You may have woken up today thinking we’d talk about the Standard banning. With Field of the Dead banned, what’s that mean for the format? Will Oko and Gilded Goose take over? Does Gruul have legs after winning the event? Well, here’s your answer: nothing has mattered less in the history of Magic.
Because alongside the B&R announcement, Wizards has rolled out a new format: Pioneer. Pioneer is meant to be nu-Modern, as it begins at Return to Ravnica, and extends through Throne of Eldraine. The five fetches that would be legal are banned, and we can assume the fetches won’t be legal ever. Other than that, that’s it: everything else is on the table, with the caveat from Aaron that they’ll be watching the MTGO results closely and making off-schedule ban announcements to keep the format from getting too degenerate. With all that said, let’s dive in!
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Travis Allen has been playing Magic: The Gathering since 1994, mostly in upstate New York. Ever since his first FNM he’s been trying to make playing Magic cheaper, and he first brought his perspective to MTGPrice in 2013. You can find his articles there weekly, as well as on the podcast MTG Fast Finance.
The Mythic Championship is this weekend, and after that, it’ll be a Players’ Tour, and from there, make your own joke. I’m old enough to sound crotchety when I complain about the names of things, or how the simple things aren’t so simple, or old rules…you get the idea.
What isn’t old, though, is that Modern Horizons is ready to pop. Buckle up.
First of all, an illustration of the overall pattern for Modern Horizons: Giver of Runes.
You can see that the price had some wild early movement and has now settled in nicely, being stable for about the last month.
The headliner for the set has a similar graph. Benjamin Franklin, meet Wrenn and Six.
There’s one motable card ticking upward the last couple of weeks, and the recent success of Whirza decks, sometimes with or without Paradoxical Outcome, shouldn’t make the uptick in the Lord High Artificer a surprise:
What you may or may not be thinking about is the rest of the set. Oh, sure, you needed some new Canopy-style lands for a deck, and you’ve got to get a couple of Prismatic Vista for different Commander decks, plus there’s only two Force of Negation in the main but you want two in the sideboard…
Modern Horizons has stopped being drafted, and Modern events aren’t center stage at the moment. This is the time to strike. I can respect if you don’t want to go deep on Arcum’s Astrolabe as eventually a $5 card, because you fear Pauper bans. Have you noticed the prevalence of snow lands? A couple of coverage teams have noted on streams that the decks people play no longer have a preference for which art they liked best, they are playing snow lands because they are strictly better. Every percentage point counts.
As wise, aware people, we can see that the combination of a semi-limited run plus falling out of favor plus higher initial price plus very high playability in multiple formats means a set rife with investment potential.
Let’s get one thing straight: If you play a lot of Modern, it’s likely time to get in and buy your playsets now before they cost you a lot more.
Urza, Lord High Artificer ($42 nonfoil/$142 foil)
The only fly in the ointment is that Urza is a fantastic candidate for reprinting as a Judge foil or other special prize. The card is straight-up busted, fantastic as a commander or in the 99, and is the key to unlocking some amazing turns in the new generation of decks. Thopter-Sword is good, but now Urza gives you infinite spins at the top of your deck, too? Some decks are going the Jeskai Ascendancy route, sometimes with Emry, Lurker of the Loch, but every flavor is delicious in its own way.
Urza is going to be $75 by the beginning of summer, and quite likely sooner if some version of this deck takes down another GP or SCG Open. Foils are a lock to grow and grow, even if a Judge wave hits I’d feel good in the long term. Yes, it’s a lot to buy into a card at $40, but you’re going to resell at a tidy profit within a year.
Mox Tantalite ($4/$24)
That’s a huge multiplier for a card that is only in 500 decks on EDHREC and has 65 foil copies available on TCG. Someone is buying these. Lots of someones. I’m not sure who, but there’s enough of these folks to give a rarely-played card a 6x foil multiplier. This happens with every mythic in the set, and a lot of the rares: foils are more expensive than I would have thought. Either the amount of foils is lower in Modern Horizons (we would have noticed by now) or the demand for the foils is higher across the board. I don’t know the cause but I’m trying to find out.
I do love to buy mythics at very low prices, and I’d understand if you wanted to get in now, but I’d advocate waiting a little bit longer. There’s no rush on a long-term spec like this. Many suspend cards have eventually had their time to shine, and I’m sure this Mox will too.
Echo of Eons ($5/$35)
At only 2000 listed decks, it’s not blowing up Commander yet but I think it’ll get there in Modern first. I like this a lot more than I do the Mox, and I bought a couple playsets when this was in the $8 range. I’m picking up four more at this price, and I’m going to be patient until the day someone breaks this card in half. It’s likely going to be when there’s a second ‘your opponents can’t draw extra cards’ effect like Narset, Parter of Veils, but it’s a question of when the card spikes, not if.
Dead of Winter ($1/$12)
This foil price is impressive as hell, considering that it’s not seeing much play yet in Whirza sideboards. If you’ve played Gates Ablaze in Standard or even limited, you know how good this effect can be, and it’s so cheap! A little attention will pop this over $5 briefly, and watching it decimate creature strategies will help that price stay.
Whenever you can get in at such a low point, patience is key. It’s not going to take off to $20 out of nowhere, but one day you’ll wake up and be able to see huge returns on very little invested.
Cliff (@WordOfCommander) has been writing for MTGPrice since 2013, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the official substitute teacher of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at a GP and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.
Last week we talked about how Alela was the top deck on EDHREC. Well, I checked today, and guess what happened?
Kenrith is creeping up and maybe we talk about that next week, but for this week, I noticed a few cards I wasn’t sure about last week are on the move and I’m going to talk about those before I get upset with myself.
Is it telling to anyone else that the Top 4 commanders right now are the 4 Brawl commanders? This format they’re trying to push has real consequences for EDH and Alela just might be good enough for Standard. No rants today, just value.
OK, 3 things about Kenrith, real fast.
The price of the card on the right probably has consequences for the price of the card on the left. There is basically only one good card that isn’t a shockland in the set so a bulk rare like Biomancer’s Familiar could have long-term upside. There are a ton of loose copies and not enough pressure to make this a fast process and then there’s the matter of the high reprint risk. I think there SHOULD BE reprint risk for Training Grounds because letting it hit $25 was pretty negligent on Wizards’ behalf, but they’ve been letting a lot of stuff get stupid expensive. Biomancer’s Familiar is an OK budget Training Grounds but both have upside, however limited.
Speaking of letting things get stupid expensive.
This card is stupid expensive. It’s very, very good but a lot of that price is scarcity. Speaking of which, you know what isn’t scarce?
This card is underpriced at a buck and I want basically every copy I can lay hands on. I don’t think its reprint risk is all that high per se and I think some of the $7 cards in Throne will tank leaving room for this card’s price to move up, but that paradigm may be shifting given the absence of MODO redemption as a factor that enforces box prices. Sets come out so often that box prices don’t go up because people only buy boxes for about 3 months before the next set full of insane cards that are a mistake and ruin multiple formats comes out. Modern Horizons made Modern, Legacy, Pauper and Vintage unfun – how long until they do another set like that? Will anyone care about Throne of Eldraine boxes in 4 months when their next mistake set comes out? Better just snag these while you can.
Also, there are 5 different versions (FIVE!) of Throne of Eldraine cards, so no one knows what to charge for foils given the extended art versions. It’s weird out here. I think Faeburrow Elder has applicability in multiple formats and this card is going to take off soon and everyone will act surprised.
Anyway, enough of Kenrith, here are some quick hits based on a second look at Alela.
TCG Player is the last to know here, but this card is selling out everywhere. It isn’t hard to see why – it’s old, it only has 2 printings (I don’t count that HIDEOUS Masterpiece) and it’s bonkers in Alela and in other go-wide decks that involve Blue. Opposition isn’t in a ton of Alela decks on EDHREC but there are more Alela decks with Opposition in them (25) than there were Yorvo or Linden decks built total, so that’s a thing. Opposition is gettable for the “old” price on a few sites like Strike Zone.
TCG Player prices are a little stickier because we scrape their market price which is based on last sold price. They haven’t started moving at the new price because there are still copies at the old price to buy up, and that will persist for a while because there are MP copies, people that charge like $2.50 for shipping and only have one copy of the card, foreign versions and all sorts of impediments to the card selling out completely. Since TCG Player is so tough to buy out and everyone uses their app, people will still think Opposition is $4 for a week or two after every other site lists it for $10 if that’s what happens. You have time, but not much.
And it’s not done, either. Check your bulk rares!
Every time they print a commander that makes small-ish tokens from now on, another deck needs this card. It’s tailing off a bit from its last spike but this is a $5 card if it’s not reprinted, and given that it’s a set-specific, Legendary artifact, I’m not sure how likely that is. Check out this metric while we’re looking at metrics.
There are only 2 non-land cards from Amonkhet, an insanely powerful set, that get more play per EDHREC than Throne. One of them is Pull from Tomorrow and the other is Anointed Procession. Throne doesn’t know it’s a $5 card yet, but it is.
As long as we’re doing that, check out cha boy, Revel in Riches.
As far as I am concerned, the underlying metrics are better and the reprint risk is lower for Revel in Riches compared to Throne of the God-Pharaoh and I LIKE Throne as a spec. Revel is rough to reprint in an EDH precon because it wins the game and they won’t put that in a precon. It’s no unreprintable, but it will be tough. I think Revel is a slam-dunk and I’m glad the price is down because it WILL go back up and now we can get them cheaper.
That’s all I have for you today. I think these Brawl precons will have a big impact on EDH and EDH prices and I think Arcane Signet was a huge mistake. Sell your Felwar Stones if anyone is still buying, I guess. Until next time!
Throne of Eldraine is set to hit the big time this coming weekend with the last paper Mythic Championship. Have I got that right? After this one, they switch back to “PTs,” which are now Player’s Tours? Or is it Players Tours? Heading into the weekend Golos is the deck to beat, with armies of 2/2 zombies seeming quite likely. There’s quite a purse available for anyone that can crack the Golos threat. If you’re Golos, this is all a lose/lose type of deal. Wizards moved the next B&R update up several weeks to later this month, in the second-least gracious wielding of list management since the “lol nm it’s banned” Felidar Sovereign update back in Kaladesh. RIP to all the people that bought Saheeli’s Monday afternoon when they thought the deck had dodged a ban.
The rest of this content is only visible to ProTrader members.
Travis Allen has been playing Magic: The Gathering since 1994, mostly in upstate New York. Ever since his first FNM he’s been trying to make playing Magic cheaper, and he first brought his perspective to MTGPrice in 2013. You can find his articles there weekly, as well as on the podcast MTG Fast Finance.
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