We don’t normally get this much value packed into these sets, but then again, we were warned that this was a year of reprints. So what do we do if we had lots of Bonecrusher Giant? Is not the time to stock up on Fabled Passage?
I’m here to help.
The rest of this content is only visible to ProTrader members.
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.
Many of you know I’m not a huge fan of foils when I give spec advice because I think they’re harder to move than people imagine, have a higher buy-in price and there are fewer copies so fewer people can take advantage of my advice. I also consider buying foils as a way to mitigate reprint risk to be kind of intellectually lazy and I tend to avoid calling foils as a rule unless I have a very specific card I really like, such as Arcane Denial or Dramatic Reversal. However, today I’m going to get into some foils and we’re all probably going to make money so it’s probably fine if everyone but me feels good about that. Let’s talk about why I want to talk about foils at all, first.
A new set came out and when that happens, I look at the new commanders as they start to get popular and try to predict what’s going to go up as a result of those cards getting bought and adopted. The longer after the release weekend we get, the less and less meat there is left on the bone. That’s fine because there is still some time, but I think we’ve had even more time to address something that’s readily becoming very obvious and we still haven’t.
Korvold Isn’t Like Other Decks
When you look at the decks per week snapshot, basically every week the number 1 deck of the week is Korvold, no matter what else happened that week. We got sort of numb to seeing it at that number one spot, and sort of ignored the numbers at the bottom that showed just how much more Korvold was being built. Luckily I take a screenshot most weeks.
Watch Kenrith, Golos, Windgrace and Chulane fall way off in real time. As the weeks go on, the number of Korvold decks built every week actually increases. Korvold is unstoppable. Since it wasn’t obvious what a juggernaut Korvold is by looking at him in first place every week, let’s look at some other measures.
Number one this month with 20% more decks built than #2. Want to know where he ranks in the past 2 years?
20th. Korvold is the 20th most-built commander of the last two years and it’s only been out since October of 2019. Korvold is a beast and maybe we take another look at the cards in the deck, specifically some foils. We’ve probably missed a few boats but I’m sure there are plenty more.
SPECS!
Wait, did you just skip to this part because I labeled it “specs!” because that’s not cool.
I’m just kidding, I don’t care. I’m as excited to tell you about this as you are to hear about it.
My aversion to foils has bitten me a bit here. See that sharp incline? That started back in October, the month they printed the Brawl decks. I’m no astrophysicist but I think it’s possible the two events are related. Players went and did what I’m talking about doing months later. The news isn’t all bad – these are gettable under $10 and you should scoop every sub-$10 copy you can find, so that’s neat. Also, cards with more than one printing won’t be as sensitive to a change in demand but will still have upward velocity. Again, not an astrophysicist, but I think we’ll know upward velocity when we see it.
Victimize foils from Conspiracy flirted with $10 a few times before the rug got yanked out from under it by a reprint nerfed the price back in 2016 and then Korvold seemed to make it hit $8 before it tanked again last year. I think with new decks like Erebos and Kroxa and the continued demand from Korvold, we could see this hit $8 again.
This hit $7 a few times even after it was printed at foil in Masters 25. I think this is an $8 card in the near future given its ubiquity.
There isn’t a ton else, so I want to reserve the rest of this space to talk about why these weren’t discussed months ago.
One reason I tend to avoid foils is that the prices move much faster, both up and down. I know how to do Mtg Finance stuff well enough that I could stay abreast of those changes but given how slowly I list stuff for sale, I don’t like dramatic price swings. I like cards that are cheap and then I buy them and then they go up, and then I don’t list them and then they go down a little and I go “man, should have sold those” and then they go back up and I still don’t sell them and I don’t ever sell them and would you like to buy some copies of Curse of Opulence because I feel silly trying to sell them on Twitter.
In order to know which foils to buy from the Korvold deck, we would have had to have known back in October that Korvold would crack the Top 20 of all time on EDHREC (we don’t display data older than 2 years by default to keep things fresh so a bunch of Oloro decks don’t block out all of the signal from new cards). Anyone who says “You claim to be good at EDH but didn’t see Korvold would be that popular?” also said the same thing about Vannifar, so let’s maintain perspective here. If you had that feeling about Korvold and you recognize that feeling next time it comes around and want to try and capitalize, here’s what to look for.
What To Expect When You’re Expecting (A Deck To Be The Next Korvold)
Recent foils are just as capable of jumping dramatically as older foils. Take a look at Mayhem Devil, a cards that’s basically only in Korvold decks.
Mayhem Devil came out in War of the Spark, 5 months before the Brawl decks. Here’s the trajectory of the foil.
Smooth, steady, organic. I’m sure people notice this but it didn’t trip any “email me when a card dectuples in a day” google alerts or anything so for the most part, this was just a thing that happened because all of us can’t watch all cards all the time.
We would have had to have correctly predicted Korvold could sustain this level of play to justify buying a foil that’s only in one EDH deck, and I didn’t have that kind of trust. I will admit situations like this are a big weakness in the method I use which requires a lot of patience and data, but I was patient and didn’t buy a ton of foil Bounding Krasis, another card that seemed as sure to hit at the time as foil Mayhem Devil.
I don’t mind ignoring really volatile cards that are difficult to predict before we know which decks are really dominant. No one predicted Vannifar would be built less than Lavinia and Nikya, not even me, so if we can take guessing and bias out of the equation, our hit rate really improves. We miss a few Mayhem Devils but we miss a lot more Bounding Krasis and that itself is a win.
That does it for me this week. I’ll be back next week to talk about cards that haven’t already gone up, which has sort of been my niche for a long time. I hope you’ll join me and I hope you didn’t bulk out any foils Deathreap Rituals or Pawn of Ulamogs. Until next time!
Sometimes it can seem that the world of Magic: The Gathering is running at a thousand miles an hour, and it’s felt a bit like that recently. Over the weekend we had coverage of Worlds going on, alongside a new Secret Lair drop (I’m a big fan of this one) and the release of the Standard Challenger decklists to consider – all in the space of a couple of days. Before that we had two consecutive weekends of Pioneer PTs, more Secret Lairs and Unsanctioned previews revealed (and I’m gonna be needing some of those full art basics).
In today’s article I want to take a step back and consider some cards slightly outside of the fast-moving metagames of Standard and Pioneer, looking at some longer timelines and more stable entry points – a good thing if you don’t want to be spending all your time trying to keep up with MTG finance.
Dryad of the Ilysian Grove (EA)
Price today: $12 Possible price: $20
Modern is being absolutely dominated by Amulet Titan at the moment. We haven’t had a Modern Grand Prix in a little over a month now, but if we take a look at the SCG Team Open results from the past two weekends, Amulet Titan took four of the top eight slots at Philadelphia and another three at Richmond the previous week, in addition to consistent MTGO results. Since the introduction of Dryad of the Ilysian Grove to the deck, it’s moved the archetype away from trying to set up lethal through a huge double-striking Primeval Titan and pivoted towards being a dual Amulet and Valakut build.
The Titan decks we’re seeing now are effectively a combination of the older Titan Shift decks (often winning by casting Scapeshift) and the more classic Amulet Titan versions that used Slayers’ Stronghold and Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion to kill. Dryad is playing multiple roles in the new decks, enabling extra land drops each turn as well as being a Prismatic Omen on a stick, which means that the deck doesn’t need to play any actual mountains to enable Valakut kills pretty quickly. It’s also just a 3 mana 2/4 that can block really well.
When a Modern deck is as prolific and powerful as Amulet Titan is currently, we do need to take into consideration a potential ban. If the archetype keeps putting up results like this then a ban could be on the table, but if I’m going to be honest I’m not sure what the ban would be. Wizards have shied away from banning Prime Time in the past, choosing to axe Summer Bloom instead so that the archetype isn’t completely shut down. We could see this happen again if they choose to ban something like Azusa or Valakut, most likely leaving the deck alive but just less powerful.
However, even if we see something banned from the archetype, this is a card that’s already been adopted into almost 2000 EDH decks according to EDHREC, making it the most popular card from Theros Beyond Death to make it into the 99. I imagine that it’ll be a staple of multicoloured decks ad infinitum – it fixes mana and ramps at the same time. Extended art copies of Dryad are starting at around $12 on TCG at the moment, not too far above the regular copies at $8. Even if we do see an Amulet Titan piece banned in Modern, I don’t think Dryad’s time will be done in that format, and so I can see these EA copies making it above $20 within the next 12-18 months.
Drown in the Loch (Foil)
Price today: $3 Possible price: $8
Drown in the Loch is a very flexible spell that’s currently seeing a reasonable amount of play across Pioneer and Modern, and even showing up in Legacy too. Certainly in Modern with the abundance of fetchlands, Drown is a card that’s going to be turned on a large proportion of the time, and it’s most popular in Death’s Shadow and Whirza decks. Shadow decks have, by and large, remained fairly consistent in construction for a while now, occasionally switching up some of the spells they play depending on the metagame. Whirza decks have gone through another evolution since the banning of Oko, and for the most part slimmed down to be just Dimir colours, still playing the Thopter Foundry / Sword of the Meek combo but otherwise just being a solid midrange deck.
Over in Pioneer, Drown in the Loch has become a staple in Dimir Inverter. Most decks will only be playing 2-3 copies but the card is always there, and I think Inverter will stay sitting at tier one for the foreseeable future. Not that Legacy moves cards prices too much any more, but Drown is also becoming a relative staple in Grixis / four colour control decks in that format.
This isn’t a card that’s going to jump overnight, but I think if you stash a few of these foils away you’ll be pleasantly surprised 12-18 months down the line. If we take a look at Mystical Dispute, an uncommon from the same set, foils are sitting at around $7.50. It is being played more than Drown at the moment, but it shows that Drown does have the potential to get up there too.
Nyxbloom Ancient
Price today: €6 ($6.50) Possible price: $20
This pick is a slightly different one to normal: it’s an arbitrage pick. Generally speaking, the market for EDH-focused cards in Europe lags behind the market in the States, as EDH isn’t nearly as big or widely played in the EU as it is in the US. This often creates excellent arbitrage opportunities to buy cards in Europe and sell/buylist in the States, and today I’d like to highlight a particularly good opportunity that exists at the moment.
Copies of Nyxbloom Ancient are currently available on Magic Cardmarket (effectively the European version of TCGPlayer) for €6 (around $6.50), and if we look at the lowest price on TCG, it’s almost $12. That’s a huge gap, and even if we take a look at CardKingdom buylist, that’s sat at $7 cash / $9.10 credit for your bog-standard version. This is a super powerful card that’s going to be a forever staple in green decks, so not one I’d like to miss out on.
Making moves like this does require a certain amount of setup. Cardmarket doesn’t allow shipping to the US; you need an address in Europe, so the best thing to do is to find an arbitrage partner residing in the EU that you can arrange to bounce shipping off. If you’re based in Europe (like myself), then you can ship directly to US buylists or find yourself an overseas partner to sell cards on TCGPlayer for you.
Another way to source cards from the EU (shill incoming) is to become a member of the MTGPrice Protrader service, and get yourself into the Discord server. That way you can get in on the group buys that offer EU pricing on cards from the latest sets, and take advantage of arbitrage opportunities like this.
I might write a full article on cross-border arbitrage at some point, but for now I’ll drop some of the best opportunities into my regular articles. If you’ve got any questions, hit me up in the comments, on my Twitter or in the Protrader Discord!
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.
We have the decklists for the Mythic Championship XXVI 2020, and it’s wonderful to have such a concise list of what’s good in the eyes of the pros. Standard is not solved but there are clear tiers of decks, and it’s not a rock-paper-scissors sort of arrangement.
Let’s take a look at the archetypes and the potential for growth in each.
I’ve written about it before, but we’re coming into the time when I want to make sure I’m not holding excesses of cards that are about to rotate and don’t see Eternal play. If it’s good in Pioneer/Modern/Legacy/Commander I’ll think about keeping extra copies, but this dataset is more geared towards the next eight months of Standard.
The metagame is neatly sliced up, with only Piotr Glogowski ruining what would have been four groups of four:
That’s a beautiful chart, and gives us five archetypes to look at. If you go to the official page and scroll past this graphic, you’ll see a breakdown of which cards are played most. As you can imagine, there’s a lot of 16s in there, but there are a few cards getting more play than that:
A four-of in the Mono-Red Aggro and a three-or-four-of in Jeskai Fires, there’s a lot to love here. It’s marvelous value, giving you a kill spell and then a no-drawback 4/3 creature. I don’t need to convince you that is a good combination, but that’s two rather different archetypes that are packing high quantities of the card. Jeskai Fires could be playing Shock for mana efficiency, but they chose the Giant for flexibility. It’s wonderful to see a card that’s good in mono-red and good against mono-red!
What I’m really impressed by is that this card has until October of 2021 to make waves in Standard. I’m in. I’m advocating you get your copies now because by the end of the weekend it’ll be pushing $5. What’s the upper end for this? It’s played heavily in Pioneer too, a format that can’t be any hotter, so getting in now around $4 and getting out at $10 next Christmas seems quite likely.
Robber of the Rich ($5/$6/$8/$25)
This card is already spiking and I apologize if these prices are no longer available.
The big thing here is that it’s a fun card in mono-red but it’s part of a semi-transformational package for the Jeskai Fires decks. Sometimes you need the 2/2 for two, as a blocker or as a Teferi-killer with that haste. This is a mythic getting played in high amounts, and that’s a formula for very high prices.
Robber could have been had for $2 just a few weeks ago, but that ship has sailed. This isn’t getting Eternal play like Bonecrusher is, but being a mythic is going to mean this card likely breaks $10 if aggro wins this event or Fires makes it look like a key card after sideboarding. The wonderful news is that you’ve got a long time for it to get good, but this is much more of a quick flip. If you can get your LGS to sell you their copies before the flood of publicity, great, but this is a card that’s going to rise and fall with the metagame.
Brazen Borrower ($23/$26/$37/$70)
First, the graph.
Yup, the time to buy in was Halloween, when we were all wondering why this was a mythic and not a rare. Ouch.
BB has a lot of game outside Standard, and that’s driving the price of the more ornate versions. When something makes it into Legacy Delver lists, you know it’s a paragon of efficiency. Allow me to quote-tweet Autumn Burchett here:
Having the flexibility on both sides is key, and it appears we’re not all evaluating Adventure cards with an eye towards the built-in card advantage. It’s not card to get a full card out of the bounce effect, and then you get a 3/1 flyer whenever you want. With flash, even!
I like this to go higher, but I’m not sure how high it can go. Forty bucks seems like the highest it might get to, but the amount of Eternal play this sees makes me feel pretty good about buying a couple playsets right now. Even if it never gets to lofty heights in the next 18 months, I’ll feel good about the long-term prospects.
Teferi, Time Raveler ($20/$32/$67 Stained Glass/$27 JP Alternate/$107 JP Alt Foil)
It is hard to argue with the efficiency of this card. He’s exceedingly annoying for decks that want to do things sneaky-fast, and he’s capable of protecting himself while drawing you a card. It’s nigh impossible to be behind on cards when you drop him into play, and if you want, you can even draw a card on an empty board!
Teferi’s power is evident in every format, and even though this is the time where you want to be unloading extra copies, I’m stoked to buy up copies in the summer. I’m hoping he falls as low as $7, but that’s probably too optimistic for someone seeing as much play as Teferi does.
I think the stained glass version has room to grow. It’s $40 less than the Japanese alternate art foil, and I can’t imagine there’s too many stained glass in circulation. It’s hard to get that level of growth, so the safer play is just to sit tight and wait on Teferi. I do not advocate buying in at the $20 range for regular copies right now, though: you’ll have a long wait for those to get profitable.
Fabled Passage ($18/$20/$27/$80)
I picked this back in December on MTG Fast Finance, and the reasoning remains the same: It’s super popular in Standard and Pioneer, the only fetchland in either format. There’s probably not going to be much growth on this before rotation in the fall, when we lose shocklands and one set of temples. Yes, we’re going to get some form of dual lands in the sets to come, but Passage is super popular and something I want to have in stock.
Mystical Dispute ($3/$7) is actually the most popular nonland at the Championship, and I’m pretty sure that the foil isn’t done growing in price. It’s already a $3 uncommon, and is wildly popular in Pioneer to so with all the Standard play it’s seeing. I don’t think you’ll be able to gain much profit from it, but if you have some foils (or nonfoils) I’m holding on. Remember that Eldraine rotates in a year and a half, so you’re going to have a chance at some even greater gains.
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.
MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY
ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.
