Top 10 Most Expensive Big Score MTG Cards

The big score is the friends we made along the way.

In addition to the regular set cards printed in Outlaws of Thunder Junction, and in addition to the bonus sheet of Breaking News cards, we also got another bonus sheet, known as the “Big Score” cards. This consisted of 27 brand-new cards and three reprints, and some of the Big Score cards are extremely potent – with price tags to match. Today, we’re going to get across the 10 most expensive Big Score cards, and evaluate whether they’re actually worth the current asking price.

10. Generous Plunderer

Generous Plunderer

Outlaws of Thunder Junction: The Big Score, Mythic

Generous Plunderer is a weird card, requiring a very specific set of circumstances to do its best work. Of course, it’ll generally ding an EDH opponent for a couple of points of damage given how common mana rocks and the like are in Commander, quite aside from completely wrecking anyone playing an artifact-specific deck – but it’s still just a two-mana 2/2, even with menace, so its on-attack ability isn’t as reliably triggered as you might like. Still, it’s a great inclusion in decks that generate artifacts for opponents – Kibo, Uktabi Prince, Vazi, Keen Negotiator – and provides a steady stream of Treasures for you, so maybe it’s worth it as a $6 card.

9. Lost Jitte

Lost Jitte

Outlaws of Thunder Junction: The Big Score, Mythic

An obvious nod to the legendary (in more ways than one) Umezawa’s Jitte, Lost Jitte is a deceptively powerful piece of Equipment. Funnily enough, the fact that it’s an homage to one of the very best pieces of Equipment ever printed actually makes this card seem worse than it is – because the natural comparison is with Umezawa’s Jitte, a comparison that will see very few cards do well. Lost Jitte is about as cheap as can be – at one to cast and one to equip, and has a useful little suite of abilities. You can bank mana, set up a lethal attack or just grow the team – flexibility like this is always welcome. Is it worth around $8? As this card is a cheap, flexible and powerful piece of Equipment, I think you could do a lot worse.

8. Molten Duplication

Molten Duplication

Outlaws of Thunder Junction: The Big Score, Mythic

You can do some pretty silly things with Molten Duplication. You can play it in The Master, Multiplied, and end up with more copies of your commander than you’ll know what to do with. You can play it in Zada, Hedron Grinder, to make a one-time hasty copy of your entire board. You can play it in Etali, Primal Conqueror as a two-mana way to cast a round of free spells from everyone’s libraries, even if you don’t keep the 9/9. Given the unique effect of this card and its very cheap mana cost, I can see why this card is sitting at $8 or so – it remains to be seen if it’s a gimmick, however, or actually has staying power.

7. Ancient Cornucopia

Ancient Cornucopia

Outlaws of Thunder Junction: The Big Score, Mythic

Seasoned Commander players might be confused as to why a color-restricted mana rock with a marginal life gain ability is sitting at around $7 – until you remember that this card is legal in every format from Standard through to Vintage! Ancient Cornucopia is, believe it or not, seeing play in various multicolored decks in Standard, Pioneer and even Modern. Most notably, it’s being consistently included in Pioneer Niv to Light, which plays an overwhelming number of multicolor spells. Gaining an extra two life a turn is welcome in decks like this – especially when Ancient Cornucopia ramps you to five mana, the amount needed for Niv-Mizzet.

6. Pest Control

Pest Control

Outlaws of Thunder Junction: The Big Score, Mythic

Pest Control is one of the most efficient and effective sweepers printed in a long time – despite its effect being extremely narrow, the fact that it has cycling pushes it into the realm of effortless playability. Particularly in older formats, where decks are much more likely to have a lot of one-drop threats, Pest Control is extremely powerful – it has become a staple of multiple Legacy archetypes, like Reanimator and Orzhov Scam. This is and will remain a very popular card, and its roughly $7 price tag will only increase as time goes on (unless, of course, it is eventually reprinted).

5. Fomori Vault

Fomori Vault

Outlaws of Thunder Junction: The Big Score, Mythic

Any deck playing a large number of artifacts is going to want to play Fomori Vault, especially if the deck doesn’t have stringent color requirements and can afford to play colorless utility lands. A land that allows you to filter through your deck like this can be extremely powerful, and already Fomori Vault is played in various artifact-based Modern decks, like Hammer Time, Affinity and Thopter Combo. These decks may not be dominating Modern, but they’re made better thanks to cards like Fomori Vault – all the same, I do think $11 is a little high for a card like this, given its somewhat narrow application; it’s not as if you can throw it in just any deck.

4. Hostile Investigator

Hostile Investigator

Outlaws of Thunder Junction: The Big Score, Mythic

Hostile Investigator had a very quiet start, initially, being available for as little as a dollar or two before shooting up to its current $13.50 price. People finally found homes for this card, I guess, and now it sees play in multiple different decks across both Standard and Pioneer. In particular, the Pioneer Mono-Black Discard deck makes excellent use of Hostile Investigator, using it as another payoff card like Waste Not to reward you for all the discarding you’ll make your opponents do. As a four-mana 4/3 that will almost always get you a three-for-one, I can see why this card has become so popular.

3. Vaultborn Tyrant

Vaultborn Tyrant

Outlaws of Thunder Junction: The Big Score, Mythic

What a card. Vaultborn Tyrant is an exceptionally powerful card, well and truly worth the seven mana it costs to deploy it – but is it worth the $23 it costs to buy it? That is a lot of money, but this is a lot of card – Vaultborn Tyrant is perfect in any big green deck in EDH, like Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma, and is a slam-dunk inclusion in Dinosaur-themed decks as well. Despite being a powerful, sticky, value-laden threat, Vaultborn Tyrant’s price does not seem sustainable. Maybe I’m wrong on this, maybe the hype is real, but I suspect this price might settle down a little bit in the coming weeks.

2. Sword of Wealth and Power

Sword of Wealth and Power

Outlaws of Thunder Junction: The Big Score, Mythic

Now that the 10-card cycle of Swords of X and Y has been completed, offering protection from each of the color pairs, we have a new sword – Sword of Wealth and Power, offering protection from instants and sorceries instead (I can’t wait to see the sword that will offer protection from artifacts and enchantments). This sword is pretty sick, however, assuming it’s being played in a deck that can support its abilities – a free Reverberate is no joke, especially in a format with massive spells like Expropriate or Time Stretch. At roughly $26, Sword of Wealth and Power is the fourth-most expensive sword, behind Fire and Ice, Truth and Justice and Feast and Famine – and I think that’s a reasonable spot for it to be.

1. Simulacrum Synthesizer

Simulacrum Synthesizer

Outlaws of Thunder Junction: The Big Score, Mythic

Simulacrum Synthesizer comes in at a princely $32, due to the fact that it can be, currently, found in decks across every single major competitive constructed format, from Standard right through to Vintage. This sort of demand results in a massively inflated price, as Vintage players pick up copies for their Workshop decks, as Legacy players include it in Patchwork Stompy lists, all the way through to Standard players playing it in Azorius Artifacts. Simulacrum Synthesizer offers a powerful and repeatable effect that doesn’t require too much setup and has an affordable upfront cost of three mana – but it’s up to you to decide if its upfront dollar cost is worth it, as it doesn’t seem to be shifting from its $35 price tag.