Top Trades: June 9 - June 16

Cleansing Wildfire | Illustrated by Mathias Kollros

Howdy, folks, and welcome back to Top Trades, the weekly series where we check in with the most popular cards from the previous week of trading here at Cardsphere. So, what cards have been making moves this time around? Let's take a look.

Honorable Mention - Stock Up

Number of Trades: 12 --- Number 0f Cards Traded: 15

Leading things off this week is a card we've seen before, and for good reason: Stock Up.

For , Stock Up is a sorcery that lets you look at the top five cards of your library, put two of them into your hand, and the rest on the bottom in any order. Three mana is a lot for a card selection spell by older standards, sure, but this card isn't just offering card selection: it's also offering card advantage, and that combination is a potent mix. Digging five cards deep and coming away with two of them is a ton of value, making Stock Up one of the best card draw spells that Wizards of the Coast has printed in years.

#5 - Tablet of Discovery

Number of Trades: 5 --- Number 0f Cards Traded: 7

Kicking off our main list for the week is Tablet of Discovery, a mana rock with a little extra utility stapled on.

Tablet of Discovery is an artifact for that, when it enters, mills a card and lets you play that card this turn. It also taps for , or it can tap for if that mana is being spent only to cast instant and sorcery spells.

That’s a pretty appealing package for red spellslinger decks. At its floor, this is a mana rock that helps smooth out a draw by giving you one more card to work with the turn it comes down. Once you get into decks built around chaining cantrips, burn spells, or bigger spell-based payoffs, the two-mana mode starts to look a lot more attractive.

#4 - Avenging Hunter

Number of Trades: 6 --- Number 0f Cards Traded: 9

Next up is an old Pauper favorite that still knows how to get the job done: Avenging Hunter.

For , Avenging Hunter is a 5/4 Dragon Ranger with trample. More importantly, when it enters the battlefield, you take the initiative.

That one line of text has done a lot of work over the years. In Pauper especially, initiative creatures have been format-defining at various points because they generate value immediately and threaten to snowball if the opponent can’t take the initiative back. Avenging Hunter also happens to come attached to a sizeable trampling body, which makes it pretty good at both pressuring life totals and defending the initiative once you have it.

#3 - Into the Flood Maw

Number of Trades: 6 --- Number 0f Cards Traded: 10

Coming in at number three is Into the Flood Maw, a deceptively flexible blue interaction spell out of Bloomburrow.

For , Into the Flood Maw is an instant with the option to gift a tapped Fish. (You may have an opponent create a tapped 1/1 blue Fish creature token before this spell's other effects.) At base rate, it returns target creature an opponent controls to its owner’s hand. If the gift was promised, instead it returns target nonland permanent an opponent controls to its owner’s hand.

One-mana bounce spells are always worth a look, and this one scales up nicely depending on what the game asks of you. Sometimes you just need to clear a blocker or buy a turn against an early threat; other times, handing over a tapped 1/1 Fish is a pretty small price to pay for bouncing a much more important noncreature permanent. Cheap, flexible interaction tends to move well, and this one has enough play to keep showing up in trades.

#2 - Cleansing Wildfire

Number of Trades: 6 --- Number 0f Cards Traded: 17

Just missing the top spot this week is Cleansing Wildfire, one of the cleaner little value spells red has picked up in recent years.

For , Cleansing Wildfire destroys target land. That land’s controller may search their library for a basic land card, put it onto the battlefield tapped, then shuffle. After that, you draw a card.

On paper, this reads mostly like interaction for nonbasic lands; in practice, this card has been useful in a bunch of different places. Sometimes it’s disruption against utility lands. Sometimes it’s a way to cash in your own tapped or, better yet, indestructible land for ramp while replacing itself. And in Pauper, of course, it has long been tied to decks looking to turn artifact lands into card-neutral fixing and ramp at the same time. Remember, you can always target a land with indestructible and have the rest of this spell resolve; the land you target just won't be destroyed.

#1 - Seeker of Skybreak

Number of Trades: 45 --- Number 0f Cards Traded: 85

Last but not least, our most traded card of the week by a completely absurd margin: Seeker of Skybreak.

For , Seeker of Skybreak is a 2/1 Elf with “: Untap target creature.” On its own, that’s old-school utility text. The reason it’s suddenly everywhere, though, is a newly discovered combo with Hawkeye's Bow, the upcoming one-mana Equipment that causes the equipped creature to deal 1 damage to each opponent whenever it becomes tapped.

Once Seeker of Skybreak is equipped with Hawkeye’s Bow, it can target itself with its own activated ability, tapping to untap itself immediately. Because becoming tapped triggers the Bow, that loop deals 1 damage to each opponent every time, which means Seeker turns into a two-card infinite damage engine. That’s the whole story here: a cheap, clean combo piece just got paired with a brand-new payoff, and suddenly an old card went from binder bulk to must-find pickup overnight.

Wrap Up

That does it for this week’s Top Trades. Between a familiar blue draw spell, a couple of Pauper staples, some cheap interaction, and one very busy little Elf, this week’s list covered a pretty wide range of what players are after right now. Thanks for reading, and be sure to check back next week to see what cards are making moves next.