Doomsday has been popping up in our interests for some weeks now, and has been a weekly winner a few weeks ago. But, unexpectedly, Doomsday has spiked last night with almost 400%, totaling up to a 517% win over the past week.
Ah yes, Doomsday is a card I have a love-hate relationship with. One of my good friends used to play a Doomsday Legacy deck. A deck that happened to have a very tight matchup with the deck I was playing at the time. A good portion of the best games of Magic games I have ever played was against him, with Doomsday.
However, Doomsday's spike has no relevance to that deck, or Legacy as a format. After the banning of Gitaxian Probe, the Doomsday decks in Legacy are as good as dead.
It's EDH that rings the bell, and to be more exact: Thassa's Oracle. The reason is simple: with Doomsday you can throw out your whole deck, except five cards. That means you'll then only need more in play to have enough devotion for Thassa's Oracle's alternative win.
Doomsday has two other printings and those are currently a few dollars cheaper. However, the cards are currently sold out and will most probably spike up to similar heights by this time tomorrow. Doomsday will not be able to hold a solid $23 price tag. More realistic is a $15 - $18 range.
While Doomsday's spike has nothing to do with Legacy, Grinding Station's spike has. That card sees play in UW Control / Underworld Breach decks in Legacy. But it sees some fringe play in Modern as well.
The Legacy decks revolve around people decking themselves with Grinding Station and Brain Freeze and using those discarded cards as fuel for Underworld Breach. Depending on the build of deck people play, you can either finish the game with Thassa's Oracle, or even Lightning Bolt. That last card is not seen in regular decklists, but is convincingly used in the video below showing how this combo works.
On top of Legacy popularity, MTG Pro Pascal Maynard tweeted two days ago about a Modern build of the deck, featuring Thassa's Oracle as well: "This is one of the best Modern decks Ive ever played (banned decks included). Kills on turn 3 with 2.2 cards through creature removal, you have infy redundancy while not playing bad cards, you can play a long game, galv blast + dance gives an alt kill if main pieces run out."
Modern play and some love by a Pro mean a lot for card prices. When this deck delivers in Modern and/or Legacy, prices can shoot up some more!
In all the years I've written these Weekly Winners, this is the first time all three winners are related to combo decks! As a combo player, this warms my heart. Even in times where Wizards focuses on 'fair' decks, prints many white hatebears, bans greedy blue spells, Sensei's Divining Top and Gitaxian Probe, combo now has a fighting chance again.
Silence maybe looks like an odd card, in comparison to the other key pieces in combo decks. But it is a very important piece. In combo, consistency is key. We all have those Magic friends that build elaborate combo decks that perform insane feats when left unchecked. But a single counterspell, discard or removal leaves them dead in the water and fuming out of their ears.
Combo decks are only viable when they can win through hate. And Silence helps you with that. Same counts for cards like: Orim's Chant and Duress. When playing those cheap mana spells before you go off, you can bait a counterspell.
When your opponent lets Silence resolve, he cannot counter your combo. But when he plays Force of Will he is down one counterspell and blue card. This dramatically increases your chances of winning.
One of the best examples is the semi-final in a local tournament I was playing in, against that good friend I told you about earlier. I was on Sneak and Show, he was playing Doomsday. Last game of the match, score was 1-1 and I just successfully put a Griselbrand into play. And I thought this would be the end of the game. I was right, but not in the way I wanted.
My friend took his turn and cast a Silence. Since I had no counterspells in hand, I needed to activate Griselbrand to draw 7 cards. I found nothing. One more activation gave me only Daze, and being tapped out I could only return an island to cast it. He did not pay the mana and Silence was countered. Instead he uses that mana on his combo, went off, won the game, the match and got into the final.
Without playing Silence before, I could have stopped him from going off by a good timed Daze. But I had to use it on Silence instead. Even when I would have had a Force of Will in hand, I would have had to throw it away on Silence, leaving me with lesser counterspells to deal with his combo. And when your opponent has enough mana, cards like Daze of Spell Pierce are easier to play around.
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.
