In the last sixteen months of unemployment, I’ve really learned that Magic doesn’t have to be expensive. There are a lot of great cards out there that are underplayed and come with cheap price tags.

This series began with an article that featured older, underused, and undervalued cards that would be good to rock in Modern decks. The highlight of that article was Foster, a card I think needs some extra time in the sun. (Which will happen more now that it has an appearance in a Commander (2013 Edition) deck) Another entry followed, and today sees another group of fifteen rares that are cheap and powerful. In these three articles, I have looked at forty-five cards for your use, and each has a very high price-to-power ratio since they cost so little to begin with.

Each of these rares clocks in at under $1 near mint on CoolStuffInc.com as of the writing of this article. So, let’s take a look!

Shard Phoenix – This flying creature brings several interesting powers to the table. First, it’s a flying blocker that can be reanimated when it dies to block again and again (or to swing again and again). It can be recurred after a Planar Cleansing or other form of removal. It can be forced through a counter wall—eventually, the control player will run out of counterspells. And let’s not forget that you can sacrifice it to deal 2 damage to creatures. That clears out a lot of utility creatures, from Oracle of Mul Daya to Fog Bank and from Wellwisher to Soul Warden. It can also add some damage in after combat to finish off some damaged bodies. It’s a strong tool to assist in a variety of situations.

Crypt of Agadeem – Although this is a little harder to set up than cards such as Cabal Coffers or even Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, it is also more reliable. Any deck with a lot of black creatures and a reliable way of stocking the graveyard qualifies. Cards like Buried Alive play quite well with the concept, and it works great with a lot of cards and concepts from the Innistrad world, from reprinted Mulch to Forbidden Alchemy. Your graveyard—and mana base—will thank you.

Collective Unconscious – Have you ever seen a green deck that could reliably have a lot of creatures in play game after game? Perhaps they were tokens or maybe a Priest of Titania/Gaea's Cradle–fueled Elf deck that vomited creatures all over the battlefield. We’ve often seen green decks rock a lot of creatures and then run out of juice. Well, suggest this card to those players. When an Elf player has a board of fun, he or she can just play this sorcery and draw a new hand o’ cards without slowing down.

Morningtide – Sure, it exiles your graveyard, too, but a simple 2-mana sorcery that can exile all graveyards is an elegant tool against a lot of multiplayer crap. If your metagame is rife with reanimation, the aforementioned Life from the Loam, flashback, and other tricks, this is one of the right tools for the job. It exiles every graveyard, so all players lose their cool stuff. And since you are playing this in your deck, you can keep your graveyard use/abuse to a minimum.

Void Maw – Speaking of exiling cards, consider Void Maw. It works really well in decks with mass removal (especially when other creatures are those removed, a la cards like Plague Wind or Hellfire). Exile all of the dying creatures with the Void Maw, and then you can keep them exiled or run them back to their controllers’ graveyards for a temporary pump for the Maw. I’ve seen a Maw go lethal multiple times with stocked stacks of exiled cards ready to blow opponents out of the water—doing its best Psychatog impression. The best part is that it stops tricks such as sacrificing creatures and bringing them back with Volrath's Stronghold or even via persist or undying.

Holistic Wisdom – This classic engine is another undervalued card at the multiplayer table. Take a look: Spend 2 mana and exile a card from your hand. Seems rough, right? But then, you return any card with a shared type from your graveyard to your hand for another use. I’ve seen this broken with anything from Time Warp effects to mass card-draw to burn to trading a cheap creature for that big beater later in the game. It’s flexible, and it can be the engine for a lot of different decks.

Trade Routes – There was a time when Trade Routes was the default card-draw-and-discard engine of choice for a lot of blue decks. That’s no longer the case. It has two real uses: It bounces a land for a mana or you can discard a land for a card for a mana. This gives you the ability to turn late land draws into something else (and if you draw another land, you can discard it, too). You can also bounce and then discard a land for 2 mana to find stuff. You can save lands from destruction, fill up your hand for various effects (I like Thoughts of Ruin in particular), create discard triggers for other cards, fill up your graveyard for anything from threshold to using those lands (a la Terravore or Harvest Wurm), and a lot more. It’s a low-powered card-filtering system, and, as such, it goes under the notice of most people (much like Compulsion does). Maybe it’s time for Trade Routes to get another round of play.

Trash for Treasure – This card looks like card disadvantage. You sacrifice an artifact to put one into play from the graveyard, and you spent your T4T as well. (So is Tinker, by the way, and no one would say that Tinker sucks.) In an artifact-heavy deck, this becomes a potent tool in both stages in the game. Early on, use this to bring out something truly dangerous long before it’d be normally ready. Later in the game, transfer that lesser-powered artifact you just drew into something awe-inspiring. There is some treasure in the trash pile; you just have to play this to find it.

I hope you found a card or three here that resonated with you. Perhaps you came across the missing piece to your Commander deck or a good adjunct to an existing strategy. Maybe you never knew about Pedantic Learning, forgot about Flickerform, or saw Seht's Tiger in a new light. Let me know what worked for you; I’d love to hear your stories!

See you next week,

Abe Sargent