this one, even in a Commander pillow fort deck. I think there are simply much better variants out there that affect all creatures, like Ghostly Prison, Windborn Muse, and Archangel of Tithes, to name just three.

There is one deck where this can shine. In Kudo, King Among Bears, this makes all creatures without buffs to their base power ignore you in combat. Here, it's probably even better than the variants that allow creatures to attack if their controllers pay two mana. It's one to watch out for, given it's never been reprinted, even in The List.

12. Twincast

Market Price: $6.87

Today I learned that this wasn't printed for the first time in Magic 2010! Copy effects are pretty strong in Commander because they enable a ton of combos, including some as simple as generating infinite magecraft triggers for your Archmage Emeritus or Storm-Kiln Artist. Check out its Commander Spellbook entry for an exhaustive list!

I did notice that Reverberate sees play in four times the number of decks despite being the exact same card, only in a different color. If anything, this tells me that mono-red decks like copying stuff a lot more than mono-blue ones, though this could also be down to just having more and better options than . What do you think?

11. Ashes of the Fallen

Market Price: $7.10

I'm just not enough of a Johnny to call this anything but a do-nothing artifact, though it's one that has at least never been reprinted. Of course, Magic: The Gathering just isn't that simple, and one deck-builder's trash is another one's graveyard recursion engine. In fact, you can pair this with Horde of Notions, Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad, or Disa the Restless, and it also supercharges Patriarch's Bidding.

10. Freed from the Real

Market Price: $8.27

This is what I call it when I finally force myself to stop doomscrolling on Instagram. Others might call it a combo piece, and a great one at that. The most popular engine on Commander Spellbook uses Bloom Tender to get you infinite mana:

Notably, it's a common, which lets me shout out one of my favorite formats that I don't really get to write about in this column, because rares just tend to be more expensive than everything else. The Walls Combo deck has spent some time among that format's best lists, and it leverages this Aura's affinity (no, not the keyword) for creatures that can tap to produce multiple mana pips. Axebane Guardian and Overgrown Battlement happen to fit the bill, so the deck comes together nicely, and even features some redundancy in Galvanic Alchemist.

9. Michiko Konda, Truth Seeker

Market Price: $8.50

She sees niche play in Commander, most frequently in Queen Marchesa as part of a suite of cards that deter opponents from trying to tussle with you. Delney, Streetwise Lookout is also a fun home for Michiko, because making opponents sacrifice two permanents instead of one is actually annoying and difficult to ignore, unless everyone is going wide or it's late in the game.

8. Kami of the Crescent Moon

Market Price: $8.83

An interesting, albeit niche, choice for a group hug commander, Kami is nonetheless pretty popular in 99s of that archetype — and of its sluggish cousin, too. He recently made the cut in a deck tech featuring Kurohitsuki's very political take on King T'Challa. The list really highlights one of the keys to the group hug archetype. Sure, you're giving your opponents free stuff, but many of the commanders and cards you can play pay you off for your unselfishness anyway!

7. Pain's Reward

Market Price: $10.44

I wasn't too familiar with this, so when I read it, I didn't think the reward for this whole minigame would be a measly four cards. On the other hand, that does soften the blow when you end up entering a bidding war that an opponent wants to win more than you. But, then, are you really putting this in your deck if there's a risk you'll lose? Pair this with Platinum Angel or Platinum Emperion and raise that paddle as many times as you want! Otherwise, you may end up in an Uncut Gems situation.

6. Reki, the History of Kamigawa

Market Price: $15.48

I love a good card draw engine, especially when you can build your deck to all but ensure this draws multiple cards a turn. Jodah, the Unifier, Peter Parker, and Kethis, the Hidden Hand are just three of many legends-matters commanders that should seriously consider Reki. He's also a probationary member, or perhaps an independent observer, of the NBRC, because he's become more accessible thanks to The List and Secret Lair editions.

5. Sakashima the Impostor

Market Price: $17.34

Sakashima is useful in various Commander decks, from Sisay, Weatherlight Captain, where he's a Clone effect that can be tutored up, to Koma, Cosmos Serpent, whom you really want to be copying with variants that ignore the legend rule, like Irenicus's Vile Duplication, and Spark Double. In fact, there's a whole archetype built around playing a ton of Clones, and Sakashima features in around 18% of those lists on EDHREC.

He's also a pretty interesting, if underpowered for 2026, Cube card, as he gives you the enticing upside of getting to get more enters triggers off copying your opponent's best creature.

4. Choice of Damnations

Market Price: $18.54

Instead of being a Crux of Fate/Extinction Event modal card, this is a bit of a twist on punisher cards, like Browbeat, that gives your opponent a ridiculous amount of agency. They can just pick a number that is both lower than their remaining life total and close to the number of lands and/or threats they need to kill you with after you spent six mana on a card that didn't do anything. Of course, nothing is really, truly, completely unplayable in Magic: The Gathering. You could cast this when your opponent is at a low life total already or with Wound Reflection in play, forcing them to sacrifice more than they might be comfortable with. So, it's not unplayable, it's just inefficient.

Of course, a card doesn't have to be efficient to be valuable, and this has a lot else going for it anyway: it's a bona fide member of the NBRC, it's splashy and devastating at the right moment, and it's a card that Jennies love to try and make work.

3. Miren, the Moaning Well

Market Price: $20.18

Getting a sacrifice outlet on an untapped land is pretty good, but competition is stiff: High Market, Phyrexian Tower, and Grim Backwoods all compete with Miren for deck slots and recall. The lifegain angle is genuine upside, making this fit cozily into toughness-matters Commander decks, like Felothar the Steadfast and The Pride of Hull Clade.

2. Oboro, Palace in the Clouds

Market Price: $21.04

Lands that feature in infinite combos are always going to capture players' interest, because playing them increases your outs to win on the spot without costing you a spell slots. For Oboro, the ability to return it to your hand forms a formidable engine alongside Kodama of the East Tree and Tireless Provisioner:

It's right at home, then, in Landfall Commander decks, which are commonly headlined by powerful legends, like Aesi, Tyrant of Gyre Strait, Omnath, Locus of Creation, and Flubs, the Fool. But, it's probably most irreplaceable in Modern, where its ability gives Dimir () Mill decks some reach and staying power by setting up more Hedron Crab and Ruin Crab triggers.

1. Erayo, Soratami Ascendant

Market Price: $21.97

This is banned in Commander, and rightly so, in my opinion, because it rewards deck-builders for jumping through hoops to make games miserable for opponents. Yet, Erayo's value spiked before the release of Secrets of Strixhaven and hasn't come back down to earth since. A lot of that hype seems to be attributable to a Modern list that did well on Magic: The Gathering Online that utilized zero-cost artifacts, like Mox Amber and Mox Opal, to set up a lock as quickly as possible. I can't say if this strategy will stand the test of time, but until then, you're looking at the most valuable card in SOK.

When Nothing Remains....

And with that, we're spiriting ourselves away from the original Kamigawa block and looking forward to the much more urban Ravnica. But before we venture into that megalopolis, what's your favorite card from Saviors of Kamigawa, or from the first two sets? Let us know!