Top Trades: June 24-July 1

Vincent Valentine | Illustrated by Norikatsu Miyoshi

Howdy, folks! Welcome back to Top Trades, the weekly series where we check in with the most popular cards here at Cardsphere. So, what are players searching for? Let's take a look!

Honorable Mention - Cecil, Dark Knight

Number of Trades: 9 --- Number of Cards Traded: 12

Kicking things off is our honorable mention for the week, Cecil, Dark Knight.

For just , Cecil is a 2/3 legendary Human Knight with deathtouch and, whenever he deals damage, you lose that much life. But wait, there's more! After losing life to Cecil's trigger, if your life is less than or equal to half of your starting life total, you'll get to untap Cecil and transform him. On the back side, Cecil becomes Cecil, Redeemed Paladin, a 4/4 legendary Human Knight with lifelink and "Whenever Cecil attacks, other attacking creatures you control gain indestructible until end of turn." So, what to make of Cecil?

First off, this card is super aggressively costed. A one-mana 2/3 with deathtouch is still powerful, even by today's powercrept standards. Sure, you'll lose some life as you use the front side of Cecil, but anyone who's ever seen Death's Shadow will tell you that life loss is sometimes a good thing. Sure, the eventual upside isn't a 13/13, but a 4/4 that helps you recover all the self-inflicted damage and protects the rest of your team is a reward nonetheless.

#5 - Aerith Gainsborough

Number of Trades: 6 --- Number of Cards Traded: 6

Speaking of life gain, first up on our main list of Top Trades for the week is Aerith Gainsborough, a lifegain payoff with cross synergies for +1/+1 counter strategies.

For , Aerith Gainsborough is a legendary 2/2 Human Cleric with lifelink and two triggered abilities. The first, Aerith's immediate lifegain synergy, puts a +1/+1 counter on Aerith whenever you gain life. The second, the counter synergy, puts X +1/+1 counters on each legendary creature you control when Aerith dies, where X is the number of +1/+1 counters on Aerith.

Aerith does a little bit of everything that white likes to do in Commander. She gains life, scales as the game progresses, and places - not distributes - a potentially massive amount of +1/+1 counters across the legendary creatures you control. The fact that she has lifelink means that, even without any other lifegain in the deck, Aerith can already grow to be a threat in and of herself, exactly the kind of self-synergistic power that has come to dominate recent card designs.

#4 - Vincent Valentine

Number of Trades: 6 --- Number of Cards Traded: 7

Next up is another legendary creature with lifelink (well, at least on the back side) that gets +1/+1 counters as the game goes on: Vincent Valentine.

For , Vincent Valentine is a 2/2 legendary Assassin creature with "Whenever a creature an opponent controls dies, put a number of +1/+1 counters on Vincent Valentine equal to that creature's power." Additionally, whenever Vincent attacks, you may transform him. On the back side, Vincent Valentine becomes Galian Beast, a 3/2 legendary Werewolf Beast creature with trample, lifelink, and "When Galian Beast dies, return it to the battlefield tapped (front face up)."

All in all, Vincent is a bit of a weird one to evaluate: this creature quickly scales, provided you have a way of dealing with your opponents' creatures. The back side is easily achievable, with minimal cost to transform Vincent. However, it isn't particularly game-breaking either; lifelink and trample are great, but they're only as good as how big the base creature is. Vincent can get big, but that doesn't mean he will.

#3 - Midgar, City of Mako

Number of Trades: 7 --- Number of Cards Traded: 8

Coming up at the midpoint in our list for the week is Midgar, City of Mako, black's contribution to the Adventure Town cycle of rare lands from Final Fantasy.

First up, the land part. Like all of the Adventure Town cycle, Midgar enters tapped and can add one mana of its hallmark color, in this case black. Unique to Midgar, however, is the text of its Adventure component: the spell modality of this card, which allows you to cast a sorcery first and then play Midgar as a land from exile on a later turn. For Midgar, that Adventure is Reactor Raid, which costs and provides you with the opportunity to sacrifice an artifact or creature. If you do, you'll draw to cards.

Semi-effieicnt card draw stapled onto a colored-mana-producing land is something we rarely see in Magic, and that's because cards and mana are the two most precious resources in the game. Putting them together, no matter how inefficiently, isn't something to be taken lightly, and Midgar shows that. A tapped land always hurts, and three mana plus the requirement to sacrifice something isn't exactly great, but the flexibility to play at least one, if not both, is what takes this card up an order of magnitude.

#2 - Jidoor, Aristocratic Capital

Number of Trades: 8 --- Number of Cards Traded: 9

Next up is blue's Adventure Town: Jidoor, Aristocratic Capital.

Just like Midgar before it, Jidoor comes in tapped, although this time adding when you tap it later down the line. As for the Adventure, Jidoor brings with it Overture, a sorcery for which causes target opponent to mill half their library (rounded down).

In your average deck, Jidoor is a much worse card than Midgar. Few lists care about mill, which means that the average player looking at Jidoor just sees a worse Island. However, for the decks that do care about mill, Overture is often a game-winning spell. In Commander, for example, anything running Bruvac the Grandiloquent is immediately going to love this land. Those decks already run Traumatize and Maddening Cacophony, so one more mass-mill effect will easily be gobbled up with glee.

#1 - Genji Glove

Number of Trades: 9 --- Number of Cards Traded: 12

Last but not least, we come to our most traded card of the week, a Commander icon that can go just about anywhere: Genji Glove.

For , Genji Glove is an Equipment with equip that doesn't actually grant the equipped creature any abilities. Instead, Genji Glove brings with it a triggered ability all on its own: "Whenever equipped creature attacks, if it's the first combat phase of the turn, untap it. After this phase, there is an additional combat phase."

Extra combat phases have been a popular effect in Commander since the first time that text appeared. However, they've traditionally been a red-only effect, like World at War, Fury of the Horde, etc. Genji Glove may be one of the more expensive versions of this effect, but it's both consistent and universally available, two characteristics which serve as significant boons to its popularity across Commander. From mono-blue to colorless Eldrazi kindred, now any deck with a creature can have access to extra combats.

Wrap Up

It's been a few weeks since Final Fantasy released, and still the set is making waves across formats. This week, the focus was on Commander, where some of the set's sleeper hits have gradually begun to make names for themselves. Check back in next week to see which cards are taking the lead, and thanks for reading!