Jason Alt, Unlocked ProTrader

Unlocked Pro Trader: Anti-Tech

Readers! As you all probably know, War of the Spark is going to feature Planeswalkers. Not just that, it’s going to feature ALL of the Planeswalkers. One in every pack, 36 in all. “One in every pack “sets like Dominaria with its Historic card in every pack, Ravnica sets with their Guildgate in every pack or Unhinged with their premium card in every pack sell well. That’s why Unhinged sold well. Every pack had a contraption.

With a glut of new Planeswalkers, we’re bound to get some good ones, right? 36 is a lot and while there are bad to be same bad ones at uncommon, there are bound to be some good ones at rare. People are planning on them impacting every format and should they impact EDH, there are some cards we can use to stop the other players. A lot of them are good against Atraxa, also, which is nice. Here’s some anti-walker tech. If the card is usable in formats outside of EDH, I’ll be sure to mention that, also.

HATE

These are sort of weak metrics for what I consider to be a pretty decent card. Its “rarity” means it was in 2 decks and is therefore twice as common as a rare in the set like the $10 Meren, and it was in a Commander Anthology as well, so it will take some doing for this to move. It’s also not going down and the buylist price as showing signs of life for a minute. This is actually a terrific beating if you’ve ever resolved it but at 6 mana for a creature, people aren’t super thrilled about it. I’m not sure why. It’s not a 1/1, it’s frequently a 25/25 for 6 mana and you kill a bunch of walkers. If you’re buying In Garruk’s Wake but not this, get your act together. Also, if you’re running in Garruk’s Wake but not this, well you’re 6 times as likely to exist. This card’s good but I can’t make people discover it unless the Command Zone ever has me come back on the cast, and if they do, I’m talking about Acquire, not this.

Another bit of anti-walker tech has the benefit of being a card I saw people talking about. I don’t think any of this stuff is good but I do think people will try it and I think if you buy now, you can sell to the greater fools who notice the cards selling out. That’s not the best strat, but neither is using Thran Temporal Gateway to construct a 2-card combo where you play a Planeswalker that costs 2UW for 4 colorless.

This has the added benefit of being legal in Modern, unlike Thief of Blood. I don’t think that’s all that relevant, but Modern players are optimistic enough to think Stoneforge was getting unbanned and Faithless Looting was getting banned, so it’s possible they’re optimistic enough to buy into something like this. Realistically, a deck in Modern playing Walkers is playing Jace, Karn, Terferri or other Karn and odds are they aren’t letting you resolve a damn Aether Snap, but tech is tech. This also nukes tokens, which can really matter in a game of Magic, especially since it gets non-creature tokens, which matters in EDH. A little.

It’s not just black cards getting caught up in the fun, though.

Tragic Arrogance usually gets the nod because you can pick an artifact creature or artifact land as two of the modes and really hose them, but Cataclysm nukes Walkers entirely and leaves you with an angel with an aura and a sword, usually. People don’t like MLD much, but I don’t like Planeswalkers much, even the ones I do like.

Hex Parasite got a bump when Solemnity hit but it’s always been a pretty solid way to deal with Planeswalkers. It’s mana-intensive, but you get a power boost that could knock out a now-defenseless player and it’s reusable. I like it to keep counters off of my Decree of Silence, but I always liked that.

The EDHREC metrics on Anti-Walker cards are weak, and probably for a good reason. The ones that don’t do extra duty, like also wiping out tokens, or killing all creatures or wiping the whole board aren’t worth a spot in a deck. You won’t necessarily play against a walker, and a lot of spot removal just gets it. You should be playing Merciless Eviction regardless of whether Walkers see more play. But with terrible cards like Thran Temporal Gateway poised to go up in price, it doesn’t hurt to think about how to counter the incipient Walker uprising. Until next time!

Watchtower

The Watchtower 3/11/19 for ProTraders – Plan Your Specs

By: Travis Allen
@wizardbumpin

Don’t miss this week’s installment of the MTG Fast Finance podcast, an on-topic, no-nonsense tour through the week’s most important changes in the Magic economy.

Two pieces of information are currently the catalysts of heavy market activity right now; the knowledge that War of the Spark is going to be heavily planeswalker focused, to the point that each pack is guaranteed a walker, and the existence of Modern Horizons, coupled with the point that no currently-Modern-legal card will appear in the set. Between them, every card that A. has to do with planeswalkers or B. exists in Modern is coming under intense scrutiny. We could talk awhile about the timing of the announcement — in fact, I did, on the latest episode of @mtgfastfinance — but that’s neither here nor there at the moment. We’ll keep our attention on the cards themselves this week. I’d also recommend revisiting last week’s article, specifically Mox Opal. I managed to find that card all over again this week, and it wasn’t until I pulled up my notes that I realized I wrote about it as recently as seven days ago. If it caught my attention twice in a row, I can at least say that my methodology is consistent, and I like the card.

Doubling Season

Price Today: $38
Possible Price: $60

This isn’t a particularly clever pick, and there’s no doubt you’ve encountered other people talking about it as well. That alone makes it worth turning my attention to it, since we’re sort of one level above that here. Most content of this nature is “here’s what’s going to be good,” while I try to make this column more “here’s where the attention is going to be focused.” I’m not sure if I succeed at making that clear, or in doing it period, but at least I think about it while I’m writing.

Anyways, Doubling Season. It’s hard to find a more well-known synergy than planeswalkers and Doubling Season. Season is the ur-EDH staple to begin with, and that particular interaction only intensifies the demand for the effect. You know this, I know this, every schmoe at your FNM knows this. It’s still true, and for that reason, worthy of our attention. 16,000 EDH decks can’t be wrong. With a deluge of planeswalkers a month away, expect there to be even more demand. What I especially like about non-foils is that Doubling Season is the type of card that speaks to the kitchen table. In fact, I myself bought a playset (for the hard decision of $20) back when I was playing living room table Magic. Those types of casual players don’t bother with foils at all. They’re also the type of player to be enamored with having “a planeswalker deck,” so the overlap is real.

You’ll find copies in the $38 to $40 range. There’s maybe fiftyish copies under $45, and then they’re up into $50, $55, and $60. That’s about what we’re shooting for I think; $60. This isn’t a glamorous shot by any stretch. It’s safe though, as we know it’s not coming in Modern Horizons and is too expensive to end up in a Commander product.

Oath of Gideon (Foil)

Price Today: $1.50
Possible Price: $6

In keeping with our planeswalker focus, as that’s hitting shelves before Modern Horizons, we turn next to Oath of Gideon. Two other Oaths are likely to be more directly impacted — Teferi’s and Nissa’s — as they’re, I guess, more “obvious.” Gideons is certainly useful though, as the two tokens run interference for a turn, and while a single extra loyalty isn’t as immediately impactful as doubling them, it comes down sooner, and is much less likely to be a target for enchantment hate while still shaving a solid turn off most ultimates.

It will be hard to build any planeswalker-centric deck without Oath of Gideon, I suspect. The two tokens are valuable whether we’re talking a casual sixty card build or a full-sized EDH list. Given that it’s not the most popular card in EDH yet, and the relatively low supply, I’m wondering if this was already targeted. There’s a whopping 22 pack foil copies on TCG right now, and for a card that’s semi-new and not in 40,000 EDH decks, I’d expect much more than that. There’s no price changes in the card’s history, so if someone did go after it, they didn’t manage to impact pricing yet. Still, keep that in mind.

What few copies remain are floating in the <$1 to $2 range. These should be an easy cruise up towards $5 or $6 once the spoilers are rolling in hard. I’d be looking for a quick exit on these, with the intention to buylist whatever you end up with.

Heritage Druid

Price Today: $7
Possible Price: $15

Rather than spend all week talking about WAR and the attention being paid to planeswalkers, I figure we should at least cover a little Modern. Remember, we want to look at cards that are currently legal in Modern that may see increased application or attention after having 250 new cards dumped into the set. My first choice for this slot this week was going to be Goryo’s Vengeance, until I remembered that it was in Ultimate Masters and that there were something like 400 copies of those on TCG right now. RIP Goryo’s Vengeance I guess.

Elves is a tribe that’s always hung at the edges of Modern, trying valiantly to elbow it’s way into the crowd, even succeeding, rarely, at relevance, only to be tripped and trampled on by the larger decks wielding Anger of the Gods the following weekend. There’s never been the necessary component to give them full stability by means of enough power that it can overcome the minimal sideboard hate that typically wipes it back out. As a fan favorite tribe that’s on the cusp of playability, it’s not unbelievable that Wizards would toss “elf” on a key card or two in the interest of giving them a bit more depth and range. Birchlore Ranger has long been a card I’ve wondered about, as it would give the deck access to any color of mana it needed, opening up all sorts of slots, whether being able to side in Rest in Peace as a GB deck, or run Beck in the main without needing to ruin their manabase.

Heritage Druid is a key engine in elves builds, to the point that any elves deck that didn’t utilize it would be a functionally different deck. At $7 a copy today with medium supply, there’s a definite possibility this moves into the $15 to $20 bracket with the announcement of new, powerful elves. Keep an eye on the spoilers, and have a purchase plan in place if something pops up. [/hide]

Travis Allen has  been playing Magic: The Gathering since 1994, mostly in upstate New York. Ever since his first FNM he’s been trying to make playing Magic cheaper, and he first brought his perspective to MTGPrice in 2012. You can find his articles there weekly, as well as on the podcast MTG Fast Finance.

Brainstorm Brewery

Brainstorm Brewery #329 Plateau is a Dual Land

http://traffic.libsyn.com/brainstormbrewery/Brainstorm_Brewery_329_Plateau_is_a_Dual_Land.mp3

Corbin (@CHosler88) is back in town with DJ (@Rose0fThorns) and Jason (@jasonEalt) to welcome back one of the originals, Marcel (@MarcelMTG), to talk about coverage, modern horizons, and much more!

Make sure to check us out on Youtube because everything is better with video. https://www.youtube.com/user/BrainstormBrewery

Uncategorized

One More Horizons Article

One of the things I’ve bellyached about before is that since I’m the Friday slot for the site, I sometimes really look silly when big things happen on a Friday, or even when they happen on a Thursday and I don’t have time to think clearly.

I was super-mega-wrong about Modern Horizons, and wowzers is this amazing. We’ve all written about to to some form or another, and today I want to cogitate about things we can expect.

Let’s get into it, shall we?

Modern Horizons is a puzzle itching to be solved. What cards are not good enough to break Modern, plus some all-new cards, and come together to make a good draft set? Will it be tribal, and power up Slivers, Elves, and Goblins? Will it be anywhere near as fun as Ultimate Masters?

What I’m most interested in is the lands we get. At common, we’re likely going to get the one-mana cycling lands, something that a rogue Drake Haven deck would love and who knows, maybe we get Astral Slide + Lightning Rift? Perhaps. That’s a deck I’d like to see in Modern, but once it’s going it’s just brutal.

I also think we get something new and comparable to fetchlands, since we’re not getting fetches in this set. A card in this vein:

It’s a guess, as I’m not a game designer by trade.

In terms of Magic finance, what does this set do to Modern, one of the two pillars of value, the other being Commander? (This philosophy of mine will be expounded upon soon, I promise!)

We know one thing for sure: Masters sets dropped values for a while, but as Modern changes, decks become new, and the format is relatively healthy. Sure, sometimes a card/deck gets overpowering, but Wizards will break out the banhammer.

I have to admit that I’m worried about what’s going to happen to Modern prices. We’ve seen Scalding Tarn come back up to $100, a price it’s been at before. I still can’t believe that MM2017 packs had a $60 card at rare!

Wizards is going to have to reprint some things somehow. Maybe they supercharge the next set of Commander decks. Maybe it’s awesome Event decks. I don’t know, but you can’t grow Modern with a new set like this while letting everything else stay super expensive.

The cards that have become cheap due to a Masters-style reprint are the ones we really need to look at. I’d expect Horizons to bring us new decks in addition to charging up old ones. Staples are my first thought, and let’s glance at things that overlap between ‘printed in last 12 months’ and ‘played quite commonly’ to examine where we should be placing our bets.

Rest in Peace ($12)

Being in Masters 25 hit this pretty hard, but it’s one of the most popular sideboard cards in Modern and that blip was temporary.

There’s a lot of heavy speculation about a good reanimator deck coming into Modern Horizons, and even if that’s not the case, there’s a lot of decks looking to abuse the graveyard. Yes, you’ve got to be playing white to use it, and that rules out a certain percentage of decks. Still, it’s about the best graveyard hoser, even if your own yard is splash damage.

I can see this being $20 before too long, and the new graveyard deck might make it $25 before summer’s over.

Noble Hierarch ($50)

Your time to get one of the most-played creatures in Modern at its lowest price is rapidly running out. There’s an impressive array of decks running this card, and let’s not overlook that the collectors have Ultimate Box Toppers, Pro Tour Promos, and a Judge Promo to choose from. I’d strongly suggest that you get your playset now for about $200, because it won’t be long before you’re spending $300.

Snapcaster Mage ($60)

Another top-five creature in Modern that was deflated in Ultimate Masters and given a Box Topper, Snappy has been $100 before, and was mythic in both Masters set where he was reprinted. There’s also the RPTQ version if you’re feeling spicy, but I would be content to get these now before the climb starts again.

Inquisition of Kozilek ($5) and Thoughtseize ($13)

Yes, Thoughtseize is better, but here’s a line of thought more than one person has expressed this week on Twitter: If the new cards improve decks, those decks will get faster not slower. That means we need cheap interaction, and conveniently, these are a single mana and had reprints not too long ago. Thoughtseize is a solid spec anyway, having once been over $60, but if I’m a Modern player, I want my playsets for both of these locked in for cheap.

Aether Vial ($40)

Gee, you think we’ll get some busted one-drops? I won’t be shocked if Wasteland (or something close to it) is finally Modern legal, and if that’s the case, then Vial gets a lot better. Again, it’s coming off the not-so-Iconic Masters and that served to depress prices nicely for the #1 artifact in Modern. Tribal decks have shown the most interest in Vial, and if Goblins gets a bump then watch out.

Thalia, Guardian of Thraben ($10)

I would not bother with the nonfoil, I’d be all over the Dark Ascension foil at $30 or so. Hatebear Thalia has been one of the most effective cards at slowing some of the biggest threats down, and sometimes just one turn is all you needed.

Even more tempting is the World Magic Cup Qualifier version at about $65. There’s so few cards with this sort of visual impact, zoomed in on the face. Steve Argyle even put a reflection of Avacyn into the reflection in Thalia’s eyes, and that’s a level of detail which can only be called art. If nonfoil can climb to $20, it’s easy for me to imagine this making it to $90 or $100. Even now on TCGPlayer there’s only about 10 NM under $75.

Cliff (@WordOfCommander) has been writing for MTGPrice for five years now, 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.

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