Just like last week, Modern's dictating prices this week. New archetypes have spawned and old ones are returning.
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!
Yearly Winners
Just like last year we'll put out a series of articles at the beginning of 2025 and look at the top winners and losers of 2024! We'll have the following sets of data for you to look back on:
Yearly Winners 2024: Top Winners and Losers
Yearly Winners 2024: The Reserved List
Yearly Winners 2024: Absolute Value
Yearly Winners 2024: Cheapest Prints
So keep your eye on MTGStocks for these articles. You can obviously be notified by them when you join our Discord, follow our Telegram channel, or follow us on Twitter or Bluesky.
Last week we basically had an Unbanned Winners, and now that the prices of the actual unbanned cards are slowly settling, we see replacements coming up within the meta for the cards that were banned. Yggdrasil, Rebirth Engine is such a card that's finding it's way into the Modern meta now that space has opened in decks with cards like The One Ring gone.
Yggdrasil was printed in the Universes Beyond: Assassin's Creed set and when played lets you exile all creature cards from your graveyard. It can then exile cards from the top of your library and you can return one of the creatures exiled with Yggdrasil for to put it onto the battlefield with haste. Can you think of creatures that you would like to put onto the battlefield for four mana? Generally those will be creatures that cost a lot more than that, and one of the creature types that fit that description is Eldrazi.
We currently see a full playset of Yggdrasil, Rebirth Engine being played in Modern Eldrazi decks. The deck still tries to churn out big Eldrazi with cards like Through the Breach, but with some card selection you can also scry an Eldrazi to the top to exile it with Yggdrasil. It also potentially works well with Faithless Looting, which was unbanned, but definitely not all decks play it. Discarding some Eldrazi (not Emrakul) to Looting to later exile them with Yggdrasil also seems to be a strategy that can be used. The new metagame is still taking shape and we'll have to wait and see where it settles, but Yggdrasil seems here to stay in the Eldrazi decks for now.
Speaking about fatties, we also have Archon of Cruelty spiking the past week because of the metagame shake-up. Again Faithless Looting is one of the cards synergising and boosting a deck in Modern. This deck tries to cheat out the Archon ahead of the curve and take over the game from there. As you can see, Archon of Cruelty is eight mana to cast, but does give a bunch of enter effects that also trigger when it attacks.
And while we're touching upon Indomitable Creativity anyway, it's also a winner this week for this exact same reason. People seem to need this card so badly that they're even playing the print from the Outlaws of Thunder Junction: Breaking News set of which most cards have been wildely unpopular with players due to the art style.
This archetype isn't new in Modern, as it was one of the more dominant decks in the format several years ago. Back then Living End decks were one of the other most prevalent decks in the meta. When the The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth came out, it contained some of the most powerful artifacts to enter Modern, like the now banned The One Ring. But because of how Indomitable Creativity works, this deck couldn't benefit from these as it can't add artifacts to the decklist. As the metagame is still evolving we'll have to wait and see how dominant this deck will become. We may expect more graveyard hate in the sideboards because of it, keeping it somewhat in check.
Next up is a more recent rare from the Duskmourn: House of Horror set that has also been showing up occasionally in Standard. But once again, the main reason is Modern. Fear of Missing Out costs and let's you loot a card. With sufficient card types in your graveyard it can grant you an extra combat step upon attacking and untapping a creature in the process.
It's found its way into, once again, a deck that exists due the unbanning of Faithless Looting. The deck wants to get cards into its graveyard to get cheap Hollow Ones or grow Nethergoyfs. But all these cards in the graveyard can also be used to cast spells from it like the goyf itself, but also Detective's Phoenix that counts both as an enchantment and creature in the graveyard, fueling Delerium.
And while we're touching on the card, lets also show the price chart for Hollow One which could have been our #1 winner. I was a bit reluctant to make that our winner, since we also briefly talked about the card last week. The card has definitely increased in price and does deserve at least an honorable mention.
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.
Gleeful Arsonist 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.
