I’m posting this Thursday night, a few hours before the PT coverage starts. I can’t stand the idea that by the time this would normally go live, I’d already be proven wrong or right. I want to give our ProTraders a little bit of a head start on some of the cards that are due for some movement, and the Modern Pro Tour is absolutely going to cause some movement.

Let’s get to the cards!

Rest in Peace ($7) and Leyline of the Void ($22-$24)

I think this is about to be a PT that requires powerful answers to the graveyard. Dredge, the boogeyman, is out there just waiting for a metagame that has devoted sideboard slots to things besides graveyard hate. Leyline has had a couple of bumps in its lifetime and the last printing was in 2010 as part of Magic 2011. Rest in Peace has also had a decent bump in its lifetime, and is still trickling down from the high of $10.

Both of these cards are excellent answers to degenerate graveyard strategies, depending on the colors being played. Leyline is one-sided and can be deployed early enough to stop the decks that want to lead off with Faithless Looting or some such. Rest in Peace has both an immediate effect and an ongoing one, it’s cheap at two mana, but it nukes your graveyard as well.

There’s other graveyard effects that people use, like Faerie Macabre, Nihil Spellbomb, Bojuka Bog or even in a couple of fringe decks, Stonecloaker.

Dredge (and for the purposes of the article, I’m including the Hollow One decks) is a deck that is a metagame decision, based on what people are going to be preparing for. Modern is a diverse enough format that you can’t prepare for everything, so you have to make some decisions. Do you include graveyard interaction? Artifact hate? Great cards for beating Burn decks? The mirror match? You can’t include everything, so you have to make those judgement calls, and if you go light on the answers because you think everyone else will, then the herd immunity wears off and we get a top 8 packed with Dredge.

I think that this weekend will prove to be a format where you really benefit from having something to deal with graveyard decks, maybe even maindeck ways to do so. RIP and Leyline each offer some growth potential, but even if Leyline grows to $30 or $35, that’s hard to gain value out of.

Rest in Peace can be had for under $7 if you buy playsets on eBay, and that’s extra tempting. If this is a big weekend for the graveyard, this will break $15 or even $20. Foils are already over that mark, and a foil RIP you pick up tonight at $20 might well be $50 by Monday morning. It’s only had the one printing and it’s a card you really ought to be playing in Commander too.

There’s more budget options out there, like Nihil Spellbomb or Bojuka Bog, and I like the latter a lot more because it’s got potential to be in some maindecks. Bog is already a popular Commander land, and it’s held at $1 even though it’s been in two Commander releases. Both of these, though commons with reprints, have foils in the $20 range, with the capability to spike pretty hard due to the limited number of foils in circulation.

Speaking of hate cards, let’s talk about Affinity.

Some of the most commonly played cards to help with Affinity decks are Hurkyl’s Recall, Kataki, War’s Wage, Vandalblast, and Stony Silence.

Each of these has had its own spike, and trailed off afterwards to current levels (about $3 for each except for Stony Silence at about $5) and are all prime targets. Which you play depends on your colors, and Recall especially is likely to buy you one, maybe two turns. Affinity decks, despite playing no cards with the actual Affinity mechanic, are more than capable of dumping their hands back onto the table after a reset.

Kataki has has a couple of reprintings, including the one-time-only Modern Event deck. It’s a nice answer as it can attack and block, but it can be killed. Most Affinity builds have Galvanic Blast, and a few can add Shrapnel Blast too. There is not a perfect answer, and that’s what gives the deck such power. Sideboarded effects can lead to sacrificing a board to Arcbound Ravager, then stack those counters onto Etched Champion, and dying in two hits.

I like Vandalblast especially, as it’s got some legs in Commander. If you’re a red deck in the 100-card format, you should be starting with one of these. Shattering Spree is good too, but that’s already over $14 and not a strong growth target because you need lots of red mana to make it work. Vandalblast will solve all problems for 4R, and it’ll be a lot easier for that card to double or triple up if there’s a strong showing on camera.

Leyline of Sanctity is the last card I want to bring up tonight, and it’s a doozy. It sees play in a wide variety of decks, from Ad Nauseam to Bogles, and even in the sideboards of decks that couldn’t cast it, like Titanshift. It’s only has two printings, and while it’s odd to say that Modern Masters 2015 isn’t recent…that is two and a half years ago. In addition, that set has some of the widest gaps I’ve seen in terms of the cards. You might crack a $70 Mox Opal or a 75-cent Comet Storm at the same rarity level. Ouch.

I do not like alternatives for the Leyline either. Runed Halo has already spiked hard and is twice the price. Witchbane Orb comes down too slowly. Don’t try to get cute. If you’ve got the courage, a playset of Leyline will cost you $85-$100, but I think it’s very likely going to go up to $40 each or even higher, depending on the camera time and the decks it stymies. 

Cliff is an avid Cuber and Commander player, and has a deep love for weird ways to play this game. His next project will be a light-up sign for attracting Cubers at GPs, so get his attention @wordofcommander on Twitter if you’ve got ideas or designs.

I love watching Magic content. I can devour an awful lot of content, especially with Cubes, unusual decks, and high-level play. YouTube is a fantastic resoucrce for me to learn about new innovations, to see how cards get played correctly, and other ways to move a beat ahead of the market.

We are living in a time where some people are capable of influencing card prices just based on ideas they have had and they don’t even need to win a tournament. The phenomenon of ‘net-decking’ is nowhere as evil now as it was before, and ignoring data is a flaw in your approach to the metagame.

What I want to look at today is a few ways that individuals online have swayed prices significantly. The decks played don’t even need to do well, because all it takes is the attention and the cards begin to spike.

Let’s look at some recent examples.

The Professor and Pauper

In case you weren’t aware, there’s a YouTube personality called The Professor, and he’s in charge of the Tolarian Community College. You might not think it’s important, but he’s got almost as many subscribers as the official Magic: the Gathering video page (295,000 to 315,000, if you want to know the specifics). The Professor has had a quest for a while now, one that’s recently bore fruit: To take the online format of commons-only called Pauper and translate it to the paper world.

GP Santa Clara was the first time it happened, and they drew a hair over 200 people. GP Indy had a similar experience, and Pauper events are going to be at most GPs going forward, since the same company is in charge of all the GP-level events.

As a result, a lot of people are taking up Pauper in paper events. Stores are starting to hold Pauper events, and with the growth in interest comes the growth in prices.

I freely admit that I don’t know enough about Pauper’s best decks or the metagame. There’s some awesome interactions, such as Grapeshot and Storm the Warrens being banned but Storm lives on with things like Thermo-Alchemist as the win condition. With that in mind, some prices are really fascinating.

Battle Screech is now $6, but it jumped from bulk to $4 back in January of 2016. It popped again recently when it was shifted to common in Vintage Masters online, because paper events all use that same banlist.

As a result of all this, pauper cards have gone absolutely mad. If the appeal of the format is that the cards are all common, and therefore cheap, there’s some $8 Ash Barrens that would like to have a word with you. Even if it’s cheap now, it won’t be for long.

It’s a format with an interesting (and non-rotating!) card pool, which means it’s likely to stay around. MTGO has been incubating the format for a while and that means it’s probably not going to get newly broken as a new pool of players takes it up, and event accessibility is probably still an issue for many stores, but I think it’s here to stay.

What this also means for us from a financial standpoint is that your bulk just got a bit more valuable. Every new set is going to offer a stack of new cards to add to the format, and new chances for old cards to become worth a lot more.

SaffronOlive and MTGGoldfish

With 125,000 subscribers, this is not one of the top channels in terms of numbers, but what this channel does offer is a continuous stream of oddball decks trying to play weird cards in new ways. Most of the time, that means a card or two gets highlighted, the deck does badly but has one or two really epic games, and we move on with our lives.

Occasionally, though, Seth (better known as SaffronOlive) hits upon a deck that is unexpectedly powerful, and a few cards can really take off. The most recent example of this is a B/R deck featuring Hollow One, Flameblade Adept, and a couple of commons that allow for mega-discarding: Burning Inquiry and Goblin Lore.

Those commons have gone from pure bulk to selling from $3 each. Buylists haven’t caught up yet, as stores have a lot of bulk to sell off and I’m not sure how many people are actually buying at this price, but the effect is real. This deck has had some staying power, putting up good results on MTGO Modern events, so these particular cards are not going to go down in price for a while yet.

To be clear, there are a lot of streamers out there, making a lot of content, but a lot of them aren’t trying new things every single week. LSV isn’t going to show his newest deck that will break the Pro Tour, he’s going to show you how to play a deck more effectively than you’ve been doing. Streamers using new cards in new ways offer a new avenue for us to gain value in our collections.

Cliff is an avid Cuber and Commander player, and has a deep love for weird ways to play this game. His next project will be a light-up sign for attracting Cubers at GPs, so get his attention @wordofcommander on Twitter if you’ve got ideas or designs.

Oh it’s prerelease weekend already?

We’re all looking forward to Dominiaria, 25th Masters is coming soon, and I just finished up a great weekend at GP Santa Clara.

Hopefully you’re opening cards and trading them away immediately. It’s always a safe bet, and advice I give every time.

Some cards are really picking up in price as we go forward and people pre-order for brewing, but with a Banned and Restricted announcement Monday (they’ve promised no Modern changes) lots of people are hesitating on brewing for Standard.

The exact numbers are fluctuating pretty wildly, given that this is weekend #1, but it’s worth noting that even at prerelease prices, only about a third of rares or mythics will get you your $4 back. If your store offers credit in lieu of prize packs, take it.

Let’s look at some prices, shall we?

Rekindling Phoenix (up to $12 from about $7): Yes, it looks like an owl. A terrifying one, but yeah, there it is. This seems like a good card in a range of decks, a four-power flyer that requires two removal spells to be dealt with permanently. Notable that you can play it, block with it, and it’ll be back and hasty the following turn.

What I can tell you is that the interest in this card is high, but I can’t pinpoint the deck that wants it. Is it another efficient and effective cog in the Temur Energy machine? Is it a new player in Ramunap Red? I don’t know, but exile removal is looking better and better with each day.

Something in this set has to be expensive, right? Usually that’s the planeswalkers, but our choices this time around are less-than-bombtastic. It’s been quite a while since we had a set that was so lacking in overall value, something I’ll dive into soon.

I think if you open a Phoenix this weekend, move it. We’ve had a lot of variations on Phoenixes over the years, and very few have made huge impacts. It’s true that this one comes back into play and doesn’t need to be recast, but it’s also the most fragile of the group too. It’ll need to see a fair amount of play to hold this price.

Dire Fleet Poisoner ($5 now, up from $2): Creatures are incredibly efficient at this point, and this is all sorts of stuff. It’s a sweet combat trick, giving deathtouch on top of +1/+1, but it’s also just a decent aggressive card as a 2/2 deathtouch. This just in: Blocking is for chumps?

What I like about this is that the Poisoner gets played as the full set. That always bodes well, but I need more results for this card before I’d invest. My biggest question is the one-drop that gets played the turn before. Right now, there’s some fun Pirates (and a fun payoff in Fiery Cannonade for being all-Pirates) but there’s a lack of aggressive Pirates until now. We are getting a 2/2 for R and a 2/1 attacker for B in this set, and that’s very intriguing. There’s a strong case to be made that if the most-played deck in standard wants to go Attune, Servant, Refiner, the new Pirate deck can shoot under that curve effectively.

For right now, though, I’d move this at the new price too. We’ve got a lot of Rivals to open and it would take a whole lot of play to make this a $10 rare.

Ravenous Chupacabra (up to $1): It’s no Fatal Push, but it’s got plenty of room to be a $2 or even $3 uncommon. It’s surprising how few creatures in all of Magic have this text without some sort of drawback, like non-black creatures or some such. I love it as a card, and I’d expect it to be a feature of the format until Ixalan block rotates in September 2019. I’m going to tell you to hold any that you open, and trade for them at $1. You won’t be able to sell these for $2 cash, but you’ll be able to trade them away at $2, and send them off to a buylist at $1. If that’s too small-time for you, that’s fine, but this is straightforward.

As an aside, if you played Standard during the time of Jace, the Mind Sculptor, you likely remember the ‘Jace test.’ Did your creature do something when it came into play, or did the other person bounce your creature and negate your whole turn? I worry Standard is now getting into the Chupacabra test, but we will see.

Ghalta, Primal Hunger (currently up to $5 from a low of $2.50): Green never passes the test, unfortunately. Ghalta here started out $10, slid down to $2.50 but has rebounded. A big beater, yes, but this dies to just about everything. Keep in mind that this is going to be the Game Day winner promo, and in case there was casual demand for this dinosaur, that value is about to be soaked up. Move any you open immediately.

Kumena, Tyrant of Orazca (Started out $10, up to $12.50): This lord does some cool things but the biggest strike against it is the costs you’re paying. Why am I tapping three Merfolk instead of attacking with them all? Do I have that many 1/1 hexproof tokens? It takes a lot of work for this legend to get you ahead on cards, and they don’t do much for the board state.

I have trouble seeing this as an automatic four-of in Standard Merfolk, and that’s the sort of play needed to keep this in the $12-$15 range. Do not buy. Sell if you get them.

Cliff is an avid Cuber and Commander player, and has a deep love for weird ways to play this game. His next project will be a light-up sign for attracting Cubers at GPs, so get his attention @wordofcommander on Twitter if you’ve got ideas or designs.