The recent bannings in Commander have had quite the impact on prices. And we're seeing a new archetype in Modern!
Like every week, just in time for FNM, I'll tell you about the Magic: the Gathering cards that'll be the talk of the town tonight! Come discuss this week's price movements with us on Discord.
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Onto the Weekly Winners!
Losers of the Week
Before we get into the winners of the week, let's start talking about the losers of the past week. In the very unlikely chance that you haven't heard yet, there's been a shakeup in the Commander format where four cards are now banned in the format. Three of these cards were staples that were heavily played, and therefore sought-after and expensive. And one of these cards is now completely unplayable.
Jeweled Lotus, Dockside Extortionist, Mana Crypt, and Nadu, Winged Wisdom are banned. The Bird wasn't really a surprise, since it was already banned in other formats as well. Not only is Nadu really strong, it also led to an atrocious playing experience for your opponent(s) where the Nadu player has to go to a lengthy undeterministic combo that could potentially still whiff. Also, Nadu wasn't worth much before the bans, so from a financial perspective, not a lot was lost. But when we look at the other three cards, they were are pretty expensive for pieces of cardboard.
The most harsh ban may be Jeweled Lotus. Sure, it's still technically legal in constructed formats like Legacy and Vintage, but since the ability is purely bound to casting your commander, it's not really of any use there, and thus makes this artifact completely useless. The market price of this card has dropped from $90 to around $50.
When looking at the market price of Mana Crypt we also see a tremendous drop from $195 to $90. And Dockside Extortionist has dropped from $97 to $34. The banning has wiped out the value of these three cards, and I can imagine that people feel really bad, especially if they recently bought them.
Now that we've talked about the losers of the week, there's also a special extra winner this week because of the bannings.
The Kingpin from the relatively small set March of the Machine: The Aftermath has been going up this past week. This card cares about opponents losing exactly one life, because when that happens, it will grow the Kingpin and can provide you card advantage. We've talked about this card before, over a year ago when All Will Be One was printed, since that provided an infinite combo with Ob Nixilis.
This week however it's because of the front-facing commander of the Endless Punishment precon: Valgavoth, Harrower of Souls. Both Valgavoth and Ob Nixilis fit the same theme, which is opponents losing life and getting +1/+1 counters and card advantage. But also very important is that they're both Demons, making them fit with each other even better. And speaking of Demons that went up in price, Great Unclean One is now also a $6 card. This Demon makes sure that your opponents lose life at the beginning of your end step, fitting nicely within the same theme. It doesn't trigger Ob Nixilis or Valgavoth though!
Herald of Slaanesh also always seems to do well in price whenever Demons get more popular. The Herald makes your Demons cost less and give them haste. We see again here that it's moving up quickly in price because of the new popularity for the creature type.
We also see Chandra, Awakened Inferno high up on the Interests list, as well as Forsaken Wastes. And don't forget the newly printed Razorkin Needlehead which started preselling around $3, but is now a $15 card because of its playability within the theme we've been discussing. People really seem to be embracing Valgavoth as commander and building around it.
A card I didn't expect to see moving up is Selective Memory, a rare from Worldwake and that hasn't been reprinted since. This set was released in February 2010 and introduced Jace, the Mind Sculptor to the world! Selective Memory is a four-mana sorcery that lets you search your library for any number of nonland cards and exile them. Now, Magic is a wonderful game with many, many strategies that you can follow. So when reading this card, I didn't exactly immediately feel that it's useless. I mean, in the right deck, it may just do the right thing.
And that right deck has come. In Modern we see a new blue Goblin Charbelcher deck. As you may know, the plan is to play one or no lands and activate Charbelcher to do a bunch of damage to your opponent since you can't flip a land card. Especially with the printing of the double-sided lands, it's really easy to play no lands at all. In this new Modern deck, called Selective Oracle, we find four copies of Selective Memory as well as Thassa's Oracle and Jace, Wielder of Mysteries as alternative win conditions.
Zur cares about enchantments. He cares about them so much that he gives enchantment creatures deathtouch, lifelink, and hexproof and can make your non-Aura enchantments creatures, thus granting them the abilities. In Duskmourn: House of Horror we got a new sub-type of enchantments: Rooms. A Room is a split card with two card faces on the front side. Each side of a Room is called a door, and as with all split cards, players can cast only one half from their hand. Pick one half to cast, and that door unlocks on the battlefield, giving you access to that half's abilities. The other half of a Room can be unlocked when it's on the battlefield by paying the locked half's mana cost.
With this information, let's talk about how Zur interacts with these rooms, using Dollmaker's Shop // Porcelain Gallery as an example. You can play the Dollmaker's Shop side for and you can then animate it with Zur. It's now a 2/2, because Zur gives it base power and toughness equal to its mana value. But now you pay the to unlock the Porcelain Gallery side. It now becomes an 8/8 creature ( + ).
Investigating further, I wasn't really sure if these Rooms were the real reason for Zur's spike. And then it hit me! Aminatou, Veil Piercer! We've talked about this new commander for the past two weeks. Aminatou gives enchantments the Miracle ability and discounts them. This obviously plays very nicely with Zur as well and is likely the reason for the spike.
However, what's interesting to note is that the regular printing of Zur seems to mainly have spiked. The Showcase version can still be bought for about a dollar.
Please note: for our 'record low' we consider the price of the card over the past seven years. Many cards were even cheaper (a) decade(s) ago. Also note: some cards are still going down, and might be even cheaper pickups next week.
Blooming Marsh has been identified by the MTGStocks Premium Penny Stocks feature as a card that has reached its bottom and is starting a consistent uptrend.
Arjen has been playing Magic since Ice Age and has mostly played the Legacy format. Ten years ago he founded MTGStocks because he and his friends wanted to buy Magic singles at the right time to play with.
The changes around the Commander format are really having an interesting effect on the market. Fortunately, Pioneer and Modern are also making sure that things are moving.
