This week we have a nice mix of Modern, Commander, and Legacy to talk about. Usually these weeks are my favorite, and there is plenty of stuff happening in Magic land.
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.
Articles
Sometimes people don't understand why a card is expensive. In Ryan's article series Price of Knowledge he explains exactly why that is, and this week he covered Painter's Servant.
Matt talked about the Phyrexia: All Will Be One Jumpstart set and which cards to keep an eye on in his New Horizons series. This is definitely a series to watch if you want to stay up to date on upcoming sets and which cards could have an impact.
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Here's an older card from Betrayers of Kamigawa shooting up. This instant can reflect damage done to you or a creature you control by either paying its mana cost or by pitching a card. Shining Shoal has recently been seeing play in Modern Mono White Human decks as anti-Fury tech.
Fury sees a lot of play in multiple formats, but mainly in Modern where it's a popular inclusion in a variety of decks. Being able to Evoke it makes it some cheap removal when you have to get rid of some creatures. Decks like Izzet Aggro, Rakdos, and Elementals all include copies either mainboard or in the sideboard. You can imagine that for decks with small creatures, like Humans, it can be backbreaking to have a single card 4-for-1 you (or 4-for-2 you when Evoked). That is why Shining Shoal is now seeing play in these decks to prevent some damage done to creatures and to keep your board.
Since Shining Shoal is a rare card from an older set with only a single print, the price shoots up easily when it becomes more popular. Funnily enough the last time this card spiked was in May 2017 when it made the Top 8 in the Modern GP Vancouver the month prior. Jason Simard played two copies in his Mono-White Eldrazi & Taxes deck. Back then it shot up to $6.17 from less than a dollar and has slowly dwindled back down again to about $1.10 until this week.
Here is a more recent rare from Commander: Phyrexia: All Will Be One that is quickly becoming popular. The card can be found in the Corrupting Influence Commander Deck and has broken out. With all the new love for poison counters it can be a valuable sweeper for just 3 mana. Worst case, you can use it to give all of your opponents a poison counter for .
Now that we have discussed a winner for Modern and Commander, I'm happy to also find a card on this week's Interest list that could be discussed because of Legacy to have a nice rounded-out mix of cards! Cephalid Illusionist is an uncommon from Torment that has never seen a reprint. And while copies can still be had for $2.88 since it went up with 60% it's also notable that the foils went from $25 to $150.
This is not an unknown card for anyone who knows a thing or two about Legacy. It used to be included in a popular archetype called Cephalid Breakfast. When we look at Cephalid Illusionist we see that whenever it becomes targeted you have to mill three cards. This means that if we're able to target it repeatedly, we get to mill many, many, many cards. Nomads en-Kor enables us to redirect one damage from one target creature. And this is a bit odd, but you can activate this ability an infinite amount of times targeting your Cephalid Illusionist, thus milling your entire library. Milling yourself can win you the game with the right deck, and this deck makes sure that it can get Thassa's Oracle out to win the game with an empty library.
While Thassa's Oracle is a relatively new card, there have been ways to win with this combo before it, going all the way back to 2007. Just like now you get to put Narcomoeba onto the battlefield and use Dread Return. So far the deck still functions the same nowadays, but back then you would bring back Karmic Guide, which could bring back Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, which in turn can copy the Karmic Guide. With this copy you can return Sky Hussar to the battlefield. That card can untap Kiki-Jiki, which can in turn create another copy of Sky Hussar, which will untap Kiki-Jiki, making an infinite amount of Sky Hussars with haste.
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.
Tamiyo's Journal 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 the Ice Age set released. He primarily plays Legacy format and founded MTGStocks over a decade ago when he and his friends wanted to track card prices to purchase singles at optimal times.
