Weekly Winners 2021 - 29

We again mainly see price changes due to commander, but Modern is still settling. But this week we also see a card that sees play in Legacy. All-in-all another interesting week in Magic finance.

Like every week, just in time for FNM, I'll now tell you about the cards that will be the talk of the town tonight!

Come discuss this week's price movements with us on Reddit.

MTGStocks update

Last week we deployed a new version of MTGStocks that included a dark mode. That dark mode was always enabled if you have set your OS preference to that. But there was not way to turn it off again. I assumed that if you prefer dark mode, you would like everything to be in that shade. Feedback has shown that was not the case, so we made some adjustments and included the toggle you see now in the navigation bar. The default setting is still your OS preference. We did do some tweaks in the meantime to the dark mode, meaning graphs are better readable now and links have become a little bit lighter.

 

#1 Stolen Strategy $12.93 (+173%)

 

There are plenty of reasons why Stolen Strategy has spiked this week, and frankly I am kind of surprised this card has been sitting below $5 for so long. It seems to be a super fun card for casual commander play and can definitely invoke some proper chaos in the games. It has gotten some extra attention since the printing of Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer, Garth One-Eye, and recently we also see it show up in Prosper, Tome-Bound.

But Stolen Strategy also is a great upgrade to the AFR Planar Portal Commander Deck, which was mentioned on the The Command Zone as well. Them mentioning a card can often mean that it goes up in price since it focusses some new attention on it.

As people may know, MTGStocks is a proud sponsor of Brainstorm Brewery, a weekly podcast about anything Magic finance related. In these podcasts the hosts (DJ, Corbin, and Jason) do a segment called "Pick of the Week". If you are a Patreon you get access to these podcasts a few days in advance, and boy should you have been a Patreon. In the upcoming episode that becomes public today, Jason mentions Stolen Strategy as his "Pick of the Week" telling everyone that he really likes this card for $5. Only a few days later it shot up to almost $13. If you don't listen to the podcast already, I suggest you do, and consider supporting them.

Edit: The video is now public and can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSPv1n9l9II

 

Stolen Strategy
Battlebond	CardKingdom $5.49	TCGPlayer $12.93

 

#2 Anje's Ravager $3.46 (+78%)

 

A card that was recently adopted within Legacy HollowVine decks. These decks can really go crazy since the printing of Blazing Rootwalla. You can cheat out Anje's Ravager for its madness cost by discarding it to Lion's Eye Diamond or Faithless Looting, and it enables more draws, discards, and thus madness cost activations. If you haven't seen this deck in action yet, I suggest you watch Thraben University on YouTube with this deck. It can really just kill you out of nowhere.

We also see Anje's Ravager show up in commander around Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar. But another important reason for the spike is that this is a cheap upgrade to the AFR Draconic Rage Commander Deck.

 

Anje's Ravager	CardKingdom $2.49	TCGPlayer $3.46
Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar	CardKingdom $2.49	TCGPlayer $2.00

 

 

#3 Fracturing Gust $7.60 (+56%)

 

In the past weeks we have been discussing the new Modern metagame since the release of Modern Horizons 2. The first few weeks have revolved around cards people needed for their mainboards and tune their strategy, but the latter weeks have more revolved around sideboard cards to adjust their decks to the new meta. We have seen cards like Crime // Punishment and Alpine Moon come up and we can now add Fracturing Gust to this line-up.

We see Fracturing Gust come up in quite a range of Modern decks in the sideboards, since it deals pretty efficiently with decks revolving around artifacts and enchantments. It is good with decks playing Urza's Saga since they usually play a lot of artifacts, but it also works really well against Enchantress decks. It seems the new Modern meta is relying more and more on artifacts, meaning being able to deal with these strategies on instant speed along with getting you some life seems to work really well.

 

Fracturing Gust	CardKingdom $4.99	TCGPlayer $7.60
Urza's Saga	CardKingdom $29.99	TCGPlayer $26.43

 

#4 Liliana, Untouched by Death $8.50 (+56%)

 

Liliana already is included for some time in a lot of commander decks based around zombies with popular commanders being Gisa and Geralf and Liliana, Heretical Healer. It seems that she is getting some extra love lately. But it is also likely that people are starting to speculate on her.

Don't forget that the next two expansions sets will both be featured on Innistrad. Midnight Hunt and Crimson Vow are both likely to include new zombie cards that can make Liliana, Untouched by Death stronger and more popular.

Edit: As pointed out to me by the fine people of Reddit, there is a potential combo with Liliana, Untouched by Death and Shambling Ghast if you have a sac outlet. If you minus three Liliana, you can sac the Shambling Ghast to your sac outlet, create a treasure and then replay Shambling Ghast from your graveyard over and over again. So if your outlet is something like Goblin Bombardment you can ping your opponents to death.

 

Liliana, Untouched by Death
Core Set 2019	CardKingdom $6.99	TCGPlayer $8.50
Media Promos	CardKingdom $149.99	TCGPlayer $157.69
Prerelease Cards	CardKingdom $17.99	TCGPlayer $12.23

 

 

Cheap Pickups

Please note: for our 'record low' we consider the price of the card over the past 7 years. Many cards have been even cheaper (a) decade(s) ago. Also note: some cards are still going down, and might be even cheaper pickups next week.

 

Imperial Recruiter $10.66 - Slowly trending down

 

Ignoble Hierarch $11.03 - Slowly trending down

 

Chatterfang, Squirrel General $8.31 - Trending down

 

Ignoble Hierarch	CardKingdom $12.99	TCGPlayer $11.03
Imperial Recruiter	CardKingdom $11.99	TCGPlayer $10.66
Chatterfang, Squirrel General	CardKingdom $7.99	TCGPlayer $8.31