A lot has happened on the markets after the unbanning of both Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Bloodbraid Elf. Prices are spiking on several cards, impacting not only Modern, but also the eternal formats Legacy and Vintage, since they also like to play their planeswalkers and several other staples that now find their way back into Modern. All the while Pauper is still causing prices to increase.
Once again, right in time for FNM, I will now tell you what cards will be the talk of the town tonight!
As of yesterday, Liliana of the Veil is now a $100+ card, a new all-time high for the card. What happens in modern right now is what happens usually when powerful cards are unbanned. Five things (can) happen:
- The unbanned card(s) in question spike, across all printings, instantly (with split second).
- Staples in current tier decks that are likely to be able to use the unbanned card increase in price, sometimes spike.
- Cards (also outside current meta) that make the unbanned card good/ better of have synergy increase in price.
- Cards (also outside current meta) that can deal with the new unbanned card(s) increase in price.
- Post-brew Panic Spikes: people that want to have a front seat on new developments aggressively buy into anything that looks good in new deck brews with and/or against the new unbanned cards.
Liliana of the Veil is a spike of the fourth kind. It sees play in agressive, Grixis, Mardu and BG decks that are designed to race to the finish, hopefully before a control player can actually take control over the game. And since Liliana of the Veil takes a role in those decks, it is no surprise that the card increases in price.
By no means did Liliana of the Veil have the biggest percentual gain this week, but is a big winner when you look at absolute numbers. Since the B&R announcement Liliana of the Veil gained more than $20 in price. And with this new price, Liliana of the Veil is now, by far, the most expensive card in Modern Masters 2017. Outpricing Snapcaster Mage, Tarmogoyf and Scalding Tarn by $40.
#2 Tangle $10 (+171%)
Tangle is another Pauper card in a long line of pauper cards that are spiking or increasing in price over the past weeks. It sees play in Elves, WUBRG and UG in Pauper, as a sideboard card.
It seems that Tangle is an example of another card that only had an uncommon printing in paper, but was digitally 'reprinted' in Vintage Masters, a set only released on MTGO. And since Pauper only recently became a competitive paper format, this means that the accessibility of this card in paper is far, far lower than online. Where its Vintage Masters counterpart sits at only 0.04 tix in MTGO, you have to pay $9.94 more for a copy in paper.
This is totally not surprising, giving the new status Pauper has got as a format that is now playable during GP's. There are more cards that are reprinted as commons in Vintage Masters while being only available as a uncommon in paper. Most of them don't see play in Pauper decks, but that can change, and might not matter that much. Speculators might pre-emptively buy those cards out, betting on a price correction of the market price, before unloading their stock again.
#3 Dreadbore $5.04 (+86.45%)
Another post-unban spike of the fourth kind: Jace, the Mind Sculptor. The explanation is easy: it kills planeswalkers. Meaning: opposing Jaces and Lilianas, all the while still being able to take a Tarmogoyf or any other big threat your opponent plays when he doesn't use planeswalkers. It competes for a slot with that fantastic removal spell: Terminate. The latter cannot destroy planeswalkers, but it is an instant, and its target cannot be regenerated.
Dreadbore sees play in the same decks as Liliana of the Veil, but has a lesser playrate. It sees both mainboard and sideboard play in many Modern decks, higher and lesser tier:
- Mardu (23 listings)
- Grixis Control (5 listings)
- BG Aggro (2 listings)
- Jund (2 listings)
- Rakdos (1 listing)
- Grixis Pyromancer (1 listing)
- Grixis Aggro (1 listing)
Our list of interests is filled with post-unban increases and losses of all five kinds. My advice: keep a close look on the cards you wanted to buy 'some time' and you haven't got around to yet. Check if they might fit into on of the five kinds explained above. If so, be on the safe side and buy your still low priced playset. We will keep seeing price changes in Modern for the coming weeks.
