Weekly Winners 2024 - 19

It's been a good week, with several spikes from both Commander and Pioneer. And the upcoming Modern Horizons 3 is already making waves.

Like every week, just in time for FNM, I'll tell you about the Magic: the Gathering cards that'll be the talk of the town tonight! Come discuss this week's price movements with us on Discord.

Articles

• In How to Deal with Volatility in the Magic Card Market, Harvey explains how to navigate market fluctuations with strategic insights into macroscopic and microscopic forces affecting card prices. This includes the impact of new releases and reprints on price dynamics and the importance of considering both immediate and long-term market trends. For a deeper understanding of managing your card investments amidst changing market conditions, read up on the article.

• Corey dives into the implications of leaks in the card market, questioning their impact on market volatility and the ethical issues they raise, urging caution in speculative investments ahead of official releases. For an insightful perspective, check out What You Should Know About Magic Card Leaks.

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Onto the Weekly Winners!

#1 Angel of Indemnity $9.99 (+952%)

Angels tend to do well, and especially good Angels. Angel decks are popular amongst the casual crowd and in Commander it's a powerful creature type. When we look at the top commanders of the past two years we have Atraxa, Praetors' Voice in the #1 position, but we also see commanders like Kaalia of the Vast and Giada, Font of Hope high up on that list.

$11.64 $16.99

$3.50 $5.49

Angel of Indemnity is no exception and is sometimes being referred to as "new Sun Titan," a card that also pops up in Commander often. While Angel of Indemnity is missing the "on attack" trigger, it does return a permanent with mana value four or less from your graveyard to the battlefield. But the interesting part comes from the Encore ability. Whenever Angel of Indemnity is in your graveyard you can pay its Encore cost and you get to create a token copy for each opponent and you get to attack them immediately. But because of all these tokens you create, you also get to return that many permanents from your graveyard to your battlefield. That can be a very powerful, and possibly game ending, turn. What certainly helped the spike was that it was called out in a video on The Command Zone channel where they discuss the best cards from Outlaws of Thunder Junction.

But there's another reason for this spike, and it has to do with leaks from the upcoming Modern Horizons 3. If you want to know more about leaks, then read Corey's excellent article on this subject as well (the article does not discuss specific leaked cards, so it's safe to read for anyone). In short, some cards from the Modern Horizons set have leaked and Wizards even confirmed some of them. However, this does lead us to believe that the unconfirmed cards from these leaks also may be real, including the Demon that's contributing to this spike. 

Angel of Indemnity	CardKingdom $1.79	TCGPlayer $9.99
Angel of Indemnity (Extended Art)	CardKingdom $2.79	TCGPlayer $3.08
Atraxa, Praetors' Voice	CardKingdom	TCGPlayer $18.29
Kaalia of the Vast	CardKingdom $16.99	TCGPlayer $11.64
Sun Titan	CardKingdom $1.79	TCGPlayer $1.53

#2 Pillage the Bog $4.00 (+192%)

This rare sorcery seems to be one of the long-time winner cards from the Outlaws of Thunder Junction set as it has found its way into a constructed format. With Pillage the Bog you get to look at the top X cards of your library, where X is twice the number of lands you control and you get to keep one of these cards. But the Plot ability makes this more interesting. You can Plot it for three mana and play it for free later when you have more lands on the battlefield.

The card has found its way into Pioneer Niv to Light decks, a recently updated archetype. Another new card that appears in the deck is Lilah, Undefeated Slickshot. One of the most important strategies is trying to resolve Bring to Light with five colors and getting one of the Niv creatures out. But you can also opt to find Valki and immediately play it as Tibalt. The deck adopts a midrange strategy to try to take over the board.

Pillage the Bog	CardKingdom $3.49	TCGPlayer $4.00
Pillage the Bog (Extended Art)	CardKingdom $3.49	TCGPlayer $5.35
Bring to Light	CardKingdom $0.69	TCGPlayer $0.58
Lilah, Undefeated Slickshot	CardKingdom $0.49	TCGPlayer $0.50

#3 Dandân $11.00 (+633%)

This is not Dandân's first spike, but here we are again! As you may or may not know, there is a somewhat fringe format called "Dandân," which is a two-player format that revolves around this namesake card. Most older players probably have a few laying around, since the card is not very good in traditional formats. Before September 2022 you could buy it for about $0.25 and foils for about $3. But now a foil version of this card will cost you about $55 due to this format's increase in popularity.

So what's this format about? Dandân (or Forgetful Fish) is an 80-card, two-player format where both players play off the same deck and share the same graveyard. Other than that, the rest of the game is played with typical Magic rules: take your opponent from 20 to zero or deck them (this last win condition is especially challenging, since you share a deck). All you need to play is the deck, with an example listed below, and dice to keep track of life totals.

Now with that bit of background information we can talk about the the spike itself. Like I mentioned, this is not the first time Dandân is making waves. Back in April 2023 we even did a "Dandân Shenanigans" section in the Weekly Winners where we listed cards that went up because of this format. The reason for the new spike seems to come from a video from Tolarian Community College on YouTube that brought some renewed attention to the format and showed how incredibly fun this format can be. In the video this deck and format is being referred to as a "A Blue Mage's Dream" by the Professor.

Dandân	CardKingdom $1.99	TCGPlayer $11.00
Dandân	CardKingdom $1.99	TCGPlayer $9.20
Dandân	CardKingdom $16.99	TCGPlayer $17.85

Cheap Pickups

Please note: for our 'record low' we consider the price of the card over the past seven years. Many cards were even cheaper (a) decade(s) ago. Also note: some cards are still going down, and might be even cheaper pickups next week.

Case of the Locked Hothouse $3.24 - Moving up!

Case of the Locked Hothouse has been identified by the MTGStocks Premium Penny Stocks feature as a card that has reached its bottom and is starting a consistent uptrend.

Ojer Axonil, Deepest Might (Showcase) $7.35 - Slowly moving down

Rise of the Eldrazi (Extended Art) $7.04 - Slowly moving down

Case of the Locked Hothouse	CardKingdom $2.29	TCGPlayer $3.24
Ojer Axonil, Deepest Might (Showcase)	CardKingdom $11.99	TCGPlayer $7.35
Rise of the Eldrazi (Extended Art)	CardKingdom $11.99	TCGPlayer $7.04