Cards to Pick Up While We Wait for a Nadu Ban

Happy Wednesday, readers! Or, perhaps, not so happy given the limbo Modern finds itself in. In the wake of the SCG Con Baltimore Modern 10K, it seems we are still finding ourselves in the thick of Nadu summer, wherein five of the top eight spots at the 10K were occupied by Bant Nadu decks, including the winner. Where does this leave us in terms of Modern finance? Well, in an odd spot. On the one hand, given that Nadu, Winged Wisdom likely will not see an official banned list announcement until the end of August (following the normal schedule), the play patterns of Modern are growing rather stale, with the incentive to innovate being rather low. 

However, where there are low incentives to innovate, there are ripe financial opportunities, and speculatory musings. So let’s talk about a handful of Modern-legal cards from Modern Horizons 3 and Bloomburrow that have a lot of potential, but are finding their promise overshadowed by a big old bird. 

Chthonian Nightmare

This energy-fueled Recurring Nightmare is more than meets the eye. While it’s impossible to beat the sheer power of Recurring Nightmare, the more “balanced” Chthonian Nightmare is still immensely powerful in the same way Necrodominance has proven to be.

In Modern, Chthonian Nightmare provides a nice recursive option for Aristocrats-style decks to both enable death triggers from saccing a creature to pay for Nightmare’s cost, while simultaneously reanimating creatures that can enable follow-up plays. Cards like Blood Artist, Zulaport Cutthroat, Gravecrawler, and Stitcher's Supplier all enable abusive plays with Nightmare. Golgari Yawgmoth, which has been pushed to the margins of the meta under Nadu’s reign, can also capitalize on Chthonian Nightmare considerably, meaning that should Nadu see the banned list, we may see a resurgence of Yawgmoth with some solid Chthonian Nightmare tech.

Beyond these builds, Chthonian Nightmare has ample opportunity to make an impact in other eternal formats, namely cEDH and Legacy. In Legacy, Peregrine Drake enables infinite mana with Nightmare, while in cEDH, Dockside Extortionist enables (potentially) infinite treasure tokens. 

For a card that’s flatlining at $3 a copy, Chthonian Nightmare represents a very promising speculation opportunity, if only for its uptick in play in eternal formats outside of Modern, as well as its potential to see love in the Modern format in a post-Nadu world. 

Chthonian Nightmare	CardKingdom $2.99	TCGPlayer $3.38
Chthonian Nightmare (Borderless)	CardKingdom $8.49	TCGPlayer $8.47
Chthonian Nightmare (Retro Frame)	CardKingdom $5.49	TCGPlayer $5.70

Psychic Frog

Psychatog… Psycharog… Psycha Frog… Psychic Frog… 

Psychic Frog was one of the earliest previews in MH3, and its design and name drew immediate comparisons to its iconic predecessor: Psychatog. The only difference here is that Psychic Frog is considerably better in almost every way. It’s one generic mana cheaper. It draws you cards when it connects for damage. It not only acts as a discard outlet, it also gains flying whenever you discard to its activated ability, giving it evasiveness to make it easier to connect with your opponent’s life total and draw you a card. And finally, when you discard cards to Psychic Frog, you get +1/+1 counters on it, rather than just a temporary boost until end of turn, enabling the Frog to be an enduring threat turn after turn. 

Overall Psychic Frog is an incredibly powerful card just at face value, but when synergized with, say, Agatha's Soul Cauldron, you can discard a card like, oh, let’s say Griselbrand, put Griselbrand under Agatha’s Soul Cauldron, and now your two mana Psychic Frog with a +1/+1 counter has the activated abilities of Griselbrand. You can now draw seven cards by paying seven life, and discard as many as you want to put even more counters on Psychic Frog. Eventually, you can discard Walking Ballista, put it under the Cauldron, and use all those counters on Psychic Frog from drawing/discarding a la Griselbrand to ping your opponent to death with Psychic Frog’s Walking Ballista-inherited activated ability. 

What I’ve just described is sort of the floor for what Psychic Frog can enable. One could imagine Frog being an integral component of Atraxa Reanimator decks that also play Griselbrand, too, among many other potential uses. Much like Chthonian Nightmare, Frog’s price has also remained relatively stagnant in the current Modern meta (this will be a theme in today’s article) making it another promising opportunity for financial speculation once Nadu inevitably falls from grace. 

Psychic Frog	CardKingdom $11.99	TCGPlayer $9.51
Psychic Frog (Borderless)	CardKingdom $18.99	TCGPlayer $18.42
Psychic Frog (Retro Frame)	CardKingdom	TCGPlayer $16.95

Powerbalance

This card is more a fun pick than it is something that’s necessarily viable in Modern, although who knows depending on the way the winds blow a couple months from now.

Like its counterpart Counterbalance (see what I did there), Powerbalance cares about the mana value of spells your opponents cast. Except, unlike Counterbalance, Powerbalance allows you to reveal the top card of your library and cast it (rather than counter your opponent’s spell) if it has the same mana value as the spell your opponent cast. This card is very square in the red part of the color pie in so many ways. In Modern, the mana value of the average card is getting low enough where Powerbalance can hit for incidental value, but it’s likely less consistent compared to other eternal formats that have access to Sensei's Divining Top and Scroll Rack (among other choices for manipulating the top card of your library).

Now where this card shines is Commander, and more specifically cEDH, where every zero-mana rock under the sun is played ubiquitously in almost every deck. Your opponent plays a Mana Crypt? Excellent, look at the Mox Diamond that was revealed off the top of my deck. Beyond this, in a format like Commander where you play in pods rather than against just one opponent, there are ample opportunities for Powerbalance to generate multiple instances of incidental value that ignore typical timing constraints in one turn rotation.

Is Powerbalance likely to see play in Modern? Not anytime soon, but its potential in other eternal formats feels overshadowed by a bird-shaped cloud looming over MH3’s dissemination into competitive scenes thereafter. For a card under a dollar, Powerbalance represents a very fun, low-risk speculation that has the real potential to move, depending on its uptick in Commander and cEDH scenes.

Powerbalance	CardKingdom $0.49	TCGPlayer $0.65
Powerbalance (Borderless)	CardKingdom $0.59	TCGPlayer $1.19

Valley Floodcaller

Bloomburrow is still taking me a minute to digest. I’m not super sold on its viability across the Modern format altogether, although there are some standout pieces. The most notable standout to me is Valley Floodcaller. 

This little Otter does a lot of things. First and foremost of its features is that it has the keyword flash, allowing you to cast it at instant speed. For three mana, with a 2/2 body, its stats aren’t the most impressive feature, but its second paragraph sheds significant light on its value: “You may cast noncreature spells as though they had flash.” 

Much like [card]Born Upon a Wind[/card], this little guy allows you to play your sorceries, artifacts, and planeswalkers at instant speed. Why do I like this guy more than Born Upon a Wind, for comparison's sake? Simple, by nature of being a creature, Valley Floodcaller can be tutored for and/or tutored out with cards like Chord of Calling and Invasion of Ikoria, among other Modern-legal options. 

Being able to win or establish a win condition at instant speed is a feat few decks are capable of achieving, hence the utilization of Born Upon a Wind at competitive Commander tables. Valley Floodcaller fills a similar role by enabling you to “play it safe” and let your opponent play out their turn, while you wait in the wings to let the proverbial floodgates open, likely with most interaction offline on your opponent’s end step.

Like pretty much every other card in our discussion today, Floodcaller’s potential is hindered by the state of the Modern meta. However, it is seeing play in Commander, where its utility is quite immediately apparent. For less than $1.50, this feels like the highest-potential spec on the list today.

Valley Floodcaller	CardKingdom $2.49	TCGPlayer $1.14
Valley Floodcaller (Showcase)	CardKingdom $2.79	TCGPlayer $1.18

What Awaits Us Next?

Ideally, a Nadu ban at the end of August. Modern finance is unfortunately in a stale state so long as the meta remains in its current limbo. While WotC has made it clear that they do not wish to set a precedent of emergency-banning cards in Modern, the meta is currently at a point that’s arguably lower in enjoyability than Hogaak Summer, or even Eldrazi Winter before it. 

The quickness of how “solved” Nadu is as an archetype in the format has led to an acceleration in its saturation in the meta. Pros have no better options than to play Nadu or likely lose to someone else playing Nadu. While the expectation is that a ban will surely be near on the horizon, the current status quo disincentivizes innovation and experimentation–something that Modern desperately needs.  

In my last article, I advised that speculating on staples like the Fetchlands and the Shocklands was a reasonable financial strategy in the interim, but this week, I’d encourage readers to take a look at all these newer, viable singles from MH3 and Bloomburrow that could have a place in the format, but are falling to the wayside given the state of the current meta. Happy hunting!

Further Reading:

Great Cards to Pick Up with Recent Magic Sets