Casual Fridays

The Grand Plan

For those of you who are experienced at the ebb and flow of Magic, today’s plan is not going to be a shock to you. What I’m doing is old hat and a plan that has served me well so far, and I haven’t seen a reason to change yet.

For those of you who are more new to the game, and the idea of how drastically values can change for a card, prepare for some sage advice. Even though the Pro Tour is underway, and you should stay tuned for cards that bust the format open, that’s a skill I don’t have. Today’s plan, though, has worked for me over and over.

Aether Revolt has some really powerful yet really cheap cards. This is good for us who seek to accrue value while cards are inexpensive, back to the original profit idea of “buy low, sell high.”

We are going to do a lot of buying low and hopefully a lot of selling high, but instead of lots of cards, I’ve got a timeline in mind.

Aether Revolt is the current set for drafting and events, but on March 15, Modern Masters 2017 will arrive.  Then on April 22, we have the prerelease for Amonkhet! This is a lot going on in a very short time, and represents some real opportunities.

The cheapest point for a set is right after the following set comes out. So for Aether Revolt, I want to be picking up cards about March 22. I want to be getting Modern Masters 2017 cards around the beginning of May.

I especially want to be getting the cards that have long-term appeal, not just the Standard powerhouses. I would so much rather buy 17 Lifecrafter’s Bestiary right now than one Walking Ballista, for instance.

The pattern of Standard has been one of consistency for the best cards. Let’s look at the headliner for Battle for Zendikar: big ol’ Gids.

He’s dipped down to $20 from time to time but he’s stayed in the $20-$30 range pretty consistently, and I expect the same out of something like the Ballista. It might go down to $10, it might creep up to $20, but nothing too crazy.

Unless Doubling Season gets reprinted in Standard. Then watch out.

I really love a lot of Aether Revolt for long-term holds. Regular and foil copies of the Bestiary, because the card is just amazingly powerful if you can live through the turn you cast it.

Whir of Invention is really intriguing to me, as a card that could be broken in the right deck. The comparison to Chord of Calling is a good one, because the deck that wants Whir will want four of them, and that’s a trait I truly love in my speculative picks.

Aethersphere Harvester is a fairer Smuggler’s Copter, but this demonstrates how good looting is compared to gaining life. I think Rishkar, Peema Renegade plus Winding Constrictor is a turn-two into turn-three that a lot of decks won’t be ready for, especially when something costing six lands on turn four.

I don’t know much about the cards in Modern Masters 2017, but the principle still applies. Conspiracy: Take the Crown lowered prices remarkably, and now a lot of those cards have enjoyed a bump. I want to plan on grabbing cards at their low point, though I need to think more about the actual cards. The 2013 edition of Modern Masters had a lot of amazing cards, but the 2015 was less valuable and more widely distributed. So we will see.

That’s my plan. It’s what I’m going to be trying to accomplish, and I love having targets and ideas clearly drawn. Buy low, sell high, but do that about once a month these days!

James Chillcott, Pro Tour Coverage

Pro Tour Aether Revolt: Financial Preview

6 Comments

The second stop of the 2016-2017 Pro Tour season finds Standard in a pretty weird spot. Fresh off an early winter Standard scene that was heavily warped by the presence of Emrakul, the Promised End, WOTC elected to ban the Eldrazi titan along with Reflector Mage and Smuggler’s Copter in an attempt to hit the reset button and open up the field.

Unfortunately, the printing of Felidar Guardian in Aether Revolt introduced a Splinter Twin style combo to the format alongside the previously ignored Saheeli Rai, and now the format is warping alongside the combo and the GB aggro and delirium decks that seem best suited to keep pace with it.

Over in Dublin, Ireland, the best Magic players in the world have been stealth testing to answer a pressing question: facing down one of the most dangerous Standard combo decks in recent memory, can a foil be found that still has game against the rest of the field?

Saheeli RaiFelidar Guardian

With over $250,000 USD on the line, and a cool $40,000 for the champ, players angling for the Top 8 will need to be both lucky and good while they pray their team has both read and answered the meta-game correctly. Taking a look at the results from the first two major Star City Games Standard tournaments including Aether Revolt, the Top 8 field has been more or less evenly dominated by GB and Jeskai Combo decks.

So far, dark horse decks striving to break out might include any of the following shells that have put up a smattering of relevant results:

As per usual, it is worth noting that the Pro Tour currently requires that players succeed in a mixed schedule of booster draft (AER – AER – KLD) and Standard play with 3 rounds of draft Friday morning Ireland time, followed by 5 rounds of Standard starting around 8am EST/5am PST, Friday.

Given the European time zone of this tournament, early morning speculation has the potential to be more successful than usual here.

Will any of the pros find a way to unlock a new archetype with game against the known field? Will a fringe deck from the early weeks of the format suddenly end up perfectly positioned to take off? Will there be a chance to get in on a must-have card that shows early promise or will the hype train leave the bandwagon speculators out in the cold without enough buyers come Monday morning?


Cards to Watch

Complicating matters this weekend is the fact that WoTC has announced that bannings can now take place at the release of a new set and five weeks later. As such, investing in cards that are most heavily played in the Saheeli Rai combo decks (including Saheeli herself) is potentially very risky. A top 8 dominated by the combo could easily get Felidar Guardian banned and result in Saheeli plunging back down towards $5. This scenario should be predisposing the financially minded to pursue cards that are likely to be in high demand with or without the Saheeli decks in the format, and especially cards that are useful in a variety of deck shells.

Here are a few of the interesting cards that seem like they should be on our radar this weekend:

Saheeli Rai: Too good for Standard?

Saheeli Rai

Saheeli Rai + Felidar Guardian is the pivot point for the entire format at present and anyone that can’t figure out how to beat it consistently this weekend might as well join the crowd and field some version of the deck. Both Jeskai and 4-Color builds have been doing well, with a green splash being put to good use to help find combo pieces via Oath of Nissa, ramp with Servant of the Conduit or grind value with Rogue Refiner.

So far I am finding it hard to believe that any of the pro teams will find a brand new deck that is so good against both the combo and the rest of the field that it dominates the Top 8 from nowhere. Instead I predict a Top 8 with 2-3 versions of Saheeli Combo, 2-3 versions of GB decks, 2-3 sggro decks and a perhaps a random Tier 2 deck that slipped past the ramparts. If the combo decks field 5+ versions in the Top 8, the clock for a banning will be counting down and Saheeli will likely tank as players anticipate an imminent banning. The ideal scenario for the risk takes among us is that the deck only fields 1-2 copies in the Top 8, marking it as strong, but not overwhelming and potentially allowing for some upward price motion. Once the near term ban decisions are made, another spike could be possible as well. Having already gotten in at $5 and out at $20 on this card, I’m steering well clear of this uncertainty, but do as you will.

Current Price: $18
Predicted Price Monday: $15
Odds to Top 8: 1 to 4

Torrential Gearhulk: Best card in the format?

Torrential Gearhulk

Sure, Saheeli Rai may be hogging the spotlight, but a compelling argument can be made that beyond the combo, it’s the blue artifact creature that best defines this format. Showing up in both combo and control Jeskai variants,  Torrential Gearhulk provides tremendous value in the late game. A typical sequence might involve flashing in the ‘hulk to block and kill a threat, while flashing back an instant to kill another threat, stop an opposing combo turn, draw some cards or simply close out the game on the back of a burn spell.

This card is even seeing fringe play in Modern and I would be stunned if it didn’t make the Top 8 of this tournament. Often played as a 3 or 4 of, this ubiquitous mythic is highly unlikely to get banned in a few weeks, and could easily end up over $30 at the end of the weekend. Even if that doesn’t happen, the card has at least a year to spike again, and constitutes my top pick for the fall set mythic most likely to hit that number before rotation.  There isn’t a lot of meat left on this bone, but a playset for $88 could end up being outed at $120 minus fees, or about $105, for a $17 gain. Not amazing, but you could make worse decisions.

Current Price: $22
Predicted Price Monday: $26-28 (on a strong Top 8 presence)
Odds to Top 8: 1 to 4

Verdurous Gearhulk

Verdurous Gearhulk

GB aggro and delirium decks make up 20-30% of the metagame heading into this weekend, and nearly all of those decks are running multiple copies of the second most powerful gearhulk. In coordination with Rishkar, Peema Renegade, Winding Constrictor and Walking Ballista, Verdurous Gearhulk offers ratchets up the shenanigans level on +1/+1 counters to new heights in Standard. With a supporting cast this deep on deck for the next 18 months, there is a decent chance that additional role players will appear in forthcoming sets and keep the beefiest construct in demand for the duration of it’s time in Standard. Currently priced about $6 less than his blue brethren, and with a much lower chance of being impacted negatively by a fresh round of bannings, I think that picking up a couple of play sets of this card could be in order.

Current Price: $16
Predicted Price Monday: $22+ (on a strong Top 8 presence)
Odds to Top 8: 1 to 3

Aetherworks Marvel: Dead For Good or Amonkhet Ready

Aetherworks Marvel

Without Emrakul coming into play on Turn 5, and facing down the trigger countering abilities of Disallow with blue decks doing well, Aetherworks Marvel seems to be back on the shelf waiting to get broken all over again. I have to assume that the pros are at least attempting to make this happen, since they’re all too familiar with the power potential, but even if they don’t find it this cycle, there are several more sets forthcoming that might put this back in the spotlight in 2017. Heck, a great new Nicol Bolas planeswalker and a good discard spell might be enough to get this back in play alongside Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger. I’m not moving back in yet, but I’ll be ready to pull the trigger as soon as someone gives me a good reason.

I’ll leave it up to you to decide if this 5-0 Temur Marvel deck from yesterday is reason enough.

Current Price: $3.50
Predicted Price Monday: $3
Odds to Top 8: 10 to 1

Metalwork Colossus: Stuck at Tier 2?

Metalwork Colossus

Numerous versions of the Metalwork deck have put up decent results since the fall, but the deck has so far failed to find a configuration that can consistently lay claim to Tier 1 status. Between vehicles, Sanctum of Ugin and numerous value artifacts, these decks can pull together some pretty explosive turns, and I would love to see a fresh take on this archetype make it’s way to the top tables and give this card a reason to break $5 and set up some decent action for the folks who got in closer to $1.

Current Price: $2
Predicted Price Monday: $2
Odds to Top 8: 5 to 1

Inspiring Statuary: First to Spike

Inspiring Statuary

The first buyout of the weekend belongs to this oft-overlooked artifact, and either the pros are feeling confidant about a rogue deck choice or someone decided to go deep indeed. If the deck is real, it likely involves Aetherflux Reservoir, Paradoxical Outcome, Crush of Tentacles (a $2 mythic!) and a poor man’s storm combo in Standard that was briefly seen on camera at SCG Richmond last weekend. Something nutty with Paradox Engine (currently at $7) could also be a thing. If one or more pro teams have actually built a finely tuned killing machine around this card and they manage to Top 8 with it, the current spike may hold for long enough to get back out, but it’s much more likely that someone is going to get stuck holding a lot of $2 rares without buyers. I’m happy to stay out of this and play it safe, as peak supply for Aether Revolt is still weeks away and anything over $2 for a rare is going to be tough to make money on.

Current Price: $4 ($1 this morning)
Monday Price: $2
Odds to Top 8: 6 to 1

Tezzeret’s Simulacrum: Sold Out?

Tezzeret's Simulacrum

I can barely find a copy of this card for sale anywhere in North America right now. Did the pros figure out a way to break this with Inspiring Statuary and Paradox Engine? Is Tezzeret, the Schemer going to end up a thing at $13? This would be big news if true and someone is certainly making a move here. Keep in mind that even though this card is labelled as an uncommon, it is only available in the Planeswalker sealed product, and it therefore effectively a mythic rare if it is suddenly needed as a four-of in a real deck. Could this be the biggest surprise of the weekend?

Herald of Anguish: Coming Out Party?

Herald of Anguish

Here we have a 5/5 flyer that can potentially be cast cheaply, force your opponent to discard and kill small creatures at will. This bad boy demon was bought out early in Japan during preview season, but has yet to put up relevant results. Now down to $7, with deep inventory that’s only getting deeper, this weekend would be an amazing time for these to suddenly start doing work on camera and drive a hard spike to $15 that would probably fade on Day 2 when it’s pilot failed to ace their draft pod and got knocked out of the tournament. A long shot for sure, but solid profit potential if someone proves this card is real.

Current Price: $7
Monday Price: $6
Odds to Top 8: 20 to 1

Aether Hub: Most Popular Kid in the Class

Aether Hub

Aether Hub is the most played non-basic land in Standard, and it’s not close. Unless Amonkhet provides some great new color fixing, this essential uncommon could end up pushing $4-5, but only if Standard play regains momentum at the local level and starts draining down inventory on what is currently a pretty deep stock. Blooming Marsh and Spirebluff Canal also have a chance to make you a few bucks/copy based on their current demand profile and their limited Modern play, though foils may be the better bet there.

Current Price: $2
Monday Price: $3
Odds to Top 8: 1 to 100 (ie inevitable)

Do you have an outsider pick for the tournament? Share it in the comments!

Stay tuned for round by round MTGFinance coverage of Pro Tour: Aether Revolt all weekend!

James Chillcott is the CEO of ShelfLife.net, The Future of Collecting, Senior Partner at Advoca, a designer, adventurer, toy fanatic and an avid Magic player and collector since 1994.

ProTrader

PucaPicks for 2/2/2017

4 Comments

I’ve turned the corner on PucaTrade, admittedly because of my experience and not because of larger factors.  Five weeks ago, I was at 20,000 points and my bounties got picked up by random people, including an Invention for a 70% bounty.

I mentioned last week what changed: I decided to give up on the hustling of Discord or forums and such, and I started sending out a trade every two days.

I’m not going to offer the same huge bounty this time, but I am willing to send out the leftover cards from my Grand Prix sells box in oder to build up points again. I like using PucaTrade for low-level speculations, many of which are worth going after today.

To be clear: If the only way trades happen is for me to send trades, then it’s a race that can never be won. The site wants a constant churn, a flow of cards in and out. At this point, it’s not effective to build a stack of points up and then just wait. I have a high number of lower-value stuff that packages well, though, and I’m happy to build back up. I’m not going to try for the super-high-value cards, but I like Puca as a way to move cards that don’t otherwise have a good outlet.

Aether Revolt is out and getting opened and some prices are stabilizing, so let’s dive in!

Aether Revolt box – 14314 points – It’s worth mentioning that if you want to change actual dollars into Pucapoints, this is a very cost-effective method. Spending about $90 cash will get you about 1.5x that in points, and while some individual cards have a better ratio, this will happen pretty quickly and easily, and that’s before unofficial bounties come into play.

Heart of Kiran – 1538 – This is currently the most expensive card in the set, and that’s a little disheartening. This set overall is very low-value, which is actually really good for us. Cheap cards offer a lot of opportunities. This card SHOULD be very good. Two mana, 4/4 flying vigilance, is amazing. It’s got a Crew cost of 3, which makes it sort of bad in creature-based decks, but if you can afford the loyalty, it’s stunning. I can see this being good in a Planeswalker deck, alongside mass removal, but that deck hasn’t shown up…yet. I don’t like to pick up cards that are this expensive based on what could be, so for right now, this is a sell.

Walking Ballista – 1236 – We forgot that Hangarback Walker is a good card! It costs XX and can get bigger, and yet we totally forgot how good it can be. I think this is good enough and versatile enough to really shoot up in price sometime in the next 18 months, but I want to wait another couple of weeks before getting this. I’m hoping for the price to drop to about 1000 points, at the time Modern Masters 2017 comes out.

Tezzeret the Schemer – 1175 – He’s falling fast, and requires the right deck. That screams out sell him now, and that’s what I’m doing.

Herald of Anguish – 882 – I think this is a worse Demon of Dark Souls, and while it can cost less to cast, the immediate impact isn’t there. I expect to see this fall farther, and right now, I’m sending this out.

Ajani Unyielding – 838 – If you can get him in play, he’s game-breaking. He’s worthy in Commander too, and I think this is about the perfect price.

Paradox Engine – 811/1802/4949 – It’s an engine in search of a combo. Clearly it needs mana rocks/creature-based acceleration, but it’s going to be broken in some format. We saw several attempts at this when Jeskai Ascendancy was revealed, and this is copies 5-8 for the deck that wants such. I love the card, and I think the pack foil is gorgeous, but I’m just holding onto this now instead of buying or selling.

Rishkar, Peema Renegade – 651 – I’m a big, big fan of this card. It’s instantly one of the best cards in my Experiment Kraj Commander deck, turning all sorts of things into mana producers. I think that after rotation, the black-green decks will adjust and start casting Winding Constrictor into Rishkar, for a 4/5 attacker on turn three backed up by a 4/4, each of which taps for mana! I can’t deny the power, and I’m picking these up now.

Disallow – 650 – I don’t think this has legs for Standard, so I’m selling this now. I think Commander is keeping this afloat at this moment, so I’ll love getting this in a few weeks for 400 or less.

Metallic Mimic – 473 – What I love about this as a speculative card is that if a deck breaks this card, it’s going to be a four-of. It’s got to be in play early and before the broken cards land, and that deck isn’t here yet. I’m selling this until it gets to two or three hundred points.

Foil Mechanized Production – 1100 – Alternate win condition! This is several times the nonfoil price, and that screams ‘casual players love me!’ That’s a sound that I love to hear, because it tells me what I should be paying attention to. This is another card looking to be broken, and I’ve got this on my want list at this price.

Planar Bridge – 373/1266/5005 – I know this is a good Commander card. I know it’s got potential in big mana decks, and while I want it to be good, I will not be picking this up quite yet.

Spire of Industry – 364/851 – I love these foils especially. This seems like an auto-in for artifact-based decks, and it’s got excellent potential in Standard right now too. Seems like an easy pick to be 700-1000 points in six months. Both are on my want list now.

Lifecrafter’s Bestiary – 144/400 – I can’t believe these foils are this cheap, and this is the easiest pick this week for me. Have you played with this? Against it? It’s going to be a top-five Commander staple before you know it, and I want all copies right now. Foils especially, but nonfoils for 100 or so points is a fantastic deal. Grab all you can, keep them in great condition, and thank me later.

Whir of Invention – 139/467 – I like getting these cheap right now. I’d love picking this up for even less, especially foils, but if you like open-ended cards, this is your cup of tea. I like getting a stack of these right now, and I am indeed trading for them.

Winding Constrictor – 108/1201 – I love everything about this card, and the foil price is not a surprise to me in any way. I spent the weekend chanting ‘Kill the snake!’ in Limited play and it’s an amazing Commander card. I wouldn’t be surprised if it made Standard waves either, or was an FNM promo sometime soon. I don’t see any prices spiking, but I like having the foils for long-term stability.

Jason Alt

Ripple Rat Reminder

There were no new rat cards in Aether Revolt or Commander 2016 and yet I feel like a few decks are going to get a look because of something that wasn’t printed. It’s itself a bulk rare and while maybe the foils have upside, I’m not excited about either the foil or non-foil or the card itself. However, this series was predicated on, and subsequently got away from when I felt like it, the idea that a new card, whether or not the card itself has financial upside, can re-invigorate older archetypes and get people talking about those archetypes and make some people some money when the cards sell more briskly. Prices of older cards balance on a knife’s edge and it sometimes takes a very small nudge to send the price teetering. It also takes a pretty long time for the prices to go back to normal, if they ever do.

Sometimes the push is very, very slight.

“Wait, couldn’t we beat Legacy Tron decks with this?”

“Anyone else sick of losing to Storm?”

I remember people flipping out in the QS forums over both of these cards and trampling each other to buy copies. It’s sometimes hard to tell what’s going to be a Sylex (also very, very good in Vintage) and what’s going to be a Druid. These pushes were from tournament tech that caused copies to disappear from the floor of a GP and sent people scrambling for copies around the event hall that weren’t there. We’ve seen it dozens of times and it’s always hilarious. Sometimes you had to be there – Aegis of Honor’s price graph has erased all traces of its “$20 on the floor of an SCG Legacy open in Columbus” from 4 years ago. Sometimes you have copies or get them right away while everyone else is flat-footed, sometimes you don’t. Little nudges are all it takes sometimes, and I feel like a nudge happened and it’s going to register pretty soon.

Low supply can have the same effect as high demand, and that’s why I pointed to cards that are very old like Sylex and Druid. I think a new card is going to make people more interested in a card with low supply and the rest of the cards in the deck, as well. Could we see one little rock thrown in a pond lead to big ripples? I think so. It’s funny that I mention ripples, by the way.

So this is a sub $7 card some places and that’s non-correct. Casual ripple players buy these four at a time, but obviously no one has in a while. The real upside can come from people building a new deck with Relentless Rats or Shadowborn Apostle in EDH. Is there some reason that would happen now of all times? I think so.

This plucky $1 foil is a pretty damn good card in a deck with a ton of Rats or Apostles in it. You can grab a bunch of copies of the card of choice and still have some left in your deck. It may not be a huge impetus behind a ton of new demand for rat and apostle cards in and of itself, but it’s one more reminder those decks exist, one more chance for some EDH deck brewer to write an article about those decks and a new group of people remembering those cards exist. Secret Salvage is not in low supply and probably never will be, even the foils, but that’s not our focus and shouldn’t be. I think Thrumming Stone is the best target in the decks, both of which have many other juicy targets with low supply.

Did you know this is a $12 foil? It’s nearly sold out which means we’re very near a tipping point, but this is, again, a $12 foil. That doesn’t seem correct to me and once this is gone at this price, it likely gets put back in stock at $20 and everyone looks at it and says “Yeah, duh, EDH” or whatever they say when they wish they’d thought of it. There is very low supply on Coldsnap in general because the boxes were miserable back in the day and now they’re prohibitively expensive. There was basically never a good time to buy boxes of Coldsnap unless you could see the future. That being the case, small runs on these cards aren’t mitigated by new supply and have long-reaching effects. We saw Arcum Daggson go nuts earlier and that price has stuck. Ripple rats decks aren’t Arcum decks (Arcum being a Commander that is nuts now that we have Paradox Engine. He’s stupid now. For those of you who read my Scrap Trawler piece and wondered where Trawler was needed, this is a good place to start looking) but they are still popular and with the combined effect of rats and apostles on the cards they share, we could see a similar amount of upside. $12 for a foil is wrong if anyone additional builds a new deck.

Speaking of small multipliers, this is a $3.50ish foil. The fact that a foil common is $4 when a non-foil common is $2 points to the fact that casual players are inclined to build around this card and therefore buy the cheapest version. Still, EDH players do foil decks sometimes and if it’s only twice as much for foils and they’ll get bought 20 or so at a time, only one new deck is going to permanently impact the price.

There’s perhaps no better visualization of what’s going on than the price graph of Shadowborn Demon’s foil price over the last couple of years. It’s like you can watch people not care about the deck in real time. I don’t think it’s necessarily people freeing up copies by selling the deck because the deck was cheap to make and costs nothing to keep together, and if you’re going to sell a card, why buylist it for $2 when you could just keep the deck built? Do you want to free up 100 sleeves that badly? I think this is mostly from hype around the deck when it was first built that while it materialized, didn’t quite sustain the amount of copies it would need to sell.

Do I want to buy $3 demons with the expectation that they will hit $20 again? Not really, but the supply is mostly accounted for since it spiked early which means renewed interest will make the price increase more sharply, if it does. I think the cards basically can’t get any cheaper at this point, just on principle. Still, let’s look at the cards shared between the two potential ripple decks besides Thrumming Stone and Secret Salvage to see if there is anything that has two chances to go up.

It’s not entirely certain if there will be a Commander 2017 given the announcement of Commander Anthology, but given the release of Commander 2016 in a year when they released Planechase Anthology earlier in the year, I wouldn’t sweat it. Still, the odds of getting White-Black reprints until 2018 at the earliest seem low. Iroas hinted they are willing to do it, but the exclusion of Kruphix or other Gods that would have vastly improved the decks they were in signals that a reprint of a God is theoretically possible. Still, I wouldn’t hold my breath. Clearly capable of selling for more than it is now and also the best general in Apostle decks (Though maybe not rat decks) I am breaking my promise to talk about cards in both kinds of decks to point out that this seems to be climbing a bit and the spread is narrowing. This is probably not worth speculating on, but I would get them if you want to play with them because the cheapest days are behind it.

This is hard, guys. This is always going to go up even if it’s reprinted, but other than obvious tribal stuff, what do Ripple Rats and Ripplepostles have in common? One’s rats and the other one is demons. They have EDH staples in common. Black Market. Dictate of Erebos. One’s better with Shirei, the other with Marrow-Gnawer.

This is also poised to go back up. If you take nothing else away from this week’s article, let’s remember to go back and look at stuff we think we know the price of. That’s sort of what Secret Salvage did. Even if we don’t find anything juicy, we found a bunch of prices we haven’t checked in a minute. Stuff is creepin’ so creep on the creepers and peep their creepin’ for the price of the creeps is too steep.

Hey there, creeper. This is probably the most expensive card in the deck if you’re trying to build either one. I think Secret Salvage is a good way to fill your hand so you can pitch the cards to something and Bidding or Living End them back or win with Mortal Combat or something. This is, again, a pretty general tribal card that could go up based on renewed ripple rat rapture but will also creep on its own.

You would think all of this would discourage me, but it actually doesn’t. While the Shadowborn deck seems like a bit of a bust in terms of targets and there is way less non-staple overlap than we had wanted, I still think the rats builds are solid moving forward and Thrumming Stone is a card I want to be about. It’s old, unlikely to be reprinted, has the same supply as cards like Arcum Daggson which have been good movers lately (albeit with more of an impetus, I know that, I’m just saying Arcum establishes what renewed interest in a Coldsnap rare does) and I think it’s too cheap right now. Rats has a chance to shove it over a tipping point as does Shadowborn stuff. With every new demon printed, people will get a reminder. With every new rat, same. Thrumming Stone will likely continue to creep up and 60 card, 4-of casual could really get the ball rolling for us faster than we expect.

Next week I’m going to delve into the lists from Commander Anthology and talk about which cards I expect to recover, which I don’t and whether the Anthology is even going to impact prices all that much. Until next time!

MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY