Yeah, it’s an over-used title and a worn-out trope, but what are you gonna do? Not read the article? Didn’t think so.

Anyway, there’s often a lot of discourse over foils in Magic, especially when it comes to competitive play. Foils can warp and thus be seen as marked cards, particularly if only certain parts of a deck are foil, and apparently this dissuades many people from foiling out decks. However, I think this complication is always made out to be more of an issue than it actually is. Countless players from all levels of competition foil out their decks without any problems, and we only really hear about the small number of cases where someone has come a cropper with bendy cardboard. Admittedly certain print runs (looking at you, FTV) are much worse than others, but for the most part there will be an alternative foil available.

I could ramble on for a while about this, but what I’m trying to say is that foils are fine, and they generally make better picks from a finance perspective, so here we go.

Spell Queller (Foil)

Price today: $25
Possible price: $40

Once a force to be reckoned with back in its Standard days (so much so that the UW flash deck it occupied had to be taken down a notch by the banning of Reflector Mage), Spell Queller has since found a home first in Modern, and now Pioneer. Spirits is a deck that has waxed and waned from the Modern scene ever since it became a ‘real deck’ when Supreme Phantom was printed in M19, and has put up some decent results over that time. Spell Queller has deservedly always been a four-of in the archetype, and now that Spirits is doing well in Pioneer too, the deck has become very popular and lots of players need to pick up their spooks.

Spell Queller foils did see an inevitable spike after the Pioneer format was announced, but have since retraced and are in a nice spot to pick some copies up. Supply is low at just 22 vendors on TCGPlayer, with an additional nine prerelease listings. Starting at $25 there’s a nice ramp up towards $40, and with this just being a single printing foil that I don’t expect to see crop up again any time soon, the market price on these will climb pretty quickly once the cheaper singles get snapped up.

Assassin’s Trophy (Foil)

Price today: $25
Possible price: $40

I remember when Assassin’s Trophy was previewed 18 months or so ago, and oh boy do Magic players love their hyperbole. It was to finally be the end of Tron; Jund would be the best deck in Modern by a mile and it was just such a powerful card! Of course, nothing of the sort happened. Instead, Assassin’s Trophy was adopted in reasonable numbers into GB decks in Modern, has seen decent play in Standard and is a useful card in Pioneer.

Although it’ll be rotating out of Standard relatively soon, the Modern and Pioneer play coupled with a significant amount of EDH adoption (almost 13k decks, 18% of all possible decks) makes Assassin’s Trophy a cross-format all-star. Well, maybe I’m being a tad hyperbolic there, but the card’s definitely popular. You’ll find it in basically any deck that can cast it in Modern (albeit sometimes just relegated to the sideboard), and Sultai Delirium and Golgari Stompy are taking advantage of it in Pioneer.

Trophy actually follows a very similar price and stock level to that of the aforementioned Spell Queller, with 33 listings starting at $25 and ramping up nicely. This one does have the additional promo pack foil version to compete with, but I think all copies are heading upwards and should land around $40 in 6-9 months.

Ugin, the Ineffable (JPN Alt Art Foil)

Price today: $55
Possible price: $80

I’m rounding off today’s picks with a more pricey card than normal – foil Japanese alternate art Ugin, the Ineffable. These alternate art cards have been in very low supply since War of the Spark was released, and we’re not getting any more of it.

New-gin has become one of the tools of choice for Eldrazi Tron in Modern, usually just as two to three copies but pretty much always a player in the deck. He might not be as innately powerful as Old-gin (yeah that doesn’t really work does it?), but he comes down earlier, can still blow stuff up and helps to power out the rest of your colourless spells too.

I was actually quite surprised by the level of EDH inclusion for this card – a touch under 8000 decks, which puts it well into the top ten cards from War of the Spark (and it’s definitely got some tough competition). I guess it being colourless means that players can drop it into any deck, but it is of course most popular with the colourless commanders.

With a grand total of fourteen foil copies available on TCGPlayer, I think that $55 is a lower price than it should be for this card. I doubt we’ll see another printing of these alternate art cards for a very long time, if ever, and so although this could be a longer hold (12-24 months), I’ll be damned if it doesn’t get there sooner or later. If you wanted to go for the extra extra pimp level, there are only five copies of the alt art prerelease foils on TCG, ranging from $92 to $150 – and those ones are super ultra rare.

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.

Modern has been taking a bit of a back seat recently, with the main spotlight having been on Pioneer for a while now. Despite this, there are still Modern tournaments going on and the format is still moving prices, if somewhat more slowly than it used to. There is also a certain amount of overlap between the formats and their archetypes, and so finding the cards that are being heavily used in both is sure to be a winning strategy.

Karn, the Great Creator

Price today: $4.50
Possible price: $10

Pretty much right from the release of War of the Spark, Karn started to do big things in Modern. He was immediately a four-of in Eldrazi Tron and has since been a consistent pillar of the deck, whilst also popping up in some other archetypes too. Since the banning of Mycosynth Lattice, the deck has dropped in power level slightly – but it’s still putting up some reasonable results and shouldn’t be dismissed by any means.

In the past couple of weeks, a new Karn deck has been emerging: Dice Factory. The deck gets its name from the sheer number of dice you need to keep track of all the charge counters you accumulate across your board, using cards like Surge Node and Coretapper to power up the likes of Astral Cornucopia. The deck can then use Paradox Engine with Mystic Forge to play most of your deck, generate a huge amount of mana and fetch a Walking Ballista from the sideboard to ping your opponent to death.

Karn has also now started to show up in Pioneer lists too, like this one from Twitch streamer Aspiringspike. Having easy access key sideboard cards like Damping Sphere, Pithing Needle and Tormod’s Crypt can be crucial in matchups against Breach and Inverter combo, whilst also just being a fast aggressive ramp deck on top of that.

The main point I want to make here is that Karn is a very powerful Magic card that can quite easily slot into a lot of different archetypes where you might not normally expect him, and I think he has a lot of potential in multiple formats going forwards. At $4.50 I don’t think he’ll get any cheaper than this, so pick some copies up now and I think they’ll easily land upwards of $10 in 12 months, maybe sooner.

Ranger-Captain of Eos

Price today: $9.50
Possible Price: $20

When Modern Horizons was released last year, Ranger-Captain of Eos was one of the more hyped up mythics, along a similar vein to Seasoned Pyromancer. Initially, Ranger-Captain saw play in Death’s Shadow variants (being able to search up the namesake card and protect against removal etc.), as well as sometimes being adopted into Humans. However, since the inception of the Pioneer format, Modern has somewhat taken a back seat and this has had a negative effect on a lot of card values, especially those from Modern Horizons.

There is renewed hope for Ranger-Captain of Eos though! There has been a lot of debate about how good the Heliod/Walking Ballista combo is in both Modern and Pioneer, but the deck has been putting up solid results in Modern so far. Ranger-Captain can go and find Ballista whilst also protecting the combo, with some lists also playing a Viscera Seer for another avenue of infinite life.

Ranger-Captain has seen a slight uptick due to its inclusion in these decks, and I think it has further to run. The Heliod deck has proven itself to be a player in Modern, and we could see Death’s Shadow and Humans run it back with the Captain at some point. Supply on these isn’t too deep considering they’ll generally be picked up a playset at a time, and this might be a slightly longer hold depending on how many other Modern decks it can find a spot in, but on a 12-24 month horizon (hah, get it?), it’s a card that definitely shows promise.

Merchant of the Vale (Showcase)

Price today: $1
Possible price: $3

To round off today’s Modern picks, we’re taking a look at Showcase Merchant of the Vales. The Haggle side of it may only be a poor man’s Faithless Looting, but it’s one of the best options that Modern Dredge has access to at the moment, and Dredge has quietly been putting up some good results recently.

I’m slightly of the opinion that Dredge is never really going to die, short of Wizards actually just banning the mechanic itself. Time and time again they’ve taken cards away from Dredge (Grave-Troll twice, Looting, and you might count Hogaak and Bridge from Below in that list), but it just keeps bouncing back. Merchant of the Vale has replaced Faithless Looting, and lists are now all playing a couple of Ox of Agonas as well as another draw/dredge engine.

An interesting point to note about common Showcase cards from Throne of Eldraine is that they don’t show up in regular booster packs. The non-foil commons were only available from the Collector Boosters, which means that they’re a lot more scarce than they otherwise might be. Although this means that the foil multiplier is lower than normal, the non-foils are generally more attractive for tournament play, and this means that they will most likely be in much higher demand than the foils, even if the foils aren’t costing much more.

Starting at just under a dollar, I can see this as a decent buylist play a little way down the road. Pick up the copies you can find between $0.50 and $1.50, and I can see buylists hitting $3 in a year or two.

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.