Watchtower

The Watchtower 09/28/20 – Back At It Again With The Competitive Formats

Following straight on from last week’s article, I’m back this week talking about more competitive Magic cards. Zendikar Rising has continued to make waves in Modern and Pioneer (as well as completely annihilating the Standard metagame, oops?), and if I’m honest there’s some pretty exciting stuff going on in those formats at the moment. Modern and Pioneer, that is, not Standard…

As well as a couple of new decks being formed, we’ve also seen a surprising number of cards from Zendikar Rising being adopted into current top tier decks, with impressive results for the first week or so of brewing. Last night’s Manatraders Modern tournament saw the ‘landless’ Undercity Informer combo deck make top 8 featuring a full suite of the new MDFC bolt lands, as well as Death’s Shadow making good use of the new Scourge of the Skyclaves and Agadeem’s Awakening.

Skyclave Apparition (EA Foil)

Price today: $10
Possible price: $25

As a Spirits player in both Modern and Pioneer, I was pretty excited when Skyclave Apparition first got previewed. A 2/2 flying Spirit for 3 mana that is really a better Oblivion Ring on a stick was definitely something to get hyped abo- hang on what? It doesn’t have flying?? But it’s a Spirit! And look at the art, it’s blatantly floating!

I, like many others, was caught out at first by this one, and a lot of people dismissed it as a roleplayer due to the lack of evasion. But if we dig a bit deeper into the card, I think it’s secretly really good. First off, we can exile any non-land, non-token permanent CMC 4 or less with it. Other than a couple of problematic things like Primeval Titan, that hits pretty much every relevant permanent in Modern and Pioneer, which is a great start. But the best bit is that your opponent never gets their thing back if Skyclave Apparition leaves play; they only get an Illusion token for their troubles. Imagine being able to exile a Tef3ri or Uro with this, and they’ll only be left with a textless 3/3 if they deal with your Spirit.

Outside of an actual Spirits deck, Skyclave Apparition has already popped up in multiple 5-0 Modern Death & Taxes lists, as well as featuring heavily in the sideboard of Humans decks. It’s a good replacement for Deputy of Detention, which although can sometimes get extra value by removing more than one permanent, is quite susceptible to removal (especially with all the Lightning Bolts flying around in Modern at the moment). Skyclave ensures they won’t get their Seasoned Pyromancer or Liliana back, which means you can generally run it out without much fear – and if you are playing it in a Spirits shell then you have things like Rattlechains and Drogskol Captain to protect it.

Enough of my fawning over the card though, let’s have a look at some real data. If we take a look at some EA foil rares with similar play patterns from older sets, we can easily see that $10 is just too cheap for this card. Torbran, Thane of Red Fell EA foils are over $25 with a sharp ramp towards $40. Dryad of the Ilysian Grove and Thassa’s Oracle, although having slightly larger play patterns than I expect to see from Skyclave, are $60 and $40 cards respectively. I think my point is evident; this is a great card in multiple formats and $10 is definitely too cheap for the EA foils. I’ve already ordered my personal copies up to play with, and will probably be picking some extras up soon as well.

MDFC Bolt Lands

Price today: $10
Possible price: $20

As I mentioned in my intro, the new MDFC bolt lands have spawned some new decks in Modern. You can now play a ‘landless’ Goblin Charbelcher deck with 20 or so MDFCs to function as your mana sources, including 4 each of Turntimber Symbiosis and Shatterskull Smashing. As well as this, there’s the Undercity Informer combo deck which mills itself out and puts a bunch of Vengevines and Narcomoebas into play to attack for lethal.

Aside from the combo potential of these lands (which is definitely nothing to be sniffed at), what they really offer is our favourite thing in MTG Finance: open-ended synergy. A lot of decks in almost every format are now able to play some of these almost for free, replacing a basic land here or there to offer a slightly more painful manabase, but giving access to some powerful late-game spells as well. How many times have you drawn a land late in the game that you wish were a spell? Well now it can be both.

I think that the main targets here are Agadeem’s Awakening and Turntimber Symbiosis. Agadeem’s Awakening is already being played in Death’s Shadow lists and other Lurrus builds in both Modern and Pioneer, and Turntimber Symbiosis is slotting into Primeval Titan and Devoted Druid decks. On top of this, I think that they go right into a lot of EDH decks to replace a basic land or similar. I think that Emeria’s Call and Sea Gate Restoration will mostly be reserved for the combo decks (but also see some EDH play), with Shatterskull Smashing landing somewhere in the middle of the five.

The fact that these are mythics means that their price isn’t going to dip as easily as a rare might as we head into peak supply. I like picking up Agadeem’s Awakening and Turntimber Symbiosis at $10 or lower, and if they trend down then pick more up as cheap as you can find them. The applications for these lands are only going to increase moving forwards, so keep an eye out for any new tech utilising them.

Seasoned Pyromancer

Price today: $28
Possible price: $60

Rounding things off today with a more familiar card, Seasoned Pyromancer was one of the cards from Modern Horizons that I think Wizards absolutely nailed in terms of power level, and that’s backed up by the amount of play it’s seen without being dominating. It’s a superb value engine and has found homes in the RG and Jund midrange decks in Modern, as well as being a great later-game play for Burn and Prowess decks to filter through cards.

Seasoned Pyromancer has already made people a decent amount of money since it was printed last year (although it feels like it was longer ago than that), but I think it’s still got room to grow. If we compare it to another mythic from Modern Horizons, Wrenn and Six is still a $50 card despite having arguably narrower applications in Modern and being banned in Legacy.

There’s a steep ramp formed from $28 on TCGPlayer, with just 20 vendors before it hits $50. It’s already more expensive than that in Europe, with the cheapest copies over $35, and although supply is deeper, this is indicative of more competitive play starting up again outside the US. Once paper play picks back up in the States, it won’t be long before the cheaper copies drain out and push this card over $50. It’s an open-ended value engine that probably doesn’t have a reprint due for at least another year, by which time you can be in and out on this with a healthy profit.

David Sharman (@accidentprune on Twitter) has been playing Magic since 2013, dabbling in almost all formats but with a main focus on Modern, EDH and Pioneer. Based in the UK and a new writer for MTGPrice in 2020, he’s an active MTG finance speculator specialising in cross-border arbitrage.

Casual Fridays

What makes a Bad Spec?

Dear reader, this has been a long time coming. It’s a joke that many like to make, that there are no bad specs, only ones that haven’t arrived yet. However, between my bad moves and those that others have posted about, there are some rules for the things to avoid at all costs.

This is not a comprehensive list of all bad specs, but the guidelines for the things I’ve seen go bad and the things that haven’t arrived yet. Some of these, I’ve done, and regretted ever since.

One thing I’m not listing here that I’m sure you’re thinking: I’ve left off mistakes around banned cards. Anticipating bans was, until recently, not a great endeavor. I freely admit that I’ve got a stack of Prophet of Kruphix in my failed spec box, hearkening back to it being the best creature ever. Could I have anticipated that it was too good? Possibly. I’m not going to be cruel to those who got hit with the banhammer, though.

Mistake #1: Buying too late/FOMO

This is the main thing I see in the world, and it’s something I get asked about a lot by my friends. “This card is spiking hard right now! Do I buy it?” 

Invariably, my reply is no. It’s exceedingly rare to buy in on a card when it’s started a fast rise from its low point, yet still buy in low enough that you can exit with profit made. Let’s look at an example of a fast rise:

There are slower rises worth getting in on. When Field of the Dead rose to $5 off of EDH play and Modern use, despite the bans, that’s a card worth thinking about because Wizards rarely reprints banned things and this had room to grow.

The meteoric risers, though, those you want to avoid, because you don’t know what the price will be settling at. There are other places to put your money, I promise.

Mistake #2: Confusing high demand with low supply

There are two basic reasons why a card is expensive: Either lots of people want it and are willing to spend for it, or only a few people want it and there were only a few copies of the card in the first place. There are a lot of old cards which don’t have a huge supply, and very slow demand over the years has made that card expensive. Most of Portal: Three Kingdoms falls into this realm, as an example. The cards in that set are crazy expensive because they are incredibly rare. When reprinted, and given even a moderate boost in copies, that tends to tank the price. Originals might hold their price, as part of a very rare set, but the new ones are going to be a fraction of the cost. This is why 7th edition foils command such a premium–there are not a lot of collectors who are determined to get a full set of the first Core Set in foil, but there’s enough of them to create some incredible price gaps.

In terms of more recent cards with this problem: Mana Echoes is a card I don’t want to spec on, even though I’m really high on most of Double Masters. Let’s take a look at the price chart for Mana Echoes:

Clearly, the original copies took a dive when the new version showed up at mythic. Being at mythic is likely why the drop is only this much so far. I suspect it’s got farther to drop, because it’s a card that doesn’t have a huge demand pattern. It’s only in about 3500 decks online, and that’s troubling. It wants you to play a tribal deck, and in red. Plus you need to use a ton of colorless mana, and that’s not an easy set of characteristics to match.

Mistake #3: Fringe card in a new deck

I have a dozen foil copies of Eldrazi Mimic in my spec binder. I bought these relatively cheap, at $3 or so, when they were new and after the initial rush had worn off. I saw what the Eldrazi decks were doing, it was the cheapest of the cards, being so new, and I dove in.

And that was four years ago.

I haven’t had a chance to sell these for anything like $3 yet, so these are going to sit, stagnating, soaking up money I could have used more proactively, instead of spending $60 on the worst four-of in a deck that caught a ban right after I bought in. There’s a chance they will be good again, but four years is a very long time. 

Mistake #4: This ‘should’ be good! (aka The Gut Feeling)

In July 2019, we got a hint of the mechanics for the Commander decks that year. We found out the themes would be Madness, Populate, Morph, and Flashback. I wrote a whole piece about cards to run out and buy in anticipation. One of the cards I highlighted was Avacyn’s Judgment in foil, figuring that it ought to be in the deck and having the foil is where I wanted to be, as people built around the new Madness commander.

So I followed my own advice, and bought about 50 copies of the card, averaging a dollar each. And here’s the graph:

I’ve made nothing from this, and again, it’s just sitting there, a brick of wasted potential. Combine this spec with the Mimic, plus a couple others, and I could have had a dual land, or anything else with a strong growth curve. 

It’s harder to highlight where I went wrong on this card, though. This is an awesome effect, but people weren’t in a hurry to foil out their Anje Falkenrath decks. The deck never really caught on, being listed only 1700 times on EDHREC. It’s the #49 commander for this color identity, but maybe if the commander had been the flavor of the month, the spec would have paid off better.

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.

Jason Alt

Unlocked Pro Trader: Have No Fear

Readers!

After looking at cards that will go in lots of decks, how about we talk about cards that will go in one deck? In order for that not to make a 1/3 as much sense as the articles I wrote the last two weeks, it would have to be a pretty popular deck, right? Well, luckily I have just the thing and I have some stats to back it up.

Omnath continues to get top billing in the set and that’s no big surprise, but Akiri came out of nowhere to swoop into second place last week and is still holding strong. Akiri is yet another Boros commander that makes combat slightly better, but Akiri is one of the better equipment commanders ever and while you won’t draw as many cards as in a Sram deck, you can play Sram and you can also have access to Red which gives you additional combat steps. What else does Red give us? We don’t have to guess – we have the data of what people are already playing!

I don’t know if this will be relevant financially at all for Gadrak. I would have said snap No if this were a normal set, but I feel like Core Sets get bought less and this Core Set, though it has good cards, was never drafted in paper and the supply was a little wonky. We could see Gadrak bump someday but it would probably need more help than just Akiri. I think we’re going to want to look at cards older than 2 years and which have lowish reprint risk, something I would have said about Masterwork of Ingenuity which… just got reprinted. Bummer.

THat said, Hammer of Nazahn ALSO just got reprinted and it’s in quite a few Akiri decks, and it’s finally not being priced out of people’s collections. Since a new set came out every week this summer, I think Double Masters was underopened and Hammer of Nazahn could recover.

This probably isn’t done getting cheap. This peaked at $32 which was largely due to scarcity but it has quite a bit of demand backing it up. Usually the new ceiling is halfway between the pre-reprint peak and the eventual floor, wherever that is. If the floor is $7 like it appears on TCG Player, we’re looking at like $20ish best case scenario. I don’t hate a $7 buy-in if this hits $20 on Card Kingdom in a year or two. Mirari’s Wake is also from Commander 2017 and it’s like $25 on CK right now and they’re paying $17.55 in store credit. I’ll take a free Hamilton in CK credit just for babysitting a card for a couple of years.

Every time they don’t reprint Steelshaper’s Gift, a brand new player drops his the rare from his first ever booster pack in a puddle and quits Magic to go do competitive Rubik’s cube. It seems unlikely it will survive a reprinting, and I’m even a little reticent to buy Sigarda’s Aid despite it being a matter of time before something else comboes well with it and makes it pop again. One card I like for the deck is uniquely suited for this deck because this is the first equipment deck I’ve seen that gives you a 1-mana way to remove equipment, which is new.

If you like your picks on the risky side, I think this only goes up but a reprint likely nukes any chance of it ever recovering. I wanted to discuss this card in particular, not because I like it per se, but because its graph is interesting. The Blue graph is the best buylist price. Since the beginning of the year, the best buylist, I assume Card Kingdom, has been $5 and it hasn’t moved. Since it has remained the best buylist price that whole time, that means not only is CK (I assume) not offering more than $5 on Balan, no one else is or they’d be the new highest price and the graph would move. When dealers are staying away, take the hint. I don’t know why no one has any confidence in this card, but it could have something to do with reprint risk. Whatever the reason for the lack of movement in the buylist price for months, I think there are enough good specs that we can avoid ones dealers and their sophisticated algorithms seem to want to avoid.

This isn’t 100% Akiri-related, but this card is too cheap. In most EDH decks, people only want 2 or 3 swords max since there are so many ways to tutor for them. Feast and Famine is #1 but there’s no reason an equipment-heavy deck doesn’t want this. You’re not always going to get full value is the problem, but “1 planeswalker” scales perfectly from 60 to 100 cards in a way that “2 damage” does not. This belongs in a deck with more than 3 swords, imo. I think it’s as cheap as it will ever get and EDH decks need to run it more. They can’t be in a huge hurry to reprint it and I think given some time, it could see $20 again.

This was recently fairly bulky and some stores who don’t computerize their inventory could have this mispriced in a binder or box somewhere. I recommend trying to ferret out a cheap copy. That said, this “spiked” just on the basis of there being new Partner commanders and not on merit, so this could get a second spike on the basis of the Aikiri deck, which wouldn’t go down as quickly because the cheap copies were discovered. I don’t love retail on this but I do think it’s worth trying to snag some for the old retail price of $2ish.

I realize that isn’t super *great* advice – any card that you get for its old price after it goes up is a buy. However, I think specifically a card that went up for no good reason during a pandemic may be more gettable at its old price at a store that doesn’t 100% pay attention. I also wanted to talk about the concept of second spikes during a pandemic and this let me do that. Plus this card is good in the deck. Besides, I have more picks.

Foil Quest for the Holy Relic is selling out under $2 and I think if you can get these for its current “dirt cheap” some places, you should while you still can. I don’t like EDH foils and I have a hard time moving them, but if this hits $5 on CK, they’ll buy it back for $2 or $3 in store credit and I don’t hate paying $0.50 on these in that case if you don’t trust your ability to out them for retail price when it goes up.

This hasn’t gone up in price in a year and a half. That’s not correct and if this card is adopted at all in Akiri decks, the current, meager supply won’t hold. I know it’s an uncommon, but it’s uncommonly good and its price has already gone up over the years despite the supply. I’m calling this a target, especially with CFB charging a full dollar less than CK, which sells way more copies of this than CFB does.

That’s all the news that’s fit to print if you ask me. There are other cards I could have targeted and didn’t and if you have a specific question about why, hit me up in the comments section or the MtG Price Pro Trader Discord server. Sling those lines and snag those singles. Until next time!

Watchtower

The Watchtower 09/21/20 – Pushing Paper

A tier 1 ramp deck? In MY Standard format? It’s more likely than you think. Turns out Lotus Cobra and Omnath are busted in Standard and there will never be a good aggro deck again – who could’ve predicted it? Zendikar Rising has already shaken up not just Standard, but older formats as well. So far we’ve seen a landless Belcher deck storm the MTGO Modern leagues with a tonne of the new MDFCs, as well as UB 8-Crab Mill taking first place in the Modern challenge – and we haven’t even hit actual release day yet.

Outside of the US at least, paper tournaments and LGS play have started picking up again, which means that cardboard for more competitive formats is starting to move again – so let’s take a look at where we stand.

Eladamri’s Call (Foil)

Price today: $10
Possible price: $25

Eladamri’s Call has long been a staple in Devoted Druid decks, to fish out whichever combo piece you need at the time. It’s also in 21k EDH decks registered on EDHREC, popular with both the competitive and more casual commanders…but we know all this. So why am I talking about it now?

Well, it’s started showing up in a lot more Modern decks over the past couple of weeks. There’s a new Titan variant on the block, with no Amulets but 32 lands and a bunch of creatures that help ramp out an early Titan. Dryad of the Ilysian Grove, Elvish Reclaimer and Eladamri’s Call are all 4-ofs in the deck, with extra 1-of utility creatures for Eladamri’s Call to find when needed. There’s also a Valakut package along with 4 Flagstones of Trokair; this deck really has a lot going on.

We’re also seeing new Devoted Devastation builds featuring Lurrus as a Companion, which honestly really doesn’t require much sacrifice from the deck at all to play. The decks are a streamlined combo, with 4 Eladamri’s Call and 4 Finale of Devastation to help find your pieces. Finally, the Soulherder deck has also been putting up some decent results here and there, also playing 4 Eladamri’s Call and a popular tier 2 choice.

Original Planeshift NM foils of this card barely exist, and A25 and MH1 copies are drying up too. Starting at around $10 on TCGPlayer, there are only 12 sellers with NM A25s and 13 with MH1s. They’re the same art and border, so relatively interchangeable here, but both are headed over $20 in fairly short order. The refreshed Modern demand backed by EDH play means that without a reprint in the next few months (which seems doubtful), the cheaper copies of this will be snapped up and it’ll be $25 before long.

Lurrus of the Dream-Den (EA Foil)

Price today: $30
Possible price: $50

Speaking of Lurrus, despite the change to the Companion rule after Ikoria’s release, Lurrus has remained the most popular of the Companions, both as a Companion and as a maindeck card. Incredibly, it’s actually sitting as the third most popular creature being played in Modern right now (the top two spots being taken by Uro and Monastery Swiftspear), and takes seventh place in the Pioneer ranking too.

In decks like Devoted Devastation it can just be a fairly free inclusion in the Companion spot, and decks like Bogles and the BR Prowess deck have been playing it for a while now. In Pioneer the WB Auras deck is still playing Lurrus and putting up results here and there, as well as the Young Pyromancer / Dreadhorde Arcanist builds utilising the card to good effect. Overall, it looks like Lurrus is here to stay, with it and Yorion really being the only two companions to survive the nerfing.

I didn’t want to pick regular copies here, mostly because more often than not players are only going to need one copy of this card to play as their Companion, which doesn’t move the needle nearly as much as if people need playsets. Extended Art foils, however, are in much lower supply, with only 16 listings on TCGPlayer. There are only a couple of copies under $30, and this is one less common instance where they’re actually more expensive in Europe. This could be indicative of lower Collector Booster supply in Europe, but also that players are picking them up for tournament/LGS play now that COVID restrictions are being relaxed in Europe. Either way, I think that getting these at $30 in the US is a sure thing to hit $50 within 6-12 months.

Thoughtseize (Borderless Foil)

Price today: $33
Possible price: $55

Moving onto an even more popular card, Thoughtseize is currently the second most played card in Pioneer and fifth most played card in Modern. That’s card, not just spell, by the way. It’s long been a Modern staple and has been at the forefront of Pioneer since the format’s inception, played in almost every deck that can cast it in both formats.

Borderless box topper foils from Double Masters featured a stunning new art for the card, and so besides original Lorwyn foils (which are obviously the best correct choice), these are probably the ‘most pimp’ copy for players looking to upgrade their decks – and they can do so at not such an unreasonable cost.

The foils are still running pretty close in price to the non-foils, and besides any curling worries (which I haven’t seen much of from 2XM box toppers), the foils are going to be the obvious choice for a lot of players. That’s going to push foil prices up above non-foils, and slowly but surely inventory is going to drain out. We may well see more future printings of Thoughtseize, but it went almost three years between the IMA and 2XM prints, and so I wouldn’t be surprised to see at least another two years go by before it’s printed again. And even when it is reprinted, I doubt we’ll see it with the box topper treatment again, so these borderless beauties will probably be safe. It might be a longer road on this one (think 12-24months rather than 6-12), but I have no doubt that these will get there.

David Sharman (@accidentprune on Twitter) has been playing Magic since 2013, dabbling in almost all formats but with a main focus on Modern, EDH and Pioneer. Based in the UK and a new writer for MTGPrice in 2020, he’s an active MTG finance speculator specialising in cross-border arbitrage.

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