As the spoilers for Guilds of Ravnica are pouring in, it is unusually calm in the world of magic finance. But, expect some spikes and changes in the coming weeks as people start brewing and posting new decks.
Wait! Before you get underwhelmed that our #1 winner this week has a price tag of only $3.60, please consider that Dread of Night is an uncommon and printed in two sets. Its Tempest counterpart has a $5.97 price tag. And on top of that, Dread of Night is a sideboard card that fills just one or two slots. If you take that into account, a 230% spike and a $3.64 price tag is quite impressive.
Dread of Night is gaining in price because of the recent shifts in the Legacy metagame since the banning of Deathrite Shaman and Gitaxian Probe. Because of those bannings, the Death and Taxes deck has gained popularity and power and is now the #4 deck in Legacy. This means that more and more decks need to protect themselves from that mono-white deck. Dread of Night is a solid card to slow down Death & Taxes. As you can see in the list below, Dread of Night means instant death for 17 maindeck creatures in the deck.
Dread of Night has seen Legacy sideboard play for a long, long time; albeit in much lesser volume than right now. That means that the price of the card is solidly tied in to its playrate. Put in simpler terms: if Death&Taxes loses popularity Dread of Night's price will drop accordingly. And: if another (mono-)white deck gets popular, or Death&Taxes gets even stronger, Dread of Night might pick up even more value.
Dark Confidant hit a low for 2018 a few weeks back, but is now rising again. The reason is this potentially format shattering new card: Assassin's Trophy. That last card might very well replace Abrupt Decay in decks that play Dark Confidant, since it is more versatile than its predecessor. This might make all GB(x) decks in Modern and Legacy more powerful and Dark Confidant is still the card advantage powerhouse in those kind of decks.
But buying Dark Confidant at this time is also quite a risk! Dark Confidant is from the original Ravnica set and it is still possible that it is getting reprinted in Guilds of Ravnica. Both alphabetically and based on collector's number there is a chance it will be in the set. Some argue that having both Dark Confidant and Assassin's Trophy will make UB(x) so powerful in Standard that Wizards would (or should) not print them both. This sounds logical, but Wizards is not always making choices players find logical. We just might be heading into a season that we will later remember as the UB(x)-winter.
Just to spell it out for those who don't follow: if Dark Confidant gets reprinted, the price of the card will fall. Even when it is reprinted as a Mythic Rare. After the set rotates out of Standard, its price will plummet even further. Reprinting Dark Confidant might not be logical from a Standard-format point of view; but if you consider that we return to Ravnica again and a reprint is good for Modern and Legacy; it might not even be that strange for the card to get reprinted. Personally I think that Wizards will really risk a one dimensional Standard when it is reprinted and won't do it. I guess we'll have to wait a few years when we return to Ravnica once more.
Also note: Tarmogoyf is now at an all time low, and might go up as well!
Faerie Artisans sees play in three EDH decks with commanders that were (re-)printed in 2018. And since Faerie Artisans itself is a rare, from a set in a smaller print run than regular cards from expansion sets, the market will get tight very quickly. Those commanders are: Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer, Aminatou, the Fateshifter and Ishai, Ojutai Dragonspeaker.
Cheap Pickups
