We have two hot topics in the casual magic market right now: dragons and Tiny Leaders. Both move prices around a lot this week, which you will see reflected in this week's winners. But, I'm also happy that we can add a little Modern and Legacy flavor this week! So, like every week, just in time for FNM, I present you the cards that will be the talk of the town tonight.
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Honestly, I never thought I'd see the day that Tetsuo Umezawa would be a $45 dollar card. But today is that day. The big reason for this is the up and coming Tiny Leaders format. And when I see the price jump on Tetsuo Umezawa, my enthousiasm about the format is curbed. For those of you not familiar, Tiny Leaders is a kind of "mini-EDH", with a few exceptions to the commander rules. The most important one: all cards in your deck may cost only 3 mana or less. Which means that the amount of legendary creatures you can choose from is severely limited.
Building a deck in a new format can be very entertaining. In my playgroup we play a format called Pauper+, a constructed modern format in which you can use only commons, but you may add 5 uncommons and 1 rare or mythic. It's nice to be able to play a format that doesn't allow you to netdeck and forces you to rethink cards you deemed unusable. I'm telling you this because Tiny Leaders is kind of the same thing: it opens new possibilites and lets you build a deck in a completely new environment. And that's fun!
So far, so good one could say. But, (huge but), creating a new format comes with challenges, and in Tiny Leaders, the availability of enough tiny commanders is a huge challenge. Tetsuo Umezawa spiked to $45 because it is the only 3MC legendary creature that has a RBU color identity. To add insult to injury, it is from the Legends set, which was printed on a very limited scale, escpecially when you compare it to current printruns of sets. So, if you want to play RBU, you need to play Tetsuo Umezawa. In regular EDH you have 13 commanders to choose from. No wonder Tetsuo Umezawa now has a $45 price tag.
It actually gets a little worse. Since there is no sultai-identity Tiny Leader, the format creators (fellow MTG players, not WoTC) allow players to use the 'Sultai' legendary creature. A proxy 2/2 vanilla legendary creature, since there is no BGU tiny leader available. It just doen't exist.
Tiny Leaders is fun to play, and it offers players new possibilities, but the recent effect on card prices show that this new format needs to overcome some obstacles to become (and stay) a sustainable and affordable format. I hope it does.
Pendelhaven (the Legends printing) is, just like Tetsuo Umezawa, an example of the impact of limited print runs on the price of cards. When you compare the price of the timeshifted version, you'll notice a $10 price gap. The FNM promo is also $8 below the Legends price. That's how much a limited print run matters.
Pendelhaven is played in both Legacy and Modern, and in both formats the card is played in a infect strategy. It allows you to quickly deal 10 damage to a player, and in the case of infect, this means your opponent is dead. Pendelhaven is used as the first pump of a creature like Blighted Agent, after that it gets +1/+1 from Noble Hierarch's exalted ability and then you continue by pumping the creature with other spells. In Legacy both invigorate and berserk are used to quickly amount to lethal damage.
Dragons are hot! Dragons of Tarkir spoilers are upon us and we see new dragons every day. And this has a huge effect on other, dragon related cards. Old, new, EDH or just casual, it doesn't matter. Dragons are on the rise and they will soon burn your wallet!
Scourge of the Throne has a very nice casual multiplayer flavor that allows you to attack a second time, when you attack the player with the most life. Casual multiplayer needs these type of effects, especially when you are in a playgroup (like mine) with people that all use insane decks, which almost always amount to multiple board wipes, an inablity to cause any damage or getting everything you have either stolen or traded for garbage you don't need.
Well, with Scourge of the Throne you can beat the multiplayer politics by using the card to attack the player with the most life, which will gain you some friends. Which will soon turn into enemies again when you attack them in the second run. In other words, Scourge of the Throne is a fun card to play in the age of dragons we are in now.
Other interesting movers:
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