Casual Fridays

First Week of Allegiance!

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Ravnica Allegiance has some amazing cards, some busted cards, and we’re already getting some interesting price movement on these cards.

Let’s not waste any time, and look at what’s jumped and what’s tripped over, fell into a hole, and rolled over to fall into an ever deeper hole.

As a bonus this week, there’s some extra-interesting Guilds of Ravnica cards that I think are excellent pickups, since they aren’t rotating out of Standard for another 21 months.

Before we get into these too deeply, let’s keep in mind that card prices right now are at a volatile place. This is all pre-order hype, we haven’t opened any packs yet, and at this point in Guilds of Ravnica Arclight Phoenix was a $5 card. There’s plenty of time for these to spike higher or drop lower.

Early Gainers

Hydroid Krasis (up to $20 from $12) – I said last week this would be $20 at next Christmas. I still believe that, but as you can imagine I’m not high on buying this at $20. I played the hell out of Sphinx’s Revelation, and the secret to that card was the first cast for X at two or three, which found you that bit of gas you needed to get to the backbreakers.

Mana acceleration isn’t great in Standard right now, and casting this early hurts. Four mana gets you a 1/1 flier. Six is a 2/2 and one card and one life. Still not great. I don’t think this is Standard gold, but this is the be-all and end-all of what Commander players want to be doing. You’d have to have a very clear reason not to play this in your 99, right? Maybe you run zero creatures?

Judith, the Scourge Diva (up to $8 from $2) – She’s a tough act to follow, but her path is clear: all aggro, all the time, and if you wipe the board you’ll pay a price for that too. “Any target” is great, but are we going to see decks with four of her? I get that if she’s staying in play the useless copies in your hand aren’t as awful (and playing the second one means two pings, FWIW) but it’s going to stand in the way of her going much higher.

Smothering Tithe (up to $5 from $2) – Your guess is as good as mine. I can’t figure it out. This is Rhystic Study’s less annoying cousin, and while I suspect that the Commander implications are better than they seem, I still don’t know why people are going into a tizzy here. Is it good against control? I suppose more mana is good, but they can pay if it turns into a problem. In four-player pods you can drop an eight-mana bomb on your turn five, but I need a dedicated strategy for this card to make my deck. When you figure it out, let me know.

Early Losers

Repudiate // Replicate (down to $2.50 from $8) – I don’t think this was ever going to be an amazing card, but this was a super-high preorder price and it’s a card that’s going to be tough to use in Standard effectively. You want your modal (or split) cards to cover a wide range of cases, but this has two niche abilities that don’t always fit the same deck.

Kaya, Orzhov Usurper (down to $9 from $13) – I wrote last week that I thought she’d stay around $13, and that seems a touch optimistic right now. Looks like she’s going to level out a little lower than I’d expected.

Benthic Biomancer (down to $1 from $4) – If a Merfolk deck is going to get there in Standard, now’s the time. The looting doesn’t happen on using the Adapt, it happens when you get the counter, and handily, Merfolk has no shortage of that. There’s a chance, but I’d like that chance a lot better if the UG Merfolk decks could still run Heroic Intervention.

Mostly, cards in the set are down across the board, and that’s to be expected. Preorder prices are educated guesses, and a set doesn’t keep a huge number of $5 rares around for long.

Guilds Quick Hits

Chromatic Lantern is at $5/$10 nonfoil, and that’s a full $5 cheaper on the new foil vs. the old foil. It’s a card that ought to get reprinted every few years, so I’m bigger on buying the foils now that they are cheap. Remember how high this got right before the reprint?

Even with a Masterpiece floating around, the RTR foil was $30 this summer before the reprint hit. Get your foils now while they are cheap, both for your decks and to trade away when it’s $30 again, because it will be and Commander players will always want them.

I’ve written before about Dream Eater as underpriced and underplayed, an opinion I still hold. I’m buying them off eBay for about 75 cents each when I go after them.

Arclight Phoenix has also taken a lot of words from me, but please, listen and buy your playset now, before they are $40-$50 this summer. It’s too good in all formats to stay this low.

Divine Visitation foils are $13 right now and this is a silly low price for the card that token decks most want in Commander. I even think it’s better than doubling effects, if we’re measuring head-to-head.

Experimental Frenzy at $3/$8 foil is good things waiting to happen. I’m about to go on strike, so my card buying is turned off right now. If that were not the case, I’d be hip-deep in these foils especially. It’s going to get broken. Thousand-Year Storm, at the same set of prices, is an ‘I win’ card in the Commander decks that can use it, and the foils here are super tempting, as a mythic even!

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 and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.  Follow him on Twitter @WordOfCommander

Jason Alt, Unlocked ProTrader

Unlocked Pro Trader: Karlov The Magnificent

Readers!

I am a little more excited about this crop of commanders than I was for the ones in the last Ravnica set, gotta be honest. Niv-Mizzet was the most popular and he wasn’t even new. Lazav proved unwieldy, Izoni proved underpowered, Trostani proved unpopular, Ral Zarek proved to be a Planeswalker and Aurelia proved to be bad even in Standard. This new crop, however, is exciting. I have already discussed a bit about how I think Prime Speaker Vannifar is bound to give us some delicious new possibilities and will also be a boring, linear deck that everyone is going to hate out immediately. That won’t deter speculators from hoarding Intruder Alarms because that combo is so obvious, people who don’t play EDH thought of it. I hope you snagged Alarms when they were still $6 which was the price they were when I tweeted about it. Following me on Twitter seems like a good idea since it’s free and a lot of you pay money to get my opinion on stuff. What ISN’T so obvious that even a non-player could think of it is basically every card in the Vannifar deck that isn’t Intruder Alarm or Thornbite Staff and every card in every deck built around every other commander. I think the stuff in the Teysa Karlov deck is just as obvious as the stuff in the Vannifar deck so I am going to run through that today. That’s it. Magic Finance can be hard sometimes but my method has refined itself enough over the years that we don’t need to pretend it’s more complicated than it is. It’s simple but it also relies on me paying attention to stuff you don’t want to pay attention to. Well, I did that, and here’s what I came up with.

Teysa Karlov is a very interesting creature – so interesting that most people forget she has a second ability.

Teysa Karlov [RNA]

Creature tokens you control have Vigilance and Lifelink? Could that ever possibly be relevant? I think so, and people who build the deck are going to notice. In this way, Teysa is the perfect commander for a deck with creatures with Afterlife, which is a much smaller number of creatures than we anticipated. However, it isn’t just afterlife that is affected here – all of the “on death” triggers that Black decks normally use to great effect are doubled and that makes her brutal. You don’t need to haphazardly jam a bunch of mediocre creatures with Afterlife into the deck just because she synergizes with that ability and indeed people beginning to brew with her aren’t. You have better ways to make creature tokens and you have better ways to take advantage of her first ability, too. Let’s look at some cards I really like in the wake of this printing that haven’t spiked yet because, again, they are slightly less obvious than Intruder Alarm and that’s basically the only reason.

Font of Agonies is a card that has people talking a lot. There are a lot of good ways to put counters on Font and the ones that people who write about EDH and have tens of thousands of readers aren’t even always that good. Bennie Smith said he wanted to pair Font with another way to kill creatures.

This is… a card, certainly. I don’t know if you pull these out of bulk per se because Bennie talked about it. This isn’t the worst card to pair with Font and while Font won’t make it into every Karlov deck, the fact that your tokens will gain you life should mitigate the life you pay and I think Font is an attractive inclusion in the deck. So if I don’t like Slaughter despite it putting enough counters on Font to kill another creature, what do I life? So glad I pretended you asked. Here’s a card that just got a reprint and won’t likely get one soon.

Here’s a $5ish mythic from a set whose prices are beginning to recover that is in 15,000 decks on EDHREC and does a great job of putting counters on Font. Don’t think you want to run Font? That’s cool because it turns out Necropotence is just fine in a deck that has a bunch of lifelink tokens running around. You’ll draw a ton of extra cards with this and it’s honestly cheating in EDH. The triple Black is no issue in a 2-color deck and honestly I’m not sure why Necropotence isn’t banned in EDH. It’s not, it’s not fair and that’s fine with me. Both the retail and buylist price are rising on this and Card Kingdom is charging twice what TCG Player is. These are too cheap right now even having grown a few bucks over the last year, so get them now. This is a slam-dunk inclusion in Teysa decks but it’s also an EDH staple that just got a reprint and is seeing the price rebound.

Remember when these were $0.50 and then I went on the Command Zone podcast and told people I bought 200 of them and they should buy some, too? I don’t think that appearance had as much to do with this precipitous climb as the fact that the card was a $0.50 substitute for a $12 Grave Pact but as those two prices converge, it’s looking more and more like you just play both and a lot of people play Butcher of Malakir as well. In a non-Teysa deck, Dictate of Erebos is brutal because saccing a creature token for mana to an Ashnod’s Altar or flinging it at them with Goblin Bombardment triggers the Pact and makes them sac a creature. In a Teysa Karlov deck, that happens twice as long as Teysa is in playsa. That’s what we call “value” in this bidness.

Black Market took quite a hit in 2015 but it seems to be on the cusp of making a comeback. Card Kingdom wants $5.50 for it and TCG Player isn’t too far behind with a market price of $4.89. I don’t expect this to stay under $8 forever and with double the charge counters with Teysa Karlov, I expect plenty of people to auto-include this in their Karlov decks, especially since you’re getting double counters on death triggers. Suddenly your Ashnod’s Altar can generate even more value when you sac a dork.

A Conspiracy printing hacked the legs out from under this card but as much as 6 mana and a death trigger was a pretty “fair” rate before, with the trigger doubling, this is a very efficient way to dump your hand, especially in a deck bound to be playing big, expensive creatures like Kokusho and Sun Titan. Gettable for as little as $2.50 on TCG Player, this never really hit bulk rare status despite the reprint even though people ship me these in bulk all the time. If you’re not lucky enough to get these by accident, don’t worry, it’s likely retail will catch up with reality and a hundred bucks or so at $2.50 per will likely look pretty good pretty soon.

Remember the good, old days when these were under a buck? It’s been a long time since that was true and while I saw it coming, I don’t have as many copies as I would like. I sold a LOT at that first $3 plateau and while I’d like to kick myself for lacking the foresight to wait a whole year to see if they moved again, I’m not mad because I reinvested that money wisely. I don’t think this will ever be cheap again barring a reprint and how likely do you think a reprint is? They left Manamorphose out of Ultimate Masters so it’s clear they miss stuff. I bet this miss this card that sneakily climbed to within striking distance of $10 without anyone making a big deal out of it.

I honestly don’t know how much longer Attrition can stay under $10. Then again, I don’t know why it went down after it spiked near $17.50 years after it was reprinted. If I had to guess, it’s not getting played much in new decks and if you look at the decks where it’s used most, they’re pretty old. Demand is not what it used to be.

That said, with Teysa Karlov turning 1/1 tokens into two death triggers for 1 mana in situations where you don’t have a Dictate of Erebos in play and 4 death triggers where you do, I think it’s safe to say that Attrition is going to come back into favor very soon and while I don’t know if it ever flirts with $20 like it did back in early 2016, I think cresting the $10 point and going above and beyond is pretty reasonable. I don’t know how popular Teysa Karlov will be but I do know she’s a better commander than any commander in Guilds of Ravnica. Is that damnation by faint praise? That remains to be seen. What I do know is that Guilds was not very popular for builders.

Do I expect more than 27 people to build Teysa Karlov decks? I sure do. I think more people will build Teysa than built Niv-Mizzet. I’m counting on it.

One last thing before I go, one the issue of Guild Kit reprints, people are worried about their specs ending up in the kits. Given that only cards from Ravnica sets will appear in the guild kits, I think there are very few cards you need to worry about. I think there’s a real possibility the Orzhov one could be as good a buy as the Selesnya one was but even if it’s not, let’s quickly look at the cards I think will get hit.

Merciless Eviction $1.79, 21,679 decks

Debtor’s Knell $9.99 2,964 decks

Blind Obedience $1.99 15,038 decks

Ogre Slumlord $1.99 3,288 decks

Nothing else is really that much of a beating, financially, so I wouldn’t worry about it.

That’s all for me this week, folks. I recommend brewing a Teysa Karlov deck of your own and thinking about what you’d put in it. Skullclamp seems good, Phyrexian Altar seems good, Twilight Drover seems good and Divine Visitation seems good. Decks that get a loop going with Karmic Guide or Nim Deathmantle seem good and cards like Archon of Justice that are much better when doubled deserve a look. See what other people are building, brew yourself and make your decisions based on that. Or just spend $300 on copies of Attrition and if enough of us do that, it doesn’t even matter if I was wrong (I’m not). Just kidding about that last part, don’t do that. But do come back next week where I’ll have some more tips, possibly predicated on some actual data. Until next time!

Watchtower

The Watchtower 1/14/19 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.

While there’s no major news on the Magic front today, there’s plenty brewing. The Ravnica Allegiance spoilers wrapped up last week, and the full set will be found in players’ hands shortly. There’s plenty of tasty cardboard in this one, and I know I’m not alone in looking forward to seeing how it reshapes Standard and Modern. I’m especially excited to see Electrodominance do some work, maybe balancing out the format.

The format needs balancing too, what with the way Arclight Phoenix has been going lately. Apparently something like 17% of decks at SCG Worster were Phoenix? That’s a whole lot for Modern, where non-PT numbers tend to top out at single-digit percentages. It’s not the first time we’ve seen a UR deck reach that level of play, and the last time it did, Splinter Twin paid the ultimate price. We’re only a few weeks into really understanding Modern with Arclight as a tier one strategy, so Wizards isn’t going to be in a rush to answer it with heavy hand, especially since all things considered, it’s a fair strategy. Expect some time for the format to adjust organically before action is taken.

Amulet of Vigor

Price Today: $22
Possible Price: $40

There’s been whisperings of Amulet Titan in Modern for a few weeks now, and it managed to take first this weekend, beating out piles of Phoenix decks. It’s a strategy whose popularity was hit harder than its efficacy by the Summer Bloom ban. It would seem a good foil to Arclight Phoenix, considering that we’ve been seeing an uptick in play along with the growth of Phoenix decks.

While there have been various versions of the deck, and several strategies for deploying as many lands as possible, two pieces are non-negotiable, and I hope unsurprisingly, they’re the two pieces whose names make up the archetype’s title: Amulet (of Vigor) and (Primeval) Titan. Amulet of Vigor’s effect with Karoo lands is what makes the deck tick, after all.

Amulet has been a worthwhile spec for awhile now, and the new attention is probably going to max this card out in a hurry. If Amulet Titan really is a strong choice for battling a Phoenix-infested metagame, players will flock to it in a hurry, especially as a tested strategy that’s already proven it has the chops to compete. When that happens, the single-printed rare is going to undergo extreme supply duress. Even though prices are already $22-$23, I don’t doubt at all that prices could climb into the $40 to $60 range, especially if it’s good without leaning on “Phoenix predator” as a feature.

Spirebluff Canal (Foil)

Price Today: $20
Possible Price: $45

While we started with the Arclight foil, we’ll turn back around and hit an actual Arclight foil. Arclight is an Izzet deck looking to cast a tremendous number of cheap red and blue spells each game. It’s fast, looking to top out at four mana or so, and has an impressive array of selection. It is a perfect candidate for fastlands, as it wants to leverage them hard early, and can eschew them later when they slow down.

Of course, this is only one in a long history of strong Izzet decks in Modern. There always seems to be one hanging around, and even when there isn’t one, there will be shortly. It’s a powerful color combination, and I’m expecting to see another soon with the printing of Pteramander, Delver’s amphibious cousin. And it will be a quick, spell-heavy deck looking to satisfy two mana colors early in the game.

We are now more than eight years past the printing of Scars of Mirrodin, and we’ve yet to see a fastland reprint of any sort. If we assume the same timeline for the Kaladesh fastlands, we wouldn’t see a reprint of Spirebluff Canal before, well, we’re all dead. Which means foils are going to be in short supply (right up until there’s no one left to buy them and it’s all rather irrelevant). There already isn’t a deep pool of these, and several more weeks of Phoenix hysteria, paired with constant pressure from other Izzet strategies that pop up in Modern, is going to empty the market soon. Foil Blackcleave Cliffs are $95, and nobody is even playing Jund today. I’d consider finding your Spirebluffs soon.

Butcher of Malakir (Foil)

Price Today: $2
Possible Price: $10

Wrapping up the week we’ll look in on EDH. With Ravnica Allegiance around the corner we’re going to get a few new commanders, and they’ll for sure be hitting the “Top Commander” lists for a few weeks. Don’t forget too that EDH players take awhile to buy into their decks, unlike constructed players, who will shovel playsets into their cart at a moment’s notice. New commanders will easily take months to move large volumes of cards to those intending to play them, simply because on the whole, 99s aren’t built in one afternoon.

Anyways, Edgar Markov has held steady on popularity for months and months now. There’s a deep pool of vampires to draw from, and sitting across three colors allows some flexibility in what you’re able to include. I’m not expecting an explosion in popularity any time soon, but he’s a consistent fan favorite.

If I’m looking for specs in a tribal deck like this, I want to find cards that are excellent in the tribal build, but still playable elsewhere, in order to capture the largest demand profile. Something like Door of Destinies, a card which otherwise defies my expectations regarding pricing, is a good example. Any vampire deck is going to want to be in the Door business, and at the same time, many other strategies are too.

A not-Door of Destinies card in Edgar Markov lists is Butcher of Malakir. She’s a vampire, which is uh, about all the checkboxes that need to be checked for an Edgar list. She benefits from all the tribal synergy floating around, and even moreso, she provides an extremely powerful effect in her “Grave Pact on a stick” deal. Grave Pact is of course a long-standing EDH favorite. This is reflected in Butcher’s play stats – over 15,000 decks on EDHREC, to be specific. That’s the cross-deck synergy I’m talking about. An excellent choice in a popular tribal strategy, and also a great pickup for plenty of non-vampire decks.

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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.

Casual Fridays

Preordering RNA Mythics

The whole set is up! Go take a look at it, and marvel at Wizards’ ability to keep churning these things out. I’m certainly impressed, and humble too. I was totally, ridiculously wrong about Arcbound Phoenix, and I can only aspire to do better for you this time around.

That said, let’s dive into the mythics and see if there’s preorder value to be had!

Domri, Chaos Bringer (preordering at roughly $20)

Domri 2.0 starts at five and can go right up to six loyalty, if you have a cheap creature to play to defend them. That’s pretty good, but the upgraded Divination effect really has my attention: Lead the Stampede is a very good card, and while Domri’s an extra mana, it’s quite worth it.

I wouldn’t buy Domri at $20, but I’m listening at $10. This looks like a set of abilities RG really wants in Commander, and there aren’t many planeswalkers who have a non-ultimate that says to draw your two best of your top 4.

Angel of Grace ($18)

This is a LOT of stuff on one card for a mere five mana. We’ve got a 5/4 flash flying Angel, a card that is just plain good by itself. We’ve also got ‘You don’t go below 1 life this turn’ on this, a wonderful touch given that for six mana and an exile from the graveyard, you turn your life total to 10. That’s just delicious upside.

It’s relevant to note that this flashes in to block a Phoenix quite nicely, though they’re often on the attack before turn five. Lyra Dawnbringer is likely just better in a vacuum, but they do play nice together! Lyra hit some impressive heights, and this is a bit more niche. I suspect this price will just trickle downwards, and level out at $7ish.

Mesmerizing Benthid ($6)

Amusing. Don’t buy this. Yes, it’s three blockers for five mana, but it’s a delay at best. This will be lucky to not be bulk, even if hexproof is a really wonderful ability right now.

Biogenic Ooze ($9)

There’s a chance that this is a fantastic card, given that it’s 6/6 for five, but we have that at uncommon with Crested Herdcaller. You need the Ooze to live two turns and pump more mana into it to beat what the Herdcaller does, and with a four-mana wrath entering Standard, I’m not so sure.

On the other hand, it’s an Ooze lord and certain Commander decks are going to go nuts. This will fall a little but not too far.

Spawn of Mayhem ($15)

A 4/4 flying trample for four mana. Is that more amazing than Doom Whisperer at five? How about if you can get that 4/4 on turn three, given even one damage to your opponent? Let’s add some aggressive pinging in there too!

Doom Whisperer is better as a control finisher, and this is aggro to the middle of its Rakdos heart. I expect this will rapidly pop up in price as aggro decks try to take over, to $20 or $25, before control decks figure out the right mix of sweepers (Cleansing Nova, Kaya’s Wrath, and Citywide Bust all play!)

Skarrgan Hellkite ($8)

We have a few comparables here, and none of them are reassuring to this Dragon. Demanding Dragon, anyone? The pinging is cute but expensive and slow, and why does a huge dragon care about the measly two-toughness things?

Before you ask, yes, this is a huge upgrade on Colossal Might.

Plus, we’re getting Collision in this set, making huge flyers a bit more suspect. I fear this Dragon is doomed to the bulk bin.

Kaya, Orzhov Usurper ($13)

She’s very good against tokens, and has the ability to stop the endless value grind that Golgari decks can currently do…but is that enough? She does offer inevitability if she’s not stopped, but we can see that the wraths are real. Esper looks dominating right now, and I think she’ll see just enough play to stay about this price.

Dovin, Grand Arbiter ($14)

Now this is more like it. I think this version of Dovin is underpriced, given how well he’ll play into what UW wants to do. You’re going to need a good aggressive deck against him, and the way his plus plays with the token generating is a very elegant design. I think we’ll see him delaying all over the place, enough to bump him up to $20.

Rakdos, the Showstopper ($6)

A little bit of a bummer, but I think there’s a decent deck to be made around his ability…but not a top tier deck. Commander goodness all the way, and he’ll keep this price for quite some time.

Prime Speaker Vannifar ($18)

My instincts all say that this is a bad card for Standard but the purest of Commander gold. It’s slow, weak, and constrictive in Standard, but if built around, can be totally busted in the two most busted colors in Commander. That’s not a recipe for a $20 card, more like a solid $10.

Our graph can barely show the recent spike to $25!

Seraph of the Scales ($10)

Four mana, 4/3 flyer, can have vigilance and deathtouch, is an Angel, but most importantly, has Afterlife of THREE. So it’s a good size flyer with Spectral Procession built in afterwards? Holy hell. That’s pure, sweet, addictive value. It’s cheap, and not legendary, so a deck can play the full set. This has a lot of potential to climb, but lacking that fourth toughness in the land of the Phoenix is a very real drawback. I honestly don’t know what will happen. A spike to $20 wouldn’t shock me, nor would a slow fall to $4.

Emergency Powers ($5)

Seven mana is a lot, even if you can do this as an instant, or get your mana back in a permanent. If you could cast a wrath off this card I’d be more interested, but it’s already low and people aren’t biting. Yes, it’s a Timetwister effect and those are quite rare, but only the most steely of control decks are going to cast this after running their opponent out of resources. Will be bulk.

Captive Audience ($4)

While I love this, you’re not winning until a couple turns after you cast it, and even then it’s not a total given. Aggro decks have some much better choices as finishers, and while it’s funny in Commander, once you survive the three effects, this does nothing. Another bulk.

Ravager Wurm ($6)

I got into a big talk about this card during GP Oakland. It just seems so un-mythic-like for its mana cost. This is the big Gruul finisher? Somberwald Stag could fight at five mana, Reclamation Sage has the destruction at three. Yes, you’re being flexible and that’s nice, but you’re not getting a lot of stats out of your six-mana mythic. Underwhelming in price and abilities, though this might bump after Field of Ruin rotates out.

Hydroid Krasis ($12)

Oh yes indeed, this is a card. Go ahead and counter it–I already drew and gained from it anyway. This is a superlative card, one that’s going to see a lot of play. $12 is too low. I’m expecting that it’ll drop a little and then start to climb as people figure out how good it is. By next Christmas, this is back up to $20, maybe even more.

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