Weekly Winners (1)

This week I'm back with the first installment of Weekly Winners in 2016. I have enjoyed a well deserved holiday. Once again, I present you the cards that will be the talk of the town tonight.

 

#1 Delay +454% ($3.99)

The first weekly winner of 2016 is a very interesting card. In itself, Delay is a solid card, it is a counter that buys you three turns before the threat is played again, and if you are able to find an out for it, swing the game your way, or just plainly win, you have a good counterspell for 1U. 

But, because of its drawback it is not a very consitent card. If you are on the play and have it in your opening hand, a lot of other counterspells are much better to have. And when you are competing in a slower format, Delay will only give you the needed edge when the conditions are just right. 

The reason why this card spiked is beacuse of its synergy with recent printed Eldrazi. Take Wasteland Strangler as an example. You might wonder what putting a card from exile into a graveyard has to do with anything. Well, this: 

"702.61b A card is “suspended” if it’s in the exile zone, has suspend, and has a time counter on it."

Cards with suspend are actually in the exile zone, until the last time counter is removed. Most people leave the suspended card on the battlefield, as a reminder that the card is suspended, but it should be placed in exile. You won't have to be a rocket scientist and/or brain surgeon to figure out that Wasteland Strangler removes the suspended card from exile and therefore it won't come back into play after the three time counters are gone.

Do remember that when a card suspended with Delay loses its last time counter, it is treated as if it is just casted (with a alternative cost) and is put onto the stack, and therefore you will be able to counter it again.

 

#2 Wasteland Strangler +360% ($3.18)

Eldrazi decks have been performing well in Modern, and one of the pieces in several builds is Wasteland Strangler. The card sees play in Standard as well. But the deck I want to put some extra focus on is Matthew Dilks' SCG Cincinatti deck. A very interesting deck that ended on the 10th place of a tournament with 1028 competitors.

Dilks' deck uses discard, exile effects and big Eldrazis to fill the exile zone and process those cards with cards like Wasteland Strangler. And when a deck using a new strategy ends up in the top 16 of a large tournament, speculators and traders quickly buy into any interesting cards they deem interesting, thus causing a spike.

#3 Relic of Progenitus +253% ($6.43)

This is one of the craziest spikes I have ever seen. A few days ago, a planechase Relic of Progenitus costed you almost $12. That is more than insane for a common, printed in thee different sets. The price dropped again, but still, $6.43 for a widely printed common is almost unheared of. Relic of Progenitus is a good card, sees play in Modern and Legacy, but it is also a piece of graveyard hate in a long, long line of graveyard hate pieces. So it is interesting to see that it now suddenly spikes so hard. Probably because of the same deck I mentioned above, since it shows us how Relic of Progenitus in combination with the new Eldrazi tech.

 

Cheap Pickups

We can start 2016 with a new record: there have never been less cards on their all time low as this week. Sadly, I have no direct explanation why this is the case, and it also means that the number of real interesting cheap pickups is low.

Remand

 

Blinkmoth Nexus

 

Goblin Lackey

 

True-Name Nemesis

 

Sinkhole