Dosan, the Falling Leaf’s price has seen a huge leap following the release of MTG’s Modern Horizons 3 set. The reason for Dosan the Falling Leaf’s huge increase in price is its incredible synergy with Modern Horizons 3’s best Commander: Nadu, Winged Wisdom.
Dosan the Falling Leaf is a green mana Legendary Human Monk Creature that can be cast for 1GG. Its ability is a passive one, but is no less potent for it. While Dosan is on the field, players can only play spells during their own turns.
From an already-expensive total of $13.60, Dosan has roughly tripled in price and is currently sitting at a listed median price of $39.93 on TCGPlayer. Foil treatments are going for even more, at an average of $60.
Crucially, Dosan does not provide further combo material for Nadu. Instead, the card works so well with this Commander because it can remove opponents’ abilities to stop Nadu’s nigh-endless draw ability once it gets going.
Nadu takes Simic’s already formidable card-drawing abilities and pushes them into overdrive. The card has been making waves in the MTG community ever since being revealed, with many players citing it as an example of Modern Horizons 3’s blatant power creep.
While Horizons sets are well known for pushing MTG’s power level higher and higher, Nadu has taken the spotlight through being both a viable cEDH candidate and an absolute terror in Commander, Modern, and more.
Dosan, the Falling Leaf leans into the deck’s cEDH potential, often coming down and allowing a Nadu player to win the game on the very same turn.
Dosan’s effect isn’t unique in Magic: The Gathering. Cards like Grand Abolisher come with a similar ability but are limited in crucial ways.
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Dosan removes Instant spell interaction by keeping players locked to their own turns. Grand Abolisher on the other hand prevents new spells from being played and effects from being activated by other players, but only during its controller’s turn.
The only place that Dosan falls short compared to Grand Abolisher is preventing effects that are already on the field. Grand Abolisher shuts off activated effects from Creatures, Artifacts, and Enchantments, keeping your turn from being interrupted by cards that were already set up earlier in the game.
However, a crafty and careful Nadu player will have prepared for this in advance. With all threats on the board being recognizable at a glance, Dosan the Falling Leaf prevents any further interaction pieces in opponents’ hands from getting in the way of a game-ending Nadu combo.
Grand Abolisher came with a high price tag for many years, but its reprint in Outlaws of Thunder Junction’s The Big Score bonus sheet has helped to drive that price down. Now though, Dosan the Falling Leaf’s cost is rising to match – and even exceed, in the case of foil treatments – the rate that Grand Abolisher once boasted.
White mana is more broadly associated with control-based lockdown effects like this. However, Dosan utterly shutting down interaction from other players’ hands makes it a useful card in combo decks featuring green.
It speaks to the overwhelming strength of Nadu across multiple formats that the card has seen such a significant price spike so quickly. Dosan takes a deck that was already hugely difficult to stop once it builds up momentum and removes some of its opponents’ only remaining avenues to victory.