Image courtesy of Scryfall.com
In the ever-turning wheel of MTG market dynamics, reprints are the great equalizers. They flood the supply at key moments, soothing spikes in price and occasionally dousing collector fever. When you pair that reality with the layered complexity of a Domain-themed legend like Bortuk Bonerattle—Dominaria United’s forgotten Troll Shaman—you get a revealing lens on how card prices swing in waves rather than in straight lines 🧙🔥💎. This uncommon gem, released in 2022, sits at a modest price point today, but its journey through future reprint cycles serves as a microcosm of how the market reads value, rarity, and playability across formats 🎲⚔️.
What this card brings to the table on a player's desk
Bortuk Bonerattle is a legendary creature — Troll Shaman — casting for 4 colorless and one black and one green mana (a total of six, or a six-mana commitment for serious domains). Its signature mechanic, Domain, isn’t just a flashy tag line; it’s a thoughtful nod to the land-type economy MTG players love to optimize. The enter-the-battlefield trigger says: if you cast it, choose a target creature card in your graveyard. Return that card to the battlefield if its mana value is less than or equal to the number of basic land types among lands you control. Otherwise, put it into your hand. In practical terms, that means your deck’s capacity to leverage basic land types—Forest, Plains, Island, Mountain, Swamp—can tilt this spell into a powerful recursive play or into a controlled, tempo-driven tutor for value when your mana base hasn’t lined up perfectly.
Colorwise, Bortuk sits squarely in black and green, a pairing that historically loves graveyard synergy and resilient permanents. In Commander circles, Domain is a familiar strategy—build your mana base with a broad spectrum of basics, count your land types, and you unlock a cascade of potential recursions. Even in more casual formats, the card rewards you for thinking through your land fetches, your land drops, and your late-game plan. The art by Wayne Reynolds captures the earthy, ragged wisdom of a Troll Shaman who’s seen kingdoms rise and fall, a reminder that magic in Dominaria United often wears a weathered cloak of domain and decay 🎨.
Reprints, waves, and the price reality
The MTG market moves in waves, and reprints are the tide that shifts shoreline values. When a card like Bortuk Bonerattle appears in a new printing, the visible effect is a broader distribution and greater accessibility, especially for nonfoil copies. The data snapshot for this particular card shows its current price living around a few pennies to a dime range in USD for nonfoil (and a touch higher for foil), with collector interest often anchored more strongly in EDH/Commander play than in Modern or Standard formats. This is characteristic of many Domain-based legends from mid-range sets: solid casual appeal, decent EDH value, but not the headline risk that ultra-rare chase mythics see during early print runs or surprise reprint announcements.
When you layer in the reality of a new reprint wave—whether a standard-set reprint, a secret lair variation, or a supplemental product drop—the most consistent impact is price normalization. Rarity matters, but so does format availability. An uncommon with a well-tuned EDH role can see its price drift downward as copies flood the market; that drift can stabilize once the immediate supply shock passes and demand settles into its long-term rhythm. For Bortuk, the Domain trigger remains the catchy hook, but the real demand engine is how many players still value graveyard recursion in B/G decks and how often this particular legend finds a home in those lists 🧙🔥.
Why reprints still matter for the broader market narrative
We tend to think of reprints as “lower prices” across the board, but the truth is more nuanced. Reprints primarily affect supply, but the price floor is curated by demand, format legality, and the card’s utility. In the case of Domain-domain hybrids like Bortuk, you’ll see these patterns emerge more clearly in the edges: long-tail EDH demand, synergy with fetch lands and land-type heavy decks, and a deliberate detraction of price volatility once the initial reprint wave settles. The small delta between nonfoil and foil prices also underscores the inflationary pressure that foil copies sometimes resist during the initial frenzy; foils tend to command a premium on initial printings, but in a steady state, foil premiums can compress when supply becomes easier to source in multiple printings.
“Reprints aren’t just about cheaper copies; they’re about a more durable, accessible game for everyone who loves to draft, brew, and swing with a clever Domain engine.”
For collectors and investors, the signal is more subtle than it looks: watch the set timing, the announcement cadence for new printings, and the evolving EDH meta. If a future wave teases a Domain-heavy or graveyard-centric theme, predictable pressure could push down prices of midrange Dragons and Trolls alike, including Bortuk. Conversely, a reprint that introduces new, asymmetrical effects or a completely different mechanic around land types could rekindle interest and lift nonfoil values back up. The market rewards players who read the room—whether you’re chasing a casual sweetspot or managing a bag of reserved-collection odds and ends 🧙🔥🎲.
How to balance your deck-building with price awareness
If you’re assembling a B/G EDH brew or a more budget-conscious cube slot, here are practical takeaways that tie pricing to playability:
- Evaluate your land base: A robust domain strategy benefits from a diversified set of basic land types. If your deck can reliably count five basic land types on board, Bortuk’s ability becomes more consistently potent.
- Weigh recursions vs straight value: The “return to battlefield” versus “hand” mode forces you to balance graveyard threats with hand-driven recursions. This dichotomy affects how often you fetch Bortuk in a given game, which in turn informs how often you’d consider purchasing copies during a price lull.
- Foil vs nonfoil dynamics: Foils often hold a sliver of premium through the early print run, but long-term price stability tends to align with demand in casual formats. If you treasure the aesthetic for your display shelf, a glossy foil might be worth the investment beyond pure gameplay value 💎.
- Stay alert to reprint signals: Watch for announcements around new sets that lean into domains, graveyards, or green-black commanders. Reprint waves often come in predictable patterns, and a lighthouse signal is usually a shared design space across multiple cards in a given block.
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