Watchtower

A Few Underpriced Modern Cards

Last week we evaluated the Pioneer metagame and highlighted a few cheap pick-up opportunities. Today, we’ll do the same level-setting exercise for Modern, Magic’s most popular competitive format. The Modern metagame has been fairly stable since Modern Horizon’s 2 (MH2), with new decks emerging slowly over time. This remained true even after Lurrus was banned in March 2022. While some decks got a little better/worse because of this change, nothing major completely fell out of the metagame. The format is very diverse, with certain decks clearly being top tier and others doing well but lacking the consistency to be dominant every week.

The format primarily features a combination of the following archetypes, along with others: Blue/Red Murktide Regent Decks; Four-Five Color Piles featuring Omnath; Hammer Time; Burn; Yawgmoth Combo; Amulet Titan; Living End; Crashing Footfalls; Death’s Shadow; Azorius Control; Archon of Cruelty Reanimator; and Rakdos Midrange.

That’s a lot of decks! While Modern organized play certainly doesn’t impact cards to anything close to the level that it used, cards like Murktide Regent or Seasoned Pyromancer show that competitive play still matters since they see virtually zero EDH play. With paper play coming back slowly, both at local shops and the “Return to the Pro Tour”, it is time to dive into some Modern competitive cards that may see gains in the near future.

After reviewing the currently top played cards in Modern, a few trends jump out. First, most top non-Modern Horizons 2 cards have either been reprinted at least once, are already expensive, or are commons/uncommons. I always avoid commons and tend to avoid uncommons, except in rare circumstances. Additionally, only a small number were recently re-printed in Double Masters 2022 (Wrenn and Six, Force of Negation, Pithing Needle, Supreme Verdict, Kolaghan’s Command). Based on these factors, for the moment I believe targeting key Modern Horizons 2 staples continues to be the easiest way to find success going forward. While many good options exist, here are three cards that I would specifically focus on:

Fury (Borderless Foil)
10 Most Frequently Played Card in Modern  
2 Most Frequently Played Creature in Modern  

Current Price: $60
Potential Price: $100 in 12 months
Confidence: 9/10
Disclosure: I own four copies

All the free creature spells from Modern Horizons 2 have done well. Of all creatures, they are #1 (Endurance), #2 (Fury), #4 (Subtlety), and #7 (Solitude). Grief is the least played but is still in the top 50 creatures at #45. Free spells are good, who knew!

Despite all being top modern cards, the price for the Foil-Extended Art (FEA) versions of each varies widely. Solitude was always expensive but I recently noticed that both Endurance and Subtlety foils recently jumped significantly. Fury FEAs have not yet jumped, but I think it’s only a matter of time, especially when factoring in its use in Legacy, where it’s the 12th most played creature. Legacy isn’t a huge factor these days, but that’s a lot of play and we all know Legacy players love bling. While some of the price gaps between the free creatures can partially be explained by some cards having more EDH play (Solitude, Endurance), I still think Fury will soon rise as supply continues to drain out of the market.

Dress Down (Pack Foil)
7 Most Frequently Played Card in Modern
6 Most Frequently Played Spell in Modern  

Current Price: $9
Potential Price: $20+ in 12 months
Confidence: 8/10
Disclosure: None

I was surprised that Dress Down is such a big part of the Modern metagame once again. Its use tends to ebb and flows depending on what other cards are being played – since it’s a reactive card. Currently, it’s seeing play in Murktide, Omnath, Azorius Control just to name a few. Typically, it’s played in both the main and sideboard. While trying to figure out what is the likely price trajectory for this card, I looked to find examples from Modern Horizon 1. No perfect analogy exists, but I do think it’s fairly similar to Archmage’s Charm. Both cards are blue and have strong competitive play patterns but little EDH play. Archmage’s Charm typically has an average of 3 copies in a deck, Dress down is normally only 2 copies, but it is in more decks overall due to its splashability.

When looking at Archmage’s Charm it started cheap and then slowly got expensive over time. Foils went from a low of $7 to over $60 at its absurd peak. Modern Horizons 2 has more foils in circulation compared to the original set, but that difference is likely baked into the price already. Dress Down set foils seem like the obvious choice compared to the sketch version, which I think are ugly, but maybe that’s just me. Also, regular foil versions are rarer. Non-foil versions could also do well here too, but supply remains fairly deep and its price could linger.

Urza’s Saga (Pack Version)   
16 Most Frequently Played Land in Modern  

Current Price: $30
Potential Price: $55 in 12 months
Confidence: 8/10
Disclosure: Own many copies  

Urza’s Saga has been discussed many times by many MTG Price commentators because it’s an exceptional card that is irreplaceable in the competitive Modern strategies that leverage it. Urza’s Saga is included in about 20% of Modern decks and is almost always run as four copies. But to add to this, it’s a powerful commander card that is featured in 70,000 decks on EDHREC.com and sees significant Legacy play to boot. I bring up this card again because the MH2 hype has faded and with it all the MH2 cards have retreated in price near their all-time lows. At some point supply will dry up on MH2, forcing prices to climb.

If you look at Force of Negation, the summer after its set release was the turning point towards its high of $100. I don’t know whether Urza’s Saga will be cheaper come the December holidays, but absent a reprint I’m very confident that it will be much higher than $30 come this time next year.  

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

Double Feature, not Double Masters

I am remaining steadfast in my stance that I’m not going to let Double Masters 2022 get me. I still want to buy some staples, and frankly a lot of those staples, but the prices are going to trickle downwards for a while yet. My research has indicated that six months is new the sweet spot, at least for the basic versions of cards. We’ll see if this holds true to premium versions.

What came out six months ago? Innistrad: Double Feature! I especially love the Silver Screen foils from this set, and the massive multiplier for these cards indicates how little of the product was opened and how rare these foils are. Most of these cards have a pretty low supply, mainly due to the lack of interest in the cards, but also because the set had double the rares and mythics. Each card is that much rarer, and especially in foil.

Also, there were no Collector Boosters of Double Feature. No increased drop rates of anything. Just draft booster packs and 1-3 foil rares per box, the way Richard Garfield intended!

So here’s a list of the cards that have the right intersection of low price, good demand, and limited supply.

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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, ProTrader

Pro Trader: A Chicken in Every Pot, A Legend in Every Pack

Readers!
Dominaria United is coming eventually, and on the tenuous basis of one thing I heard, that there will be a Legendary creature in every pack of Dominaria United, I am going to do that whole speculative thing I do when I say “it’s a D&D set so buy Orcs” or whatever. It’s great because you don’t have to be right, you just have to have people who are also wrong buy the cards from you rather than from someone else.  If we are getting new Legendary stuff, and not just reprints of older Legendary creatures in new, premium borders (which is what I actually want) we could see some bold new additions to a kind of deck we haven’t seen much lately until it reappeared with Shrines – the 5 color, Legendary goodstuff deck. We have seen some even more instructive variants, so I will be looking for inspiration in 2 places – Kethis, the Hidden Hand decks and Reki, the History of Kamigawa. If people are going to use the Historic keyword again, it pays to know what a deck built around something Historic plays, and if those decks are to be bolstered by new printings, it pays to know what’s in them. I am imagining we can see quite a bit in the high synergy cards from those decks and go from there. Let’s take a look, shall we?

Kethis has a lot of goodies for us, and while they’re not all worth a look, one class of cards is – the cycle with all 3 copies represented in this Top 10.

Of those 5 spells, only Urza’s Ruinous Blast and Karn’s Temporal Sundering are worth even a dollar, which means there is financial opportunity because they’re cheap or no financial opportunity because they’re so cheap and have been the whole time. Short of printing a new Legendary creature that interacts with those spells better than with any other spells, the slight trickle of copies into a few niche decks hasn’t really excited the price of cards in a set where there are only 19 cards worth more than $2 and 7 of them are reprints. I like Temporal Sundering, though, actually.

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Watchtower

Let’s Discuss Affordable Pioneer Staples

I’ve been writing off-and-on for MTGPrice.com for a few years, but I’m pleased to report that going forward I’ll be publishing articles every Monday discussing developments in the competitive Magic scene and their potential implications on MTG card prices. I’m still working on finding my groove as a writer, so I hope you’ll provide your feedback (good and bad!) along the way via Twitter @OkoAssassin.

Prior to jumping into week-by-week specifics, I thought it would be best to zoom out first and look at the big picture. This week I’ll review a few current role players within the Pioneer format, and next week I’ll look at Modern. Once we have level set a bit, in future weeks I’ll begin to share a noticeable change in the key competitive formats and their potential impacts on prices.

Most players used to shrug when Pioneer’s name came up, but that all changed when WOTC made their long-awaited organized play announcement, which made clear that Pioneer would be a signature format going forward. The Pioneer metagame has been fairly consistent over the last months including a combination of the following archetypes, along with others:

  • Izzet Phoenix
  • Rakdos Midrange
  • Azorius Control
  • Boros Aggro
  • Burn
  • Mono-Green Ramp
  • Lotus Field
  • Mono blue/Bant spirits

While some of these strategies are more dominant than others, each plays an important role in shaping the Pioneer format. Cards that overlaps between multiple archetypes – or are otherwise unique – are often worth a look due to this format’s growth potential. As Pioneer becomes more popular, prices should increase going forward, albeit maybe slowly. Paper events are key here – if COVID locks down the world again, Pioneer will once again fall on hard times. So take all this commentary with a large grain of salt.

If you don’t think Pioneer matters, look at the price of Fable of the Mirror-Breaker – which is the 11th most played card in the format. It currently sits around $11 for an in-print rare! Similarly, the top played pioneer card Unlicensed Herse is around $15! Both get support from other formats – but I would argue that Pioneer is a key driver for the price of both cards. 

Many of the key pioneer stables are commons and uncommons, making them unattractive from a speculation perspective, even if they see quite a bit of play. Additionally, the number of mythics that see play is also relatively lacking, and most played mythics have seen one or two reprints over time or their prices are fairly high due to their lack of reprint. For these reasons, today we’ll be focused on evaluating a few played but potentially underpriced rares.

Supreme Verdict (Foil Borderless)
37th Most Frequently Played Spell in Pioneer  

Current Price: $10
Potential Price: $20 in 18 months
Confidence: 8.5/10
Disclosure: None

Supreme Verdict is a long-time staple in both Modern and Pioneer. Blue/White Control is fairly popular in Pioneer and these decks typically run three copies of Supreme Verdict. It’s also solid role player in EDH, being included in nearly 45,000 decks on EDHREC.com.

Absent another reprint the Double Masters 2022 Foil Borderless edition should do well over time – especially if you’re able to time this purchase at its lows. My guess is that these lows will be in December, while others are betting on today. I’m betting December because more collector boosters will eventually be opened and hype will wind down over time, but we shall see. Even at today’s prices, having this card go from $10 to $20 is not unreasonable and seems very likely.

Graveyard Trespasser
23rd Most Frequently Played Card in Pioneer  
4rd Most Frequently Played Creature in Pioneer  

Current Price: $3.00
Potential Price: $10 in 12 months
Confidence: 7/10
Disclosure: None

This card protects itself well even on the turn it’s cast, provides mainboard graveyard hate, and comes at a relatively efficient mana value. Personally, I used to not rate Graveyard Trespasser very highly until I played against it. All it takes is a few frustrating games to understand why this card is so highly played in Pioneer. This card has maintained a high price point on Magic Online for a while based on its high level of play, but that same enthusiasm has mostly not yet transferred to the paper version of this card. It’s a rare from AFR and the supply is extremely deep for the regular and showcase versions of this card. But the Double Feature version is relatively scarce by comparison. 68 copies of the Double Feature version sold already on TCGPlayer.com in July, which is very solid relative to current inventory levels. Assuming this card doesn’t fall out of the metagame – and isn’t reprinted in the upcoming Pioneer Challenger Decks (a risk in Orzhov Humans) – it could see solid gains going forward.

Old-Growth Troll (Foil Extended Art)
38th Most Frequently Played Card in Pioneer  
13rd Most Frequently Played Creature in Pioneer  

Current Price: $5
Potential Price: $15 in 12 months
Confidence: 8/10
Disclosure: None

About 13 percent of Pioneer decks run a full playset of Old-Growth Troll – and only a limited number of Foil Extended Art copies remain available at a reasonable price. The low supply is surprising considering that Kaldheim was cracked heavily by vendors leading to a seemingly never-ending supply. Mono-green has been a staple since Pioneer’s inception, so it’s unlikely to fall off the map completely anytime soon, although its power level has fluctuated over time. Combine all these factors together and I can easily see Old-Growth Troll increasing in price to $15 over the next year.  

Sokenzan, Crucible of Defiance (Borderless)  
3rd Most Frequently Played Land Card in Pioneer  

Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire (Borderless)  
10rd Most Frequently Played Land in Pioneer  

Current Price: $5.50
Potential Price: $12 in 18 months
Confidence: 7/10
Disclosure: None

Sokenzan, Crucible of Defiance, and Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire both see a reasonable amount of play in Pioneer. They both average a paltry 1 copy per deck, but they see play in many decks as they provide free value, in a similar way as Otawara and Boseiju. They do not see Modern play for the most part, which is reflected in their relatively low price point. Both also see solid EDH play as well, being included in 20,000 and 30,000 decks respectively. I believe cards like these seem underwhelming for now, but over time, they will continue to slowly grow in price as copies drain out based on modest but well-rounded competitive plus EDH demand.

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