So last week was originally intended to be sort of a “Week 1 Winners and Losers” bit, along the lines of what I have done in the past. That piece didn’t go up due to scheduling complications courtesy of Hurricane Matthew- fast-forward to THIS week, where the Pro Tour is starting on my USUAL publishing day. What I have decided to do is include the parts of last week’s piece that are still relevant (updating where necessary), while including my PT expectations as well.

LOSER: CHANDRA, TORCH OF DEFIANCE: Chandra was almost inevitably going to be branded as a bust coming out of the gate. It is nearly impossible for a planeswalker to perform well enough to justify a $60 price tag in a new format, and Chandra’s intangibles (RR casting cost, the fact that she’s red at all) only made that harder. Of the mono red planeswalkers, Koth of the Hammer probably had the best career; all of the others were gadget roleplayers at best (Sarkhan Dragonspeaker falls somewhere in the middle). I’m not sure where Chandra’s home is, in the sense that she doesn’t seem to play any singular role exceptionally well. Ignoring Jace, the Mind Sculptor, all of the best planeswalkers can be slotted into fairly definitive roles- Liliana of the Veil is the Pox/grindy attrition planeswalker, Ajani Vengeant is the Zoo topper, Nahiri (the good one) fit perfectly into Modern Jeskai control strategies. If Chandra is able to have a dominant weekend at the Pro Tour (multiple 4x decks in the Top 8, including some camera time in the finals), then its possible that the price bounces back. More likely, however, is that Masterpieces continue to exert downward pressure on rares and mythics, and Chandra eventually bottoms out somewhere around $18-22. At this point, the only thing keeping her up is SCG not wanting to drop the price from 60 to 30 so quickly.

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