Weekly Winners (38)

This week has not proven to be a very interesting week for Magic Finance. This week I have 3 winners that did not gain that much, but are still interesting enough to have a look at. So, once again, I present you the cards that will be the talk of the town tonight.

 

#1 Knight of the Reliquary +20.3% ($7.69)

Retreat to Coralhelm was spoiled this week. The card screams to be abused by Knight of the Reliquary! With the Knight, you can sacrifice a plains or forest, fetch a land and untap Knight of the Reliquary again. Rinse and repeat. The big question is however, how powerful is this really? And in what particular format? 

Knight of the Reliquary is only legal in Modern, Legacy and Vintage. Besides all casual formats. A trick like this is nice, but will it be good enough outside casual or EDH? If you have two Retreat to Coralhelms, you can tap blocking creatures while fattening up Knight of the Reliquary. If you do this at end of your opponent's turn you will be able to swing for the kill. Nice trick, but is it better than what we've got? I don't think so. 

The Scry ability is interesting as well. If you can landchain and scry everytime, maybe you will be able to find something to either use your big Knight of the Reliquary to do damage, or to combo out with something. But big difficulty is that you need to shuffle your library every time, making Scry less good.

And don't forget other landfall cards. Putting a whole chain of lands into play, triggering landfall across your board might be very, very good. Here are some possibilities, probably none of them are good enough for Modern/ Legacy/ Vintage: 

 

• With 20 lands and a Hedron Crab you can deck your opponent. (Or with 2 crabs and 10 lands)
• With a Lotus Cobra you can get 2 mana for each land you 'cycle'.
• With a Lotus Cobra and a Seer's Sundial you can draw a card for each land you put into play.
• With Emeria Angel you can flood the board with 1/1 fliers
• With Adomonition Angel you can exile your opponent's board.
• With Roil Elemental you can steal your opponent's dudes.
• You can have Shoal Serpent lose defender many times
• With Tectonic Instability you can keep your opponent's lands tapped
• With Stone-Seeder Hierophant you can generate a lot of mana 

 

 #2 Sliver Hive +21,5% ($4.18) 

Adam Bowman piloted this deck into the top 8 of the SCG Open in Cincinatti. Not this week, but the week before. Every time when a 'rogue' or lower tier deck reaches a top 8 or top 16 it will attract a lot of attention. Some see it as prove that a deck is not that 'rogue' at all. And it will attract the attention of traders and speculators too. 

Because of this, Sliver Hive is gaining in price. In the right deck the card is great. It produces any color mana without a drawback worse than paying a life for fetching a land or pitching a blue card for Force of Will. You can only spend that mana on slivers, but hey, if your deck plays 30 slivers and only 6 cards that are non-slivers and require a colored mana to be cast it can't go wrong. 

But, unlike fetches and Force of Will, Sliver Hive is only playable in a deck that has 30 slivers. And that is the reason why the price tag on this card is low for a land that is so strong in the right deck. Maybe it's better to compare Sliver Hive to a card like Doomsday. There is no reason why you would pay half your life to almost deck yourself. Unless you play Legacy Doomsday. Insane in that particular deck, (almost) useless outside that deck.

 

#3 Lantern of Insight +21.5% ($4.80) 

Lantern of Insight is up after the good performance of Zac Elsik on GP Oklahoma with his Lantern Control deck.

 

Cheap Pickups

 

Flooded Strand

 

Windswept Heath

 

Personal Tutor

 

 Cursed Scroll

 

Archangel of Tithes

 

Kytheon, Hero of Akros

 

Chandra, Fire of Kaladesh

 

 B.F.M. (Big Furry Monster Left)

 

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