By Travis Allen

As of Monday evening while I’m writing this, Kalonian Hydra is about $22-$23. It has seem some amount of play so far in Standard this summer, most notably in Zvi’s GW Elves deck piloted by Hall of Fame elect Huey Jensen to a Top 8 performance at an SCG open. The card, unlike Voice of Resurgence, has not exploded onto the competitive Magic scene. Rather it has quietly slotted itself into a few face-beating decks as a 4-of, providing a brutally effective if not particularly graceful means of achieving victory. Despite the quiet reception, I believe there is potentially something brewing here.

Let’s begin our look forward by examining past Core sets. Look at these cards and see if something stands out to you:

• Magic 2010: Baneslayer Angel
• Magic 2011: The Titan cycle
• Magic 2012: The Titan cycle (again)
• Magic 2013: Thundermaw Hellkite

When Baneslayer Angel was revealed in M10, the collective community gasped. Wizards brought creatures to the party, and they rolled deep. Never before had a creature been so clearly pushed. Keywords and abilities abound; it quickly made good on its promise of power, bringing with it an unheard of $50 price tag in Standard that many would herald as the umpteenth death of Magic. It remained a huge factor in tournament Magic right up until the next summer, when it was promptly outclassed.

In M11, rather than a single wrecking ball of a creature, Wizards bequeathed unto us five. Each had their own day in the sun, but the clear winner was Primeval Titan. Valakut had been decent prior, but having a 6/6 trample the deck could accelerate into that conveniently represented death on two separate fronts pushed the deck to the front of the Standard landscape until Valakut rotated along with the rest of the Zendikar block. Primeval Titan, as Baneslayer Angel before him, carried a $50 price tag for considerable periods of time.

M12 ran the Titan cycle back, and while the second printing suppressed the prices a bit, the titans continued to be a massive force in standard, with Primeval Titan being a 4-of in a Pro Tour winning deck, fetching and fueling massive Kessig Wolf Runs.

Three years after Baneslayer Angel dominated creature matchups, her scaly counterpart arrived hot on the heels of Lingering Souls to make sure Standard wasn’t ruled by dinky 1/1 spirit tokens. Thundermaw Hellkite didn’t need a litany of abilities, opting rather for succinct prose: Flying, Haste, Tap your flyers. Functioning both as a gruesome top end for aggressive/midrange strategies and a fast clock for UWR control decks, Thundermaw Hellkite has spent most of his tenure in Standard terrorizing Top 8s. His pedigree is such that he has even broken through to Modern, a true testament of efficacy for a 5-drop creature. Thundermaw Hellkite, like his predecessors before him, enjoyed a $50 price tag for a non-negligible period of time.

Baneslayer Angel, Primeval Titan, and Thundermaw Hellkite all hit $50 during their respective outings, and even when they weren’t floating that high, they still had no trouble holding $25-45. Additionally, there was no subtlety here. Nothing here slipped in under the radar and then saw success due to a particular metagame. These cards were the metagame. Nobody saw the spoilers for these cards and thought, “hmm, I wonder if this is good enough.”  These creatures were not the piano wire or silenced pistol, but rather nail-studded baseball bats and limb-tearing desert eagles. “Red Zone” may as well have been written across the card in Sharpie.

We’ve established that past core sets have shown us large, Mythic, blunt creatures of destruction that have all seen significant play and commanded $40-50 price tags for extended periods of time. I have no reason to expect this year to be any different. The question then, is this:

Which of these is our sledgehammer?

There are arguments for each, but let me explain why I don’t think it is either Archangel of Thune or Chandra, Pyromaster.

While I think Chandra’s power is so far unexplored, I don’t think she’s quite the format-warping artillery strike past creatures have been.  She is more of a role-player rather than meta-maker. She is also a Planeswalker, not a creature. While I doubt our defining spell in the core set will forever be a creature, I don’t think we’ve left that territory quite yet. Nor does Chandra appear as heavy-handed as specters of Standard past.

Archangel of Thune is a candidate more worthy of consideration. First of all, she’s a creature. Second of all, that ability is pretty awe-inspiring. It doesn’t take long to imagine a scenario where Archangel gets dropped into a board full of dorks, you trigger lifegain once or twice, and suddenly you’ve got a legitimate army. The biggest reason I don’t expect this to have the lasting power of Kalonian Hydra is because of these two cards:

Sublime Archangel is the real damning evidence here. It’s another top end angel that pays you heavily for having a board full of guys. While Sublime Archangel wasn’t cheap – pushing $30 during her peak, and comfortably $15-$20 for quite some time – she saw mostly fringe play and kitchen tables, while it was Thundermaw that was ruling the skies in Pro Tours. There’s room for other pricey Mythics in core sets beyond the $50 battlecruiser, as Sublime Archangel and Angelic Destiny before her have shown us. I get the impression Archangel of Thune will receive her accolades early, working in concert with Sorin and similarly lifegainy cards in a grey deck. She may still pop up from time to time over the next year, but I’m pretty sure she’ll be taking a back seat to the rapidly multiplying heads of Kalonian Hydra.

Kalonian Hydra has a lot in common with past Florisian best-in-formats. He is eminently castable, capable of winning the game on his own, and there is no subtlety to his strength. While he doesn’t have an immediate impact on the board in the way of Primeval Titan or Thundermaw Hellkite, Baneslayer Angel did not either. And while he may not do as much immediately, with the exception of Primeval Titan fetching mountains or a huge Kessig Wolf Run, Kalonian Hydra kills the opponent faster than any single prior pillar. Taking all this into consideration, I feel there is a good chance Kalonian Hydra is that creature.

At $23, it’s hard to say definitively that you should be buying in. Speculation is out of the question at this point, as there is far too much to lose in case things shake out unexpectedly. However, it’s not unreasonable to assume he could hit $50 sometime in the next year, and as cards like Liliana of the Veil and Voice of Resurgence have shown us, the existence of $35-$45+ cards in Standard is certainly possible. At this point, I’d be asking yourself if it’s a creature you are likely to find yourself casting. If the answer is yes, I’d start looking for opportunities to grab them in trade. There is definitely a chance he may settle sub-$20, but if it’s the type of card you want to be swinging with, you’ll be very upset if you try to wait for him to drop and then find yourself stuck trading for them at $35 a pop.

A few points before I go:

• Chandra, Pyromaster was a 2-of in the winning decks of both Grand Prix Warsaw as well as one of the SCG Opens this past weekend. She’s currently around $10. While it won’t always be Kibler’s GR deck, I have a feeling she’ll be showing up with regularity in the future. $17-$25 is quite possible.
• Last Wednesday I mentioned Horizon Canopy and Shadow of Doubt. By Thursday morning, both were basically out of stock everywhere. Horizon Canopy jumped by a solid $10, and Shadow of Doubt doubled to $7. I don’t believe either price is stable yet.
• This coming weekend is GenCon. There should be some Theros and/or Commander spoilers. Watch for any strong interactions with existing cards for growth potential.

Another weekend, another major Magic event. This time around, it was the World Magic Championship. I was rooting hard for Reid Duke, and I’m nearly positive I was more upset at the Engineered Explosives in Shahar’s opening 7 in game 5 than Reid was. Still though, it was a great finals with plenty of tense moments. Many (PVDDR) were dismissing the match due to Aura’s perceived lack of interactivity, complaining it would be boring to watch. What we were treated to instead was an exciting match between two skilled players, with a lot of drama in what draw steps would herald and whether Shahar could win the race. My biggest complaint, beyond Reid not winning, is that he reminded everyone that Auras exists, a deck I was planning on playing at GP Detroit. Back to the drawing board, I suppose.

My first impression while reading through the Standard lists was just how boring they are. When players work together in a team prior to a major event like a Pro Tour, it’s good for everybody involved. They do great jobs of finding the best decks, and we get to see the real power in whatever format they’re playing. There are a lot of Pro Tour players that aren’t in pro superteams though, which leads to a lot more variety of brews (good and bad) showing up. At the WMC however, there are only 16 players. A team of 5 people consists of nearly a third of the room. The result of the players forming these teams was a homogenization of the event: there were five Jund decks and eight UWR Flash decks in the Standard portion. That means a little over 80% of the room was playing one of two decks. That makes for a very bland looking Standard scene, regardless of whether the true format is more diverse. Even Jon Finkel noticed, taking to Twitter to vent his frustration about how Wizards had seemingly phased out many unique deck types such as combo, land destruction, hand disruption, true control, etc.

Financially, basically nothing came out of the Standard portion. It served only to reinforce the staples: Sphinx’s Revelation, Supreme Verdict, Jace, Scavenging Ooze, etc. I don’t think we’re going to see much of anything new or noteworthy in considerable competitive play until rotation. I’m guessing it will mostly be a lot of tweaking of existing archetypes. Brian’s GR beatdown deck was the only Standard deck that was a departure from the norm, but all the financially-relevant cards are already known suspects, so there isn’t much to work with there either.

The more actionable data was found in the Modern portion of the event. The most significant finding was the prevalence of Scavenging Ooze. A full 22 showed up between maindecks and sideboards, which is about 33% of the maximum amount of Oozes that could have appeared. You’ll remember that a few weeks ago I told you how good Ooze would be in Modern. I don’t expect this to be a passing fad either. SCG has jumped their buy price to $12.50, and is currently sold out at $25. The Ooze is here to stay, so get used to it. The ramifications of this will be widespread. One impact will be just making it tougher and tougher for graveyard strategies in Modern. 4x Deathrite Shaman and 4x Scavenging Ooze is going to be the start of so many decks in Modern that showing up with Vengevine, Demigod of Revenge, Life from the Loam, or really anything with considerable graveyard interaction is just asking to 0-3 drop and get food.

Aside: Keep your eye out for any card that gets printed to help protect your graveyard. Think along the lines of a bear that while in your graveyard gives the whole thing hexproof or some such. Wizards may realize they’ve pushed too hard on graveyard hate, and not wanting to blank so many cool cards, may provide some resources for those types of decks. This type of card, if properly powerful, could quickly become a strong card in both Modern and Legacy, but would likely not carry a high price tag during prerelease season.

Other than Scavenging Ooze, I really like Horizon Canopy right now. The card is a fantastic land for any deck that wants to make green and white mana as well as attack. It’s a land that makes both of your colors right away, it helps combat mana flood, it’s used in Legacy, and it’s a Future Sight rare. Grove of the Burnwillows had a second printing, is arguably not as good, and is still $20. The rares in that set have proven that they are completely capable of going wild, and staying there. Case in point:

Horizon Canopy has been ticking up slowly for quite some time, currently at about $14-15. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it jump like Chord of Calling did at some point. $35+ may be a stretch, but $25+ seems plausible. There’s a very small chance we’ll see it in Theros, but if we don’t I expect it to rise the closer we get to Modern season. What makes this particularly safe is that even if it is printed in Theros, it would be with a Modern border. The unique Future Sight border will help the card maintain value even in the face of a reprint. I particularly like Horizon Canopy foils, which could easily be $70-$100+ with a jump.

Financially, the most important but least-discussed piece of information (so far) is the change in the PTQ schedule. Previously, it was Modern at the start of the year, then Standard over the summer, and finally Limited in the fall. Now however, we have this schedule:

What this means is that starting at the end of this year and through spring of 2014, it will be Standard instead of Modern. Then through late spring and early summer we’ll have Sealed, and Modern doesn’t show up until early summer, where we’ll have it for 11 weeks. Finally the year will finish up with Sealed again through late fall.

The first major change to consider is the delay of the Modern PTQ season. Originally, we all expected it to start around January 1^st or so. This meant that between now and the start of the season, we only had to worry about what was in Theros and the Commander product this November, as well as perhaps any spoilers that slipped out ahead of time. Now though, Modern doesn’t start until June of next year. That is a long ways away, with the entire Theros block being released in the interim, M15 spoilers will be close at hand, and most germane, spoilers of summer product will be available. In fact, do you recognize the date of June 7^th from anything else? The Modern Masters release date was June 7^th, 2013. The Modern PTQ season begins exactly one year later. This is no coincidence. I bet dollars to doughnuts that we will have or at least will have heard of another Modern supplemental product by then.

The obvious impact of this is that our Modern holds are far more tenuous than they were before. Whereas Fetchlands were an absolute hold before, that is much more in question now. There is a lot of time and a lot of product to go before the PTQ season finally rolls around, and a lot of opportunities for the lands to be printed again. Wizards isn’t going to be turning a blind eye to the most prevalent lands in the format being this expensive. They have shown an eagerness to go after high-value Modern staples already. The rise in price of Tarmogoyf and Dark Confidant was a byproduct of Wizards printing too few boxes, a move they have already explained was meant to be overly cautious. I do not expect them to be quite so prudent next time. They now have the data in front of them, and they can more accurately gauge how many boxes they should print of any future Modern product.

Hint: it’s going to be more.

The question then becomes what to do with our Modern holdings. To be perfectly honest with you, I’m still a bit undecided. I’m not rushing out to sell them today, as the threat of additional copies won’t begin to creep up until after the first of the year. It’s really next spring we need to worry about. At this juncture, I am planning on holding until after the first with the calculated risk that they likely won’t go down by then, and have the chance to climb a few more dollars. I’ll probably ditch them in January though, happy to take my profits and unwilling to brave whatever spoilers the spring months may bring. It’s entirely possible the Fetchlands don’t see another printing cycle before the next PTQ season and they all hit $70+, but I’d much rather get out at $30-50 each in January rather than have them show up in MM2 and sell at $20 in July.

The other slightly less drastic result of this schedule change is that there is no longer a Standard PTQ season to keep rotating staples afloat over the summer. Once March 9^th rolls around, Ravnica-block Standard staples will quickly begin to decline as PTQ grinders sell off their copies that they no longer need, whereas in the past they would have held them right through till rotation. Expect Standard prices to deflate sooner and faster this coming year than they have in the past.

Two last parting tips this week: Fellow financially-minded writer Corbin Hosler (@chosler88) pointed out on Monday that Shadow of Doubt has quadrupled in the last several months. As an original Ravnica block rare, it could easily climb to $10. The card also has hybrid mana, making it tough to print outside of supplemental product. If you can grab these under $4, they seem quite safe.

 And finally, Sen Triplets. This card is now pushing $14. Did you know that?