This week we see some movement because of Commander, but the winners are mostly coming from Modern, Legacy, and Vintage. That makes it a fun week to write about, and gives some extra opportunity to show off some deck lists.
Like every week, just in time for FNM, I'll tell you about the cards that will be the talk of the town tonight! Come discuss this week's price movements with us on Discord and Reddit.
Articles
In case you missed it, go read Harvey's The Big Things: Magic 30th Anniversary Edition. He talks about the controversial anniversary set and how prices are affected by it. Very interesting read!
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Premium updates
Our Premium users have already been notified about this, but last week we added two new features to Premium. These are Card Kingdom Interests, which allows you to see the changes that Card Kingdom has made in their sell prices and in their buylist prices. This is important if you want to know the right time to pull the trigger on a buylist or buy. The other new feature is Minute Movers, which sends you alerts when a card moves in price throughout the day. You can create your own rules on which cards you want alerts for. These notifications can be sent out over multiple channels.
Let's start the week with Underworld Breach, a rare enchantment from Theros: Beyond Death which was released at the end of January 2020. This card immediately screamed "combo potential" when it was released. Being able to cast cards again from your graveyard creates incredible card advantage. Not long after release, in March, the card was banned in Legacy because of the interaction between Underworld Breach, Lion's Eye Diamond, and Brain Freeze. Turns out, being able to cast Lion's Eye Diamond over and over and over again for free, netting you three mana each cycle, was simply too much. The interaction was too strong for Wizards to just let it stay, and thus Underworld Breach was banned.
On August 8 of that same year, Underworld Breach was also banned in Pioneer. In this case players would ramp to three mana, play Lotus Field, and use cards like Hidden Strings to keep untapping it and generating insane amounts of mana. Along with Underworld Breach it could combo off and generate a lot of card draw and mana to eventually kill the opponent with Expansion // Explosion. This strategy proved too strong in the format, and unfun to play against.
So that leaves Modern, Vintage, and Commander where Underworld Breach is still widely played. In Modern it sees a lot of play in Jeskai Breach, Twiddlestorm, and Izzet Prowess. In Vintage the card shows up in Breach Combo decks as well where they try to kill with the aforementioned Brain Freeze along with some Moxes. Currently the card is jumping in price because of its increased presence in Modern. And along with it, we see Grinding Station has been shooting up in price as well to $28.
Who doesn't know good old Goblin Welder? The card has been a staple in Legacy for quite a few years. Being able to "weld out" a cheap artifact for a Wurmcoil Engine is lots of fun. In Legacy nowadays you see the card in Painter decks where you can use Welder to get your Grindstone or Painter's Servant back from the graveyard. There's even a little trick where you can activate your Grindstone, and with the ability on the stack, activate Welder, destroying the Grindstone and getting Painter's Servant into play. And, as you may know, Goblin Engineer also exists and does something similar to Goblin Welder.
Since The Brothers' War came out, artifacts are in the spotlight, and cards that work well with artifact strategies are growing in popularity. You can imagine that, along with the Legacy playability, Commander is also a driving factor behind these prices. It can do some nasty things with artifacts like Portal to Phyrexia, especially when you are able to sacrifice it occasionally and just get it back at instant speed.
In the Weekly Winners back in July I mentioned Cyberdrive Awakener as a cheap pickup since it was identified by the MTGStocks Premium Penny Stocks feature as a card that had bottomed and was slowly working its way up again. Did you buy it back then? Because the card is now worth double that.
This rare artifact creature from Commander: Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty will turn your noncreature artifacts into 4/4s for a turn when it enters the battlefield, and also gives them flying. That sounds powerful, but is a pretty steep cost. Now what format has a lot of cheap artifacts that can also generate mana? Vintage Paradoxical Outcome decks seem to be experimenting with Cyberdrive Awakener in the 60, since they play a whole bunch of cheap artifacts. When Cyberdrive Awakener hits the battlefield you can end up with a bunch of flying 4/4s to quickly end the match.
This deck already existed before Cyberdrive Awakener and can also end the game in different ways. When you cast Paradoxical Outcome you get to return all your cheap artifacts, and preferably Moxes, to your hand and you get to draw a bunch of cards. From there you can replay your cheap (or free) artifacts again untapped and let them generate mana again. Can you see the storm count ticking up here? Older versions of this deck used cards like Brain Freeze, Tendrils of Agony, or Monastery Mentor to win the game. Now we're seeing Displacer Kitten or Cyberdrive Awakener as recent additions to the deck to make it more powerful.
Please note: for our 'record low' we consider the price of the card over the past 7 years. Many cards have been even cheaper (a) decade(s) ago. Also note: some cards are still going down, and might be even cheaper pickups next week.
Braids, Arisen Nightmare has been identified by the MTGStocks Premium Penny Stocks feature as a card that has reached its bottom and is starting a consistent uptrend.
That's it for this week! Make sure to check back next week for more Weekly Winners.
Arjen
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.
