The 15 Most Valuable Fifth Dawn Cards

Combos aside, it's also great at controlling the board and getting in for chip damage in Commander decks that can produce a ton of tokens, like Atla Palani, Nest Tender, Darien, King of Kjeldor, or Gisa, the Hellraiser.

If you're a Magic: The Gathering boomer like me, you probably know that this is part of a four-card cycle of stations in 5DN that combine to deal infinite damage. But, which other stations made this list?

13. Steelshaper's Gift

Market Price: $9.09

There was a time when Gift was a staple in Hammertime, one of Modern's fastest and most broken decks in the early 2020s. In fact, it used to be a $30+ card. Feel old yet? Based on my research, it simply doesn't make the cut in today's Colossus Hammer-Sigarda's Aid-Stoneforge Mystic decks that have been severely powered down by the banning of Lurrus of the Dream-Den.

Still, one-mana tutors are powerful, so Gift lives on in Commander, seeing quite a bit of play in Equipment decks led by legends like Cloud, Ex-SOLDIER, Captain America, First Avenger, and Lightning, Army of One.

12. Plunge into Darkness

Market Price: $9.60

When you're not paying three life in the early game to find do a good Strategic Planning impression and find a land, this is essentially a Demonic Tutor. Okay, "essentially" is doing a lot of work here. You either need to pay the entwine cost and sacrifice a bunch of creatures to make up for the life loss, or find another way to gain  a bunch of life. Even then, you're likely exiling a sizable chunk of your deck. Hopefully that won't matter as you're plunging into darkness to find your combo win condition. Getting to pick up your deck and extract the best card makes this attractive for the spikiest cEDH decks.

11. Silent Arbiter

Market Price: $$11.09

This rule-changer of a card can do some pretty exciting things in Commander, like make it impossible to lose the monarchy or protect your board full of planeswalkers in a Commodore Guff deck. Variants are available, like Mirri, Weatherlight Duelist and Crawlspace, but Arbiter's ability to limit both attackers and blockers without jumping through extra hoops makes it a pretty unique tool in a wide range of decks from control and pillow fort to exalted Voltron builds with Rafiq of the Many.

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Commodore Guff

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Rafiq of the Many

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10. Staff of Domination

Market Price: $11.38

This has a lot of abilities, but I'm confident in saying that a huge most of Staff's value proposition comes from its untap ability because that's what lets you produce infinite mana with Elves like Priest of Titania, Elvish Archdruid, and Marwyn, the Nurturer. You can certainly go infinite with any creature that can produce more than four mana; Elves just do this better than the rest. The cool thing is that, once your mana pool is overflowing, this also gives you a card draw ability as an outlet.

Untapping creatures lets you do a lot more than just produce mana, by the way. Well, that's literally what you do with Yurlok of Scorch Thrash and Nyxbloom Ancient, except the mana kills your opponents when it empties from their pool. You can also make infinite tokens with Krenko, Mob Boss and Skirk Prospector. It needs a little help, but it's a fantastic card with the right pieces around it.

9. Paradise Mantle

Market Price: $11.59

Here's another source of infinite mana, this time with Pili-Pala and Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy:

You don't even have to produce excess mana to break Mantle: you can do that with Freed from the Real and creatures whose abilities trigger when they're tapped, like Kilo, Apogee Mind (netting you infinite proliferates) or Unctus, Grand Metatect (infinite draw triggers and loots). Given the cards I've name-dropped, it's easy to see how this would be a popular inclusion in combo-oriented Commander decks playing . It's in almost 80,000 EDHREC decks, and it's only been reprinted in the original Modern Masters, The List, and a Secret Lair, making it a bit of a scarce one, even as an uncommon.

8. Auriok Champion

Market Price: $11.95

So, back in 2021 when I was playing with the broken Lurrus Hammertime deck, I used to run copies of Auriok Champion in my sideboard to help against the Death's Shadow deck, where its protection from and mattered a lot. This li'l 1/1 was also a staple in the Chord of Calling Selesnya () decks looking to assemble Heliod, Sun-Crowned and Walking Ballista for the win.

I promise, I'm not talking about ancient Modern history just to reminisce about the old days, before the advent of Universes Beyond. I'm simply observing that this was once an important card in one of the most widely played formats in MTG, and the fact that it used to cost upwards of $60 backs that up. But, utility and value wax and wane in this game, and Champion is now more of an also-ran and a role-player in Commander lifegain decks. It's not a bad retirement plan, to be honest.

7. Beacon of Immortality

Market Price: $15.21

Oh, you thought this was supposed to target yourself for a nice life total buffer? Not with Sanguine Bond, Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose, Enduring Tenacity, and several variants in play, my young Padawan. Then, it's basically like blasting an opponent with the Death Star.

Once you do reduce one foe's life total to zero, you get to shuffle this into your deck and threaten to do it to the rest of the table, hopefully using tutors to expedite this process. It's a sweet interaction that makes for a valuable card, even if this has been reprinted in a core set, Tenth Edition.

6. Krark-Clan Ironworks

Market Price: $16.57

This is another combo card that absolutely terrorized Modern in the hands of a small clutch of combo enthusiasts. I'll be the first to admit that I had no idea how to win with the Ironworks deck, but smarter Spikes than I got this banned in 2019. Exiled from this format, not good enough for Legacy, and without Premodern to find shelter in, this poor sacrifice outlet is living out its days in over 100,000 Commander decks where it can help set up a frankly ridiculous range of loops and engines that you can browse through on Commander Spellbook. I don't really understand any of them, I just know that you need Myr Retriever and Scrap Trawler a lot of the time.

5. Grinding Station

Market Price: $18.87

We saw in my previous two lists how many combo pieces earned places among the top 15, and Fifth Dawn is no different. While Blasting Station worked well with tokens and outputted damage, this one manifests the concept of "grinding" as milling cards and turns that into infinite graveyard-based combos with Underworld Breach:

It's also broken Commander containment, seeing play in Modern even after Breach was banned there. Kethis, the Hidden Hand combo decks now seem to be its best 60-card home.

4. Vedalken Orrery

Market Price: $19.43

This would finish much higher on the list of cards that are difficult to pronounce, but fourth most valuable isn't bad for a once-unique effect that has since been repeated and improved upon by the likes of Leyline of Anticipation, Liberator, Urza's Battlethopter, and Tidal Barracuda.

It's true that time inexorably obsoletes whole swathes of cards thanks to new printings, but new sets can also breathe fresh life into forgotten staples. The Avatar: The Last Airbender set debuted the firebending mechanic, which ramps your mana, as long as you can cast stuff during combat. This made Jonathan Zucchetti's EDHREC list of best cards to pair with firebending, so check it out!

3. Crucible of Worlds

Market Price: $28.90

Speaking of cards that were the first of their kind, Crucible was the progenitor for a bunch of land recursion cards, from creature reincarnations like Ramunap Excavator and Perennial Behemoth to twists like Conduit of Worlds.

This redundancy, instead of relegating it to the dustbin of Magic: The Gathering history, arguable makes it more desirable as Commander decks that want to play one piece of land recursion probably want to play two, three, four, or more variants of that effect, to supercharge cards like Omnath, Locus of Creation and Aesi, Tyrant of Gyre Strait and to combo with Glacial Chasm and Azusa, Lost but Seeking.

2. Doubling Cube

Market Price: $34.89

This doesn't really do anything until you already have a ton of mana in your pool to double, which sounds win-more. Honestly, it probably is, but there's no denying Cube's potential to grant you an ungodly amount of raw resources, and it even combos with Capsize, as long as you have 17 mana to start with. Sounds doable, though I'm sure there are better ways to win the game from that spot.