Watchtower

Pioneer Reborn

I’m writing this article because Jason told me to. Kind of. Look at his tweet, okay?

Pioneer is being brought back into the spotlight with the upcoming Regional Championships featuring the format, and so everyone and their dog has started playing and streaming Pioneer on MTGO again.  So let’s talk Pioneer.

Emergent Ultimatum (FEA)

Price today: $5
Possible price: $20

Hidden Strings has been one of the top Pioneer decks for quite a while now, and I think that it’s a good time to act on some of the cards in it before prices start to move. Emergent Ultimatum has long been a key part of the deck, casting it with your bounty of mana from Lotus Fields to go and find your Fae of Wishes + untap effects etc, and grab your wincon. It sounds a little convoluted but once you see it in action it works pretty well, and the only real disruption you can hit it with is counterspells (or you know, killing your opponent before they can go off).

The best decks against Hidden Strings are either hard aggro or hard control, both of which are a reasonable part of the meta at the moment but still can’t quite topple the king. Mono-red likely stands the best chance of being the top deck in the weeks to come, as a cheap and accessible deck that a lot of newer players (to the game or the format) can easily pick up, so we will be taking a look at those cards too.

I’m almost surprised that Emergent Ultimatum is still as cheap as it is, because it’s seen moderate EDH play along with its Pioneer prowess and copies have started to dry up. Only 29 listings left on TCGPlayer and not many around the $5 mark before it’s closer to $10, so I think this is prime time to grab a few of these before the cheaper copies are gone. A $10 floor is very soon in this card’s future, and $15-20 really won’t be too far off either.

Chandra, Dressed to Kill

Price in Europe: €8 ($9)
Price in US: $15+
Possible price: $25

As mentioned in the previous section, I’m looking at the mono-red deck. It’s a very streamlined, hardline aggro deck that plays 8 one-drops, four Eidolon of the Great Revel, and a bunch of burn spells (including Bonecrusher Giant which is obviously serving double duty). Chandra, Dressed to Kill really isn’t playing games (ironically?), with almost all the decks playing four copies and a few on three, and it seems like she’s the real deal.

Three mana for three loyalty is pretty standard, but Chandra comes equipped with two different +1 abilities that give you mana and burn (but not mana burn) or card advantage, and an ultimate that is certain to end the game very quickly if you ever get it off. I expect this card to be a mainstay in Pioneer, and might even get tested in Modern (although likely won’t make it very far), but either way people are all over this card right now and copies are getting hard to find.

They’ve pretty much vanished from TCGPlayer, with only nineteen listings across foil and non-foil, and the major vendors have very few copies (and they’re expensive). Over in Europe, however, the market is lagging a little bit and you can still get quite a few around the €8 mark on CardMarket. I don’t think that those copies are going to last very long at all, so pick them up whilst you can – and if you can find any in the US around $12-15 then I think they’re still a decent buy too. Supply on this mythic isn’t high enough to meet the new demand at the moment, so for the time being it’s going to be a scarcity and could easily crest $25 and keep going up if its popularity continues.

Greasefang, Okiba Boss (Showcase Foil)

Price today: $4
Possible price: $10

Now onto a completely new deck on the scene (as far as I can tell), with Mardu Greasefang. This is a deck that pivots around Greasefang, Okiba Boss, Parhelion II, and discard/mill effects. The deck’s been doing pretty well over the past few days, with a bunch of 5-0 Leagues from different players and some strong finishes in the Pioneer Challenges (including a win). I really like the look of this deck, and its strong synergy backed up by some generally powerful cards makes for a promising future.

As the name suggests, Greasefang is a key component to this deck, and until it finds a copy the deck can’t really ‘do its thing’. The fact that the Vehicle comes back to your hand instead of getting exiled is huge when you’ve got so many discard effects in the deck; it means you can just keep repeating again and again. I expect to see a few different variants of this deck pop up over the next couple of weeks, and wouldn’t be surprised if it were a major player at the Regional Championships.

Foil Showcase copies are currently available for around $4 on TCGPlayer, and I think are the best version to go for if you’re looking to spec on this card. 48 TCG listings but most are single copies with no major walls (actually nothing past 3 copies), so once demand picks up a little bit these are going to disappear pretty quickly. If you want to play this deck with foils then I’d grab these quickly, and I think it’s a really solid spec too.

David Sharman (@accidentprune on Twitter) has been playing Magic since 2013, dabbling in almost all formats but with a main focus on Modern and EDH. Based in the UK, he’s an active MTG finance speculator specialising in cross-border arbitrage.

Casual Fridays

Visiting the Shards

We’re getting all sorts of good things going on right now. We’ve been given a taste of Commander Legends 2: Battle for Baldur’s Gate, we’ve got a peek at Unfinity, and preview season for Streets of New Capenna is just around the corner.

So far, we’ve got a cycle of lands and an incomplete cycle of Charms, but knowing the shards, we’ve got enough to make some moves, or at least think about making some moves. What I’m looking for today are things that are good with the shards and that are good in Commander anyway.

We don’t know the themes for the shards yet, and honestly, I’m expecting new paths (or attempts thereof) for each shard, much like we weren’t expecting Boros to be Spirits and ‘cards leaving the graveyard’ theme in Strixhaven. Still, good picks are good picks, and let’s see what we can see.

Dovin’s Veto – 62k EDHREC decks – This is one of the banner cards for Commander. Of decks that can run it, 27% are doing so. There’s some ways around it, like Ashiok’s Erasure, but the feeling of ‘I’ve got this in hand, and when I hate something it stays hated’ is a lovely one indeed. Of note, there’s some special versions running around: we have the original version, plus its foil, and then we have a promo version in the used-to-be-FNM frame, and then the Retro Frame from Time Spiral Remastered. The OBF versions are clearly the superior choice, but are already a pretty penny. Still, $3 uncommons with multiple versions and rank as Commander staples offer a real appeal. I think the FNM foils in the $6 range offer the best chance for growth, but there’s so few OBF versions under $50 that I can totally see those few copies getting snapped up and the card hitting $100.

Sanctum Weaver – 17k decks – There’s a lot to be said for Enchantments as a theme. Sythis and now the Go-Shintai have set a very high bar for what an enchantment deck can do, and the Weaver is a staple of the archetype, no matter which color combination you’re in. FEA versions have doubled in the last few months, but I think there’s going to be more demand for this card going forward. I’d be in on EA before I picked up regular frame foils, because Commander players do love things that look different.

Sterling Grove – 20k decks – Green and White are traditionally the colors for enchantment shenanigans, and giving them protection from spot removal is a powerful thing. The price of nonfoils dropped when the reprint hit in MH2, and now we have a judge foil as well. This is a great time to get in on one of the must-have cards when building a deck with this theme, and I’m fully expecting something sweet to come along soon.

Damn – 28k decks – I thought that this card would be a Modern staple, being so spoiled for choices and options and lands in that format, but Commander players have really run with it too, and in surprising numbers. There’s a lot of control decks out there, and while there’s protections from these sorts of board wipes, it’s nice to have. The target here is the retro frame versions, foil and nonfoil, as they haven’t popped yet but they are excellent candidates to do so.

Niv-Mizzet, Parun – 4500 as commander, 21k as card – I did not think that this version would be getting as much play as he does, but as either a commander or part of the 99 it’s an amazing card. We’re only going to have one shard that uses red and blue, but ‘spells matter’ is an enduring trait of the color pair and this is nicely set for long-term growth. There’s only a few vendors with NM foils, and the card predates the Collector Booster era, so it’s pack foils or nothing.

Scute Swarm – 42k decks – Does your deck play lands? Then have I got a card for you! People have also been messing around with mutating this card and then playing lands, which works! The simplicity of the card, and the potential for breaking out the graphing calculator in order to figure out just what happens with Scapeshift + Parallel Lives…Commander players can’t stay away from this. Showcase foils are where I’d prefer to be, especially because the ramp from $5 copies to $10 copies is quite apparent.

Rhythm of the Wild – 52k decks – We are going to get two Commander decks with GR as colors (Naya and Jund) and Rhythm is a staple for those colors. If holding a Dovin’s Veto gives you a warm happy feeling, then getting Rhythm of the Wild into play with your creature-based deck is the whole dang hot tub of bliss. No counterspells and your stuff will be either bigger or faster? Sold. Foils are $20, and that’s pretty high for a recent uncommon. My concern here is that it’s a very popular card, and an uncommon, and would be an excellent addition to a Secret Lair sometime soon. On the other hand, there’s less than thirty NM foils on all of TCG right now, so a big jump upwards wouldn’t require a lot of sales.

Aura Shards – 26k decks – Honestly, this is an impressive number considering the two main printings of this card are the original in Invasion and then the Commander 2011 copies. We’ve gotten a Mystery Booster version of the CMD frame, and then The List has the Invasion frame. Even with those additional printings, there’s still only one foil (astronomically priced). With both Naya and Bant decks around, this is something that’s almost too good for Commander. It’s extremely effective at what it does, destroying a wide swath of problematic cards and invalidating some strategies entirely. We’ve got a whole lot of copies out there, but it sells 5-10 copies per day. I like that velocity, and so I like some List copies at sub-$5 to grow over time.

Felidar Retreat – 26k decks – This card is at a great intersection of colors and themes. Token decks love the card, as do +1/+1 counter decks, and being only one color means it can go into decks that much easier. Again, Showcase foils are where I want to be, with less than 50 vendors for NM foils, only a few of them having 4+ copies, and no big restocks coming.

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: Mopping Up Kamigawa Value

Readers!

I am willing to entertain the idea that we might have missed some value jumping around from Kamigawa to Street Fighter to Stranger Things to New Capenna to Baldur’s gate, so why don’t we check back in on Kamigawa now that prices are at the lowest point they’re going to go to?

As you can see, the commanders didn’t exactly end up where we might have expected. More people are playing a commander that interacts with 2 of the 5 colors of Saga more than they’re playing Hidetsugu, the face card of the set or Kodama of the West Tree. I got the top 5 correct but the order was VERY wrong. I would have picked Umezawa, then Hinata, then Isshin, then Tatsunari then Light Paws. I did OK but some of the ones I underrated deserve a second look. In fact, there is a spec in each of the top 5 decks that I missed before.

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ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.

Watchtower

Crimson Commander

I don’t think I’ve written specifically about Innistrad: Crimson Vow in relation to EDH since the set was first released, around four months ago. I think it’s time to go back and see how the set has done since then, and which cards might yet have a bright future ahead of them.

Toxrill, the Corrosive

Price in Europe: €9 ($10)
Price in US: $12
Possible price: $25

Aside from being the most popular commander from the set, Toxrill has proven to be a solid card in its own right as well – 2200 as a commander and 4200 as a card. I think that it would be far more popular than that even if not for one tiny little blue mana symbol in the textbox, which is holding it back from being in all those mono-black and black/X decks that don’t include blue.

A 7/7 for 7 certainly isn’t the best rate going when it comes to pure stats, but that’s not what this card is about. The first line of text is the most important here, because it says at the beginning of each end step – that means four times for each go around your normal EDH table, and those slime counters are going on every creature you don’t control. That’s pretty strong if you ask me, and the fact that Toxrill has a card draw engine attached to it on top of that is just even sweeter. This works equally well either as a commander or part of the 99, and I honestly think that it would already be a $20 card if it were mono-black.

Prices in Europe are, as expected, a little lower for this EDH-only card, and so if you have access to that market then I’d grab some copies under and around $10 there. Over on TCGPlayer you’ll be paying a little more at $12, but I think that’s still a reasonable price to pay for what I think should be a $25 card in the not-too-distant future. There are also the Showcase variants at around the same price, but I think those arts were a swing and a miss. The Double Feature versions are…fine? but not worth paying the extra $4 if you ask me; the regular copies should do well here. If you do want to gamble on some extra arbitrage, there are €55 Double Feature foils on CardMarket – a card which is over $200 on TCGPlayer (last sold copies around $120). I won’t be taking that bet, but if you’re feeling lucky…

Edgar, Charmed Groom (Double Feature Foil)

Price in Europe: €7 ($8)
Price in US: $13
Possible price: $25-50

Now onto a Double Feature foil that I do think is worth it: Edgar, Charmed Groom. I’m nearly surprised at how few Edgar decks have actually been built, but when you have the opportunity to play Edgar Markov as your commander instead then there’s really no competition. Nevertheless, the Charmed Groom has found a nice home in the 99 of lots of Vampire tribal decks, and for good reason. This card is going to be so annoying for anyone else to deal with unless they can just straight-up exile it, because otherwise it’s just going to keep flipping and making tokens and buffing your Vampires and flipping and…yeah, you get the idea.

There are five different versions of this card out there, and so I think the play is to look at the ones with low supply: Double Feature foils. There are only six listings on TCGPlayer and not many more elsewhere, so they’re already getting difficult to pick up. Europe has a few more but not many, albeit at a cheaper price point. We’ve already seen some of the more popular Double Feature foils hit sky high prices (mythics over $200 etc), and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect Edgar to be pushing $50 before too long. People that want the most premium version of this card are going to pay for it, so make sure you’re going to be the one selling it to them!

David Sharman (@accidentprune on Twitter) has been playing Magic since 2013, dabbling in almost all formats but with a main focus on Modern and EDH. Based in the UK, he’s an active MTG finance speculator specialising in cross-border arbitrage.

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