Weekly Winners 2023 - 30

Of course cards are moving because of Lord of the Rings, but we have some interesting cards from several constructed formats as well.

Like every week, just in time for FNM, I'll tell you about the Magic: the Gathering cards that'll be the talk of the town tonight! Come discuss this week's price movements with us on Discord.

Articles

The past few months we've been focusing on putting out more quality content, and I'd love to share the next few articles with you, since they're worth a read:

• In this iteration of the Modern Times series, Corey looks at the cards from March of the Machine: The Aftermath. Definitely worth a read!
• In WTF? (Why That Foil?) Jason is talking about why certain foils move up the way they do and how to identify the foils that may matter.
• Ever wondered what happens after the spike? Ryan focuses on cards from the Weekly Winners a year later, and talks about what happened to their prices since, in Where Are They Now?

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Onto the Weekly Winners!

#1 Lorien Revealed $3.25 (+1,060%)

A spike of over a 1,000%! The absolute dollar value change is about $3. Lorien Revealed, a common from The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth, spiked this week. While it was previously selling for about $0.30, it's now $3.25. This sorcery lets you draw three cards for five mana, and is a good way to draw some extra cards if the game goes long. But especially the Islandcycling ability is an interesting, uncounterable, way to make your land drops.

It seems to be finding its way into several formats. After it was released, and since it is a common, it quickly found a home in Pauper UW Familiars, Dimir Control, Jeskai Ephemerate, and Caw-Gates decks. That it's already found its way into most decks in Pauper that play blue says something about its power.

Two weeks ago we discussed the spike of Living End because of the printing of the two new cycling cards, Generous Ent and Oliphaunt. These two big creatures can be reanimated using Living End and won't be hit by Cascade because of their high mana value. With Lorien Revealed, we see a very similar trend, since it's being played in Modern Temur Rhinos. The strategy here is to cast Violent Outburst, for example, and Cascade into Crashing Footfalls. Lorien Revealed can be used to make your land drops, and its mana value is high enough to not be found by the Cascade ability.

Being able to play fewer lands, because you can more easily find another one, is also important in decks that can operate on just a few mana. Both Legacy and Modern Izzet and Grixis decks that play Murktide Regent usually work on just a few mana. It fixes your land drops, and is an additional card in the graveyard to feed the Regent and Dragon's Rage Channeler. And as added bonus, it's blue, so we can pitch it to Force of Negation or Force of Will.

Plenty of reason for this card to move up in price. But since it's a common, there may be a lot of them in circulation. But since the name is bound to the Lord of the Rings lore, it may prove hard to reprint in the future. But as long as product from Lord of the Rings keeps being opened, there should be a steady supply.

Lorien Revealed	CardKingdom $5.49	TCGPlayer $3.98
Generous Ent	CardKingdom $0.39	TCGPlayer $0.38
Oliphaunt	CardKingdom $0.35	TCGPlayer $0.22

#2 Showdown of the Skalds $5.00 (+100%)

When writing last week's Weekly Winners, I already noticed this card on the Interests lists. The spike then wasn't high enough to consider it for the article, and frankly, my first reaction was that it would be another spike because of Tom Bombadil. We've discussed this creature several times in the past already, for example three weeks ago, when a Saga spiked. And while this may indeed be a driver behind it, it seems that there's more to this Saga than just good ol' Tom.

Showdown of the Skalds does a lot of things. It "draws" cards when it enters the battlefield, and the next two turns it can grow your creatures by casting spells. Lately in Pioneer, Boros decks seem to be performing really well. And rightfully so, since they received a lot of new goodies in the past few sets. In March of the Machine we saw Wrenn's Resolve being printed, which added another few "copies" of Reckless Impulse to the deck.  In Phyrexia: All Will Be One we had Vindictive Flamestoker, and in March of the Machine: The Aftermath Pia Nalaar, Consul of Revival was printed.

Having a steady supply of cards coming, with some efficient removal, and agressive cheap creatures, is exactly the mix Boros decks are aiming for to quickly go over the top, and kill your opponent before they even had a chance to do something.

Showdown of the Skalds	CardKingdom $2.79	TCGPlayer $2.39
Reckless Impulse	CardKingdom $2.49	TCGPlayer $1.44
Vindictive Flamestoker	CardKingdom $0.49	TCGPlayer $0.34

#3 Flumph (Extended Art)  $11.95 (+1394%) - FOIL

Cheating a little bit here by looking at the foil extended art version of this creature, because I simply wanted to talk about this card. The regular version of Flumph is still around a dollar, up from $0.50. There is something interesting going on with it, and its a new combo in Modern. 

The combo works by targeting Flumph with Orcish Bowmasters. When you do, both you and target opponent will draw a card. This will in turn trigger Orcish Bowmasters again. Rinse and repeat! The only problem is that Flumph has four toughness and will die after the fourth trigger. That's why the deck plays several ways to give Flumph indestructible, like Selfless Savior, Ephemeral Shields, and Blacksmith's Skill. Now you and your opponent can draw cards indefinitely. Well... not indefinitely, until one of you tries to draw a card from an empty deck. So how do we make sure we don't end up with an empty deck first? To start, we play 63 cards in the deck, while most decks play 60. Further, we refrain from using fetchlands to thin our deck, while fetchlands are a staple in almost every Modern deck. Besides Imperial Recruiter to find our combo pieces, we don't have any cards in the deck that remove another card from our library, making sure we have more cards in it than our opponent.

While a really fun combo, it remains to be seen how well this is going to do in Modern. Currently it's relatively fringe, meaning it may catch most decks by surprise. But it feels like it's relatively easy to disrupt. Nevertheless, I'll enjoy seeing how the deck is going to perform in the coming weeks.

Flumph	CardKingdom $1.99	TCGPlayer $1.80
Flumph (Extended Art)	CardKingdom $2.49	TCGPlayer $2.19
Orcish Bowmasters	CardKingdom $54.99	TCGPlayer $45.00

#4 Commander Masters Precon Update

In the previous Weekly Winners we had two sections talking about Slivers and Eldrazi that were moving up because of the Commander Masters precons. Cards that were going up were cards that fit the theme (so Slivers and Eldrazi), that weren't included in the precons. That means that these cards are mostly strong upgrades to these particular decks. In this section I'll simply show the charts of a few cards that we saw this week on the Interests that fit the same reason for going up. These are the cards notably from the Sliver Swarm, Eldrazi Unbound, and Enduring Enchantment decks. You can find the decklists of these precons at the bottom of the pages I just linked.

Cheap Pickups

Please note: for our 'record low' we consider the price of the card over the past seven years. Many cards were even cheaper (a) decade(s) ago. Also note: some cards are still going down, and might be even cheaper pickups next week.

Elspeth, Sun's Champion $4.66 - Moving up!

Elspeth, Sun's Champion has been identified by the MTGStocks Premium Penny Stocks feature as a card that has reached its bottom and is starting a consistent uptrend.

Stranglehold $7.02 - Moving down

Karn, Scion of Urza $6.95 - Slowly moving down

Elspeth, Sun's Champion	CardKingdom $2.99	TCGPlayer $2.20
Stranglehold	CardKingdom $7.99	TCGPlayer $6.88
Karn, Scion of Urza	CardKingdom $7.49	TCGPlayer $6.52

 

That's it for this week. Make sure to check back next week for more Weekly Winners!