By James Chillcott (@MTGCritic)
5 Winners of the Week
1. Guttural Response (Fate Reforged, Mythic): $1.51 to $7.11 (371%)
I hear rumors that this card is spiking based on some fringe combo deck driving a buy out, but I’ve been unable to track down the relevant info. Clue us in via the comments section and we’ll update.
Format(s): ?
Verdict: ?
2. Pendelhaven (Legends, Uncommon): $10.00 to $15.00 (50%)
This is a common card in Infect strategies, and there really aren’t that many copies floating around despite the FNM, Anthologies and Time Shifted printings on top of the original. There are two Legends cards on our list this week, which just goes to show what you can expect as more and more MTG players get involved in MTGFinance and start contributing to buy outs on cards with low inventory. Whether you can move the cards into real demand is the pressing question in these cases, so if you want to hold tight on this one you need to feel sure Infect will be alive and kicking for a while in Legacy and Modern. So far all signs say you should be fine holding on to these for a while as a reprint is unlikely anytime soon.
Format(s): Modern, Legacy, Casual
Verdict: Sell/Hold
3. Tetsuo, Umezawa (Legends, Rare): $21.52 to $29.99 (39%)
This is a Tiny Leaders spec since Tetsuo is the only URB general available to that fledgling format. He’s also on the Reserved List and highly unlikely to be reprinted due to flavor/brand issues, so holding this guy for a bit isn’t a bad idea, at least until Wizards releases their inevitable Tiny Leaders product in 2017.
Format(s): Tiny Leaders
Verdict: Hold
4. Master of Waves and Thassa, God of the Sea (Theros, Mythic Rare): MoW – $3.00 to $5.50 (83%) , Thassa – $4.81 to $6.53 (36%)
These two centerpieces of the mono-blue devotion stratagem are on the rise because, well, Shorecrasher Elemental.
A UUU 3-drop may be just the thing to bring this oppressive archtype back into play as a Tier 1 or 2 option in Standard, and it’s not completely outside the realm of possibility that this card makes the archetype playable in Modern either, now that it has solid 1, 2 and 3 drops to lead into Thassa and/or Master of Waves and make a ton of tokens. We’ll see how things play out, but I added to my positions in both cards on the basis that a failure to reemerge in Standard doesn’t necessarily count them out in older formats.
Format(s): Standard/Modern
Verdict: Hold
5. See the Unwritten (Khans of Tarkir, Mythic): $1.78 to $2.29 (29%)
I’ve had 40-50 of this card in my portfolio almost since release, on the basis that either Dragons or Eldrazi would eventually make it good. We’re not there yet, but with Battle for Zendikar confirmed for the fall set, we’re not miles out from this card becoming a real thing. The thing is, if it fails to find a home before rotation, it falls back to bulk and you get to hope your copies slow burn their way into success down the road on EDH/Casual demand alone.
Format(s): Standard/Casual/EDH
Verdict: Hold
3 Top Losers of the Week
1. Hammer of Purphoros: $1.55 to $1.00 (-35%)
Making 3/3 tokens slowly just isn’t where you want to be in Standard right now and the rotation axe is grinding.
2. Elspeth, Sun’s Champion: $15.59 to $13.05 (-16%)
The old girl’s had a good run in Standard, and she’s still a viable threat at the top end of several real decks, but her printing in the most recent Duel Deck this month is not going to help her. You should already have outed your copies toward the beginning of the year, and I wouldn’t be caught holding any of this once $35 card for much longer.
3. Sidisi, Brood Tyrant: $5.58 to $5.02 (-10%)
Sidisi decks are looking less and less viable as the Standard metagame keeps shifting fast and furious this spring. I’m actually more excited about the undead version of this character once DoT is out, so I think now is a good time to be outing your copies, possibly looking to pick them back up in the mid-summer doldrums when the standard staples take a beating.
Quick Hits
My underrated cards from Dragons of Tarkir currently include (full article coming soon):
- Dragon Tempest
- Descent of the Dragons
- Sidizi, Undead Viziier
- Assault Formation
- Avatar of the Resolute
- Kolaghan’s Command
- Deathmist Raptor
- A run on foil Command Towers is ongoing. Grab ’em quick if you need one for your Commander decks or just want to go for a ride to $10+ in profit.
- Master of the Unseen absolutely dominated GP Miami last weekend, resulting in games so painful to watch it made my eyes bleed. The power of the card is no longer a secret however, and it will be topping this list next weekend along with Outpost Siege, another card that has legs on recently revealed power level.
James Chillcott is the CEO of ShelfLife.net, The Future of Collecting, Senior Partner at Advoca, a designer, adventurer, toy fanatic and an avid Magic player and collector since 1994.
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I think Guttural Response was the result of a store miss-pricing their listing.
(Quiet Speculation @QuietSpec 8h 8 hours ago
@MTGPeter @MTGStocks this is a glitching error from a store price, sadly nothing to see here. I <3 Gutterball)
I played lots of monoblue devotion in standard. My take on Shorecrasher Elemental is the following:
As of now, he won’t get there. Are people forgetting we once had Nightveil Specter? UUU with flying and possible card advantage? Shoreline has the exile activated ability, but it comes back face down, which fails to count devotion.
Monoblue also needs a good UU creature (I miss Tidebinder Mage), in which Mindreaver is the only candidate and he sucks. We don’t even have Frostburn Weird, a crap but passable UU drop.
On a final note, a resolved Dragonlord Atarka will mess monoblue up bad.
Whew. I ordered up a play set of both the Legends and Time Spiral Pendalhavens just this last week. Running it as a 2x in my Bersek Infect. Got in under the wire on that one.
Mastery of the unseen… that card was underpriced from the start… 50 copies at 18 cents:
http://tinypic.com/r/29vyv4h/8
What about Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit? Does that card have room to grow?
Not likely. The card is fairly narrow, though foils may have a future if Tiny Leaders blows up.
Pendelhaven was an uncommon fwiw…
Corrected, cheers!