The Banned & Restricted announcement of last week is shaking up the meta and making cards go up. But Commander is also doing its thing.
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.
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Onto the Weekly Winners!
Did we get your attention? The header may be a bit overdramatic, because the price you see there is the value of one of the special variants of Bristlebud Farmer. This Plant Druid from the Outlaws of Thunder Junction: The Big Score has seen a rather large uptick over the past week, especially the Showcase and Extended Art variants.
For four mana you get a 5/5 that creates two Food tokens and can provide card advantage. The card sees some play in three formats: Standard, Commander, and perhaps a little bit of Pioneer. This last format it sometimes sees play in a deck we discussed two weeks ago, which is the Ygra combo deck. In Commander it's been adopted in a few decks, where Kirri, Talented Sprout is the most prominent one because of the creature type, but it also works well in decks that care about Food tokens, like Samwise Gamgee.
But the main reason for the spike seems to come from Standard. In Bloomburrow a new mechanic was added called forage. To forage, either exile three cards from your graveyard or sacrifice a Food and get an effect. Since Bristlebud Farmer, aside from being a huge body, also makes Food tokens, this works pretty well. Therefore it's played in Standard Golgari Food decks that are doing ok. Since Bristlebud Farmer was printed in the Outlaws of Thunder Junction: The Big Score set, the supply is pretty limited compared to cards in regular sets. That makes it easier to drive the price up when demand increases.
Another card from that deck that's really moving up is Restless Cottage. However, while Standard can play its part in this spike, we should also really take Commander into consideration here. New Commanders like Hazel of the Rootbloom and The Odd Acorn Gang may also make this card more popular.
| Bristlebud Farmer | | |
| Bristlebud Farmer (Extended Art) | | |
| Bristlebud Farmer (Showcase) | | |
| Restless Cottage | | |
Pretty sure you heard by now, but last Monday some cards were banned in several formats. Amongst the bans were two cards in Modern that didn't surprise me, and most likely didn't surprise you either. Nadu, Winged Wisdom and Grief are no longer legal in Modern. Since these decks were pretty prominent in the metagame in Modern, it means that it's been shaken up.
This means that other decks can shine and become more popular. One of these decks is Eldrazi Breach, where you try to resolve a Through the Breach and put a big fat Eldrazi like Emrakul, the Aeons Torn or Ulamog, the Defiler onto the battlefield and attack with it immediately. Through the sheer amount of damage these Eldrazi can put through, you'll either kill your opponent or at least take a big chunk of life away from them. But the devastating thing about these Eldrazi is the Annihilator ability which will cripple your opponent so much that you'll find your next few damage before they can recover.
And for this very same reason we see Grove of the Burnwillows moving up. As you may see in the decklist above, this land is also included as a four-of in the Breach decklist. Usually, in Legacy, we see this land paired with Punishing Fire, but that's not allowed in Modern. Personally I'm not 100% sure on why this land is played in the deck, but since it also doesn't play any fetch lands it may be better to give your opponents a life whenever you need to make colored mana than to shock yourself with Stomping Ground. Also the land can produce which is needed for some spells.
| Through the Breach | | |
| Through the Breach | | |
| Emrakul, the Aeons Torn | | |
| Ulamog, the Defiler | | |
This rare Rabbit Warrior from Commander: Bloomburrow seems to be going up because of Commander. It's no secret that cute fluffy animals that have gotten a lot of love in the Bloomburrow set are becoming more popular. Jacked Rabbit is a creature that can be good in many stages of a Commander game. Since you can pump mana into it through its Ravenous ability it can be quite a large creature that can draw you a card, and also can give you a lot of white 1/1 Rabbits when it attacks. And even when you did draw it early in the game, it's not bad to just make a few Rabbits quickly.
Jacked Rabbit can be found in the Family Matters precon deck. It stands to reason that it can be found in decks around its precon commander Zinnia, Valley's Voice, but it also sees play in decks around Ms. Bumbleflower, Baylen, the Haymaker and Finneas, Ace Archer.
| Jacked Rabbit | | |
| Jacked Rabbit (Extended Art) | | |
| Ms. Bumbleflower | | |
| Baylen, the Haymaker | | |
| Finneas, Ace Archer | | |
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.
Claim Jumper (Extended Art) has been identified by the MTGStocks Premium Penny Stocks feature as a card that has reached its bottom and is starting a consistent uptrend.
Radstorm $4.84 - Moving down
| Claim Jumper (Extended Art) | | |
| Stirring Wildwood | | |
| Radstorm | | |
