Modern Times - Wilds of Eldraine

Good day, folks! Today’s Modern Times covers a few high-potential Modern playables from the recent Wilds of Eldraine ("WOE") release (I keep wanting to refer to Wilds of Eldraine as Breath of the Wild, which made writing this article a little more confusing in my head).

In particular, I want to call attention to the black part of the color pie in discussion of cards of interest today! Let’s explore the wilds!

Not Dead After All

This is a card I almost didn’t include on this list… In fact, I almost followed the mold and intended to discuss Agatha's Soul Cauldron. However, in my mind, Not Dead After All seems much, much more relevant for Modern, giving the presence of the Evoke Elementals from Modern Horizons 2 in the meta. For one mana, Not Dead After All saves a creature of yours from dying, returns it into play with an Aura token attached to it that gives your creature +1/+1, and punishes your opponent ever so slightly for removing your creature or its Aura token from play.

$0.72$0.79

$1.20$1.29

Aside from acting as a form of redundancy for other recursive pieces like Undying Evil, Undying Malice, Feign Death, and Malakir Rebirth, Not Dead After All offers a strict improvement by returning your creature to play with an Aura token attached to it that provides all the same benefits, but with some added versatility. Some of that versatility comes from the fact that the token is another permanent on its own, making for some interesting synergies with cards like Beseech the Mirror (more on that later) and other cards that can leverage the new Bargain mechanic from WOE. Other cards that require you to sacrifice permanents as an additional cost can simply sac the Aura token, triggering its life gain/loss effect while leaving your creature intact, but with one less power/toughness.  

In so many ways, Not Dead After All is an interesting case study for taking a simple, yet effective, card concept stemming all the way back to Undying Evil, and making that concept more efficient and effective. Ironically, despite being a common, Not Dead After All will likely see more Modern play than any other card on this list in terms of frequency, as it’s likely it will replace every copy of Undying Malice and Feign Death played in Rakdos Scam, Orzhov Griefblade, or any other builds that want to capitalize off of cards like Grief, Solitude, and Fury.  

 

Where are we pricewise with this nice little common card? Around $1, currently. It’ll probably settle closer to $0.65 to $0.75 a week or two after release. All the same, a common card in today’s age not sitting at five cents is an achievement on its own, and reflects how certain players are with the place Not Dead After All will have in the Modern meta. Pick up your copies, and retire those Undying Malices and Feign Deaths that have been in your decks previously.

The End

A fitting name for a fitting card. Combining elements of cards like Surgical Extraction and Lost Legacy into one end-all-be-all (pun intended) “remove forever” spell. The End does have some limitations, in the sense that it can only target creatures and planeswalkers, whereas Surgical Extraction can target anything, including fetchlands. 

$42.00$44.99

$30.68$29.99

On the other hand, The End has a huge upside in that it acts as removal in-and-of itself. If you're at five or less life, it’s a two mana removal spell that hits every copy of the card you removed. The utility of this is huge. At instant speed, The End can remove key pieces from the best decks in the meta. Hitting Primeval Titan from Amulet Titan decks hinders their win condition considerably, or hitting Fury or Grief from Rakdos Scam similarly takes them down a peg. 

The End won’t win you games, but it can give you longevity in matchups heavily reliant on a few choice creatures to make a go of it. Given that Modern as a format is creature-centric, The End is an incredibly valuable, and versatile, removal spell that is more than worth its weight in pennies. 

And it truly is worth pennies on the dollar. Right now, The End is preordering on TCGPlayer for $0.75. Cheap and easy playset to acquire. The question then becomes, is it even worth that much for a niche black removal spell that is likely only going to be considered in sideboards? Admittedly, if we give it a couple weeks after release, its price will probably fall a little further. This card lands closer to $0.50, if I had to make an educated prediction. It doesn’t have the versatility in terms of what it can target that Surgical does, but is considerably better than Lost Legacy.  

So where will this card end up? As I hinted, it’s likely going to be a sideboard card in decks that play black and have the room for it. Rakdos Scam and Golgari Yawgmoth seem like the obvious candidates to sideboard this. On the other hand, Grixis Death’s Shadow may very well mainboard this at some level given that they can consistently cast it at its reduced cost. All the same, The End is a terrific removal spell hindered slightly by its casting cost, but overall represents a solid piece of sideboard tech for most Modern decks that have black in their color pie. 

Will this card go up in value? It’s possible, though I doubt it. And even so, there’s a clear upper bound of where it can go: Surgical Extraction’s market price, which sits at $4. I don’t think its price will come even close to Surgical Extraction given the limitations in card types it can target, but I do think it’s more playable in a couple decks than Surgical on its own.  

Furthermore, the ability to target planeswalkers cannot be understated. Hitting Grist, Teferi, and Wrenn and Six successfully with The End saves you a massive headache as games continue to grind on, which is the direction Modern seems to be heading with The One Ring popping up in every deck that can play it. 

Beseech the Mirror

This card was one of the most-discussed cards in the preview season for this set, right alongside Moonshaker Cavalry. In many ways, it’s an amalgam of Diabolic Tutor, Diabolic Intent, and Bring to Light (if the Bargain cost is paid). Bring to Light decks had their moment in Modern many, many metas ago when Scapeshift was still a viable deck. In effect, five-color Bring to Light decks aimed at giving you more access to Scapeshift via Bring to Light. However, as Modern sped up and Amulet Titan became more appealing than its predecessor, Scapeshift fell out of favor, along with Bring to Light.  

$6.32$8.99

$0.70$0.79

Abstracting from this history lesson, Beseech the Mirror is an appealing proposition: pay the Bargain cost and its mana cost, and find the best four-mana card in your deck to play for free. So what would you grab with this? Well, ironically, you can grab another Beseech the Mirror and repeat the process as many times as you have Beseech copies in your deck and permanents in play to sac for each Bargain cost, which can thin your deck while building up a sizable storm count (for those of you who play or have played Yu-Gi-Oh, this line of play is reminiscent of using Toon Table of Contents to search for Toon Table Contents, to search for Toon Table of Contents, to search for Toon Cannon Soldier). Too bad Storm decks don’t have a place in Modern at the moment…  

In Legacy, however, this line of play is a viable turn-one line that leads directly to a Tendrils of Agony kill. However, given the absence of cards like Dark Ritual and Cabal Ritual in Modern, this sort of play is off the table. 

In Modern, Beseech the Mirror is really just a “go grab the best card from your deck” sort of card. Which begs the question: what is the best you can grab for four mana? Sheoldred, the Apocalypse seems pretty, pretty, pretty good, as Larry David would say. Other targets of note include Grief, Karn, the Great Creator, Transmogrify, The One Ring, and Yawgmoth, Thran Physician. There are some terrific three-mana cards that will probably be grabbed often too, including Grist, the Hunger Tide, and Fable of the Mirror-Breaker. Of course, as you go down the sliding scale that is the average mana value in Modern, Beseech can also grab cards like Orcish Bowmasters, and other high-value game pieces, too.  

$63.99$64.99

$5.80$7.49

This card is not without limitations, however, namely the fact that it can only be cast at sorcery speed, and has a very restrictive mana cost, making the ability to play it outside of mono-black decks difficult. This was almost certainly by design. If this card was , instead of , it would be played in every deck that plays black at three or four copies each. But with its actual cost, it’s likely its usage will be limited to mono-black brews that like Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and Cabal Coffers, and as a one-of in Golgari Yawgmoth decks that have the tokens and Undying creatures to sacrifice to the Bargain cost, and the toolbox-y deck design to capitalize off of it the most.  

Right now, Beseech is the most expensive card hitting the market from WOE, with a market price hovering around $30 as of the writing of this article. Will it hold? Probably not. I expect it to fall a bit, but not as much as high-value speculations do post-release. This card has significant potential in Legacy (for what that’s worth, given the dwindling size of the format), and will almost certainly be played in Commander and cEDH alike. In Modern, Golgari Yawgmoth lists are already tinkering with this card as a one-of, and it’s bringing back a multitude of mono-black brews centered around the synergy between Urborg and Cabal Coffers.  

I don’t think these decks will move the meter on the price in Modern, nor do I think Legacy will move the meter much, either. However, the cross-format use this card will see is much more widespread than any other card in WOE, giving it some nice support structures for its likely price floor. I can see this card settling somewhere around $20, give-or-take $5 in either direction, depending on its format uptake in Modern, in particular. 

Not Dead After All	CardKingdom $0.59	TCGPlayer $0.71
The End	CardKingdom $1.79	TCGPlayer $1.00
The End (Extended Art)	CardKingdom $2.99	TCGPlayer $1.06
Beseech the Mirror	CardKingdom $32.99	TCGPlayer $29.83
Beseech the Mirror (Extended Art)	CardKingdom $54.99	TCGPlayer $38.97

Some Parting Words

Wilds of Eldraine is not the most value-packed set on its own. The Collector’s Boosters don’t boast serialized cards, but do provide opportunities for confetti-foil cards. Interspersed in the set boosters are anime-art card variants and extra print sheet cards from the Wilds of Eldraine: Enchanting Tales subset of reprints. The Enchanting Tales cards, however, offer terrific supplemental value with a myriad of Modern reprints appearing, like Spreading Seas, Bitterblossom, Blood Moon, Hardened Scales, and Phyrexian Unlife, among many, many others.  

$1.93$2.99

$0.49$0.49

Beyond this, the Secret Lair: Universes Within (SLX Cards) “reprints” of Secret Lair: The Walking Dead also offer decent supplemental value to the set as well, specifically that of Greymond, Avacyn's Stalwart. Other noteworthy cards with Modern potential include Questing Druid, and, of course, Agatha's Soul Cauldron.

Overall, this is an appealing set to open, but not for its own cards, unfortunately. By comparison to other Standard-legal sets in recent memory, it’s tough to see WOE offering Modern a ton beyond what’s been discussed today, although, as always, I can be wrong. But at the very least, the cards discussed offer the highest potential for wider use in Modern by comparison to the rest of the set, so speculate safely, and enjoy the wilds!

Check out these other articles:

Cards in Eriette Decks That I Like by Jason Alt

New Horizons - Wilds of Eldraine by Matt Grzechnik

The Big Things - The Secret Lair Effect by Harvey McGuinness