Phyrexia: All Will Be One is officially released today, but cards are already in the market because of last week's prelease, as well as available on Arena and MTGO. Brewing has commenced, and today we look at the first price fluctuations because of that.
Like every week, just in time for FNM, I'll tell you about the cards that will be the talk of the town tonight! Come discuss this week's price movements with us on Discord and Reddit.
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This week we had two awesome articles come out! Harvey wrote about Foil Multipliers over time in his latest instalment of The Big Things, and Corey gave his expectations for cards from Phyrexia: All Will Be One for Modern in his Modern Times article. If you want to keep up with Magic finance these are definitely worth a read!
We're also looking for a few more writers to round out our written content. Currently we're most interested in getting a writer to specialize in Commander staples and their financial impact, but we're accepting all pitches. If you think you got what it takes and love Magic as much as we do, head on over to our Write for Us form and drop us a message with your pitch and a writing sample or links to prior work.
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Mercurial Spelldancer is the first example from Phyrexia: All Will Be One where we're seeing price movement because of potential play. This unblockable Phyrexian Rogue is fueled with oil counters whenever you cast a noncreature spell, then the counters can be used to copy your next instant or sorcery spell whenever it deals combat damage to a player.
First, this card is good in Commander spellslinger decks (a copied Crackle with Power can end the game pretty quickly), and we're already seeing data from EDHREC showing people experimenting with it in Edric, Spymaster of Trest and Anhelo, the Painter decks, for instance. Another commander it may work well with is Neera, Wild Mage.
But there is more going on here. Andrea Mengucci mentioned on Twitter that he thinks this card is the new Dreadhorde Arcanist. Some people say that Mercurial Spelldancer is even better. What's also interesting to note is that Andrea included a copy of Minor Misstep in this deck. We're slowly starting to see this card being played in Modern and Legacy. You can watch Andrea play the deck in his video on YouTube.
Looking at Reddit, it seems like people will also try to play Mercurial Spelldancer in Modern. And while we don't know yet whether it's here to stay in these formats, people are flocking to pick up their copies. Since it has the Phyrexian creature type, it is not easily reprint-able and thus may not see a reprint for some time.
We can talk a lot about this card, but I think we all know why Contagion Engine is popular at the moment. Obviously it has to do with the poison theme around Phyrexia: All Will Be One. With Contagion Engine you get to put -1/-1 tokens on all your opponent's creatures, and then use its ability every turn to proliferate those. And while you are proliferating anyway, why not increase the number of poison counters on your opponents? Or add more oil counters to your permanents? Or add more loyalty counters to your planeswalkers? There is plenty of stuff to do here.
The card was also mentioned in a recent The Command Zone video where they discuss the power level and strategies around Infect and poison counters since the release of Phyrexia: All Will Be One. And as we've seen before, Command Zone/Game Knights certainly has the ability to affect prices.
So far we've discussed a winner from Phyrexia: All Will Be One that wants to get oil counters, and a card that wants to help you to increase counters on permanents or players. Now we get to a card that is trying to go against that strategy. Solemnity prevents counters from being placed on players, artifacts, creatures, enchantments, or lands. No poison counters. No oil counters. No counters at all, except on planeswalkers.
In the Weekly Winners from April 2020 this card also had a spike where it went from $1.60 to $5 because of the introduction of new ability counters in Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths, like menace, lifelink, deathtouch, etc. Solemnity immediately shot up to hose these new counter types, but dwindled back down to about $3 over time. Until now, where it's currently a $6 card.
Solemnity also enables some combos, and that's why I do see it as always being worth something. The most common combos with this card are Phyrexian Unlife, Delaying Shield, or Nine Lives to no longer be able to die because of damage. Or play it with Decree of Silence to lock out your opponents from casting spells.
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.
Starscream, Power Hungry has been identified by the MTGStocks Premium Penny Stocks feature as a card that has reached its bottom and is starting a consistent uptrend.
That's it for this week. Make sure to check back next week for more Weekly Winners!
Arjen
Arjen has been playing Magic since Ice Age and has mostly played the Legacy format. Ten years ago he founded MTGStocks because he and his friends wanted to buy Magic singles at the right time to play with.
The changes around the Commander format are really having an interesting effect on the market. Fortunately, Pioneer and Modern are also making sure that things are moving.
