Magic: The Gathering is fully into its crossover era, and while the Avatar: The Last Airbender set isn’t far away, Secret Lair has seen Wizards of the Coast truly cut loose.
That means we’re getting some truly bizarre synergies, including one for Thieving Varmint. A ‘mana dork’ for cards that aren’t yours, we’re not sure anyone fits the idea of pilfering better than Nathan Drake from the PlayStation Secret Lair drop.
Nathan Drake, Treasure Hunter is a three-cost card which has 3/2 base stats and First strike.
It also has the uncanny ability to spend mana of any color to activate abilities of permanents on your battlefield that you don’t own, and cast spells from other players. It’s particularly handy, then, that Nate can also take cards from your opponents’ libraries.
In a game of Commander, you could be throwing around 2, 3, or 4 spells per turn using those that aren’t yours, so long as you have the mana, and that’s where Thieving Varmint comes in.
Thanks to this new synergy, Thieving Varmint has jumped to sit around $9.73 market price, which is a massive jump from its previous average at $0.70-$0.90 only a few months ago (according to data from TCGPlayer).
Featuring in Outlaws of Thunder Junction’s Commander Decks, Thieving Varmint is a 2/1 with Deathtouch and lifelink for two-cost, which is pretty useful, but you can tap it and pay a life to add two mana of any one color to cast spells you don’t own.
Get a board state going early on with your own lands and Thieving Varmint, and you can be using other players’ spells against them with reckless abandon.
As a reminder, Nathan Drake, Treasure Hunter is only found in the PlayStation Secret Lair drop, hence why he’s almost $30 on his own on the secondary market.
Lloyd Coombes is an experienced freelancer in tech, gaming and fitness seen at Polygon, Eurogamer, Macworld, TechRadar and many more. He’s a big fan of Magic: The Gathering and other collectible card games, much to his wife’s dismay.
