Top Trades: May 19 - May 26

Strike It Rich | Illustrated by Volkan Baǵa

Howdy, folks, and welcome to Top Trades, the weekly series where we check in with Cardsphere's most popular cards from the week prior. So, what have players been picking up this go around? Let's take a look.

Honorable Mention - The Unagi of Kyoshi Island

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

Leading things off this week is The Unagi of Kyoshi Island, a splashy blue threat from Avatar: The Last Airbender.

For , The Unagi of Kyoshi Island is a 5/5 legendary Serpent with flash and ward - Waterbend , meaning opponents have to pay an extra four mana to target it, although they can tap artifacts and creatures they control to pay each towards that cost. On top of that, whenever an opponent draws their second card each turn, you draw two cards.

A five-mana 5/5 with protection and flash is already pretty powerful just as a mid- to late-game threat, but the real payoff here is as a value engine in big-mana Commander decks, where it basically serves the role as two Faerie Masterminds at once, drawing two cards per trigger.

#5 - Ponder

Number of Trades: 5 --- Number of Cards Traded: 12

Starting off our main list is an old favorite: Ponder.

For , Ponder is a sorcery that lets you look at the top three cards of your library, put them back in any order, optionally shuffle, then draw a card. Simple, clean, and about as efficient as card selection gets, competing only with Brainstorm as among the true best-in-class cantrips out there.

There’s a reason this one never really goes away. Ponder is a staple in pretty much every format in which it's legal: Legacy, Vintage, Commander, etc. Players are always looking for cheap ways to smooth out early draws and find key pieces. One mana to fix your next few turns and replace a card has always been a great deal, and as such, Ponder remains one of the easiest blue pickups around.

#4 - Bloodstained Mire

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

Next up is a land that really needs no introduction: Bloodstained Mire.

Bloodstained Mire is a fetch land with “, Pay 1 life, Sacrifice this land: Search your library for a Swamp or Mountain card, put it onto the battlefield, then shuffle.” That means it can find basic lands, shock lands, surveil lands, and all sorts of other duals making up the mana bases of Magic's most competitive decks.

The flexibility offered by fetch lands remain some of the most important mana-fixing tools in the game. Unlike typical dual lands, which offer mana from among two different colors, the ability to search for one of two different land types opens up myriad combinations. Steam Vents, Godless Shrine, and Stomping Ground are all either Mountains or Swamps, demonstrating how this one land can grab potentially any color of mana out there.

#3 - Strike It Rich

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

Coming in at number three is Strike It Rich, a cheap red spell that does a lot more than it first appears to.

For , Strike It Rich is a sorcery that creates a Treasure token. It also has flashback for , letting you cast it again from your graveyard for a second Treasure later on. That package has made it a useful role-player for years now. One mana for a Treasure helps with early acceleration, artifact count, sacrifice synergies, and storm count all at once, while flashback means the card still has value later in the game. Whether players are building around Treasures, looking for cheap setup pieces, or just wanting more flexible red ramp, Strike It Rich tends to slot in pretty naturally.

#2 - Emeritus of Ideation

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

Just missing the top spot this week is Emeritus of Ideation, one of the splashier cards out of Secrets of Strixhaven.

Emeritus of Ideation costs for a 5/5 Human Wizard with flying and ward . It enters prepared, and whenever it attacks, you may exile eight cards from your graveyard to make it prepared again. Its prepared spell is Ancestral Recall, an instant for that lets target player draw three cards.

That is a lot of text, but the appeal is pretty easy to see. A five-mana evasive body with ward is already respectable, and stapling repeatable access to Ancestral Recall onto it is the sort of thing that gets Commander players interested immediately. Blue graveyard decks, spell-heavy lists, and slower value shells all have reason to take a look here. If you can keep feeding the graveyard, this card threatens to bury tables in an obscene amount of card advantage.

#1 - Withering Curse

Number of Trades: 8 --- Number of Cards Traded: 10

Last but not least, our most traded card of the week - also from Secrets of Strixhaven - is Withering Curse.

For , Withering Curse is a sorcery that gives all creatures -2/-2 until end of turn. If you gained life this turn, however, its infusion ability upgrades that effect and destroys all creatures instead.

That flexibility is what pushes this card over the top. At baseline, -2/-2 can clean up token boards, early game aggressors, and smaller utility creatures without much trouble. Once you turn on the life-gain clause, though, this becomes a full-on sweeper for just three mana. That's a pretty exciting rate, especially in Orzhov and Golgari shells where incidental life gain is not exactly difficult to come by.

Wrap Up

That does it for this week’s Top Trades. Between a classic cantrip, a staple fetch land, a few efficient value pieces, and a new sweeper with plenty of upside, this week’s Top Trades had a little bit of everything. Thanks for reading, and be sure to check back next week to see what cards are making moves next.