Blackbeard's SEC ($23-25 market) still outprices Ace's SEC ($12-13 market) on the base printing, though Ace's alternate art SEC ($62) commands more than Blackbeard's alt art (roughly $50)
It pairs perfectly with cheap artifacts like Ornithopter and Mishra's Bauble, making it a natural fit for any token-fueled Affinity strategy that wants to snowball board presence
(The copy becomes a token.) A resolving copy of a permanent spell becomes a token, so the token isn't "created." Effects that care about a token being created won't interact with a token that enters the battlefield from Mendicant Core's last ability
In the Duel Monsters era, it could be used to stall the game by creating more targets for your opponent to push through before they hit your life points
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It even has a somewhat clunky win condition, paying and sacrificing to provide a buff