Weekly Winners 2019 - 39

All three winners are Modern related this week. Not big spikes in percentage, but big moves in absolute terms. 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!

 

#1 Mox Opal $122.76 (+13.72%)

 

+13% in one week does not seem much, especially when our #1 winners sometimes spike with over 1000%. But for a card like Mox Opal, that is quite a spike. Coming from $108 last week, you'll now have to dig out $55 more for your playset Mox Opals.

Mox Opal is a piece in Modern, Legacy and Vintage. But its recent spike is due to new deck tech in modern. Last weekend a Four Color Whirza deck won the SCG Modern IQ in Findlay. The deck has been performing well in MTGO leagues as well, attracting attention to the archetype. The winning build features no less than 11 maindeck cards from Modern Horizons and with 12% of the meta, a deck to recon with. Other top tier decks feature 0 to 4 maindeck cards from that set, making Four Color Whirza by far the most influenced by Modern Horizons.

 

#2 Stoneforge Mystic $77.98 (+105.44%)

 

Just $35 a month ago, and with $77.98 an all time record for Stoneforge Mystic again! With a whopping 14 different Modern archetypes now running Stoneforge Mystic, you can safely say that the card is taking modern by storm and is claiming a place in the format.

U/W Stoneblade is currently on place 6 in the Modern meta with 7.17%. Not a big result. So you could be tempted to conclude that Stoneforge Mystic is not that important in Modern and its $77.98 is overrated. No so fast. When you combine the meta percentages of all those Stoneforge Mystic decks, you end up with a meta share of 20.6%. That is 10% more than Burn, the current #1 deck in the Modern metagame. Those are pretty big numbers, and numbers that warrant a big price on Stoneforge Mystic. And don't forget the fact that the card is big in Legacy as well!

 

#3 Prismatic Vista $34.73 (+15.42%)

Third winner, third card that is up because of Modern. But, just like with Stoneforge Mystic, the card sees play in Legacy as well. With a playrate of 2%, Prismatic Vista has not really found its way into EDH just yet. In Modern, this newest fetchland sees play in 8 different decks, all of them -based. Not all decks play 4 of them, but Prismatic Vista is rapidly becoming a staple in Modern and sees a fair amount of play in Legacy.

For those of you that don't play Modern or Legacy, fetchlands might seem a strange concept when you first look at it. You have to pay a life, to search for a land that you have in your deck. You might argue that you can also play 4 extra islands instead of playing a land that lets you search for one. But Modern has the Shock lands and Legacy has Dual lands. Fetch gives you wide access to fix your mana base. For instance; if you lack blue mana and draw a fetch land; you can search for a Tundra; giving you access to without the mana symbol even appearing on the fetch land itself. Do note that Prismatic Vista vista finds only basic lands. That does not mean it is not useful, since fetchlands have more than this one upside. On the other hand, Prismatic Vista is used to find basic snow lands. And allows you to find all 5 types of basics instead of just 2 types with other fetch. In the right deck, that is an upside.

Fetch lands are also useful because you can shuffle your deck when you need to. When you Brainstorm and don't find anything useful for instance. Instead of two dead draws you shuffle your deck and you get way better odds in drawing the cards you need to win the game.

A third way in which fetch lands are useful is deck thinning. Every deck needs a good balance between lands and non-land cards. You need good odds of drawing enough, but not too much land. Running fetch lands lowers the number of lands in your deck rapidly. Fetching and finding removes 2 lands from your deck. Upping the odds of you drawing a non-land card. In short: fetch lands reduces the chances of mana flood. But running and cracking too many of them in an early stage increases the risk of mana screw.

 

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.

 

Liliana, Dreadhorde General $13.79 - Record low and past bottom

 

Echo of Eons $6.64 - Record low, bottomed out

 

Tezzeret, Artifice Master $5- Record low, bottomed out

 

Tezzeret, Artifice Master	CardKingdom $5.99	TCGPlayer $5.00
Liliana, Dreadhorde General	CardKingdom $16.99	TCGPlayer $13.79
Echo of Eons	CardKingdom $5.99	TCGPlayer $6.64