By: Travis Allen
@wizardbumpin

Don’t miss this week’s installment of the MTG Fast Finance podcast, an on-topic, no-nonsense tour through the week’s most important changes in the Magic economy. And if you enjoy playing Magic, make sure to visit https://scry.land to find PPTQs, SCG Opens, and more events on an interactive map with worldwide coverage. Find Magic near you today.

Boy, what a week in Magic, huh? Just as the Masters 25 spoilers wrap up and we all were taking an opportunity to complain about how underwhelming the set looks, we get a third of Dominaria dumped into our laps, immediately followed by Wizards verifying the authenticity. Then on top of that, a spicy meatball of a Modern Open this weekend in Dallas.

I’ll tell you this much, in my research for the article this week, I’m finding myself quite annoyed with Iconic Masters. Sure the set was unfocused and bland and severely overprinted. But it also included all sorts of odds and ends that I wasn’t speccing on, and generally you shouldn’t have been either, which are now completely dead as options. I woke up thinking about Serum Powder. IMA. Ponza won? I see a lot of Obstinate Baloths in SBs. IMA. Trinisphere? Ok well that wasn’t in IMA, but it was already bought out. Dang.

Insolent Neonate (Foil)

Price Today: $3
Possible Price: $10

Have I talked about this card before? Maybe. Probably. Regardless, it’s still worth keeping an eye on. Hollow One scored 9th and 14th in the Open and Classic, regardless. Each week I’m finding this deck in the top standings. I figured it would be a flash in the pan the first time (which is the healthy and correct attitude towards this stuff), but it’s showing up regularly now. Of course we could still see it fade into oblivion for sure, as it’s only been a few weeks, but at the same time, it’s not worth fully discounting yet.

Most of this deck is quite fresh. The spell package is a bit older (specifically Goblin Lore), which were the first cards targeted when this list hit the community. You’ve got Vengevine, which was $25 to begin with, so not a lot to work with there either. Other than that it’s mostly a fresh set of dudes. That means you’ll be unlikely to see major gains on most of the cards in the list.

Given that, you’ve got to look a little deeper. If it really gets popular, prices will rise. Where will they go? Well, Insolent Neonate is as closed to a locked four-of that you can get in a strategy like this. He does everything the deck wants to do, and he does it quickly. Even better, he does it in several other decks as well. Dredge won the Classic, and you know what it played four of? That’s right. One extremely insolent neonate.

As it’s from Shadows Over Innistrad, supply is higher than some of the other cards we look at each week. Still, there’s demand from a lot of sources, and they all want the full four copies. Even an SOI common can see its price taxed if we’re looking at multi-format foils. Heck, just look at Tireless Tracker these days.

Sword of the Meek

Price Today: $6
Possible Price: $20

Hiding out a little further down the standings is a Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas deck. We see these pop up every now and then, though none have stuck around long enough for anyone to really take notice. With Jace’s unbanning and the printing of Whir of Invention, have we moved into a new era of Tezzeret?

Whir of Invention of course is the Chord of Calling for Artifacts. Where this is especially useful is with Thopter Foundry and Sword of the Meek in the deck, a combo that used to be the scourge of Modern. Sword of the Meek was unbanned a year or so ago, and ultimately didn’t accomplish much. Modern was just a little too fast for the combo to be able to take over a game itself. Or perhaps the combo was strong enough, but the support wasn’t there for it? Hard to say at this point.

With Tezzeret in the news again, it’s worth looking over the list to see where opportunity lies. Tezzeret himself is hanging out at $20, and while I suspect success would push him to $40 quickly, that’s a big gamble to take for most. If you’re looking for some action though, it’s worth thinking about.

Anyways, Sword of the Meek is worth monitoring, as it it managed to dodge reprints in EMA and IMA and A25 and MMA and MM3 and the VMAs and whatever else. A single-printed Future Sight uncommon is definitely the type of thing that can jump hard with some provocation. Anyone remember $60 Mishra’s Baubles?

Serum Powder (Foil)

Price Today: $3
Possible Price: $10

Ok so I know I complained about IMA at the start of this post. We’re going to do an experiment though. If a here-to-fore unused card is printed in IMA and then suddenly gets popular, can the foils move?

On camera at 7-2 on Sunday morning players were treated to Serum Eldrazi. This is the deck that utilizes Eternal Scourge and Serum Powder to shoot for reasonable starting hands that also set up having 3/3s to cast for free out of your mulliganed hand. New players aren’t going to be confused by any of this at all. It was an especially rosy opener Sunday, when the pilot Powdered a Scourge, put a Gemstone Caverns into play for free, dropped an Eldrazi Temple, and then cast the Scourge on turn one. That sounds like the closest this deck gets to Magical Christmas Land, but who knows, maybe that’s not an uncommon opener.

In any case, this is an amusing deck built around the shell of the remarkably strong Oath of the Gatewatch Eldrazi. We know the core of the deck is solid. It’s really a question of whether this is better than the other Eldrazi variants. One advantage this list has at the moment is how much it’s going to infuriate Jund and UW control. Jund relies heavily on destroying every creature their opponents play, generating advantage with Bloodbraid Elf and Dark Confidant as it goes to eventually chip someone down. If the Eldrazi player can just keep casting Scourges from exile, and their Reality Smashers and Thought-Knot Seers also eat card advantage from Jund, perhaps it’s enough to turn the match in their favor? At the same time UW control is going to rely heavily on Path to Exile, which of course the Scourge is resistant to as well.

Is this deck the real deal? I’m not sure. Can foil IMA cards move? Also not sure. We should pay attention though, because this may be the first deck to give us an idea of how much muscle it takes to move an otherwise saturated product.

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 2012. You can find his articles there weekly, as well as on the podcast MTG Fast Finance.

By: Travis Allen
@wizardbumpin

Don’t miss this week’s installment of the MTG Fast Finance podcast, an on-topic, no-nonsense tour through the week’s most important changes in the Magic economy. And if you enjoy playing Magic, make sure to visit https://scry.land to find PPTQs, SCG Opens, and more events on an interactive map with worldwide coverage. Find Magic near you today.

While we got the MOCS this weekend, which is a Modern/Draft format, it’s important to remember that we can’t take too much away from it. It’s a small tournament, maybe 24 people, so the metagame gets wonky. This was evident in Bogles showing up as the second most-played deck in the room. This isn’t the type of strategy that professional players are typically inclined to select for major events, like a GP or a Pro Tour. It doesn’t give them enough space to make full use of their skill as a player, and the variance is likely to catch up with them over the course of sixteen rounds. However, in a room with so few other players, where everyone is an accomplished pro, things are a bit different. You’re playing fewer rounds, so it’s easier to get lucky. Everyone is a talented player, so you don’t necessarily have that edge over most of your opponents. And perhaps most importantly, if you’re able to peg the metagame, showing up with an otherwise odd deck that’s well positioned against the most common deck in the room is a huge advantage.

All of this means that just because there were so many Bogles at the event, it doesn’t mean you should think 20% of the Modern meta is going to turn into Bogles. There is value in the event as an indicator of the format though. Jund was the most popular deck, and that wouldn’t be the case if players didn’t think it was the most powerful strategy there.

Raging Ravine

Price Today: $25
Possible Price: $40

When Bloodbraid Elf and Jace were unbanned, there was a mini run on Celestial Colonnade. Players that wanted to play Jace knew they would need the land that has followed him through most constructed formats. People were hesitant to go too deep though, since Masters 25 was around the corner and a reprint would have sucked.

Once the full spoiler hit and the Worldwake manlands were confirmed absent, prices pushed harder on Colonnade, and non-foils are sitting around $60 today. Most importantly, copies are selling at that price point. Meanwhile, Raging Ravine got some attention as well, with the price having been hanging around at $10 in the middle of last month, and it’s at $25 today.

As wild as this is, I’m here to tell you I think it could keep going. Jund was a big part of the MOCS, and that’s no mistake. Whenever Bloodbraid has been legal, Jund has been a tier one strategy. Add in that it’s got a few new tools that weren’t there before, and it’s looking even better. And rare is the Jund deck without Raging Ravines. You’ll see four occasionally, while three copies is the most common quantity you’ll see show up.

Jund has already begun to show that it’s back in Modern and it’s a real contender. As players who haven’t been in the format since the last time Jund was legal begin to move into the deck, the few Raging Ravines left are going to continue to dry up. Ravine has no more stock out there than Colonnade — in fact, there are fewer copies, since it wasn’t a buy-a-box promo. Is $60 in Ravine’s future? Maybe. That’s a big jump. But $40? That doesn’t seem far fetched to me.

Kolaghan’s Command

Price Today: $20
Possible Price: $30

Remember thirty seconds ago when I said Jund has some new tools available to it? This is one of them. Kolaghan’s Command is on the very short list of best three drops in Modern to cascade into with BBE.

Shock? Well hey, that kills opposing BBEs, Dark Confidants, Oozes that haven’t eaten yet, Flameblade Adepts, Noble Hierarchs, you name it. Return a creature to your hand? Well how about your first BBE that got Bolted? Or a Confidant? Or a Tarmogoyf? Discard a card? I’m putting a 3/2 haste onto the battlefield, killing your guy, and making you discard a card. That’s a three-for-one for all you keeping track at home. And finally, artifact removal. More limited in its application, but when you need it, boy you’ll be glad you have it.

Kolaghan’s Command is always going to be valuable coming out of a Bloodbraid, even if you have to settle for discard and shock them. Since hey, if you’re casting BBE into Command and you haven’t had a creature die yet and they don’t have anything to shoot, the game sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?

We’re not getting any more anytime soon, and nobody is rushing out to crack Dragons of Tarkir at the moment. We could easily see Kommand add on another $10 (or more) as one of the best spells in Jund over the next few months.

Mwonvuli Acid-Moss

Price Today: $4
Possible Price: $10

This one is a bit stranger than the others, but it’s where we find ourselves.

RG Ponza, or for the uninformed, RG Land Destruction, is a strategy as old as time. Blow up some lands, attack with some dudes. A good time was had by all.

In the last few months the strategy has been slowly gaining ground after having been relegated to the tournament practice room on MTGO. It’s getting more and more popular though, and with a rise in Urza Land decks and Celestial Colonnade decks, hampering your opponent’s mana development is looking better than ever.

Most of the deck is familiar ground, or at least, familiar cards. Some Arbor Elves, Birds, Titans, Blood Moons, Stone Rains, etc. Everything here has been printed several times. Except for one particular spell that’s always a four-of — Mwonvuli Acid-Moss.

It’s probably not the first card you’d expect to see a strategy such as this play, as you might expect it to reach for Molten Rain or Fulminator Mage first. Apparently costing one extra isn’t an issue though, and fetching your own land as part of the deal means you get to go slam one of those Titans in your hand into play a little earlier — say, turn four.

Acid-Moss has a single printing from Time Spiral. It was a common, so there’s a fair supply out there, but we’re now 12 — yes, 12 — years past Time Spiral. Without another printing, and an existing casual demand for land destruction as it is, Acid-Moss copies have been draining for awhile. It was $2.5 to $3 a few weeks ago, and has recently started to push up towards $4 and $5. Where you can find them at $4 they’re likely a safe pickup. They’re not showing up in the Commander Anthology. They’re unlikely to show up in other products as well, since Wizards doesn’t care for land destruction much. It’s not to say it won’t, but it’s got to be low on their list of things to reprint, and it’s not something they’re eager to include anyways.

As this deck is going to have a smallish but dedicated fan base and is otherwise fairly inexpensive, Acid-Moss is positioned to keep riding the “hard to find common” train up towards $10. And if it shows up in pauper? Well then hey, the sky’s the limit.

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 2012. You can find his articles there weekly, as well as on the podcast MTG Fast Finance.

By: Travis Allen
@wizardbumpin

Don’t miss this week’s installment of the MTG Fast Finance podcast, an on-topic, no-nonsense tour through the week’s most important changes in the Magic economy. And if you enjoy playing Magic, make sure to visit https://scry.land to find PPTQs, SCG Opens, and more events on an interactive map with worldwide coverage. Find Magic near you today.

With a wide variety of decks in the top 8 and top 32 of GP Memphis, Standard is looking healthy for the first time in awhile. Players seem overall pleased and excited for the format after having spent nine of the last twelve months griping about it. Add in the newly spoiled Challenger decks which seek to put tier 2ish prebuilt lists into the hands of players for $30, and FNM is sounding even better.

Of course none of this matters for us, since the Standard markets are going to be dead until October. Challenger decks have laid to rest any chance you may have had to cash out on soon-to-rotate staples, and with the summer lull creeping ever closer, it’s just not where you want to be for now. We’ll start thinking about it again in July or August, when prices are at their low and we can start looking for Ixalan pickups heading into rotation. It will be the first Standard without Masterpieces since Battle for Zendikar three years ago, so hopefully card prices will have a little more bounce in them.

Flameblade Adept (Foil)

Price Today: $3
Possible Price: $7

Jace and Bloodbraid are making their presence felt in Modern. Neither has dominated the format yet, but they’re certainly both key cards doing a lot of work. They’re certain to shape what strategies are viable in the coming months, and it will be hard to play a midrange deck that doesn’t include one of these cards by June.

One strategy that’s always done just fine in spite of these cards is dredge, or dredge-like builds. They tend to be immune to the discard/removal grinding of Jund, since there’s usually a way to bring all your creatures back repeatedly from the graveyard, annihilating their card advantage. Jace decks also typically lack the tools to meaningfully interact, and all the Delays and Mana Leaks in the world won’t stop three Bloodghasts from coming back for the fifth time from a land drop.

Modern’s current dredge deck of choice is BR Hollow One. It looked a little flash-in-the-pany when it was first rolled out, but continued success has proven it’s the real deal. It has a few cards new to the Modern stage, and Flameblade Adept is one of them. Admittedly it’s not going to do a lot of work in other strategies, but here, it’s a one mana 1/2 that’s capable of swinging for five or six nearly unblockable damage on like, turn two.

A few foils are floating around out there in the $3 range, but not many. Expect these to drain fairly quickly, and new prices to settle in the $5 to $8 range. It’s only useful in one deck, but it’s a deck people enjoy, and is well positioned in this new meta. Keep an eye out for trade binders and LGS cases, and you may be able to make several bucks a copy.

Fulminator Mage

Price Today: $25
Possible Price: $40

Ah, Fulminator Mage. He and I go way back. Like, Shadowmoor back. This guy, this is the guy. He blows up lands. He attacks for two. He irritates the hell out of people trying to cast Wurmcoil Engine and Jace. What more could you want?

Fulminator Mage has been a part of Modern for a long while now. I don’t think he was heavily played right at the start of the format, but eventually he became a staple. Without digging through the history books, it was probably shortly after people put together a good Tron list.

Before long Fulminator Mage had climbed to a $40 price tag, which at the time was impressive, given that he was rarely played in main decks. Eventually we got the Modern Masters 2015 reprint, and his price took a dive. And while his presence in the format waxes and wanes, it’s certainly on the upswing right now. It’s hard to find a Bloodbraid deck that isn’t packing the angry smoke of cloud. He’s a top three cascade target, along with Liliana of the Veil and Kolaghan’s Command.

In the last four years, he’s jumped to $40 three times. We’re now almost three years since MM2, and there’s a real good reason to want Fulminators in Modern again. Without a Masters 25 reprint, he’s positioned to hit it again.

Thought-Knot Seer (Foil)

Price Today: $22
Possible Price: $40

Urza lands probably shouldn’t be in Modern. They are capable of making seven mana on turn three which is flatly unfair. Sure you’ve got to do some work to make it happen (sometimes), but even then it’s absurd. The only other way to produce that much mana on turn three in the format is with two to four cards on top of three lands. Just not fair guys.

That said, it’s legal, so people are going to use them to jam Eldrazi into each other’s faces until they’re not. (And even after, most likely.) One of the best Eldrazi to be jamming into someone’s face is Thought-Knot Seer. Take their Karn Liberated. Take their Bloodbraid Elf. Take their Jace. Take their Scapeshift. Take their hopes and dreams.

We’ve been barking up this tree for awhile, and supply is getting real low. Many major vendors are already charging $35 to $45. Cheaper copies are on TCG, but for how long? Eldrazi Tron is shaping up to be one of the strategies that can compete with Bloodbraid and Jace. That’s going to position these foils well over the coming months and years.

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 2012. You can find his articles there weekly, as well as on the podcast MTG Fast Finance.

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By: Travis Allen
@wizardbumpin

Don’t miss this week’s installment of the MTG Fast Finance podcast, an on-topic, no-nonsense tour through the week’s most important changes in the Magic economy. And if you enjoy playing Magic, make sure to visit https://scry.land to find PPTQs, SCG Opens, and more events on an interactive map with worldwide coverage. Find Magic near you today.

I’d love to use this past weekend’s results to dive into what a Jace-laden Modern looks like but alas, we’ll have to wait one more week. Wizards made the (wise) decision not to apply the B&R changes to the format a week before both a GP and SCG Open. It’s easy to be annoyed about that on our end, as an audience clamoring to see how this plays out, but when you consider how many people had already spent weeks preparing for those events, it wouldn’t have been terribly polite to upend the entire format five days before they showed up on site. It’s fine; it’s just one more week.

There was a Modern Challenge that fired this weekend with the new list in place, so I ran through that, along with what I’ve been seeing on Twitter and in various articles. Jace was clearly a strong, but not overpowering card in the Challenge, although that comes with a big asterisk. For one, Jace is currently the most expensive card on MODO. One wonders how many people would have liked to use him but were simply priced out. Additionally, looking at the other decks that did well, it’s not exactly heartening. Burn, Tron, and Dredge were many of the non-Jace lists. How’s that for a gauntlet?

Ancestral Vision

Price Today: $20
Possible Price: $40

If there’s one card that I’ve seen more of since the announcement than Jace itself, it’s probably Ancestral Vision. It would seem people really feel this card is going to do a lot of work alongside Jace.

I’d imagine you start with “they’re both good blue cards, so play them together.” AV helps you find your Jace (although probably a turn late). Jace shuffles AVs away in the late game when they’re dead draws. And add in that As Foretold looks to be having a moment with Jace, and the synergy really starts to pull together. You’ll see this primarily over in Taking Turns, which is one of the first decks that gleefully added Jace. You’ll also spot a Temur list over in the Modern Challenge that ran Jace, AV, and the completely overshadowed Bloodbraid Elf. Using Jace’s +0 to put an AV back on top of your deck and then casting BBE has got to leave you longing for a cigarette.

Don’t forget about that, by the way. This is the first time BBE and AV have been legal in Modern together. Shardless Sultai has been a pillar of Legacy for years at this point, and that deck hinges on the AV/Shardless Agent/Brainstorm interaction. Modern’s version is a tad clunkier, with AV/BBE/Jace, but even still, it’s a powerful engine. We may see the Jace/AV pairing take the back seat to the BBE/AV pairing.

AV was in Time Spiral, two minorly important Duel Deck printings, and most recently, Iconic Masters. Now don’t get me wrong, IMA is a mess. Boxes are available at like, 50% of MSRP or some nonsense. So long as AV is one of the only cards to do well from the set though, there still won’t be enough EV to make it worth cracking the boxes, which means AV can climb without the market getting flooded.

Copies are just about $20 right now. Between how eager people are to play Ancestral Vision with Jace, and the absurd synergy with Bloodbraif Elf, things are looking up for Vision. I’d keep an eye on this to hit $40 sometime this year.

Raging Ravine

Price Today: $12
Possible Price: $25

Let me get this out of the way now: a reprint scares me here. It’s the number one threat to this as a potential spec target. Masters 25 is the next opportunity to see Raging Ravine, alongside the rest of the Worldwake cycle. If we dodge A25, then Ravine is worth considering.

Jace aside, Bloodbraid’s return is a fairly big deal. She was one of the best creatures in Modern before she was banned, and did a lot to shore up Jund. Now that she’s back we’ll certainly see a rise in that strategy, and possibly others as well. The other place I’d expect to see BBE that we didn’t as much prior is Temur. Remember, last time BBE was around AV wasn’t legal. Now that it is, you’ve got compelling reasons to be both Jund and Temur. And maybe Naya too but that doesn’t have Liliana of AV so really why bother.

In any case, Bloodbraid is going to bring Raging Ravine back in a big way. Ravine has always been one of the two best manlands, and now that players have a reason to add both red and green to their creature decks, they’ll have a reason to add Ravine as well.

You can score copies around $12 right now. Without a reprint, prices are definitely going to climb towards $20. There’s going to be a lot more demand for Ravine than there has been the last few years.

Fulminator Mage

Price Today: $25
Possible Price: $40

Bloodbraid loves to cascade into three mana spells. Getting seven mana’s worth for your four mana payment feels like cheating. Popular targets include Liliana of the Veil and I imagine newcomer Kolaghan’s Command. Another popular choice from back in the day that may be even better now is Fulminator Mage.

Cascading into land destruction is a time honored tradition in Modern. Stone Rain, Molten Rain, Boom//Bust, take your pick. It’s always felt good. Fulminator ended up taking the lead as the most popular iteration of land destruction, and he’s possibly better positioned today than the last time BBE was legal.

For one, Tron is a major part of Modern these days. The deck has always been around for a long while, of course, but I don’t think it’s unfair to say that Tron is better today than basically any other time in Modern. Fulminator Mage lets you slow them down considerably, when powered out on turn two by a Hierarch or something similar. T2 Fulminator into T3 BBE into Fulminator is going to smash Tron’s ability to string together enough lands, but it applies some real pressure too.

Of course, this line isn’t good against only Tron. With Jace in the format as well, four mana is going to be more important now than it’s ever been. Keeping opponents off of four with Fulminator will either let you land your Jace first, or give you a window to kill them before they resolve it at all. You also get to nail Inkmoth Nexus’ out of Infect and Affinity, plus whatever other utility lands are floating around on any given day.

Fulminator Mage was a strong target for BBE years ago, and now that she’s back, the format looks even better for the one-two punch. Supply isn’t low or anything, but keep an eye on these. With only a Shadowmoor and MM2 printing, there’s not a lot of copies to come rushing into the market if prices begin to head north.

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 2012. You can find his articles there weekly, as well as on the podcast MTG Fast Finance.

 

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