The 15 Most Valuable Dissension Cards

Rain of Gore | Art by Fred Hooper

Hey, everyone! I'm ready to wrap up my coverage of the most valuable cards from the original Ravnica block with Dissension. Will the three shocklands in this set do as well as the ones in Ravnica: City of Guilds and Guildpact did? Let's find out!

15. Sprouting Phytohydra

Market Price: $3.83

Happy to be here in 15th and only slightly ahead of Ghost Quarter is this member of the Never Been Reprinted Club (NBRC). The nonbasic land is in way more Commander decks, but this is pretty neat in Wayta, Trainer Prodigy or Kirri, Talented Sprout, so there's that! The problem is that jumping through hoops to trigger its pseudo-enrage ability gets you a measly 0/2, and that's after you've already invested five mana to drop this.

14. Cytoplast Manipulator

Market Price: $5.22

This would have been in the NBRC, were it not reprinted in the rather wordy bonus sheet set Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Source Material, with some absolutely hideous art, in my opinion. Its ability can be pretty hideous for opponents as well, if you run this in a counters deck that gives it more material to graft onto their stuff and that runs enough protection spells for you to not get blown out. You could manipulate opposing creatures in other ways, like distributing counters with The Wise Mothman or Experiment Kraj. Or, bust this out when you know you're playing against that one person who loves Hardened Scales.

13. Protean Hulk

Market Price: $5.62

I'm getting along in years, but I haven't been playing Magic: The Gathering long enough to have seen the Flash Hulk combo terrorize Legacy in 2007. Allow me to quote an article from Magic: The Gathering's official website explaining how that combo actually worked:

The combo was tricky: You Flash in Protean Hulk, which dies. You fetch up Carrion Feeder and Karmic Guide. The Guide returns Protean Hulk, which you sacrifice to Carrion Feeder. That allows you to search up Kiki-Jiki. Copy Karmic Guide with your legendary Goblin, then while the ability is on the stack you sacrifice the Kiki-Jiki to your Carrion Feeder. When Kiki-Jiki's ability resolves, you get a copy of Karmic Guide, which conveniently returns your Kiki-Jiki from the graveyard. You repeat that process over and over again until you have sufficient Karmic Guides to attack your opponent for the entirety of their life total.

In Commander in 2026, you don't need Flash to win the game; you can do it in Golgari ():

Even though it's been reprinted several times, its iconic status as broken Eternal format combo card and its continued relevance in 100-card decks mean it holds value two decades later. After all, everybody is so obsessed with hitting their Protean targets these days!

12. Omnibian

Market Price: $5.84

Frogs got some love in Bloomburrow with several new commander options to augment Grolnok, the Omnivore and Tatsunari, Toad Rider. A rising pond lifts all amphibians, as they say, so this appreciated in value significantly in 2024.

Turning an opponent's best brawler into a 3/3 can make combat awkward, even if this doesn't strip targets of any abilities they have. Hey, I get it, when you're building around a less well-supported creature type, you tend to have to get creative with your creature suite.

11. Dovescape

Market Price: $6.05

This forms a pretty spicy combo alongside Guile, netting you infinite tokens:

That's not all you can do with it in Commander: pair it with Taigam, Ojutai Master to build a Bird engine, or let Bird synergies in Choco, Seeker of Paradise or Kastral, the Windcrested reward you for actually casting spells into Dovescape without a way to prevent them from fizzling. Buffing your Birds also mitigates a big downside of putting this into play: your opponents might prefer going wide than resolving their The Ten Rings.

10. Rain of Gore

Market Price: $6.97

Another NBRC member, this enchantment plays an important role as nasty sideboard technology for Burn decks in Modern when lifegain strategies are starting to creep up in numbers. It's certainly not a mainstay, as Burn decks tend to want to play instead of for efficient spells, like Lightning Helix and Boros Charm, but it's something to keep in your back pocket. It can also do some work as tricky tech in Commander decks led by Valgavoth, Harrower of Souls, though I doubt it's worth a slot in the 99 unless your local meta is teeming with Soul Wardens.

9. Ratcatcher

Market Price: $8.63

Its only reprint was in Masters 25 and it plays out like a Demonic Tutor that can kill opponents with evasion. Sure, getting there is clunky, expensive, and really only viable in dedicated Rat Commander decks, like those led by Marrow-Gnawer or Karumonix, the Rat King. But it'll often get you your mana's worth or more, and did I mention it's a flavor slam dunk?

8. Magewright's Stone

Market Price: $9.25

I did a double take when I saw that this was an uncommon, but then I realized that it probably wasn't dominating games in its Draft format without broken tap abilities to double. In Constructed, there definitely are ways to break this, like using it to untap creatures that produce multiple pips of mana. Over on EDHREC, Arnaud Gompertz featured this and other untappers alongside Rosheen Meanderer and big X spells like Crackle with Power when he shared creative takes on Gruul Commander decks.

7. Bronze Bombshell

Market Price: $11.53

What is this, the annual meeting of the NBRC, Ravnica Chapter? The Bombshell has hardly exploded onto the Commander scene, though it is fun in Donate-themed or Group Hug/Slug decks, like Zedruu the Greathearted and Blim, Comedic Genius. It's actively great in The Beamtown Bullies, where its instant sacrifice clause means it's always available to pick up and goad on an opponent's side.

6. War's Toll

Market Price: $12.58

This basically makes your opponents choose between using up all their mana on their turn or holding it up for one big instant or spell with flash. It also stops favorable attacks that aren't full swings. That's a lot of words to mean that control decks will have an annoying time with this in play. It's better when you're using it in concert with something that punishes opponents for playing into Toll, like Yurlok of Scorch Thrash reintroducing the mana burn rule — though they don't have to add mana when their lands are tapped — or Kratos, God of War punishing them for choosing not to enter combat.

5. Psychic Possession

Market Price: $13.22

This is like when pairs are given a school assignment and one person does all the work. As EDHREC's DougY explained when he named this one of the best "opponent draw" triggers in Commander, you can usually rely on someone at the table trying to overachieve when it comes to drawing cards. And, if you want to contribute to the project and even get extra credit, you can also give them a Wedding Ring and both draw your decks!

4. Grand Arbiter Augustin IV

Market Price: $17.39

Speaking of overachievers, Augustin IV also made top 10 in the last vote on saltiest Commander cards and is also a Game Changer. Typical Azorius ()! If making games miserable for your opponents is your cup of tea, then you can build around him by jamming all sorts of stax effects into your 99, including Propaganda, Rhystic Study, and Smothering Tithe. At that point, you're really racking up the GCs and should be expecting tough matchups in Bracket 3 or higher.

3. Hallowed Fountain

Market Price: $18.00

Powerful decks like Augustin IV in Commander and Azorius Control in 60-card formats demand good mana, and this member of the "shockland" cycle provides exactly that. I would say that needing to pay 2 life points to get this into play untapped makes this slightly worse for control decks than for aggro ones, but even that downside is mitigated by the fact that you can fetch this with a Flooded Strand at the end of your opponent's turn tapped if you didn't need the mana.

2. Breeding Pool

Market Price: $18.14

In Limited, Simic () strategies often revolve around some combination of ramping and playing more than two colors. This theme has often overperformed in Constructed, too, with decks like Modern 4C Elementals running greedy manabases held together by the potent combo of fetch- and shocklands.

1. Blood Crypt

Market Price: $19.09

I'm going on a limb here and declaring that this is probably the shockland I've played the most in my Magic: The Gathering career, mostly because I am an absolute Pioneer fiend and have played more with Rakdos Sacrifice and Midrange lists than is competitively or medically advisable.

On a Megalopolis like Ravnica, Land is a Premium Resource

10 shocklands, 10 places on my last three most-valuable lists. That's a clean sweep for one of the best dual land cycles in Magic: The Gathering. That's not to say it hasn't been interested covering this block. It's been a sweet mix of familiar format staples and oddball NBRC members, with Dissension definitely leaning more towards the latter, in my view.

Now, we'll be back on Ravnica sometime soon, but first, winter is coming.... so stay tuned!