By Andrew Smith
This past weekend a couple hundred of the best Magic: The Gathering players in the world descended on Montreal to compete in Pro Tour Gatecrash. Three days of Standard and booster draft to crown the newest Pro Tour champion. And perhaps more importantly, set the direction of post-Gatecrash Standard. Without a doubt, Standard will continue to evolve in the coming weeks and months, but there are some conclusions we can draw based on the PT results.
A Reckoning
Let’s start with what is now obvious: Boros Reckoner is for real. The week after the release I was suggesting the $15 price tag was the ceiling for this card and it continues to skyrocket. Today the average price is nearly $30. I certainly misjudged the number of decks that want this card. It has its place in aggressive decks, midrange decks, and serves as a great anti-aggro card in UWR control decks. Four of the Standard decks in the top 8 ran four copies of Boros Reckoner. Last time I compared him to Deathrite Shaman, but it’s evident that Thragtusk is a better comparison. He’s going to be an important card in Standard for the foreseeable future. Even without Modern or legacy play, Thragtusk has shown us it’s possible to be a $25-30 Standard rare for quite a while.
Another card making big moves out of the PT: Falkenrath Aristocrat. Only one deck in the top 8 played the big hasty vampire, but it was the deck that won it all. And that matters, a lot. Falkenrath has already seen a 25% increase since taking down the PT.
If you can find someone trying to trade theirs off, this is a pretty safe investment. She reached $25 on some stores prior to Gatecrash when B/R Zombies was a tier 1 deck. No good reason to expect anything different this time.
Speculation
My speculation choices for this week are Abrupt Decay and Crypt Ghast. Abrupt Decay has settled in around $7 right now, but it’s getting more Standard play than ever before. Obviously, Boros Reckoner has a lot to do with that. Decay is one of the best cards to take out the Reckoner. It is also seeing an increasing amount of play in Modern and Legacy. Crypt Ghast, on the other hand, was key to Conley Woods mono-black control deck that had a winning record in Standard at the PT. While it didn’t dominate, there are a lot of people out there that love playing mono-black. Currently the average price is just over $3, but can be picked up on eBay for about a buck. If nothing else this is one card to move from your junk boxes to your trade binders.