Image courtesy of Scryfall.com

Brute Force: Data-Driven Insight into Art Reprint Frequency

MTG collectors and casual players alike treasure the moment when a familiar artwork pops up in a new set. It’s a reminder that the Multiverse isn’t just about new mechanics, but about the shared memory of a card that punched through a moment in a tournament or a draft. Today we zoom in on a single red instant—Brute Force—and use it as a case study in art reprint frequency within MTG’s modern era 🧙‍♂️🔥. This card’s journey through Time Spiral Remastered (TSR) gives us a window into how the art, rarity, and set history interact with price, collector interest, and deck-building practicality.

From the official data, Brute Force is a red instant with mana cost {R} and a straightforward yet punchy effect: Target creature gets +3/+3 until end of turn. It’s a one-mana payoff that rewards aggression and tempo, a staple in mono-red or red-beatdown decks. This particular print appears in Time Spiral Remastered, a Masters-era reprint set released to celebrate and consolidate classic MTG cards with updated borders and production polish. The card is listed as common, with both foil and non-foil finishes, and it is a bona fide reprint. The flavor text—“Blood, bone, and sinew are magnified, as is the rage that drives them. The brain, however, remains unchanged—a little bean, swinging by a strand in a cavernous, raving head.”—adds a dash of savage humor to the red-crazed vibe 🧨.

Let’s pull a few key data points and what they tend to imply for art reprint frequency and collector behavior:

• Mana cost and color: {R} (red). Red staples like Brute Force are frequent targets in reprint cycles because of their foundational role in aggro and tempo decks 🧙‍♂️.
• Rarity and reprint status: Common, with a confirmed reprint in Time Spiral Remastered. Masters sets often curate reprints of familiar power cards, creating a lattice of nostalgia while maintaining price discipline.
• Artwork and artist: Wayne Reynolds’s illustration remains a throughline across the TSR print, with the same iconic composition preserved in the TSR border treatment. This consistency reinforces a sense of identity even as the card travels across eras 🎨.
• Edition metadata: The TSR print belongs to the “Time Spiral Remastered” set, framed in the 2015 style. The presence of a high-res scan and border cropping signals attention to preserving the original feel while delivering modern print quality.
• : Prices on Scryfall show a non-foil price around USD 0.18 and USD 0.52 for foil, with EUR equivalents in the same neighborhood. These modest numbers reflect its reprint status and common rarity, rather than scarcity or demand spikes 💎.
• : An EDHREC rank of 4,408 and a Penny Rank around 3,382 indicate that while Brute Force isn’t a top-tier “must-have” Commander choice, it remains frequently encountered in casual red lists and budget builds. The card’s straightforward body-pump dynamic makes it a reliable, repeatable pick in many decks ⚔️.