Activated abilities on lands are nice, since
they don't take up a spell slot and can thus
give you more on-the-board options without
having to cast more spells. On the other hand,
they only work if you can leave that land
untapped, which means if you're still in the
process of curving out, you can't really use the
ability. That hurts a bit if the nature of the
ability is more reactive, like High Market's. If
your opponent has a kill spell, or just forces
you to chump block something, you can sack the
doomed creature for an extra life point. Morbid
triggers or graveyard recursion would help it,
but even then unless you're using this as the
sack outlet for another combo, all you're
getting is a more complicated Fountain of Youth,
and that doesn't win games. If my strategy
revolved around my creatures going to the
graveyard I'd gladly run one or two of these,
but one life point is almost never worth
sacrificing a creature unless you're desperate
to keep it out from under a Volition Reins or
something.
On the surface, this may not look like much of a
comparison to something like Miren, the Moaning
Well from Saviors of Kamigawa. The point of High
Market, though, has never been to gain life:
it's to have a way to repeatedly sacrifice
creatures that want to die that is itself very
hard to destroy or counter, and it does that
rather well. Back in the day of Mercadian
Masques, it provided an additional interaction
for cards like Nether Spirit and Grave Pact, and
even now it's arguably one of the best
combinations with the Kamigawa dragons as it
doesn't require any mana payment on top of their
high costs. Try it with Act of Treason.
Today's card of the day is High Market which is
a land that taps for one or taps to sacrifice a
creature to gain one life. Under the current
rulings this is only an okay source for a
sacrifice in response to removal or in the place
of other sacrifice options that can be
countered, cost mana, or can be more readily
removed. The small gain of life and difficulty
in repeatedly using this compared to other
options keeps it from being a standout choice.
Overall even with the benefits of it being a
land the loss of a colored mana drop or lack of
mana from it when using the effect combined with
minimal flexibility put this fairly low on the
list of cards to consider in a sacrifice deck or
as sidedeck material.
In a Limited format with this it isn't a bad
response to removal, but is not worth a first or
even early pick in Booster as it does little to
promote an improvement in your battlefield
presence. Even in Sealed this is kind of
mediocre as it doesn't help a multicolor build
much and reasons to sacrifice your own creature
shouldn't manifest often.
Welcome to the Pojo.com card of the day
section. This time we are looking at High Market
from the soon to be released From the Vault
Realms. High Market is a land that taps for a
generic mana. It also has the ability tap,
sacrifice a creature: gain 1 life.
I started playing shortly after the Mercadian
Masques set where High Market was first printed,
and I wish I had a chance to get an original all
those years ago. It would have been simply
amazing. While not the most overpowered card
ever, it was easily a favorite among many
players in that it could be used in token decks,
as well as several other deck types, to
sacrifice things and get life. These days,
Undying and Morbid decks built under Legacy
rules simply salivate at the fact that a High
Market is now easily accessible. Sacrifice
something to gain life, gain a bigger creature,
possibly dodge some removal with the Undying,
trigger some Morbid, all these things are made
easily possible.
Glad to see the High Market printed in this set,
it will be fun to see it circulate in some
Legacy decks again. Be sure to pick your own up
when the From the Vault releases this weekend!
