Weekly Winners 2019 - 34

It has been an interesting week, with spikes from Commander, Modern, and Standard. With MF Las Vegas on its way, I'm very jealous of everyone who's attending, and hoping to attend myself next year. I hope that everyone is going to have an absolute blast there! Keep in mind that this Monday there will be a Banned & Restricted announcement where (most likely) Hogaak will be banned in Modern. Just in time for FNM and MF Las Vegas, I'll now tell you about the cards that will be the talk of the town tonight!

 

#1 Psychic Puppetry $3.85 (+913%)

 

So here's a card from Champions of Kamigawa that has been less than $0.20 since forever. The card has spiked this week because a new deck showed up in Modern which I've seen being called Turbo Time, Twiddle Storm, or Twiddle me This. It has shown up here and there, and also recently piloted by Saffron Olive in the Budget Magic series.

The idea of the deck is to get Lotus Field into play and keep untapping it with Dream's Grip and Twiddle to generate absurd amounts of mana. In this deck you shouldn't really cast Psychic Puppetry, but rather Splice it onto Arcane, for instance to Reach Through Mists or Peer Through Depths. This way you can keep untapping Lotus Field while also drawing cards. Another important Arcane card we can splice onto is Ideas Unbound, another winner this week going up almost 500% to $2.90. This card will draw us 3 more cards every cycle, but since it makes you discard three cards at the end of your turn, you should wait with firing it off until you're certain you can win.

So how do we win? A good old Grapeshot does the trick nicely, since we should be able to generate 20 storm. If we however struggle with casting sufficient spells, we can use Past in Flames to re-cast all the Dream's Grips and Twiddles again. In the sideboard there's also Empty the Warrens and Aria of Flame to lock the game out.

Because of this deck, Past in Flames has also gone up 70% to almost $10.

 

Psychic Puppetry	CardKingdom $4.49	TCGPlayer $3.85
Dream's Grip	CardKingdom $0.49	TCGPlayer $0.57
Twiddle	CardKingdom $0.49	TCGPlayer $0.21
Grapeshot	CardKingdom $0.69	TCGPlayer $0.86
Peer Through Depths	CardKingdom $0.39	TCGPlayer $0.25
Reach Through Mists	CardKingdom $0.25	TCGPlayer $0.17
Aria of Flame	CardKingdom $2.99	TCGPlayer $3.59
Lotus Field	CardKingdom $7.99	TCGPlayer $6.46

 

#2 Aphetto Runecaster $2.79 (+436%)

 

I hope you paid attention to our Weekly Winners 2019-31 at the start of August, where Peter discussed the price spike of Ixidor, Reality Sculptor because of the Commander 2019 morph deck. Peter also mentioned other cards that have something to do with cards being morphed or turned face-up or -down.

One of the cards that was deemed interesting enough is, somewhat unsurprisingly, Aphetto Runecaster. I've always understood that drawing cards is kind-of good in Magic.

While on the subject, also look at Mischievous Quanar, which has gone up 122% to $5.00.

 

Aphetto Runecaster	CardKingdom $0.69	TCGPlayer $2.79
Ixidor, Reality Sculptor	CardKingdom $12.99	TCGPlayer $14.40

 

#3 Balthor the Defiled $21.38 (+328%)

 

The Command Zone strikes again! It seems that lately every card being mentioned by them will instantly turn to gold, at least, for a few weeks. This time they discussed low budget upgrades to the Commander 2019 Rakdos precon deck, where Balthor came up.

What can Balthor do in this deck? Well, for one, it pumps Chainer, Nightmare Adept and K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth, whom are both Minions. Also to be able to return all your creatures back to the battlefield seems pretty good.

I don't see this price stick. It seems that it's currently all hype, but I expect the price to come down. You can watch the episode here:

 

Balthor the Defiled	CardKingdom $12.99	TCGPlayer $21.38
K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth	CardKingdom $20.99	TCGPlayer $26.27

 

#4 Kethis, the Hidden Hand $3.50 (+64%)

 

Wait, what? A fourth Winner? What is this madness? While Kethis, the Hidden Hand certainly isn't a huge spike with "only" being $3.50 with a 64% spike, I feel this card is fun to discuss. Last weekend was the Mythic Championship Qualifier Weekend, and a new Standard deck put up great results piloted by Ondřej Stráský and Stanislav Cifka.

So what does this pile of cards do? In short, you're trying to mill yourself with Diligent Excavator, putting Legendary cards into your graveyard, so you can use Kethis, the Hidden Hand to play them from your graveyard, triggering the Excavator again to mill yourself more.

We finally found a use for Mox Amber, since it's one of the key components in this deck. Every time you play a second Mox, the old one goes to the graveyard because of the Legend-rule. If it was put there after a Kethis activation, you have to activate Kethis again to be able to play the Mox from the graveyard. However, once we can get a second Diligent Excavator into play, and find 3 Moxen, you're usually able to mill yourself entirely.

With all those Legendary permanents in your graveyard, we can activate Kethis, the Hidden Hand many times, meaning we can replay our Moxen, gaining mana, and looping them, triggering the Excavator so we can start milling our opponent. Sometimes it's easier/quicker to start recurring Oath of Kaya to burn your opponent out, but we need sufficient white and black mana for that.

The combo requires several cards in different zones, but they're easily found with Tamiyo, Collector of Tales or Ashiok, Dream Render, or using Lazav, the Multifarious to copy a creature in the graveyard. The deck needs a lot of practise, but can function really well. I would have expected Kethis to go up more because of this deck, but I feel that the deck is a lot harder to play on paper than on Arena.

 

 

Mox Amber	CardKingdom $8.99	TCGPlayer $9.98
Diligent Excavator	CardKingdom $0.25	TCGPlayer $0.25
Kethis, the Hidden Hand	CardKingdom $3.99	TCGPlayer $3.50

 

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.

 

Soul-Scar Mage $2.51

 

Soul-Scar Mage is not at its lowest price point, but it seems to be gaining traction since it's played as a 4-off in Modern Phoenix decks.

 

Shadow of the Grave $0.50

 

This card was also mentioned by Playing with Power. This card can, in my opinion, only go up.

 

M19 Mythics

 

With rotation coming soon, we see several Mythics from Core Set 2019 going down, making them cheaper to pick up. Keep in mind that they can still go lower, but these have reached their lowest price point ever this week.

 

The First Sliver $10.88

 

With the other Sliver "lords" being over $100, I feel like this is a steal. Slivers will always be popular.