UNTAP WEEKLY

Welcome to another Untap Weekly.

Reality Fracture previews are nearly behind us, but the set has only started rearranging the market. One Commander decklist woke up an entire creature type, a missing reprint sent a Planeswalker staple flying, and Prerelease is now five days away.

The loudest lesson this week: the new card is not always the card that costs you money. Sometimes it is the forgotten mythic sitting three rows deep in an old binder.

Here’s what mattered this week.

Wizards revealed the complete Multiverse Reforged Commander deck, and it was not the straightforward Superfriends list many players expected. The deck mixes Polymorph effects, the Echoverse, and a new Sphinx commander that immediately sent brewers digging through old blue mythics.

The Ur-Sphinx is the spark. Its Eminence ability reduces the cost of Sphinx spells even from the command zone. When your Sphinxes attack, the table mills, and you can steal from the cards that hit the graveyard. That is enough payoff to turn a neglected creature type into this week’s hottest Commander build.

The market reaction was immediate. Cards with one old printing and very little supply disappeared before most players had even finished reading the decklist.

Why it matters:
this was not just another preview-day spike. It showed how quickly a single precon commander can expose thin inventory. If you plan to build The Ur-Sphinx, check your collection before buying into the first weekend of hype.

See the complete Multiverse Reforged decklist

Unesh reduces the cost of your Sphinxes and gives you a Fact or Fiction-style selection trigger whenever one enters. It is exactly what The Ur-Sphinx wants—and it had only one mythic printing in Hour of Devastation.

More than 220 near-mint sales followed the commander reveal, pushing Unesh from about $1.22 to nearly $20 in a day.

My take: great synergy, terrible entry point. This is scarcity meeting launch-week enthusiasm. Search your boxes, but do not chase a 1,500% spike unless the deck is going straight onto your table.

Track the Unesh move

Sphinx Ambassador connects in combat, searches an opponent’s library, and makes them guess which card you chose. If they miss, you steal it. The Ur-Sphinx supplies both a cost reduction and a second way to play the theft game.

The problem is supply: Magic 2010 is still its only printing. Near-mint listings climbed from just under $15 to about $50 after only a few dozen sales.

My take: this is the clearest sell-into-hype card of the week. It is fun, but seven mana, narrow demand and obvious reprint risk do not look like a stable $50 package.

See the Sphinx Ambassador spike

Reality Fracture’s Empower Jace mechanic and new Planeswalker commander Tam, the Possibility created natural demand for Ichormoon Gauntlet. Then Multiverse Reforged arrived without the expected reprint.

That combination pushed regular copies from an August low around $4.55 to nearly $25. The card gives every Planeswalker a proliferate ability and turns ten loyalty counters into an extra turn, so the demand is more than pure speculation.

My take: the strongest card of these three, but the easy money has already been made. A reprint can still cut through this price quickly.

Read the Ichormoon Gauntlet breakdown

This Friday is the first real test. Prerelease runs ahead of the set’s September 29 Arena launch and October 2 worldwide release.

The mechanic worth understanding before you sit down is Empower Jace. It creates a Jace token—or adds loyalty if you already control one—which means cards that look modest can build toward a real engine. Also watch for the set’s echoed pairs: alternate versions of familiar characters are intentionally packaged together so the contrast lands in the pack, not just in the lore.

One early warning for Limited: players have already found an infinite-mana interaction in the set. That does not mean every Prerelease will become a combo tournament, but it is another reason to read every permanent on the other side of the table.

Read the official Reality Fracture Prerelease guide

Five mono-color starter decks arrive beside Reality Fracture: Calling All Angels, Keen Engineering, Reign of Dragons, Tramplesaurus Rex and Wretched Ranks. They are built for newer Commander players, but the revealed lists contain enough real staples and needed reprints to interest established players too.

That is a much healthier kind of Commander product: a clear entry point that also puts more copies of useful cards into circulation.

See the official Foundations Commander decklists

Tam is a five-color home for the Planeswalker deck that Reality Fracture made possible.

She reduces the cost of your Planeswalker spells by one. More importantly, her activated ability can proliferate multiple times, based on the number of Planeswalker types you control. That turns scattered loyalty counters into ultimates far faster than most tables will expect.

The natural temptation is to fill the deck with every Planeswalker you own. The better build is tighter: prioritize walkers that protect Tam, create bodies, or produce immediate value, then add repeatable untap effects and cards that reward proliferation. Ichormoon Gauntlet is the obvious ceiling, but cards such as The Chain Veil, Oath of Teferi and Evolution Sage give the deck several ways to snowball.

Where we would play it: as the commander of a focused five-color Superfriends list, not as a generic good-stuff pile. Tam rewards variety, sequencing and a board that can survive one full turn around the table.

If the announced $29.99 MSRP holds near release, Tramplesaurus Rex looks like the cleanest sealed buy of the week.

The mono-green list is led by Ghalta, Primal Hunger and includes Commander staples such as Surrak and Goreclaw, Witch’s Clinic, Birds of Paradise, Beast Whisperer and Arachnogenesis. More importantly, it works as an actual deck out of the box: ramp, cast oversized creatures, and turn them sideways.

Why it made the cut: it is useful to a new player without feeling disposable to an experienced one. Just remember that current single-card totals are based on pre-reprint prices. Buy it because you want the deck and the cards—not because a spreadsheet says there is $150 inside.

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That’s the week.

Reality Fracture has now shown us its story, mechanics and Commander deck. On Friday, the cards finally have to perform without preview-season hype doing the work for them.

Before Prerelease, learn Empower Jace, check your old Sphinxes, and resist paying launch-week prices for a card that was sitting at a dollar three days ago.

Until next Sunday, keep chasing the shiny cardboard.

C. Savage
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