Corbin’s (@CHosler88) and DJ (@Rose0fThorns) start the episode without the star, Jason (@jasonEalt). But once they all gang up they are able to help you tackle your way through new standard, Magic Fest, and the Mexico of Europe.
This is a popular sideboard option in a range of decks, including the still-popular Mono-Red and the more midrange Boros Angels. It’s been printed a bunch of times, though, and this is not going to hold. If you can buylist older copies, I’d do that. It’s not huge in Commander, either, so we don’t have that going for us.
It is fantastic against slow control decks. Mostly they can’t rip apart your hand, and the uncounterability is very very relevant in a metagame which has Teferi.
Quote: “Lyra Dawnbringer ($13/$30): For a card that started out ridiculously strong and who tops an impressive tribal curve (Resplendent-Shalai-Lyra), she’s fallen quite a distance. There’s some risks here: She might never be good in Standard again, and the other Constructed formats are not homes for her. She might be in a Challenger deck in the spring. She’s only got a year till she rotates.”
That’s from a few weeks ago when she was $13. I go on to say not to buy her, as going from $15 to $20 is hard to cash out of. Lyra is so good in so many ways, maindeck and sideboard. Her value against mono-red is extreme, as you can’t race her for long (she kills you!) and she’s pretty amazing at boosting your team of Angels.
She’s in a weird spot. I think she’s going to hit $30 again, but that rise is not enough to get me to buy at $23. If I had any, I’d hold a bit longer.
As I said in the preorder article, I tried like hell to make Browbeat good. The problem was that they would always take the damage, and I’d have to hope to draw another piece of burn.
Jump-start makes this card so much better. It’s not five damage once, but eight damage on the second casting. I should have figured this one out, frankly. My comparison was accurate–Browbeat has never been a star–but I overlooked the power of getting two castings of the same spell from one card.
You cast this. Opponent: “I’ll take four.”
You Jump-Start it and ask, “I’ll give you a chance to answer the question correctly.”
I’m not buying at $9, not for a rare in a set with shocklands and is likely to sell ridiculously well, but in three months when this is a $2ish card and we’re moving to the next set, I’ll remember this.
I’m looking high and low and I can only find a couple of decks running this as a sideboard sweeper.
Easy to forget it’s a mythic.
Yes, it’s a cute combo with Truefire Captain, but that seems like a questionable combo, the four-mana creature and the seven-drop sorcery.
It’s a mythic from the big set, and it’s spiked hard with a year to go till rotation. It’s seven mana. It’s not seeing any Modern play. It’s not popular in Commander. It’s seven mana. Dump this card right now.
Now this makes a lot more sense. It’s a two-or-three of in all sorts of red decks. It’s quite popular with the decks that would run The Flame of Keld, but instead of a one-time boost of two extra cards, it’ll just play as many as possible in a row. It’s very straightforward and quite powerful.
I don’t see it going a lot higher, but it’s going to get some camera time soon and that’s REALLY going to get people flocking to the card. I fully expect a streamer to give it some serious play and that might bump it a little higher…but not enough to make it worthwhile to buy at $5.
The proliferation of low-to-the-ground red decks is encouraging me to pick up a couple sets of Vance’s Blasting Cannons at bulk prices. The Buy-a-Box promo is tempting at $6, too. Unique versions of cards always get me thinking, even if they aren’t immediately good.
It turns out that the enemy-colored enchantments from Rivals of Ixalan fit VERY well with the the guilds that share a color. Plus there’s this deck, which is a testament to the question, ‘What does a Meren deck look like in Standard?’ and the answer is, the grindiest of grindy decks.
Is that deck good against the many flavors of aggro AND the controlling decks? We’ll see.
The jump for this card got me thinking about the other Rivals transform cards.
Path of Mettle is a lot of hoops to jump through, but the land’s ability to deal two damage is good. Field of Ruin is still a thing though, and people are packing the hate to deal with Azcanta, the Sunken Ruin. Buying in at around a dollar each is a pretty low point of entry, but it’s a big jump from mono-red aggro to Boros aggro.
Storm the Vaults doesn’t play with Izzet’s plan at all. A shame.
Godless Shrine will be besties!
Profane Procession is in the next block, as is Hadana’s Climb, making those two very strong targets. Procession will cost you $1-$2 each, and you’re placing a bet on how viable Esper control will be once we get the Orzhov cards.
Hadana’s Climb seems like an even better target because of the ‘play it and flip it’ factor we’ve seen glimpses of. Ironshell Beetle seems like an odd reprint right now, but what if it’s hinting at what the Simic will be up to? The previous sets had a lot of counter synergies, and I’d be surprised if that wasn’t true this time around too.
Just good in so many Simic ways!
The Climb is at about $1.50 each right now, but it’s only present in 866 decks over on EDHREC. For a card with that little play, that price is a little high, and I suspect the invisible hand of the casual players is at work. I like this as a buy right now, and if it doesn’t hit in three months with the new Simic cards, you’ve got a long-term spec to pack away until it gets big again.
Cliff 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 (next up: Oakland in January!) and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.
Don’t miss this week’s installment of theMTG Fast Finance podcast, an on-topic, no-nonsense tour through the week’s most important changes in the Magic economy.
While the MagicFest this weekend was limited, we still got plenty of Guilds Standard with an MTGO PTQ, an SCG Team Open, and a Classic. They couldn’t be much more different either. MTGO saw a strong performance by Golgari strategies, particularly explore. Selesnya tokens took the top two slots of SCG’s Team Open (the only place they even showed up), while the Classic was all about Boros Angels (and Mono-Blue Aggro?). There’s a lot of data here, and undoubtedly a lot of noise. I’m going to try and find some of the stronger threads for you guys, which is no easy feat. Given this variety of well-performing decks, there’s no doubt a lot of them will fall away in the next few weeks.
Jadelight Ranger
Price Today: $7 Possible Price: $15
Few Golgari lists didn’t bring along Jadelight Ranger for the weekend. She does a lot of work for the strategy, either functioning as a strong threat or a card drawing engine. Either way you’re not upset. Add in Wildgrowth Walker and Merfolk Branchwalker and you’re getting a lot of payoff early in the game. Will it be good enough six weeks from now? That’s hard to say, but it sure seemed to be this weekend.
Jadelight Ranger is a known quantity, and was “the next Tireless Tracker” at release. Reception cooled thereafter, with the card having dropped from $12 at its peak to about $6.50 or $7 today. Should Golgari Explore continue to succeed as a strategy, especially into the Pro Tour, we could see prices above the past peak, and possibly upwards of $15 to $20. Ixalan is the senior set these days, which is always good for prices up through January or so. A second surge in price would almost certainly exceed the past peak.
I of course can’t tell you whether Golgari Explore has legs. That’s up for the metagame to decide. I can tell you that Jadelight Ranger was everywhere this weekend, and if that sort of action keeps up, she won’t stay $7.
Resplendent Angel
Price Today: $12 Possible Price: $25
Golgari Explore felt like the most common theme I saw across the three events this weekend. If it wasn’t, then Boros Angels was. It strikes me as an odd strategy admittedly, playing eight 2’s, eight 3’s, six 4’s, and four 5’s. For a curve with no fixing, no ramp, and no real card advantage, I’m left wondering what their strategy is other than “draw an ideal mix of lands and spells.” Clearly it worked, because it did so well overall. Still though. Odd setup.
Of all the cards in Boros Angels, Resplendent Angel looks the best positioned. She’s what I would consider a relative unknown, in she’s hasn’t been a flashy or hyped card prior to this. While Lyra Dawnbringer was getting a lot of traction during late Dominaria spoiler season, I don’t really remember having heard much about Resplendent Angel at all since Core 19’s release. Her price curve supports my theory, with basically a consistent decline since release.
Should Midrange Angels (Call it “Boros Midrangels” you cowards) continue to perform, Resplendent seems the most likely to rise in price. She’s likely one of the most important parts of the strategy, since she fills in a lower place on the mana curve that angels typically don’t hang out in. $12 is a high buy in for a Standard card, but there’s a metagame where she’s easily $25, so it’s worth at least keeping an eye on.
Jace’s Sanctum (Foil)
Price Today: $2 Possible Price: $8
Standard isn’t the only format where Ravnica is making its presence known. A popular commander this week is the new Niv Mizzet, Parun. He’s all about drawing cards and playing instants and sorceries, just like every other Niv Mizzet. Each has a slightly different ideal trigger condition, and in Parun’s case, it’s casting an instant or sorcery. The more you cast, the more you draw, the more damage you deal.
There’s a well known suite of blue and red spells-matter cards in EDH, so this isn’t completely fresh territory in the way that some of our other new Commanders may be, such as Aminatou. Still, that doesn’t mean there aren’t opportunities. While browsing the popular cards for Niv Mizzet, Parun, I found Jace’s Sanctum. We all would have noticed it at release as a good pickup for EDH, but at the time it was too early to act. Not any longer.
Foils are sitting at about $2, which is the same price they’ve been for about three years. Why do we care today, as opposed to three years ago? Well for one thing, there are only five NM copies on TCGPlayer. There are zero on ABU. SCG has 19, but they’re $3 instead of $2. Overall Sanctum feels ripe to hit $6 to $8 in six to twelve months.
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 toMTGPricein 2012. You can find his articles there weekly, as well as on the podcastMTG Fast Finance.
