Watchtower

Almost-Forgotten Realms

I was surprised to learn that Adventures in the Forgotten Realms released over six months ago now, and with both the Innistrad sets back to back followed by Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty just around the corner, I think that we should take a look back at AFR before we forget about it and all the decent specs are gone.

Guardian of Faith (FEA)

Price today: $4
Possible price: $10

Guardian of Faith is something that I hadn’t really noticed until now, but really should have been on my radar as a decent EDH card. As well as being a popular option among Spirits and Knights decks, it’s actually a strong piece for any white deck and can act as a budget (or secondary) Teferi’s Protection effect, protecting all your creatures for a turn at instant speed, whilst adding an extra body to the board as well.

With AFR already having been six months in print, some of the more popular premium treatment cards are starting to dry up. Guardian of Faith has 34 NM FEA listings on TCGPlayer, almost all of which are just single copies and not many of those below $5. Europe has more supply but the copies are actually slightly more expensive than in the US, so you could still pick some up but your margins are going to be slimmer. There is also the Ampersand promo to consider, but supply on those is very thin on the ground – if you can find any under $30-40 then I’d say go for it, but they’re getting harder to find at reasonable prices.

Oswald Fiddlebender (Showcase Foil)

Price today: $3
Possible price: $10

Moving onto another white card for my second pick today: for a card that’s just a Birthing Pod for artifacts, I’m honestly surprised that Oswald Fiddlebender is only in 4600 decks on EDHREC. It seems obvious that any artifact-based deck that can run this card should be doing so, especially if you’re trying to sift through your deck to find combo pieces rather than just mana rocks etc. Once you involve a Scrap Trawler and/or Myr Retriever then you can really go to town with it, getting back all the pieces you sacrifice to Oswald for free.

Showcase foils for this aren’t particularly pricey yet, but nor are they hugely plentiful in supply – around 40 NM foil listings on TCGPlayer, again almost all single copies, and around half the quantity of the regular foils available. I wouldn’t bother with the Ampersand promos on this one as they’re all $100+ already and I’m not sure how much money is to be made there. The Showcase foils from AFR definitely aren’t for everyone, but I quite like the art style on them and it’s clear that others do too, so although sales on them might not be as fast as they could be, I think you’ll still be able to make your money on them in time.

Teleportation Circle (FEA)

Price today: $5
Possible price: $15

All white cards? Yep, all white cards this week. Unintentional but here we are, and honestly it’s probably a good thing that there are actually some good white cards for EDH. We know how popular Conjurer’s Closet is, and Teleportation Circle is both cheaper in mana cost as well as being able to flicker artifacts as well as creatures. Closet is in almost 25,000 decks listed on EDHREC and I expect Teleportation Circle to close the gap between that and its current 7000 decks somewhat over the next couple of years.

Enter-the-battlefield effects will always be powerful and popular in EDH, and so I fully expect to see this card over $10 before long, and pushing $15-20 sooner or later. Around 30 NM foils on TCGPlayer and a solid ramp to $10 means that it won’t take many EDH players buying/upgrading copies of the card to lift the price up. The Ampersand promos on this one are around $50 right now, and personally I won’t be buying any but I could see a world where they move to $75-100, so use your own discretion on that one.

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

Casual Fridays

What to Buy in Commander Collection: Black

 I realize this seems like a simplistic question, but given the amount of cards that are reprinted every year, we have to make judicious decisions about where to put our money. Plus, because of the gushing torrent of reprints and Secret Lairs and oh my god Double Masters 2: Quadruple is coming out this year…it’s easy to overlook some releases.

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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, Unlocked ProTrader

Unlocked Pro Trader: William Gibson’s Spectromancer

Readers!

Whether or not we’re happy about it, we’re about to descend into neon hell where Hidetsugu kind of sucks but the 1 in 100,000 yellow variant will be the Beanie Babies of 2022. Will the set be Ninjitsu or Bushido? Sweep or Soulshift? Kamigawa Block Constructed or post-Mirrodin Standard? Will it be cohort? It’s hard to say, but I ordered cases of Collector Boosters so I’ve cast my lot in with this stupid set. I don’t care what anything in this set costs, but it’s going to impact EDH by bolstering existing archetypes and creating new ones, and while the low-hanging “stuff with creature type Ninja” fruit is all gone, there are some cards they’ve revealed that make me think we have some money to be made before spoilers (that’s what I call preview season because I didn’t get a preview card again) start in full force. Come along with someone who thinks he understands EDH because he went from making fun of EDH to playing on the Commander RC stream and receive some finance tips, my hungry little finance birdies. No, birds eat regurgitated worms, these picks are fresh. Hungry Hippos? This sucks, I could spend 10 minutes thinking of a good animal metaphor but I’m already on to the next paragraph.

I’m literally going to post a pic of a Neal Stephenson presents: The Kami Warz card and then talk about what I think it could mean. That sounds lazy but it’s smart and you’ll like it. Let’s begin.

As you can see, this card has text. OK, let’s move on.

I’d build Junji as a deck that made a ton of clones. In general, I think making expendable, Legendary copies of all 5 of these Dragons will be better than having to recast this for like 11 mana. I have a card in mind in particular since every Clone printed since 2019 removes Legendary.

I didn’t buy these at $5 – be a lot cooler if I did. I had 2 chances to do just that, two years apart. Not surprisingly at all, this card has spent the last 3 years doing nothing but climbing. At one point, Urza’s Incubator cost as much as the precon it and this card were in, which made this card free. It’s not free anymore, but it’s so good at giving you 3 Junji triggers it isn’t funny.

I don’t know what “Modified” means, but I assume it’s equipped and or/ enchanted with an aura since there is an aura subtheme. Here’s how to figure out if there is any mono-Red Voltron stuff that could go up to go in a Goro-Goro deck.

I went to themes, equipment, mono-Red on EDHREC. I could show you with a series of screenshots, but I feel like if I explain that much, I’d also have to explain to you how to make a TCG Player account to buy cards. Either you’re hopeless and no amount of help will actually improve your situation, or you’re smart and busy and are paying me to do it for you. Very well. Here is your link.

In general, you’ll find what you need on these pages, but let me show you my favorite.

If you were afraid to grab these while the price was in freefall, I have good news – it’s on the rise. Grab this erstwhile and eventual $5 card now.

This card seems better than it is, probably, but while I’m not sure I want to build around it, a card that searches for an Unquestioned Authority and attaches it every time I play a Battle Mastery is probably solid.

Here is the mono-White auras page, although this goes in the 99 more often than it goes in the Command Zone.

I personally think Mantle of the Ancients at $2 is a player if “modified” indeed means equipped or enchanted. It could be a new thing they made up just for this set, which would suck, but with there being an aura subtheme evident, I doubt it.

I am a landfall fiend and cards like this really get me hyped. You can run a few extra lands above what anyone does these days and not be punished because you can use them as spells. The best part is bringing them back after that.

If the Green channel land is good, Ramunap Excavator is currently $3. Also, Ramunap Excavator shouldn’t be $3 unless it’s reprinted again, which I think could take a long time. CK got $6 for this 6 months ago, I’m OK paying $3 that being the case. CK buylist will be $6 in like 6 more months and every tweet that whole day will be about abolishing the “reserve” list. Or something, I don’t know, twitter sucks.

FINALLY! A 5 color Legendary dragon card. This page has some tips about how to build something like that.

This card exists and it’s climbing again. 5-color decks are the dumb, Timmy decks of the future and they don’t have to be good. Will Timmy shell out $12 for a Crystal Quarry? I don’t know, Joe Manginello built a Tiamat deck and he could buy every Magic card on the planet with all that Magic Mike scrilla, so who knows? I do know that this hasn’t gone up in price in a year despite there being a lot of 5 color decks in that year and the price of the foil doubled this month. Once the 125 copy wall on TCG Player is gone, this is a card from a set so old you had to google the card because you don’t recognize the expansion symbol. Where does that level off? You tell me. Here’s a land from the same set.

Crystal Quarry can’t untap a Gaea’s Cradle, I guess, but Deserted Temple can’t fix your mana. I think Quarry will settle between $5 and $40. Where? Depends how many more 5 color Dargons we get.

That does it for me, readers. Hit me up in the Pro Traders Discord with your picks. Until next time!

Watchtower

New Innovations in Modern

It’s always refreshing to see people bringing new ideas to the table in Modern, especially when it’s a new piece of tech for an already established archetype that can shake things up a bit. Today I’m looking at just that – some innovative takes on both old and newer decks on the Modern scene.

Tourach, Dread Cantor (OBF)

Price today: $12
Possible price: $25

Jund? In 2022? It’s more likely than you’d think. Over the past couple of weeks, Jund has become a more and more popular choice in the Modern metagame, with some of the old favourites in Tarmogoyf, Thoughtseize and Wrenn and Six, plus some newer tech in Tourach, Dread Cantor. This little two-drop is in a pretty good place in the metagame right now – as well as getting buffed from your discard spells, the protection from white is huge against decks like Hammer Time that have mostly white threats carrying their equipment, as well as being Solitude-proof.

Now can anybody tell me why the retro foil versions of this is only $2 more than the retro non-foil? No? I’m not really sure why either, but the fact is that you’d only be paying $12 over $10 for the foil rather than non-foil here, and I think that the foils will start to push upwards pretty soon to correct that. The foils are already a bit pricier than that in Europe (where the non-foils are actually slightly cheaper), and we should soon see the US market follow that trend.

This isn’t a huge EDH card but the low supply doesn’t need much demand to push the price up, and a few Modern and EDH players here and there wanting pretty versions will be enough to start draining the market. If you want any personal or spec copies then now is the time, and I think these are a slightly better pick than the borderless version of the card which has higher supply and, let’s be honest, a worse frame.

Kor Outfitter (Foil)

Price in Europe: €2 ($2.25)
Price in US: $12
Possible price: $15

Speaking of Hammer Time (as we always seem to be when discussing Modern these days), that deck has seen some new innovation as well. Kor Outfitter has been picked up as another piece of tech to put your huge equipment in the hands (or wings? Don’t ask me how an Ornithopter is supposed to carry a Hammer) of your creatures without paying the exorbitant cost for it, and although not a huge number of people have picked it up yet, the lists it’s been in have been putting up strong results.

A common with a single printing all the way back in original Zendikar, foils of these are already pretty scarce, and a NM copy is going to set you back $12 on TCGPlayer. Over in Europe however, you can grab a few at the €1-2 mark, and if you’re not too sluggish about it then you could easily ship some over to the US for a tidy profit. It’s also worth looking around in the US for any cheaper copies too; I’m sure there will be some stores that still have copies at the old price that you can chuck straight on TCGPlayer or eBay.

Wishclaw Talisman (EA)

Price in Europe: €3 ($3.50)
Price in US: $9
Possible price: $20

I don’t think that this is actually very new tech, but it’s an older deck that’s seeing a little bit more play in Modern and so I thought I’d give it a mention regardless. The Twiddlestorm deck puts Lotus Field coupled with a bunch of Twiddle effects to good use, and was a prominent force in the Modern meta a little while back before shrinking into the background a bit. Now it seems to be making a small resurgence, with a few different variants flying around and a lot of them playing Wishclaw Talisman.

Using a Twiddle effect on the Talisman enables you to search for multiple cards with it before handing the Talisman over to your opponent, sometimes even with zero counters left on it, rendering it useless to them. Some of the decks are going for a Grapeshot or Empty the Warrens win, with others opting for a Thassa’s Oracle or even grabbing an Aeve, Progenitor Ooze from the sideboard to overwhelm the opponent with Oozes.

Being a very popular EDH card, FEA Wishclaws are already $45 in the US and in very low supply, and EAs at $9-10 looking to push upwards too. Over in Europe though, you can find EAs as low as €3 (and some FEAs around €20 which aren’t bad pickups either), and that makes for some nice arbitrage. I expect to see non-foil EAs push $15 before long, and could climb as high as $20 without a reprint soon.

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

MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY