Last updated on April 18, 2025
Cecil, Dark Knight | Illustration by Josu Hernaiz
Remember that time the Warhammer 40k Tyranids teamed up with Tidus and the gang from Final Fantasy X to take down Sin and the Necrons? No? Well that's the type of non-canon mash-ups you get in a world full of Universes Beyond products. Oh, and this is about Magic: The Gathering, in case you've lost the plot.
While Tarkir: Dragonstorm‘s Commander precons have certainly done a number on card prices across the board, the latest mystery spike seems to be related almost entirely to cards from various Universes Beyond domains, namely Warhammer 40k and Final Fantasy.
Ravenous Tyranids on the Rise
The latest development comes from little-known Warhammer 40k card Tyrant Guard, a rock-solid counter-support card with some 2-for-1 potential thanks to ravenous. Nothing too crazy, but Heroic Intervention on a stick ain't nothing to sneeze at either. But what in the Warhammer happened to its price on April 17th?
Talk about a true zero-to-hero story. Tyrant Guard has been comfortably sitting around $1-2 for quite some time, and out of nowhere it spikes up to $20? Well, slow down for just a second and peek those numbers again. $20 is the listed median price, which accounts for all of the price points that storefronts are selling the card at on sites like TCGplayer. The market price tends to be the better estimation of a card's actual worth, though that usually updates overnight.
Hop over to TCGplayer or Card Kingdom and you'll see that the card is in fact listed at a reasonable market price of $2-3, but anything at that pricepoint is sold out, with anything in near mint condition listed around the $20 mark.
Dig deeper and you'll see that 61 copies of the card were sold on TCGplayer on Wednesday, April 16, almost all of which sold for between $2-3. That's what people in the business call a good ol' fashion buyout! Someone's specing hard on Tyrant Guard, but why?
It's Pronounced Tee-Dus
One of the more likely candidates leading to Tyrant Guard‘s sudden popularity is Tidus, Yuna's Guardian, one of the face commanders of an upcoming Final Fantasy Commander deck. Easy to see why that might be the case: Tidus is all about moving counters around and proliferating, and Tyrant's Guard‘s a great way to keep counter-heavy boards intact. Note that the tyranid's activated ability protects creatures with any kind of counter on them, not just +1/+1 counters.
There are three major culprits driving up a lot of prices right now: Deadpool, Trading Card, Zurgo Stormrender, and basically the entire Abzan Armor precon, but there seems to be little correlation between those shakers and the mover that is Tyrant Guard.
Option number three: A lone individual is putting a lot of faith in the community wanting Tyrant Guard some time soon, and just bought out as many as they could. Retailers see the buyout, recognize the sudden lack of supply in relation to the apparent “demand,” and jack the price up. Mr. Lone Individual sells at the high price, profits, retires, and lives a long happy life. That's how buyouts work, right?
At any rate, the unexpected 925% increase on Tyrant Guard is likely a flash in the pan being manipulated by a single actor, so best to wait and see where the market price ends up settling on this one.
But Wait, There's More!
There's actually another recent instance of this exact same phenomenon: A Final Fantasy preview causing a Warhammer card to spike in price. That was Sister Hospitaller, which started climbing the ranks about a month ago. The bulk bin Warhammer card shot up from about $1 to roughly $18 a pop in just a couple of days, though it's since settled back down to the $5-6 range.
The mystery's a bit less vague on this one though: Rather than being a potential buyout, there seems to be a direct correlation to Terra, Herald of Hope, another early reveal from Final Fantasy. Terra has a saboteur ability that reanimates creatures with power 3 or less, which lo and behold, Sister Hospitaller qualifies.
This lets you chain Terra into Hospitaller into anything from your graveyard. Toss in a sac outlet and another reanimate-on-ETB creature like Karmic Guide or Metamorphosis Fanatic and you've got an infinite chain going. Either way, this price spike was just as sudden as Tyrant Guard, but much more decipherable.
The UB Problem
Shadow Summoning | Illustration by Nereida
There's a lingering concern that arises from sudden price hikes like these Warhammer cards have been demonstrating: That is, the inability to reprint these cards in any reasonable manner. Wizards hasn't provided a good answer on how, if ever, WotC's going to reprint Universes Beyond cards. Some cards can just slot in where appropriate though;Shadow Summoning, originally from Lord of the Rings, was reprinted in the Mardu Surge precon, for example. But how do you get away with reprinting a card that's so Warhammer– or UB-coded?
One proposed solution has been to give them the Universes Within treatment (reprint them with in-universe flavor and reskinned names/art). This has happened with mini-sets like The Walking Dead, Street Fighter, and so on, but doing this with something as large as the Warhammer 40k precons seems impossible, and messy even if it were to happen.
That's as much a WotC problem as it is a player availability problem, but for now it's safe to say Warhammer‘s uniqueness and the fact that the cards are unlikely to see proper reprints means price spikes like this might continue happening. Whether it'll always be Final Fantasy‘s fault or not remains to be seen, but that set's bound to have some explosive potential for the singles market. Maybe this means Bahamut will be the one to finally give Sloppity Bilepiper its time in the spotlight.
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