I might say it in every Financial Five article, but they just keep getting better and better at pricing cards. Though I applaud them, I think I still found some potential gems in Magic Origins worth speculating on.
I understand at first glance his stats are underwhelming. What justified his inclusion in this weeks FF can be wrapped up with one word. Deathtouch! Almost any creature in the format would laugh at a 1/4, but deathtouch puts the fear in both Dragonlord Ojutai and Silumgar, the Drifting Death. Though his ability begs to be built around, it’s really not that hard in Standard to put creatures in the graveyard. He even works well with Fleshbag Marauder and Satyr Wayfinder. The only roadblock I can forsee in his future is Deathmist Raptor. The dino’s synergy with Den Protector would be the only leash holding back Standard play. If you couldn’t already tell, this is my favorite card in the set. He’s currently at $1 but is begging to gain value if Deathmist decreases in play.
Funny sidenote: Did you know Graveblade is a font? Here’s proof.
We are familiar with constellation decks from Theros block. G/B constellation was a tier one deck for a while and I think this will at least encourage some great minds to test this cards potential with that theme.
Currently at $3, it’s already pulling a small amount of hype in its direction. Gaining life ‘enchantmentfall’ shoudn’t be overlooked. The obvious combination with Courser is sweet, but the 2/2 body is its clearest drawback. Assuming you’re starting with the old G/B shell, Eidolon of Blossoms is a four of, but more importantly, another playset of 2/2’s. Blocking profitably is not going to happen often so finding a way to win without taking dragons to your face is the first puzzle you have to solve. On the surface, it seems too slow for Heroic decks. Plus, Hero of Iroas lines up better with the decks goals. With the Pro Tour Origins kicking off on July 31st, I’d say all it takes is a deck tech to double it’s price.
Priest of the Blood Rite (TCG Mid $1)
If Satyr Wayfinder isn’t enough fodder for you Sidisi, Undead Vizier or Fleshbag Marauder? I present to you, fodder and a Dragon-destroying Demon token (except Atarka, of course). Unless you’re playing FNM, Encase in Ice is the only ‘Pacifism’ effect in the current competitive Standard meta.
Since you’re already playing Wayfinder, what else goes well with self-mill strategies? Whip of Erebos! Whip takes away the drawback, adds lifelink to your 2/2, and leaves behind a 5/5 flying demon. Together, they block Whisperwood Elemental and it’s first manifest creature well. My only concern is the number of copies worth playing in a list. It clearly works best in the self-mill decks (Golgari or Sultai) but at a non-mythic rarity, it’s hard to expect a large jump even after heavy play. Current price is $1 so a $4-5 price could come true if a whip deck finishes well in the next 2 months.
This was actually the hardest card for me to add to the list. When it was first spoiled, It seemed way to narrow for my tastes and would end up being a meta call sideboard choice. It’s grown on me the more and more I think about it’s potential. It’s easy to think about when cards are good but will it be good more times than the times it’s bad. The fact that it’s a cantrip takes most of the sting out, but did keeping two mana up on your opponents turn put you behind? Probably not.
So what are the good times? It prevents reanimation, tokens, manifest, blinking, unearth, and Splinter Twin combo. Modern and Legacy benefit the most but Standard could justify a few sideboard slots. I feel U/W/R modern decks benefit the most. With Preordainand Ponderbanned, these decks rely on cantrips to keep their hands full. Most of these strategies also play most of there spells at the end of the opponents turn. Problem is, rarity and lack of main deck potential turns this card into a long term spec. Think of it to take a similar financial path as Shadow of Doubt. $3.50 is the current price but I’d say you can pick them up off standard players for less during the Prerelease and release weekends.
I can’t help but look at devotion potential when I see this little guy. Grey Merchant of Asphodel(Gary) is one of my favorite cards from Theros block. Bloodsoaked Champion and D-Souls will obviously have great aggressive potential for Mono-Black Aggro, but the ability to bring back creatures to keep devotion high could lead to some explosive turns.
On top of those, Erebos’s Titan might not come from graveyard to battlefield but with devotion high, recasting him should be easy. D-souls easily fits in two known archtypes, encourages you to play with a playset, and is currently prices at $1. This price baffles me just as much as Graveblade Marauder. Yet another card that can only go up from here.
Wrap Up
If you can’t tell, black is my Magic Origins sleeper color. If I though other cards in other color had more potential, my article would be a bit more colorful. Alas, black is receiving additions in a variety of strategies and deck styles. Cards that support these strategies could also see a rise but I wouldn’t underestimate what Liliana’s newly tainted necromancy will bring to the next two months of Standard.
I hate to be first drop before the waterfall, but I can’t help but think ahead. We might know October 2, 2015 as the first day to spend our paychecks on Battle for Zendikar, but it’s also the day most of your Theros Block and Magic 2015 magically turn from dollars to pennies. Just the word ‘rotation’ makes Standard players cringe worse than the last time I cursed in Sunday school. I know you’re thinking, “Dude! It’s June! Why the hell are you writing about rotation?” In my experience, it’s a lot easier to complete trades with rotating cards when players don’t have rotation on the mind. You’ll start noticing that ‘keep staples’ mindset right when Origins releases. Everyone will start hoarding what rares they feel will hold value and start going out of their way to unload the rest before it completely tanks. This makes Pre-Origins the best time to pick up rares that will keep or gain value after rotation. Also, if Standard is the only format you play, the rest of this article is not for you.
Keep in mind these are cards worth keeping for competitive play, not casual or EDH. Otherwise, I’d just say trade for all the gods.
Theros
Thoughtseize – Let’s start off with an easy one. Before it’s reprint Thoughtseize (Lorwyn) fetched a ~$75 price tag. It’s been in the $15-20 range (Theros) throughout most of its time in Standard despite the massive amount of Theros product opened. This is one of your last chances to pick them up before they start to climb again. It’s simple the best discard spell. Pick up as many as you can. Currently $24 Fair Trade Price
Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx – Though Nykthos has only seen fringe Modern play in Mono-Green devotion decks, the cards power is real. WotC uses restrictive mana costs to keep powerful cards away from other colors. No one wants play in a Boros Reckoner + Phyrexian Obliterator fight deck. Ok, that does sound pretty sweet, but minimizing the amount of decks powerful cards can be in keeps the formats diverse. Nykthos rewards you for playing all the restrictive CMC cards of a chosen color while also helping you accelerate them out earlier than opponents are comfortable with. My point is, WotC isn’t going to stop printing restrictive mana costed cards. Nykthos can only get better with each new set printed. It’s one card away from Tier one Modern play. At worst, casual players will keep its market demand up. Currently $5 Fair Trade Price
Courser of Kruphix – I know has only been a two-of in a few successful Modern lists. It falls to Abrupt Decay but survives Lightning Bolt. It’s dead weight against combo but great for creating card advantage and hitting your lands for the late game. You know it’s power if you’ve only playing a few matches of Standard. Speculating on a Bant control deck utilizing Courser might be a stretch, but labeling it as unplayable doesn’t seem correct either. The current $6 price might still be a bit high, but picking up a playset for $12 at rotation shouldn’t be a bad investment. This might be the only card on this list that’s worth waiting for a lower price. Currently $6 Fair Trade Price.
Spirit of the Labyrinth(FOIL) – Why foil? Cause, Legacy. Legacy players love foils and Legacy foils love having oddly high prices. Foil Spirit has been a steady $10 while only seeing 1-3 copies in successful Death & Taxes lists. In May, it dropped to $6. D&T hasn’t put up many high places finishes in a while. But, if you play Legacy, you know the meta is always changing. It’s only a matter of time before it falls back into favor. With zero play in any other format, Spirit’s price has been solely dependent on the Legacy environment. This is a good time to pick up while you can still find them. Currently $6 Fair Trade Price.
Journey into Nyx
Mana Confluence – This upgraded City of Brass will continue to take its place in Modern and Legacy decks. It’s been as high as $20 but has mostly stayed around $10-12 during its lifetime. I don’t predict them going that much lower but wouldn’t be surprised to see them follow a slightly slower price trajectory as Cavern of Souls. Plus, it’s a powerful non basic land. Always a worthy investment. Currently $12 Fair Trade Price.
Eidolon of the Great Revel – Probably the best eternal playable card printed in this block. It sees four copies in both Modern and Legacy Mono-Red lists and will continue to do so. Picking up these should be just as obvious as picking up Thoughseizes. To be honest, you probably should have picked them up when they were $5. Currently $11 Fair Trade Price.
Magic 2015
Chord of Calling – Chord fell from $40 to $20 after its M15 reprint and has steadily decreased slowly over the past year. Previously played alongside the villainous Birthing Pod, Chord fell when Pod was banned and never found a home in Modern Collected Company decks. Its lack of recent play doesn’t reflect the power of this convoking tutor. Though Pod won’t be unbanned anytime soon, I think Chord will learn to stand on its own again in a future Modern meta. Zero chance this card falls to bulk after rotation. Currently $5 Fair Trade Price.
Final Thoughts
Investing in rotating rares isn’t the quickest way to gain financial value, but it is a perfect way to acquire future format staples with a long term investment bonus. I might only have a few rotations under my belt, but I’ve made a lot of profit being patient with rotating cards like these. I hope now you can do the same before the ‘rotation plague’ sweeps over your LGS.
Usually I write a column called Financial Five on Brainstorm Brewery at each set release. This column highlights my top five cards worth speculating on in the new Standard environment. With MTGPrice now sponsoring BSB, I reached out and was glad to be asked to join this team of knowledgeable MTG finance juggernauts.
With so much going on, my Dragons of Tarkir (DTK) article was caught in limbo during the website transition and couldn’t post until after Pro Tour Dragons of Tarkir.
I still see value in my original FF: DTK article and want to find a way to relay that experience to you. The below points aren’t me saying, “I could have told you where ‘X’s’ price was going to land.” Rather, I’m revisiting some of the things I originally thought to help us all understand price changes from a set’s prerelease to after the Pro Tour. I learn something about finance every time a new set comes out. (And for those who dislike staring at graphs, this is a price fluctuation overview of DTK.)
Original Financial Five: DTK
The prices cited below are release-day prices. Here’s what I said about the cards I called:
Sidisi, Undead Vizier – $4 – Finding a creature to extort is not a problem in this metagame. Sidisi helps you break midrange mirrors and blocks well.
Surrak, the Hunt Caller – $4.50 – The Polukranos replacement we needed for this metagame. Perfect for Abzan Aggro and Green Devotion decks.
Stratus Dancer – $2 or less – This is an extra counter in the control mirror that pressures your opponent’s life total. It has potential in a R/U Dragons Tempo deck.
Hidden Dragonslayer – $1 – This is undervalued due to the expectation of only fitting in warriors decks, but remove the creature type and it’s removal against any opponent that plays stabilizing creatures on turn four or five.
Honorable Mentions
Icefall Regent – $2 or less – I was so close to switching this with Hidden Dragonslayer, but ultimately felt it didn’t have as much room to move up.
Den Protector – $2 – I wanted to get behind this card, but thought Tasigur was clearly better card advantage. Black and green are almost always together in today’s Standard. Clearly, I was wrong. Guess I should know more synergistic green uncommon enchantments from Journey to Nyx.
DTK That I Missed
Dragonlord Atarka – Holy cow! This is a great example of how MTG finance works with a mythic that gets played as a four-of at the Pro Tour.
Dragonlord Silumgar – I remember wanting to like him but never thought the removal-heavy nature of Standard would allow him to make waves (or flaps in his case, I guess). The amount of board control in the U/B Dragon deck converted even the more serious skeptics, though.
Price Movements & Updates
Sidisi, Undead Vizier and Surrak, Hunt Caller both moved up in advance of the Pro Tour due to lack of available product and in response to the first streamed event with DTK (a Star City Games Open, I might add).
Hidden Dragonslayer, Blood-Chin Fanatic, and Stratus Dancer stayed the same.
Den Protector and Icefall Regent went from $2 to $5 for reasons different than I had originally mentioned.
Surrak, Hunt Caller & Sidisi, Undead Vizier went back down to around $4.50 each.
Financial Opportunities Left in DTK
The whole undercosted megamorph cycle (except for Silumgar Assassin) is powerful enough to see future Standard format play.
Hidden Dragonslayer and Blood-Chin Fanatic are still safe pickup targets due to post rotation speculations (at $2 or less).
If anything bumps Atarka off her pedestal, look for a small Hornet Queen or Genesis Hydra price increase. Being rares, they won’t see a similar spike to the Dragonlord, but Hornet Queen is the only one of the two that has another printing. They both have a chance to hit $5 again.
Sarkhan Unbroken still has some time to drop, but I think $10 or less is a good place to get in at. The dual lands from the next block will hold a lot of weight in determining whether he is worthwhile. History shows Wizards like to switch back and forth between mono- or two-colored Standard and multicolored Standard. Since DTK didnt have rare duals, tri lands, or gain lands, I suspect the Theros rotation will be a multicolor format. We know that Battle for Zendikar will encourage printing unique rare lands (such as enemy fetches or Valakut-style lands) and land-mechanic synergies (like landfall). I think Sarkhan keeps a lot of potential playablilty pre-Khans/Fate Reforged rotation.
Am I thinking too far ahead? Maybe. As you’ll find out in my next article, I take some unique or unconventional approaches to trading and finance. It pays to be prepared, though.
Wrap Up
I understand this article wasn’t chock-full of financial recommendations, but I do hope it can give you a little insight on how prices behave from a set’s prerelease to after the Pro Tour.
Let my correct predictions excite you for future Financial Five articles and let my screw-ups give you an excuse to send me a tweet saying, “How did you miss that?!?!”
By the time you read this, it will be a few days past the Magic 2014 pre-release. While you were all jammed together with sweaty nerds in the heat of July in card shops without air conditioning, I will have been tanning getting burned on the sunny sand of Myrtle Beach. We’re all back to the real (fantasy) world by now though, and my goal is to provide some additional perspective on the fiscal axis of M14.
Before we take a look at any specific cards, there’s a well-worn point that yet bears repeating: purchasing or trading for cards at this point in the set’s life cycle is almost unquestionably a poor choice through the lens of value. For every Sphinx’s Revelation or Voice of Resurgence, there are a lot more Armada Wurms or Koths. A set’s cards just cannot maintain the price attributed to them during the pre-release period. Anything you buy into is significantly more likely to lose value rather than gain. If your goal is to make money, you have to be exceptionally confident that you’re better at predicting a card’s trajectory than many other very intelligent people attempting to do the exact same thing. About the only time I would really recommend getting in now is if you notice a very powerful, very obscure combo that nobody else seems to have picked up on yet (e.g. Dark Depths + Vampire Hexmage.) In general, it is far more prudent to wait several weeks for the prices to settle to reasonable levels, and then jump in. If you’re picking up a playset because you need it to compete, or your goal is to hedge against future price increases, that’s understandable, but speculating this early on is a fool’s game.
A strategy I like to use for pre-releases is to go in with a plan. If I show up without any trade targets in mind, I let myself get caught up in the hype and end up trading for cards that have nowhere to go but down. Instead, sit down and open up the notepad app on your phone. Make a short list of specific cards you’d like to acquire. That way, while everyone else is chattering about the new cardboard, you can be trading your inflated property for under-valued targets that will be rising in coming weeks rather than falling. That said, let’s take a pass through the spoiler and see what catches our attention.
The reason I put this card first is because this card is b-a-n-a-n-a-s oozenanas. I’m convinced that anyone that dismisses its power level has simply never cast it. The ability on this guy ranges from tangentially useful to game-dominating. In his worst matchups, he’s a reasonable threat that keeps growing while the life-gain and graveyard-consumption will be inconsequential. In some of his better matchups, he’ll provide you enough life to race or keep your head above water against aggro. In yet others the ooze will singlehandedly shut down your opponent’s strategy by blanking their entire graveyard. Read Ooze again: it exiles any card, not just creature cards.Granted you only get the +1/+1 counter and the life from slurping up corpses, I don’t think you’ll be complaining when your ooze is happily munching on Unburial Rites or Past in Flames.He’s not a one-ride pony, either. Every girl at the party gets a turn: Scavenging Ooze is going to be even more important in Modern than Standard. Out of the top 16 decks from GP Kansas City, there was exactly one deck that didn’t care about its graveyard at all. Read that again: one out of sixteen decks had no interaction with their graveyard in Modern. The rest had some combination of diverse threats such as Tarmogoyf, Snapcaster, Kitchen Finks, or Goryo’s Vengeance. He’s going to have incidental value against a gigantic swath of the field, and be a severe threat to a significant portion. Here’s another way to appreciate his wide-spread application: in Legacy, Maverick decks cut Tarmogoyf completely for Scavenging Ooze.
What other factors are going to affect the price of the ooze? He was in the first wave of Commander precons, so there’s a small supply of him out there already. He’s also the Steam promo for DOTP, which will definitely help suppress his value. The flipside of that is the quantity of formats in which he is relevant. Most recently, the best parallel I can think of is Thragtusk. He’s a high-utility green creature against many decks, his casting cost is not restrictive, and he’s not a single-copy threat in the same vein as Aetherling. Thragtusk peaked at $30, and spent very little time at less than $10:
Thragtusk. August 2012 – July 2013.
While there are fewer copies of Thragtusk in circulation, Scavenging Ooze is relevant in every real format. So overall, there will be more copies of Ooze available, but both more and longer-term demand. With that consideration, if Ooze ever gets below $10, I’d start getting in aggressively. I expect his demand will spike once the Modern PTQ season begins and he’s needed concurrently in Standard, Modern and Legacy. Even if for some reason he didn’t rebound while he’s still legal in Standard, he certainly will once M14 rotates and he continues to be a premier 2-drop in Modern.
I’m a lot less excited about this card than many in the multiverse are, and I’m seeing conflicting reports. Gerry T thinks she is reasonable, but isn’t too high on her making that much of an impact. Sam Black didn’t even mention it in his set review. Meanwhile, others are hailing her as the venerated Real Deal. The closest thing I can liken Archangel of Thune to is Sublime Archangel. Both are midrange white angels that want to beat your opponent up, and reward you heavily for having lots of bodies. Sublime Archangel showed up a little over her tenure, although accomplished nothing of note. Having said that, Sublime Archangel spent months above $20, and only recently slipped below $10. Archangel of Thune is a mythic, an angel, and the type of player that likes angels is likely to like lifegain. Sam Stoddard also pointed out some nifty synergies with things like Seraph Sanctuary. Her usefulness really depends on what sort of methods there are to gain life. A soul warden on steroids in Theros could certainly push her over the edge. Overall, I think $30 is unwarranted, but even if she sees absolutely no play in Standard, she’ll likely be $6-10. With only transient Standard play, $15-20+ is certainly viable. This card is probably the one on the list I am most unsure of.
He’s currently $2 on SCG. If you can get these for $1 in trade, I’d get in on it. Double Strike may as well be Alpha Strike. It never even has to do anything relevant in Standard to be worth $3-4 at some point due to it being a Sliver.
Plenty recognize this for the gut-wrench-inducing effect it is against some players. I personally remember playing Turboland, ready to untap and unleash a torrent of spells with my 9 lands in play after finally stabilizing against a red deck. Then he cast Manabarbs, and I basically lost on the spot. This will be capable of similar gastrointestinal torment. It’s only $1 on SCG at the moment, but with only a single copy in stock. I can’t imagine ever having to take less than $1 for this in trade, and it could easily be a several dollar card, as it has a distinct chance of transcending sideboard-grade into being main deckable. This will be great to try and pick up as a throw-in from players that remember Manabarbs being a cheap card, forgetting that there were 11 printings.
There has already been a fair amount written about Chandra so far by others. Without reading a single word on the card, it’s important to consider the climate into which this card is released. M14 has Chandra’s face plastered all over it. I find it unlikely that Wizards would make her the central theme of a set and then put out another smoldering pile of a planeswalker. My gut feeling is that, like many planeswalkers, she’s better than people are originally giving her credit for. $25 is definitely far too much money to for us to be interested, but there’s certainly a point at which we get in. Gideon, Champion of Justice is $4, and Vraska is $7, so I’d say $5 is roughly her floor. With that in mind, keep an eye out for how she fares in the format, and look closely at anything we learn about future sets that may indicate a greater value in her abilities. There may be a lot more relevancy to “can’t block” in Theros than there is right now. It’s also worth noting that after going all out with her in M14, it’s unlikely they’ll do a complete redesign just a year later, so expect to see the Pyromaster in M15 as well.
This card seems like one of the better chances to be a sleeper out of any I’ve seen so far at a mere $1. Several players who are far better than I have gone out of their way to mention how good it seems. In a format where removal is sparsely played, a 1/1 that generates a powerful effect repeatedly is king. It could end up doing nothing, but Dungeon Geists were $1 at one point too, then everyone saw Jon Finkel casting it. I’m not saying this card is Dungeon Geists, but rather we shouldn’t be too quick to dismiss it.
$8 seems way too high for this guy, but I like him a lot, and not only because my inner 17 year-old thinks his art is super sweet. He’s not quite protection from Black or Red, but protection from Black and Red removal is still solid. We’ve already had a 2/2 first strike lifelink for WW before, so we’re only paying 1 for the added pseudo-protection. With Doom Blade and Shock in the M14 spoiler, he’s probably going to be safe from a majority of the removal in the format. If in the next few weeks we see Standard shift to all Doom Blades and Pillars and Incinerates, he could be great in 3-drop Hexproof with a pile of mana dorks next to Witchstalker and Geist. It’s also possible that Knight ends up being a relevant creature type in Theros. Watch this guy closely. At worst, you have a playset of sweet-looking Knights.
I haven’t read as much about Garruk as Chandra, but he seems real legit, and it’s easy to imagine scenarios where he’s just busted. A turn one elf with a Farseek sometime in the next two turns means a turn 4 Garruk, who spits out an Armada Wurm. You could have just cast the Armada Wurm, but now you get a Planeswalker that’s threatening a never-ending stream of action next turn and two blockers to make sure he gets there. There’s also the combo-esque element of him where you’re slamming Craterhoof Behemoths into a board full of elves and Elvish Archdruid, or putting Worldspine Wurm into play seven turns early (at FNM). I’d watch him closely, because if he drops below $10 at any point, a single breakout performance at a GP (likely at the hands of Brad Nelson or Brian Kibler) will quickly double his price.
A 2-mana 2-power creature is always close to castable in certain Standards. A 2-power 2-drop that puts your opponent’s ability to block behind by an entire turn is definitely playing ball. While very similar to Blind Obedience, I’m guessing that 2-power attacker will be worth more damage than extort in most games. Reading Twitter, I get the impression this card may be slipping through some cracks at the moment. It’s preordering sold out at $3 while I write this, and it seems like it could quite easily be a $5-$8 card depending on how prominent it becomes. I’d watch this very closely, because this is the exact type of card you can get people to under-value in a trade when it starts to sneak up.
Speaking of which, I find it odd that Wizards would print this on the heels of Blind Obedience. It leads me to believe that the “no blocking” mechanic may be particularly relevant in Theros. It’s not limited to just these two cards, either. Blind Obedience and Imposing Sovereign are similar in a sideways manner to Chandra’s +1. Not blocking is shaping up to be available in several flavors at the moment. Sam Stoddard mentioned that the synergy in M14 with the fall set is a lot more subtle than Farseek and Arbor Elf were. Maybe it’s something, maybe it’s not.
Zvi Mowshowitz was talking about this card, and when Zvi goes out of his way to discuss particular cards, I pay close attention. It has a lot of hype right now, and is sold out at $30. This number is inflated without any results, so unless it comes thundering out of the gates, expect a pretty rapid crash. As a Mythic though, it will always have the possibility of tripling in price after spiking an event. It certainly is the most competitive Hydra printed so far. It suffers from the MTGS-maligned problem of doing nothing except eating doom blade before your attack phase, but when it attacks, boy does it ever. Don’t forget that this hydra is BFFs with Corpsejack Menace, taking advantage of the replacement effect twice by the time he’s in the red zone, meaning he’s a whopping 24/24 trampler. As far as “do nothing” creatures go, he does nothing until he’s sideways and killing your opponent. Like several other powerful cards without an immediate home, this has the possibility to pull a roller-coaster. Skyrocket pre-release, crash post-release, then spike an event and skyrocket again.
Cards of this type have historically been too weak to see play by any but the most mindless zombie aficionado, whether because they cost too much or don’t do enough when you finally get them to connect. Reaver has an outside shot at bringing honor to his genealogy though. It gives you another attacker next turn, and makes it tougher for your opponent to fight back by stripping resources. Remember when I was talking about how many ways there were to make blocking less reliable in this format? You’ve also got the semi-hyped Lifebane Zombie to remove any restorative angelic figures that may swoop in unexpectedly ahead of time. This is card I’ll definitely be trying to get as a throw-in during trades. If it goes nowhere, it won’t have cost me much, and if it does, I’ll look like a genius.
Edit: I wrote this bit about Liliana’s Reaver before I realized it was an intro pack rare. I’m leaving my initial reaction to him intact so that you can see the thought process. Let this be a lesson that it’s important to be aware of additional product Wizards is putting out and the impact that product will have on card prices. All in all, that piece of information sets his ceiling a little lower than I anticipated; perhaps around $4-5. Still, there’s room to profit on him as good throw-in fodder.
$15 for this card is close to the cheapest it has ever been. Mutavault been a player in Legacy for years. It hasn’t done too much in Modern yet, but that’s to the surprise of many. That format is rather combo-heavy at the moment, but if Wizards decides to push things back towards battling again, it could quickly become a big player. I can definitely see it seeing play in a basic-heavy list alongside Burning Earth. Helping it’s case is that almost any deck that wants one Mutavault wants four. I don’t see a time this card was ever less than $10, so I’d be willing to get in on any copies I could get at that price or lower. Even if it doesn’t immediately rebound, it will in time.
If you untap with Ogre Battledriver, your opponent is in a world of hurt. Can you imagine casting Increasing Devotion with this in play? Hah. It also works pretty well with Young Pyromancer, another card lots of red mages have been chatting about. The biggest hurdle to overcome here is that he’s an intro pack rare, which will set a pretty low ceiling on him. Even so, $3-5 isn’t impossible. If you’re paying almost nothing for him in a trade, I’d go for it.
I don’t really care for Path of Bravery, but players better than I think it’s worth discussing. I bring it up because at the moment it’s only $2 on SCG. Any lower and it’s a fairly low-risk target.
I only mention this card because as I was flipping through the spoiler, saw the art, recognized the card, and in my head guessed $.50. Then I saw it was A) a Mythic, and B) sold out at $8. What? Let it crash to $1 before you pick it up for EDH.
Look for cheap foils. He will be popular for dragon-centric EDH decks.
A quick note about all five planeswalkers – there is going to be an all-black promo of each at San Diego Comic-Con this weekend. In traditional Wizards fashion with limited-run product, the box of five will retail for the ludicrously low price of $65. It’s going to be available at SDCC, then there’ll be what I’m assuming will be an incredibly small supply available on the Hasbro website following the event. These things are going to be bonkers expensive. First of all, they’re going to be real scarce. Probably Book Jace scarce, who by the way is currently about $180. Second of all, they’re not just a simple alt-art promo; they’ll be the only Magic cards in existence to be printed with this design. On top of all this, not only is it an incredibly unique style, they also happen to be all black, which will certainly appeal to the angsty teen that is still alive and well in the heart of many anime-watching Magic nerds. I fully expect sealed packages to be $500 within about a year, and I see it entirely possible they’ll be $700 or more down the road. The only thing that will prevent these from hitting astronomic prices is that we already know three are virtually uncastable outside of Standard, and I don’t have high eternal hopes for the new Garruk or Chandra either.
MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY
I understand at first glance his stats are underwhelming. What justified his inclusion in this weeks FF can be wrapped up with one word. Deathtouch! Almost any creature in the format would laugh at a 1/4, but deathtouch puts the fear in both Dragonlord Ojutai and Silumgar, the Drifting Death. Though his ability begs to be built around, it’s really not that hard in Standard to put creatures in the graveyard. He even works well with Fleshbag Marauder and Satyr Wayfinder. The only roadblock I can forsee in his future is Deathmist Raptor. The dino’s synergy with Den Protector would be the only leash holding back Standard play. If you couldn’t already tell, this is my favorite card in the set. He’s currently at $1 but is begging to gain value if Deathmist decreases in play.
Playable discounted creatures in Golgari: Boon Satyr, Courser of Kruphix, Herald of Torment, Master of the Feast, Nyx Weaver, Spiteful Returned
If Satyr Wayfinder isn’t enough fodder for you Sidisi, Undead Vizier or Fleshbag Marauder? I present to you, fodder and a Dragon-destroying Demon token (except Atarka, of course). Unless you’re playing FNM, Encase in Ice is the only ‘Pacifism’ effect in the current competitive Standard meta.
This was actually the hardest card for me to add to the list. When it was first spoiled, It seemed way to narrow for my tastes and would end up being a meta call sideboard choice. It’s grown on me the more and more I think about it’s potential. It’s easy to think about when cards are good but will it be good more times than the times it’s bad. The fact that it’s a cantrip takes most of the sting out, but did keeping two mana up on your opponents turn put you behind? Probably not.
I can’t help but look at devotion potential when I see this little guy. Grey Merchant of Asphodel (Gary) is one of my favorite cards from Theros block. Bloodsoaked Champion and D-Souls will obviously have great aggressive potential for Mono-Black Aggro, but the ability to bring back creatures to keep devotion high could lead to some explosive turns.
ndead Vizier
