Previews from the upcoming sets are moving prices as people are flocking to get their copies.
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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Articles
Check out our other great content from this week.
Do Lands Affect Sealed Magic Prices? by Harvey McGuinness
Cards Flying Under the Radar in a Breach Dominated Modern by Corey Williams
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Onto the Weekly Winners!
It's been a while since we've seen a card from Universes Beyond: Warhammer 40,000 spike! This time it's Sister Hospitaller, which can bring a creature back from your graveyard to the battlefield and give you some life as well. While reanimation strategies are common in plenty of constructed formats, the mana cost is pretty prohibitive. Six mana is a lot for what decks in Legacy, Vintage, and Modern try to do, and even in Standard we have cards like Zombify (not that this card is Standard or Modern legal anyway). So it's no surprise that Sister Hospitaller mainly sees play in Commander.
When we see a graveyard strategy on a popular card in the Orzhov colors nowadays, it's pretty easy to point at Hashaton, Scarab's Fist as the reason for the spike; Hashaton has already made plenty of cards shoot up since it's release. However, this doesn't seem to be the reason for the spike. In the last few weeks cards have been previewed for the Universes Beyond: Final Fantasy set, and Terra, Herald of Hope is one of these cards for the Commander set.
Terra can reanimate a creature when it deals combat damage to a player. But she cares about power rather than mana cost, meaning that she can get Sister Hospitaller back from the graveyard. When the Human Cleric enters the battlefield, we can reanimate any creature we like. That's two new creatures on the battlefield!
| Sister Hospitaller | | |
| Sister Hospitaller (Surge Foil) | | |
| Hashaton, Scarab's Fist | | |
| Terra, Herald of Hope | | |
Speaking of cards moving up because of previews, this 17 year old rare from Morningtide shot up this week. This Elf Druid is a great way to make friends at your local LGS; not only does it provide card advantage every time you play a Druid spell, but if you have seven of them, you can just steal all lands that target player controls. When playing in a new pod, it's always a good idea to discuss your mass land destruction spells - but this technically doesn't destroy them, so you're good!
When we look at popular decks the card is played in, we mainly only see Seton, Krosan Protector as the most popular commander, but the Druid type has relatively little support. In Commander: Tarkir: Dragonstorm a new commander has been previewed that works really well with this card: Teval, the Balanced Scale. While not a Druid itself, Teval does generate Zombie Druid tokens. This means that you can safely play Gilt-Leaf Archdruid while not really bound to the Druid theme. Teval is a Dragon and creates Zombies; there are still plenty of other themes to build around here.
We do have to talk a little bit about Morningtide. This set was released in February 2008 when the world was in the early stages of a larger recession. This recession also affected Magic, since people had less money to spend, meaning that fewer packs were opened than the sets before. This has led to a relatively small circulation of cards from this set. Since Gilt-Leaf Archdruid was never really reprinted except on The List, there simply aren't that many copies around, and thus the price shoots up more easily.
| Gilt-Leaf Archdruid | | |
| Gilt-Leaf Archdruid | | |
| Teval, the Balanced Scale | | |
| Seton, Krosan Protector | | |
#3 Tiamat $25.49 (+134%)
You may have heard by now, but Tarkir: Dragonstorm will soon be released. As we can expect, and what we can see from the cards already previewed, the theme will be around Dragons. We've already seen plenty of Dragons and Dragon support cards moving up in price. The question remains what cards will be reprinted in the upcoming set and which one will dodge a reprint.
But when it comes to Tiamat the chances of it being reprinted are smaller. It's bound to the Dungeons & Dragons lore that we saw in Adventures in the Forgotten Realms, which makes it have less sense to be in Tarkir. And while it could potentially still show up on the Special Guests list, that usually doesn't add too many new copies. That said, people are speculating that it may be reprinted in the Final Fantasy set as Tiamat also exists in that universe. The Borderless version of the card has even shot up to $98 and the Showcase variant is around $92.
Cards that have been previewed that may push the price of Tiamat are Dracogenesis, which doesn't reduce the mana cost, but does make it easier to cast. Being able to then immediately tutor for five dragons is a potential win on the spot. Finding Dragons like Miirym, Sentinel Wyrm, Twinflame Tyrant, and Terror of the Peaks will go hard and immediately being able to cast them for free is huge. And while this combo already was somewhat achievable through Dream Halls, being in Dragon flavor is pretty good. Also extra redundancy is not a bad thing.
| Tiamat | | |
| Tiamat (Showcase) | | |
| Tiamat (Borderless) | | |
| Miirym, Sentinel Wyrm | | |
| Twinflame Tyrant | | |
| Terror of the Peaks | | |
Cheap Pickups
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.
Creeping Bloodsucker has been identified by the MTGStocks Premium Penny Stocks feature as a card that has reached its bottom and is starting a consistent uptrend.
| Creeping Bloodsucker | | |
| Eldrazi Temple | | |
| Taeko, the Patient Avalanche | | |
