Old-School Counterspell SPIKES 1045% After Success In Modern

Last updated on October 31, 2024

Disrupting Shoal | Illustration by Scott M. Fischer

PSA: This old-school counterspell has 10x'd in price from just under $0.90 to over $10 across all printings thanks to a new Modern deck that beats up on Mardu Energy! Check your bulk bin and cash in!

If you drafted Ultimate Masters or Betrayers of Kamigawa a bunch, you may want to check your Magic Ultimate Masters chaff. After years of being a $1 rare, in the last couple of weeks, Disrupting Shoal has spiked to well over $10, according to MTGStocks.

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Until last week, the regular Ultimate Masters print could still be found for lower prices – but at the time of writing, there were no copies of any Disrupting Shoal for sale on Card Kingdom, and the single cheapest copy you could buy on TCGPlayer (listed for around $7) was damaged.

This surge of interest is far from over, as Disrupting Shoal is a key component of one of Magic's hottest new trends.

Belchin' Blue Hot

After the Nadu ban in late August, it took Energy decks little time to claim around a third of the Modern Meta, and become the most dominant archetype in the format. But now there's a hot new contender for the title of Mayor of Moderntown: Landless Belcher.

A one-trick goblin, Charbelcher decks play as few lands as possible and try to one-shot opponents with Goblin Charbelcher. They have been a (mostly memeish) thing for years but started gaining competitive traction in Magic's Modern format about two months ago thanks to two factors: the banning of Nadu, Winged Wisdom, and the additional MDFC lands introduced by Modern Horizons 3.

For starters, these are lands only on their backside; thus, they don't count as lands for Goblin Charbelcher.

On the front, they are blue cards, which is crucial for Disrupting Shoal.

“It's not really that Disrupting Shoal got better,” notes redditor u/haze_from_deadlock when explaining the blue counterspell‘s success in Landless Charbelcher decks, “it's that the landless deck plays an unheard-of 20 3MV cards (most of which are actually lands like Sink into Stupor), but also 12 2MV cards.”

Force of Negation – which some Landless Belcher decks have as one-of in their sideboards – is only free during your opponent's turn.

“With Disrupting Shoal,” u/haze_from_deadlock explains, “you can counter the opponent's 3MV Force of Negation with all your own 3MVs.”

From Meme to Modern Menace

Landless Belcher decks have been putting up impressive numbers in Modern. According to MTGTop8, they represented around 4% of the Modern Meta in the last two months, but that percentage doubles to 8% if you only consider the last two weeks and climbs to a whopping 11% in the last five days.

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These numbers make Charbelcher the most popular combo deck in Modern by far, and it is tied for the second most popular Modern deck overall.

And this char-spewing goblin is not just popular – it's powerful.

Landless Belcher, piloted by Succulent, took first place in the MTGO Challenge 64 last Monday, with the build seen below:

That was not a fluke: the next day, CaboGrosso took down the Tuesday MTGO Challenge… while two other Belcher builds ended in 3rd and 4th place!

All current builds pack four copies of Disrupting Shoal, which tends to be the most expensive card save for Force of Negation.

Last but not least, to explain this explosive popularity, Charbelcher's cheap.

The whole deck costs about $380-$400. That's roughly the same as Ruby Storm decks, which are often signaled as the best budget option for competitive Modern. And it's less than half of what an average Modern deck will cost you on tabletop.

Landless Charbelcher seems like the real deal. If you happen to have some copies of Disrupting Shoal among your bulk rares, you may want to cash in for some nice bucks.

Or, you know, jump into Modern and join the belchin' action!