This week, we skipped silver and gold and went straight to platinum! Pros started releasing standard deck lists, so cards affected by those lists have been climbing. Finally, some really goofy spikes round out this Week in Magic. Let's get started!
Let's talk about Platinum Emperion. It seems random FNM type inclusions in Modern decks like Tron, but really doesn't see any steady play. With the release of Madcap Experiment, you can now have a Polymorph or Shape Anew effect without having to have any creatures or artifacts on the battlefield. It's a cute effect and some decks get stone walled by a resolved Platinum Emperion. I am not sure on the viability of building a deck around the combo, as I proxied a U/R control deck with Simian Spirit Guide, Desperate Ritual and Blood Moon. The deck was fun when it went off, but getting your Blightsteel Colossus or Platinum Emperion path'd can be deflating. (Yes, I did get a turn 1 Blightsteel and only took 2 damage. Yes, I also did get a turn 1 Blightsteel and took 22 damage.)
The vehicles of Kaladesh may seem like a fun gimmick, but some people are building vehicle based decks that look great! (Really cool article here.) Fleetwheel Cruiser and Smuggler's Copter have moved to the front of the starting line, and the race hasn't even started yet. They are both aggressive cards and should see play in Standard. It will take a few weeks for the best decks of new Standard to rise up, so we will have to wait and see where the price of these two settle.
Flame Lash, a new common, is over $3. Why, you ask? If you look closely, the card is numbered 266 of 264. It is a card that is only found in the Chandra Planeswalker deck (deck list found here.) The deck includes 4 of these commons, and 4 damage for 4 mana isn't exactly ground breaking. That being said, it's nice to have a semi exclusive card, but its price leaves me wondering just how long it will remain high.
I haven't commented on foil prices, as they aren't always predictable and represent a smaller market of people. There are players who really could care less if a card is foil, or even go as far as never sleeving up a foil card. However, anyone that knows me has seen my love for foil and full art cards. So I'm going to start talking to all my foil lovers out there. Grafdigger's Cage and Obstinate Baloth had some huge gains this week. They both see Modern play, so it's not surprising that people want to foil out their decks. I will definitely continue to favor you fully fledged foil followers so you may find future financially fair fiberboards.
Since I'm always asked what cards people should buy now, while they are cheap, I will counter with a short talking point. I want to talk about mill. I've been a fan of milling people since the release of Millstone. I looked at my opponent's deck as 60 life, rather than 60 cards. I built decks around trying to mill people and stop them from shuffling their graveyard into their library. Taking that approached allowed me to see the value in efficient mill cards. Fast forward to the Modern GP in Los Angeles. Jinlin Li surprised the Modern world when he piloted his U/B mill deck to an impressively deep run. There was a brief hype about it, then it faded away, like many fringe decks. Modern has many powerful mill cards, and if Wizards decides to print just one more bomb for the deck, it could be enough to push mill over the top. While casual players ensure mill cards are always more expensive than competitive players deem necessary, (see Glimpse the Unthinkable) having a mill deck put up consistent results would ensure that the mill cards spike even more.
