Watchtower

Following a Few Clues from Goblin Charbelcher

The Modern Showcase Qualifier this weekend featured two Goblin Charbelcher (“Belcher”) decks in the top 8 from users victorjcoll1 and ZYX_Jerry. While Showcase Qualifiers are smaller, relatively high-stake events, in which the winner earns a spot in the Champions Showcase with its prize pool of $70,000 and a Pro Tour (Season 1) or World Championship (Season 2–3) invitation. A complete metagame breakdown can be found here. While Belcher decks pop up from time to time, it was very interesting to see not one but two in the top 8 for a premium MTGO tournament. This article takes a deep dive into the key cards of this deck that are run in multiple formats, which you may want to consider picking up sooner rather than later.

Below is the 7th place version of the Belcher deck from MTGO User victorjcoll1.

Goblin Charbelcher decks have had their ups and downs over the last year. Despite having success, many thought they would fade after the printing of the ultimate fair land destruction spell, Boseiju, Who Endures, which is a two-mana stone rain against Belcher. Critics of this deck were correct that Boseiju would see a large amount of play. It is currently the 5th most popular land in the Modern format, being included in 37% of decks, typically with two copies. But those critics apparently incorrectly assumed that Boseiju, or its predecessors like Cleansing Wildfire or Field of Ruin, would be enough to keep this highly unfair deck down.  

Many cards in the Belcher come and go but are not essential to the strategy, or are too narrow and are only good in Belcher decks to be trustworthy (I’m looking at you Irencrag). But there are several cards in this archetype that have cross-format appeal and deserve a much closer investigation.

Pact of Negation (Non-Foil)

Current Price: $10
Potential Price: $20 in 18 months
Confidence: 8/10
Disclosure: I own 33 copies.

Pact of Negation is a key card in several combo decks. Its purpose is obvious, allowing you to win the game during the turn it’s played, or alternatively, in the late game it’s an expensive awkward counter that is typically only used against a top threat. For decks like Belcher, it allows you to push through an opponent’s hate to combo off and win the game with very little downside!

In Modern Pact of Negation also plays an important role in Ad Nauseam, Storm, and Neobrand. All are very unfair combo decks that lean into what Pact of Negation does best. In Commander, Pact of Negation does extremely well too. It’s included in 74,500 decks on EDHRec.com, which is about 10% of all blue decks!

Another reason I like Pact of Negation is because of its strong price history. The A25 version also fell to around $10 about a year after its reprinting, but then proceeded to climb to $40 before it was announced in Timespiral Remastered (TSR), combined with being in “The List” for a while. It’s hard to believe, but TSR was released in March 2021, nearly a year and a half ago. While supply is still fairly deep, Pact’s price has been holding steady thus far, and in my opinion, it’s only a matter of time until Pact of Negation begins to climb again!

Valakut Awakening (Foil Extended Art)

Current Price: $10
Potential Price: $20 in 18 months
Confidence: 8/10
Disclosure: I own 40 copies.

For the low cost of coming into play tapped, Valakut Awakening is able to selectively cycle away your dead cards and land in exchange for fresh new cards. At instant speed no less and it replaces itself! It is no surprise to see this card seeing competitive play, but typically decks run one or two copies as a backup plan like Omnath or Living End. But here, Belcher is running a full four copies! Love to see it. It has also recently been seeing Pioneer play in Jund Transmogrify and other Indomitable Creativity shells.

On top of seeing competitive play, Valakut Awakening is in 67,000 decks on EDHRec.com. This significant amount of commander play, combined with the Modern and Pioneer, is why I selected the premium version of this card. It’s unlikely that a better card filter card will be printed anytime soon that accomplishes the same flexibility as Valakut Awakening with such few downsides. Assuming a lack of premium reprint, all versions of this card should continue to climb.

Mythic Zendikar Rising Lands

A lot has been written about the Mythic Zendikar Rising lands since their release and this deck provides one more example why you should own a reasonable number of these lands. Some have missed their best entry points, but not all. They are essential for strategies like Belcher but are also role players in countless other decks and are strong EDH cards too.

Watch List: An Offer You Can’t Refuse (Promo Pack: Streets of New Capenna)

Current Price: $8

You may have noticed this sneaky little card is included as one copy in this Belcher list. An Offer You Can’t Refuse in many situations emulates a one-mana negate. For now, Belcher is one of the only consistently strong decks that include it. But at least one other fringe deck, Song of Creation storm, runs a full playset. While I’m not sold yet on An Offer You Can’t Refuse becoming extremely prevalent in competitive circles, I do think it’s worth keeping an eye on to see how it’s being incorporated in decks going forward. I could easily see this card becoming more mainstream, juicing demand for this card.

Turning to EDH, this card is in an astounding 35,000 decks on EDHRec.com, which is extremely high for a set that released in April. To put that into perspective Swan Song is in 145,000 decks. At this rate, An Offer You Can’t Refuse is on track to be a mega staple in Commander.

Another question that is outstanding on this card is when will be peak supply? This version comes out of Promo Pack from Streets of New Capenna. It’s unclear to me whether we are currently in peak supply or if a solid amount of new inventory is coming to the market soon.

For now I’m keeping an eye on it, but don’t be surprised if you see it as a future pick.

Oko (@OkoAssassin) has been writing for MTGPrice since 2020 with a focus on competitive play and Magic Online. In his personal life Oko is a lawyer, father, ice-hockey player, runner, and PC gamer.

Casual Fridays

Picking Up Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty

I have written about how in the last couple of years, I’ve gotten burned pretty badly by moving in too soon on cards I want to spec on. It used to be a three-month timeline for cards to find their floor, but now it’s more like six months. 

With that in mind, let’s look at a few Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty cards and dive in on a couple of bricks. For the most part, I’m hoping to buy at least several playsets, with the intent of selling them all to a buylist when the prices go up. Yes, you get less money per card, but when your profits are already solid, you get a good return and save a lot of time and energy on the shipping.

I don’t like to buy these sorts of cards in small quantities, I’d much prefer to take down a big wall all at once. If you’ve got the patience for opening all the envelopes, go for it.

The primary metric I want to use is EDHREC inclusions, because most of these cards haven’t been in preconstructed decks. These numbers are the tip of the iceberg, coming from the most connected and optimizing players, but it’s good to know what people’s favorite cards are. Commander is the main engine of value these days, but if a card has a lot of Modern or Pioneer play too, that’s a lovely bonus.

I want to make clear that for most of these, I want the cheapest versions, unless the more premium printings are also quite cheap. In some cases that’s possible, and in others it’s totally farfetched. Also, I haven’t bought any of these yet, just for full disclosure.

The Channel Lands (cheapest is $2.50, most expensive is $63 for Borderless foil) – By far the most popular EDHREC inclusion is Boseiju, Who Shelters All, in 61,000 decks online, and the price chart shows a remarkably consistent price for an in-print rare land.

The lands are the most popular cards in the set, with Farewell being more popular than Eiganjo and Sokenzan. It’s not hard to see why all five are so popular, the effects are good and worthwhile and are difficult to counter. 

The only thing holding me back from a big purchase of any of these is that the full cycle is an excellent candidate for a future Secret Lair. That set wouldn’t hurt too bad, as we’re getting in at good prices, but it would take that much longer for the regular versions to get there as a result.

Secluded Courtyard ($1 to $7.50) – The most expensive version of this is the Promo Pack version, which has the Planeswalker symbol frame, but this land is strictly better than Unclaimed Territory, a card in more than 66k decks and has been reprinted several times. Courtyard is in 23,000 decks and again, we’re weighing reprint risk. This is absolutely an uncommon that can make it to $4 retail, giving us a profit of $1-$2 per card when selling to a buylist, but inclusion in a preconstructed deck would sting and slow it down.

Going after the more premium versions is safer, but more expensive to start with. Those are probably the safer play, but require both more capital and more time to open the singletons you’re sent. 

Farewell ($6.50 to $17) – The most popular nonland from the set, this ‘best board wipe ever’ is already expensive from being in 44k decks online. It’s not hard to see why, given the modular nature and the exiling. This is tough to evade and especially for annoyingly recursive decks, represents a total shutdown.

In fact, it’s entirely possible that we’ve already seen the floor on Farewell and it’s only going to trend upward from here. I want to be in on the basic versions, with a greater percentage in growth over time.

The Reality Chip ($2 to $9) – The foil Showcase version of this is already pretty expensive, but the foil EA can be had for close to $4 if you want a more premium version with less of a buy-in. This is a phenomenal card advantage engine, and is even showing up in Modern as a one-of in some Hammer Time decks that tutor it up with Stoneforge Mystic. 

More than 16,000 players have listed the card in their decks, and with a price gap like this, I really want a brick of the most basic versions. I’d be looking to get $4-$5 per copy from a buylist within a year.

Atsushi, the Blazing Sky ($5 to $22) – Almost exactly 16,000 players have added this to decks, and not all of them are Dragons players. This is quite a deal at four mana, and you almost want it to die to effects immediately. In this case, I’m most likely to look at the Borderless foils and hope for an increase to $40 or $50, and that feels pretty reasonable when you remember how many NEO Collector Boosters needed to be opened to get one of these. 

It also helps that right now on TCG there’s only one person with four or more foil Borderless versions, and only about 100 copies total.

Mirror Box ($1.50 to $4) – If you’d asked me how many decks played this card, I wouldn’t have guessed this was the 12th most popular nonland from the set, put into 10,000 decks in the last six months. People absolutely love copying things, though, and Mirror Box enables a very high level of shenanigans. It’s also handy for a boost to all the things you’re playing, and if you copy something multiple times, the boost really grows. There’s a case to be made for any of the versions, but given the higher quantities you can get of the regulars, I think that’s where I want to be. 

Don’t forget that buying all the copies someone has of a card can really lower your cost per card if they went low on price but high on shipping. Here’s an example, from regular frame, nonfoil Mirror Box:

The first vendor, you can get four copies for $10 or six for $15. The second vendor lowered prices but has a higher shipping. If you buy all eight copies, you’re spending $9.75, basically getting two free copies compared to the first vendor. 

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: A Few Surprises

Readers!

I work for EDHREC as you probably know and you would think that things on EDHREC wouldn’t surprise me considering I am on the site daily plus I access it in my capacity as finance writer. You would think so, rightfully, and yet there are things that escaped my attention that seem like they’re of consequence. Let’s take a look at some of them and see if there is anything we should have noticed before. I’m goin to be looking at the Top 100 commanders built the last two weeks to see if anything snuck in. Ideally, you’d expect the Top 100 of the last two weeks to be mostly the top 10 of the last 10 sets which were all released roughly in the last two weeks, but you’ll see what it actually looks like, and… well, there are a few surprises.

You miss a lot if you just look at the top 10. Sure, Dragons being hot is no surprise to anyone, and Proper and Yuriko, boring decks that are 95% assembled in the box they came in chart highly, but once you start checking deeper, you’ll see a lot you missed. Here are some of the hits among the misses.

26th place is a long way to scroll down the page and despite seeming very weak and very narrow both, Sefris is nonetheless getting built quite a bit. The ability to trigger this 4 times a turn cycle fairly trivially and recycle creatures has caught the eye of Value Mavens everywhere.

Acererak seems like it’s in a great place. It’s got some functional utility with cards like Aluren, and future decks that do something similar to Aluren could make a 2 card combo with Acererak that draws your whole deck or pings them to death. Couple that with its obvious utility with completing the dungeon and its price currently seeing signs of life and you have yourselves a card to throw in a box for 2 years.

You’d have to really be asleep at the wheel not to notice Liesa was THIRTIETH OVERALL but I done did that. Let’s redeem myself if I can.

This card, which has flirted with $15 twice now, is the kind of casual favorite that will always be worth something because of 60 card casual players. They are the solid majority of players, and while they tend not to use our markets a ton, TCG and CK have good enough SEO that if they’re buying those cards online, they’re buying from one of those sites. This is currently gettable for $10 less than the price it peaked at, it’s on its way up and I don’t need a third thing.

It’s a little surprising for an uncommon to be ranked this highly, but this card does see some play, and it also held a very tasty secret that a lot of people missed – there was a card in there that was arbable as recently as March. Everything changed when Jinnie Fay Nation attacked.

I wish I’d noticed this when it hit its floor but the price seemed flat for so long, I stopped checking. I revisted both Aura Mutation and Artifact Mutation in the wake of Jinnie Fay but I forget about the more recent InPestation. If you can get these for the old price, do. This isn’t as much as spec opportunity as a “woopsie daisy” – I don’t always notice everything. This likely tops out at $10 but $15 isn’t unreasonable. I think expecting to spec at $8 and get out at $15 maybe is, though.

Ranked #218 overall, this is a recent (I mean, obviously) inclusion in the Rick Dees Biweekly 2.5 times Top 40. However, Value hunters found a lot to like here, and they unearthed an older card that seems more fun than ever.

The regular-border version of this is $1.50 or so making the meteoric rise of the EA version kind of surprising. Cards with large gaps between the EA version and regular version are hard for me to identify using my current routine and I’ll really need to address that or I’ll miss more than just this. Regular version can’t be terribly far behind, but in terms of sheer availability, I’m not sure what the ceiling is. EA versions are the new foils, and the foils are the new rules or token insert. What a world to rear children up in.

I don’t have a spec based on this pretty old but very, very, very linear and boring commander which I gave up on building because the process of it being on rails literally bored me, but this is as good a time as any to point out that Kindred Discovery got a reprint.

Reprinted cards have a tendency to settle between their spike price and their reprint price. I won’t bore you with the average of $55 and $5, but that number is more than $5 and it’s more than $10 and it’s more than $20, so maybe you want these at $5.

That does it for me, readers. I have to get better about identifying cards that have a very juicy EA version but a really boring regular version and foil, and I have to start tracking commanders we all know are good but which will be like 7th in a set and 50th for the month and like 63rd overall. Not being in the Top 5 can make me miss it with my current routine, and I need to tighten up. That said, missing stuff doesn’t feel nearly as bad as false positives, something my current method has been good about. All I know is that I’ve been at this more than a decade, I’m still learning and I couldn’t have done it without your support. Until next time!

Watchtower

Obvious is Easy, But Still Good

I’m back this week with more Modern talk! Last week we discussed how the Modern format still has an impact on card prices, despite less extensive paper play. This week we’ll consider a few more key role players, all of whom have proven to be resilient in the metagame over the last year. Each of these cards is a Modern Horizons 2 (MH2) mythic rare, which helps ensure that their price floor is reasonably high. If you look at the current price of all mythics from original Modern Horizons, the lowest priced card is around $5.00, meaning that even if the metagame shift, these cards are unlikely to lose most of their value.

Murktide Regent (Non-Foil)
30th Most Frequently Played Card in Modern  
7th Most Frequently Played Creature in Modern

Current Price: $16
Potential Price: $35 in 18 months
Confidence: 8/10
Disclosure: N/A

Murktide is a known quantity. It’s been dominating Modern and Legacy for a while. It’s the best at what it does, which is sticking a very fast clock for a small amount of mana. Despite its continued success, Murktide’s price remains near its historical low due to new supply entering the market. One factor that has helped suppress the price of Murktide over time is the possibility that it could get banned in either Modern or Legacy. While this is possible, I don’t think a Modern ban is in the cards anytime soon (if anything, Omnath would be the first target). WOTC has taken a hands-off approach to Modern lately, so I’m not worried unless the metagame becomes even more heavily skewed in favor of Blue/Red Murktide. In Legacy, I do think a ban could be possible, but even if that occurred, I don’t think it would be anything more than a blimp on Murktide’s price trajectory. Legacy’s impact on paper cards is nominal these days, especially for a basic no frill version.

Like most other MH2 cards, I’m not sure whether Murktide Regent is already at its price floor or whether it will continue to decline through December, but personally, I plan to start moving in on these cards slowly over the next five months until the end of the holiday season.  

Archon of Cruelty (Non-Foil)

Current Price: $11
Potential Price: $25 in 18 months
Confidence: 8/10
Disclosure: I own a few copies. 

Archon of Cruelty has come and gone in several different shells already. Current decks that run it include Five-Color Indomitable Creativity, which has seen the most success, Esper reanimator, Dimir Control, and more. What unifies these shells is that Archon of Cruelty is the best creature threat to cheat into play at the moment, even better than Emrakul, the Aeons Torn in decks that have both options, which is a bit absurd honestly. How does an 8-mana mana value card compete with the biggest baddie of them all? Much of Archon’s success can be attributed to it having an enter-the-battlefield (ETB) effect that has the potential to be a 3-1. And if it lives, the effect compounds. That’s pretty back-breaking. The original Archon shells were more fragile, but over time they have built-in resiliency and more redundancy.

On top of Modern play, Archon of Cruelty is in 13,677 decks on EDHREC.com. This is solid for a mythic from MH2, trailing only Ragavan and Sword of Hearth and Home. So even if Modern doesn’t apply enough pressure to Archon, over time Commander may take care of the job on its own.

Grist (Non-Foil)  

Current Price: $6
Potential Price: $15 in 18 months
Confidence: 7/10
Disclosure: N/A   

A strong three mana planeswalker that is played as a full four copies in a top-tier deck? Sign me. Grist was clearly designed to be a strong, yet unique card. It seems to have succeeded in both – being limited generally to one type of deck, but is able to be very strong in that deck. The mix of uniqueness combined with power reminds me a bit of Urza, Lord High Artificer, except of course that Urza was designed to be crazy powerful while Grist is a value card. But neither can be just thrown into a random deck – they both require build around synergies.

It’s hard to evaluate whether Grist’s ability to be a create when not on the battlefield will ever be more useful than it is today. I could see a world where Green Sun Zenith gets unbanned, forcing Grist’s price to spike hard. But this is not a scenario that I would want to rely on, it’s rather icing on the cake. I could also see a world where a two-card combo comes together that allows Grist to efficiently mill one’s entire deck via its +1 ability, but that seems even more unreliable to count on.  

Grist is run in 7,100 decks on EDHREC.com, plus an additional 2,235 decks as a commander! While these numbers are too low to be the basis of a speculation target, they do help Grist a bit here.  

Watch List: Hydroid Krasis (Etched Foil)   

Did you see that epic steamer Kanister ran a full four copies of Hydroid Krasis in his 6th place (two main, two sideboard) list during the recent Modern Challenge as part of Amulet? And he wasn’t the only one.

Is Hydroid Krasis, once the terror of Standard, getting a second life in Modern? My guess is this innovation will be a flash in the pan that won’t be around in a few months. Amulet, more than other decks, seems to “find” new tools and then forget about them quickly. Some stick around like Cultivator Colossus, while others go by the wayside.  

My advice here is to keep an eye on Amulet decks for the next few months – and if Krasis continues to do well – then consider picking up some of the Double Masters 2022 Etched-Foils, which are unique, much rarer than other editions, and fairly gorgeous.


Oko (@OkoAssassin) has been writing for MTGPrice since 2020 with a focus on competitive play and Magic Online. In his personal life Oko is a lawyer, father, ice-hockey player, runner, and PC gamer.

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