The 15 Most Valuable Onslaught Cards

Arcanis the Omnipotent | Art by Justin Sweet 

Hey, everyone! Last time in this column, I brought you the 15 most valuable cards from the graveyard-themed set Judgment from Odyssey block. Today is all about Onslaught (ONS)! Onslaught was the large first set of its eponymous block, released in 2002 and preceding small sets Legion and Scourge. Like Odyssey's heavy emphasis on graveyards, ONS also focused on a theme that continues to be very popular today: creature types!

It may not have been the first set to care about typal synergies, but it certainly cared about them more deeply than any set that came before. In fact, the block fleshed out mechanical identities of many beloved creature types in Magic, including Zombies, Goblins, Soldiers, Elves, and more. Are any of these classic typal cards still valuable in 2026? Read on and find out!

15. Ravenous Baloth - 42,868 decks

Market Price: $10.85

The color green may be very capably represented by creature types like Elves (oldie but goodie), Dinosaurs (the new face that has taken Commander by storm), and Hydras (iconic, splashy, and mathematical), but in 2002 Beasts were all the rage. In modern MTG, while a 4/4 for four mana with slight upside could be decent in Draft, Ravenous Baloth's stats are pretty pathetic in Constructed. Good thing, then, that Premodern exists, so that the Baloth can run free and finish off games in Golgari () "Rock" (read: grindy midrange) decks.

14. Enchantress's Presence - 42,868 decks

Market Price: $11.02

Unlike the green card before it, Presence is widely played in enchantment-focused Commander decks alongside redundant effects like Sythis, Harvest's Hand, Setessan Champion, Eidolon of Blossoms, and many more. You generally want as many of those cards as possible to get your engine going, and being an enchantment also makes this harder to remove. Commander play can be enough for an older card to retain value, but there is also a Selesyna Enchantress Premodern list lurking around decklist dump websites.

13. False Cure - 42,868 decks

Market Price: $11.60

This is a devastating counter to one specific archetype: it turns a lifegain deck's win condition into its worst nightmare. But does a hard-to-cast niche hate spell actually see play in 2026?  In Commander and on the kitchen table, you can make an opponent lose the game, as long as you have nine mana available:

False Cure has also seen a smattering of Premodern play, but I think it's primarily prized for its scarcity: it's never been reprinted.

12. Rotlung Reanimator - 42,868 decks

Market Price: $12.84

It had me in the first half, I'm not gonna lie. A Zombie that cares about Clerics but that produces more Zombies is a bit of a weird one as designs go, but it's still a powerful card and one you can build a combo around:

You'll see Reanimator in a few Cleric-oriented Commander decks, too. This is another member of the Never Been Reprinted Club (NBRC), so be prepared to cough up some coin before it powers up your Orah, Skyclave Hierophant or Taborax, Hope's Demise decks.

11. Wheel and Deal - 42,868 decks

Market Price: $13.24

A Wheel of Fortune effect for everyone at the table but you sounds pretty iffy because you'll often put your opponents up cards. The best deal you can get here is in a Commander deck that punishes opponents for drawing cards. Nekusar, the Mindrazer and Xyris, the Writhing Storm do just that and are among the most popular options on EDHREC. Its niche playability and membership in the NBRC double up to ensure Wheel and Deal hovers above 10 bucks.

10. Cover of Darkness - 42,868 decks

Market Price: $13.75

I just mentioned this card in my column on EDHREC about the most played Commander cards with ninjutsu. Cover of Darkness is a great option in kindred decks like Ninjas and Assassins, which often rely on creatures going unblocked or dealing combat damage to advance your gameplan. Even Vampires, Rats, and Nightmares lists often play the card as a way to gain a big advantage in combat. Other options to add a little redundancy to these types of decks include Levitation and Intimidation.

9. Chain of Vapor - 45,201 decks

Market Price: $14.52

A deceptively powerful defensive tool, Chain is so much better than both an Unsummon, which only targets creatures, or, say, an Into the Roil, that hits all nonland permanents but costs two mana. For years, this has been an important card in Eternal combo decks that need a cheap answer to permanent-based hate cards, like Deafening Silence or Grafdigger's Cage. You can also use it to generate additional storm count and even mana by bouncing your own stuff and taking advantage of making copies, lands be damned!

8. Steely Resolve - 46,239 decks, 358 as commander

Market Price: $15.74

I love cards that support kindred synergies without being picky about which creature types they support because you can play them in a wide range of decks. We saw several of these cards in recent booster set Lorwun Eclipsed; Harmonized Crescendo, Bloodline Bidding, and Chronicle of Victory come to mind.

In EDH, this "competes" with similar cards like Asceticism and Privileged Position, but decks that want one of these will often want redundancy to protect their creature investments.

7. Goblin Piledriver - 48,472 decks

Market Price: $22.01

This brings me back to early 2010s, watching Legacy tournament streams where Goblins gamers packing Aether Vial and Goblin Lackey would try and take on broken combo decks and tempo Delver of Secrets lists. What a time to be alive! These days, you still see Piledriver in kindred Commander decks led by the likes of Krenko, Mob Boss, Muxus, Goblin Grandee, and Wort, Boggart Auntie.

And while Goblins just doesn't pack the same heat in Legacy that it did 15 years ago, you can run the deck in Premodern with all the classics.

6. Aggravated Assault - 50,510 decks

Market Price: $26.15

This enchantment sees heavy play in Commander thanks to its involvement in many combos involving cards like The Reaver Cleaver, Sword of Feast and Famine, Ancient Copper Dragon, and more.

There's an entire strategy built around getting extra combat steps, which you can read more about in this recent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles-flavored article by DougY over on EDHREC.

5. Exalted Angel

Market Price: $26.26

It's been reprinted a lot, but Exalted Angel is a Premodern finisher in a card pool where creatures tend to be much worse than spells. Five toughness is massive, so unless opponents pack Swords to Plowshares, Vindicate, and/or sweepers, they might be in for a bad time in the late game.

4. Biorhythm

Market Price: $29.14

You don't often see unbannings, but we did in February 2026 with this enchantment's return to Commander, and how's this now-Game Changer been doing since then? Well, it's made its way into only about 2,000 decks, but that just tells me people might not know how to best build around it yet, or maybe it just hasn't been too long for the unbanning ripples to spread. Zoey Ley wrote about the card's potential impact on the format here.

3. Goblin Sharpshooter

Market Price: $29.79

While this list hasn't been too heavy on creatures (again, because spells used to be pretty powerful back then compared to critters), Goblins has two reps in the top 10. Sharpshooter absolutely earns its place here, as this little guy can take over a battlefield without too much effort. Alongside something that grants deathtouch, the 1/1 can destroy creatures at instant speed:

Even without the combo, there are enough utility creatures in Commander and Premodern that at least one copy is practically a must have in Goblins decks.

2. Mana Echoes

Market Price:$45.22

Echoes reads like a busted card, and in fact it is in Goblins decks:

Sliver Queen works as well, netting you infinite tokens and mana. Check out Echoes's Commander Spellbook page for more busted stuff. And, while it was reprinted in Double Masters, I'm going to grant it honorary membership to the NBRC. It wasn't a card on my radar when I was preparing to write this article, but I can see why it's such a prized piece of cardboard in 2026.

1. Fetchlands

Market Price:

Polluted Delta $92.40

Wooded Foothills $76.98

Flooded Strand $75.47

Bloodstained Mire $60.46

Windswept Heath $59.70

Lands are powerful, especially ones that enter the battlefield untapped and that can produce more than one color of mana. Thanks to their synergy with "shocklands" (Steam Vents and the rest), fetches can do that in formats from Vintage to Cube to Commander. They are simply staples of the game, hence their hefty price tags. The ONS printings are also some of the most gorgeous Magic: The Gathering cards in existence in my humble opinion.

There's a Lot to Love from This Set

Onslaught was a fantastic set full of iconic kindred payoffs, but the cards from here that I play with most are its gorgeous basic lands by Tony Szczudlo and Dan Frazier.

What's your favorite card from the set? Let us know, and stay tuned for my coverage of Legion and Scourge!