PT Phoenix Rising

February 7, 2020 Cliff Daigle

Today begins Players’ Tour Phoenix, a Pioneer event that promises to do two things:

Create calls for a card to be banned.
Spike the prices of some cards significantly.

Now, both points might apply to the same card; we can’t know for sure. What we do know is that a lot of Magic pros have taken the time to tell us what they are playing, and that offers some chances to get in on cheap cards before they get camera time, victories, trophies, and rise in price.

It’s not easy to make money off of cards in a weekend. You’re not trying to buy today and sell tomorrow. Too many people won’t ship the cards at the pre-spike price. What we’re doing is identifying value now, as Pioneer is an eternal format. If it’s good now, it’ll still be good when you sell in a week or two.

Mono-Black Aggro

There’s a lot to like in this list, but there’s two targets that stand out to me:

Bloodsoaked Champion ($2.50 nonfoil/$5 foil)

Scrapheap Scrounger (40 cents/$4)

These are recursive and aggressive threats that can close a game very very quickly. There’s other one-drops, but Champion is from much longer ago and Scrapheap is much cheaper. Both are played as the full four and I won’t fault you if the other cards catch your eye here.

These two cards represent the most potential profit, due to age or a low cost of entry. If this deck does well, I’d expect Champion to double to $5/$10 or so, and the Scrounger should become a $3/$7 card.

Fatal Push is a card I want to love and a card I’ve made money on in the past, but it’s in the Mystery Boosters and I can’t condone buying in right now. It’s possible that this weekend, the card jumps from $5 to $10 on the back of being amazing, but we’re going to get a whole lot of copies coming when stores get to order Mystery boxes for in-store play in March.

Castle Locthwain is another one to keep an eye on, as the graph has started to rise from maximum supply just a few weeks ago:

If you want to get in on the Extended Art version around $11-$12, that’s certainly tempting too. It remains to be seen how prevalent foiling and using EA cards will be in Pioneer, whereas in Modern people do love their foils.

Mono-Black Vampires

This is a spicy one, full of card draw and synergies. I’m sad that Vampire Nocturnus is not quite Pioneer legal, but there’s a lot to like here. If you’re playing against a combo deck that stumbles, they are dead very very quickly. Sorin into Champion of Dusk is real and powerful.

Sorin, Imperious Bloodlord ($12/$17)

Champion of Dusk ($1/$2.50)

These are the best two targets from this deck, mainly because there’s only the one printing of each. I’m delighted when a deck requires a playset of a mythic, makes me feel very good about my purchase. Yes, Sorin was a couple bucks cheaper a while ago, but he’s the key mythic in this deck and if it does well on camera, $25 is likely and $30 quite possible.

Champion of Dusk is a card that could hit $8 or $10 in foil in this circumstance, and if you’re buying in Friday morning at $10 for a foil playset, well, you’re going to feel very good about this. For both of these, I’d prefer to be in on the foils because there’s no EA versions to contend with and supply is much shallower on foils. There’s only about a hundred foils on TCG right now, and that includes Promo Pack foils and Prerelease foils. For a mythic that’s played as a four-of, that means only 25 people have to see Vampires do well and decide to jump in.

Niv to Light

Oh, does this deck make me happy. Bring to Light is a card that I know I’ve mentioned before, and frankly, this is the best shell for it. You’ll get a 6/6 flyer and probably 2-4 cards if it resolves. Best of all, you’ve got a good chance of casting Bring to Light or Niv-Mizzet Reborn a turn or two early.

Niv-Mizzet Reborn ($8/$17) and Bring to Light ($2/$7) are the big winners here, as the headliners for the deck. Sylvan Caryatid at $11/$18 is a bit high for my taste. I’m not worried about the supply of Niv due to War of the Spark uncut sheets, because there was only one Niv per sheet and getting a perfect cut out of one of those is HARD.

Dimir Inverter

Tons of words have been written about this deck, and I’ll be honest: I don’t like the odds that it survives the next set of bans. I cannot recommend buying into this deck, because of the difficulty interacting with these triggered abilities. Splinter Twin was easier to disrupt than Inverter into Oracle!

Lotus Breach Combo

The deck a lot of pros are talking about, here’s a list courtesy of Pascal Vieren at HareuyaMTG that is using Underworld Breach, Lotus Field, and a lot of other fun choices to kill your opponent dead on turn three or four. It goldfishes very well, is amazingly redundant, and is another strong contender to get banned before too long. Interestingly, both this deck and Dimir Inverter use the either/or of Thassa’s Oracle and Jace, Wielder of Mysteries as the win condition. The JP version of Jace is $20/$80 on TCG, the Secret Lair stained glass version is $60, it’s a winner in Commander…but can the two decks using him survive the next bans unscathed?

I’ve spoken before about my love of the Breach, how it’s a combo card waiting for the right shell…and here it is. Underworld Breach is currently at $4/$7/$9 EA/$44 EA foil and given what this is doing in Pioneer, with that card pool, I am tempted to get in on the EA versions for Modern and Legacy play. How long till this is busted there too?

There’s other decks, like UW Spirits, UW Control, Heliod Combo…the list goes on. My sampling is just that, a few of the decks to watch for and prepare for. If I missed your favorite deck, feel free to call it out in the comments or let me know on Twitter, or perhaps in the ProTrader Discord channel.

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 ProTrader

Unlocked Pro TRader: Old Is New Again

February 4, 2020 Jason Alt

Readers!

New stuff moves prices, sometimes. Something new comes along and makes something that was worthless suddenly worthwhile and everyone scrambles to find copies. The thing is, as quickly as people are raising their sell prices, they’re also raising their buy prices. People like me scour the LGS for copies at the old price to quickly arbitrage for free money and the supply catches up to the demand. That’s obvious. What’s also obvious if you read this column because I say it all the time is that sometimes a second spike can be more profound because the copies are all concentrated in the hands of dealers and without dollar bin copies at the LGS, Today, rather than the first kind of spikes (the Teysa tier) I want to talk about some second spike cards that have overlap with 60 card casual formats and could have some high exits despite semi-high buy-ins. These cards aren’t new but the decks that want them are and something tells me casual cards appealing to semi-casual players means the price goes up. First, though, let’s look at the impetus.

The Commander

Klothys seems like a bit of a dorky card at first but a 3 mana enchantment that either gives you mana on your precombat main or shocks the table is worth a look. You can stymy your reanimator opponent, turn your fetchlands into mana or gain a little life to make it harder to kill you. You can also make Klothys deal a lot more than 2 damage. The secret? Klothys is read.

The Stats

Klothys is climbing the rankings quickly.

As you can see, Kloxa moved up 2 spots from week 1, which isn’t nothing. A lot of the growth was recent.

Only 3 made the cut this week, managing to displace older and more popular commanders. The new hotness may be the new hotness, but people are still looking to update their decks with new cards. You also see Marrow-Gnawer there, buoyed by people updating rats decks with the singles that WotC is selling directly to players, because I guess they think Amazon warehouses will start running FNM.

61 Klothys decks this week, 130 total. Half of the growth in a third of the time tells me Klothys is heating up. Heat is good – remember how I mentioned Klothys is Red? It’s going to matter.

The Specs

This isn’t a spec, but it’s the first card you see under the “high synergy cards” section on EDHREC and it should be an immediate clue that people want to dome people for a lot with Klothys. With Just Klothys and Torbran out, that upkeep trigger gains you 2 life and deals 4 damage to all players. If you add more to the mix, it gets even more dirty.

This was a bulk rare a few weeks ago but Torbran decks pulled it out of the gutter and Klothys decks will only increase the shenanigans. The thing about Torbran decks is that your commander can’t provide any damage of his own meaning he’s probably better in the 99 than the command zone. Dictate has a lot of supply but considering it’s in a cycle with a $10 card and 3 other $1 cards, it’s safe to say the ceiling is $10 rather than its current price of “not bulk.” This won’t hit $10 but it won’t be bulk again barring a reprint, which seems unlikely given Furnace of Rath or a creature-based damage doubler seeming more appropriate for that slot given the Flash ability. Pull these out of bulk if you’ve got them. I’m not in for cash here but I like these long-term. That said, it’s been a long term already. Are there juicier specs in this same vein?

These are basically arbitrageable at this point. Troll and Toad has these for under $3 which is basically Card Kingdom buylist. You may or may not know you can do this on our site – check this out.

Never noticed that before. What’s it do?

You can see which vendors are paying what on these cards. Card Kingdom is a good place to buylist cards so if you were looking to get basically retail on these, CK has you and they have a trade-in bonus to boot. If you’d rather hold them because a 0% spread is suspicious, then do that.

All of the other damage doublers basically suck as specs, and that’s too bad. They’re either very recent non-mythics

or they have been printed into dust.

Image result for deal double that amount of damage"

I’m pretty sure this isn’t showing up on the page for “high synergy cards” because it only works if your devotion to Gruul is 7. That said, this gives you 3 pips, Klothys is 2 and you should have SOMETHING else on the board, so this basically always works, so it should see more play. Am I going to have to write an article about this card on Coolstuff? I might – if I built the deck, I’d go creatureless so I could fit all of the enchantments I want to run and have this be my only creature besides Torbran.

Rampaging Ferocidon — Daddy missed you while you were banned

I don’t think there is money to be made here, but this is a sick card. Too bad it nerfs your lifegain.

Neheb might be the best spec of the deck. It was high before, but it’s higher now on CK and still growing as it has for the past year. I hope you snagged these around rotation because this is a casual favorite, an EDH powerhouse and in this deck, you’re getting 2 mana for each opponent for doing nothing more than having 2 permanents in play and 1 in someone’s yard. That seems doable. Neheb can easily hit $15 or $20 and everyone will act surprised just like they are surprised now because this used to be $5. Hell, it used to be $2. This is my favorite spec of the deck.

If you couldn’t tell by the shape of the graph, Mana Web is on the Reserved List. This was climbing steadily but that all got nerfed by the “OMG RESERVE [sic] LIST” frenzy of a few summers ago. Prices are returning to reality but I don’t know if this can’t get back up where it was on the basis of being an unfair magic card. This could be the deck to do it since a lot of people say they’re running this and they seem to have come to that conclusion independently of each other. Klothys is a weird Stax deck and I don’t like Stax but you’re also doing a ton of chip damage, which I love. Chip damage like…

Might want to check your bulk. Thanks, Torbran.

Thanks, Torbran? I’m not sure what the deal with this card is because you double their mana, but they also take more damage than you will so maybe it’s part Manabarbs, part Mana Flare, all Mana Catch 22 for them. Anyway, this could get above bulk, I hope. I like this less than I do other cards, like…

This doesn’t do damabe but it hurts.

A lot of ships have sailed, but if you’re willing to pay a bit, someone with a… dinghy could… row you out to the ship so you can still sail the rest of the way on it? But you have to pay the guy with the dinghy money? Does that work as a metaphor for a high buy-in because we didn’t notice all of this stuff growing by 70% in the last year?

Some of the cards have higher buy-ins than others but ultimately, there is still money to be made. Klothys is getting more popular and people likely won’t have some of these old cards, or some of the new ones. Make sure you’re holding when a second spike happens so they have to buy the card from you. It pays to be prepared.

That’s all for me. Thanks for reading, and check out Klothys’ page for the full list of cards to see if anything sticks out to you. Until next time!

Watchtower

The Watchtower 02/03/20 – Post-PT Analysis

February 3, 2020 David Sharman

They say that hindsight is 2020, and in retrospect it might have been mildly foolish of me last week to promise you some non-Pioneer specs in this week’s Watchtower. Most of you are probably aware that we’re fresh off a double Pioneer PT weekend (that’s Players Tour now, not Pro Tour), with tournaments in both Brussels and Nagoya. Coming into the weekend, Inverter Combo was the hot new thing, and although it was practically a meme deck just over a week ago it turned out to be the second most played deck at Brussels, slightly behind mono-black in first. Most of the rest of the decks were what we’d expected to see from the format, with a couple of wildcards overperforming in Bant Spirits and Delirium.

In my best attempt to be true to my word last Monday, today I’ll be looking at some specs that are relevant to both Pioneer and other formats as well.

Traverse the Ulvenwald (Foil)

Price today: $11
Possible price: $20

Although showing up in relatively low numbers over the weekend, Sultai Delirium eventually took down PT Brussels in the hands of Joel Larsson, beating one of the first pioneers (yes, I know that’s not very funny) of Inverter Combo, Piotr Glogowski. Traverse the Ulvenwald was played as a consistent 3-of across all the Sultai Delirium decks, and showed up as a 4-of in the Simic Delirium decks that were present in the tournament as well. The card is a multi-use tool in the decks, both being used to fix your mana in the early game, and to fetch threats like Emrakul or Ishkanah later on when you have Delirium enabled. Usefully, it can also find Adventure cards like Murderous Rider // Swift End too, giving it even further reach.

Traverse has also long been a staple in four colour Death’s Shadow decks in Modern, filling a similar role to that in the Sultai Delirium deck, albeit more streamlined and aggressive. Being able to go and fetch a Death’s Shadow as early as turn two is some pretty powerful Magic, and although we often see a mix of four/five colour and just straight Grixis Shadow in the Modern meta, the green decks are prevalent enough that Traverse is in reasonable demand.

After the PT weekend, supply of Traverse foils is wearing thin. With only 22 listings on TCGPlayer at the time of writing, there’s a steep ramp from $11 up to $18, and I don’t think that’ll last too long. Delirium is a deck that’s almost certainly safe from and bans in Pioneer and seems pretty safe in Modern too, and having the Delirium mechanic makes it a more difficult card to reprint than it otherwise might be. Heading towards PT Phoenix in a few days, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Delirium decks become more popular after the results we’ve just had.

Sram, Senior Edificer

Price today: $5
Possible price: $8

A very surprising deck to do well at PT Nagoya was Sram Auras, piloted by Ken Yukuhiro all the way to the finals where he lost out on the top spot to Kenta Harane on Bant Spirits. As far as I’m aware, this deck was an unknown quantity coming into the PT, with only two people on the deck at Nagoya and none at all at Brussels. The deck is fairly analogous to Bogles in Modern, except without the Hexproof creatures. It makes up for this by using Alseid of Life’s Bounty and Karametra’s Blessing as protection for whatever you’re throwing all your enchantments on, backed up by the powerful draw engines of Sram, Senior Edificer and Hateful Eidolon.

The fact that only two copies of this deck were registered across two PTs over the weekend, and yet a copy still made it into the finals of Nagoya, shows us that the deck definitely has some legs (and that Ken Yukuhiro is really good at Magic). This looks like a new archetype that could be a real contender going forwards in Pioneer, and I’ll be on the lookout to see if any copies show up at PT Phoenix this weekend.

Sram is also a popular card in EDH, with almost 700 copies registered as a Commander on EDHREC and in more than 5600 decks as one of the 99. Non-foils start at $5 on TCGPlayer and Card Kingdom, and foils are in very low supply now with only five listings on TCG and none on CK (although they do have some promo copies). Sram Auras is definitely a deck to keep an eye on this week, and I wouldn’t mind picking up both non-foils and foils of this card. If it doesn’t get there in Pioneer, EDH demand will keep growing for the card and push the price up longer-term.

Collected Company

Price today: $15
Possible price: $20

Another break-out deck from the PTs over the weekend was Bant Spirits. Last week we had seen the more linear UW version of the deck putting up good results, favouring a more consistent manabase and more aggressive slant to the deck, often playing a full suite of 36 creatures and 24 lands. However, although UW Spirits was a popular choice on day one of PT Brussels, it was really pushed out of the day two metagame – in fact only five of the 23 decks made it through the cut. Bant Spirits on the other hand, despite only having seven copies registered on day one, managed to put five of them through to day two. I can’t say that I know the matchups well enough to provide a good reason for why Bant was much better than UW in this metagame, but the numbers are there to prove it.

Since the inception of the format, Collected Company has been a card that people have been trying to build decks around, but up until now it hasn’t quite hit the mark. It was a very powerful card during its days in Standard and has a proven record in many Modern decks, including Elves, Druid Combo and the original version of Bant Spirits.

Now that Company decks are putting up good results at the highest level of competition, more people are going to be inclined to adopt the archetype and try different things with it. The Company version of Heliod Combo can definitely be refined, and I think Spirits will continue to perform well.

Collected Company peaked at $25 during its standard heyday, and after a spike at the announcement of the Pioneer format has since settled down to around $15. With players needing four copies at a time for their decks and only a single printing in DTK, I don’t expect it to be too much trouble for CoCo to see a $20 price tag again, with the potential for even more growth than that.

With that, I’ve learned my lesson from last week and won’t be making any promises as to the contents of my next article, especially with PT Phoenix coming up in a few days. It’ll be very interesting to see if the metagame shifts much between PT weekends, so keep an eye out for any new tech or breakout decks.

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

Underpriced at the Starting Line

January 31, 2020 Cliff Daigle

So this weekend, we get PT Brussels for Pioneer and then PT Nagoya for more Pioneer, and then Star City’s got coverage of a Team Constructed event, which is Standard/Pioneer/Modern.

That’s a lot of coverage, and only the draft portion of the PTs are in Limited formats. As a result, we’re going to see some cards move fast this weekend. Some may have started spiking by the time this goes up Friday morning, and if that’s true, I hope you’re able to get in cheap.

Elspeth, Sun’s Nemesis ($7)

Today I’m focusing on the regular card. No foils, no Extended Art or other Showcase. I think there’s value to be had here in the cheapest versions of cards, as I’m looking at their playability. I highlighted Elspeth two weeks ago as a preorder at $7 and my mind hasn’t changed: She’s too good to be this cheap.

As a bonus, she’s going to have a year and a half to prove herself in any Constructed format before she rotates out of Standard, so buying in now is pretty darn safe even if this weekend isn’t immediately profitable for her. The Escape mechanic is tricky, and recursive cards like this almost always find a home. I want to have some copies on hand to sell into the hype when that hype train takes off.

Underworld Breach ($3.50)

I’m repeating myself and I don’t care. There are too many good combos with this card and it’s going to get broken in half. If you want to go for the Extended Art at $9 I won’t fault you, but I’d prefer picking up a lot at $3.50 and buylisting them away for store credit. I’m much happier when cards are good in Constructed, because then people need playsets, instead of focusing on just one sweet copy of something.

If you need some examples of combos, just search up ‘Underworld Breach combo mtg’ and have a field day. There’s Legacy Storm with Brain Freeze. There’s Modern versions looking to exploit Dredge interactions. MTGGoldfish recently posted a video where Drowned Secrets played a huge part in the combo win. Get in while you can.

The New Temples (Mostly around $1-$1.50)

You don’t have to move on these this weekend, but please, before Ikoria comes out, make sure you have your set of twenty Temples from this set. There’s going to be a lot more demand for them in about six months when the shocklands rotate out. Perhaps there will be a better cycle of lands in the next Fall set, but these are too cheap to ignore. They aren’t going to hit huge heights, as there’s too many copies in circulation, but I hate buying cards at $3 or $4 I could have gotten for a lot less if I’d just planned ahead.

Shatter the Sky ($1.50)

Yes, I agree. This is a bad card when compared to Kaya’s Wrath or Time Wipe or whatever. It’s easy to cast, though, and that’s a very alluring thing to a control player. Four mana to clear the board has always been the sweet spot for control decks, and while it sears my soul to know they might get a card or two, the metagame isn’t punishing this card too much. I think that this card will have a least one good showing this weekend, and it’ll be a great card with no drawback, and the price will jump briefly.

It’s also worth noting that this is one of the few ways to deal with Limited dream-killer and UW Control’s darling Dream Trawler, a card I don’t think I want to buy in on now that it’s risen above $3. It’ll be very hard for it to get actionable value past that.

Phoenix of Ash (75 cents or so)

The 2/2 hasty flyer has often been a good card in aggressive decks. Being able to Escape it into a 3/3 haste flyer for four is a wonderful upside, and one that might well push this phoenix to the front of the line, ahead of Chandra’s Phoenix, Rekindling Phoenix or Flamewake Phoenix. There’s a lot of hoops to jump through with the other firebirds, and there’s a wonderful simplicity to this one. Being in an aggressive red shell means you’ll rarely be lacking for spells in the graveyard, so they’d better have some Cry of the Carnarium ready to go.

I shouldn’t have to tell you how much fun it is to spec on a card like this for 30+ copies, and then sending them to a buylist as a brick after it breaks $4. It’s the kind of high people chase for a long time.

Storm’s Wrath (50 cents)

You can get this for near-bulk prices on TCG right now, and a lot of that is due to Fires of Invention decks that are trying so very hard to do something fun. The Fires decks actually have two good choices for four-drops in Shatter the Sky and this, depending on the risk and the presumed threats on the board.

Temur Reclamation decks are also playing the full set of this, and you can expect a hefty price jump if this looks good on camera. Wilderness Reclamation is a pretty busted card when built around, and being able to wipe the board and then reset your mana is a very sick play.

Ashiok, Nightmare Muse ($12)

Finally, I think Ashiok remains a buy at $12. The card is fantastic, providing a game-winning plan through the plus ability and setting up for a devastating minus. Defense is also reasonable, answering any problematic permanent for at least a turn. I would not be in at $15+, but right now you can get Ashiok at prices approaching $10 on eBay or the cheaper TCG copies, and that’s really where I want to be for the UB control finisher.

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