Weekly Winners 2023 - 32

The recent unbannings have made sure that these cards are moving up. Plus, we'll discuss a new Legacy archetype, and a card that seems to be pretty powerful in Commander.

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 10 Commander Masters Reprints I’m Watching Jason tells you exactly what reprints he'll be keeping a close eye on and how he identified those cards.
• Harvey will tell you what happens when cards are being reprinted and how that impacts the price. Read up on that in The Big Things: Everything is Priced In.
• In Modern Times, Corey talks about the cards from the Lord of the Rings set that have found their way into Modern, and how they showed up in the recent Pro Tour.
• Adam talks about several creature types from Ixalan, and the cards you should pick up before Lost Caverns hits, in Dinos and Merfolk and Pirates, Oh My! (Also Vampires).

If you want to receive an e-mail in your inbox when a new article is published, you can enable it in your e-mail preferences and/or join the Discord.

Onto the Weekly Winners!

#1 Unbanned Cards

Lets start by addressing the big unbanned elephants in the room. Quick recap for the people who were not aware about this, on August 7th Wizards released their scheduled B&R Announcement. While there was plenty of speculation about The One Ring being banned in multiple formats, or talk about Splinter Twin finally getting unbanned in Modern, the announcement was in the end somewhat unexpected. Two cards that were previously banned in a format were set free. Mind's Desire was unbanned in Legacy, and Preordain was unbanned in Modern. And as you can expect, the cards showed up this week in the Interests.

Mind's Desire $13.95 (+1309%)

This sorcery was printed back in 2003 in the Scourge set. When cast, you shuffle your library and then exile the top card of it. You get to cast that card from exile until the rest of your turn. The most interesting part of the card is that it has Storm, which means you get to copy the card for each spell cast prior to it in the same turn (yes, that includes spells played by your opponents in that turn). On June 1st, 2003, only six days after its release, it was banned in both Vintage and Legacy. Those formats were called Type 1 and Type 1.5, respectively, back then.

Now that it's been unleashed in the format, people flocked to their favorite store and bought the copies they wanted. Or the most copies they could get their hands on. An unban means that there will be more demand, and thus the price will go up. But if everyone stumbles over each other to get their copies, the price will spike. And while Mind's Desire does seem like a very powerful card, we still have to wait for the real results on how it'll change the meta. The first decks have already been popping up.

Thraben University already played a deck on his channel with four copies of Mind's Desire in an ANT shell. And Reid Duke managed to go 4-0 with a High Tide deck. The heading of this paragraph may be a bit misleading, because Mind's Desire can be bought for less than a dollar when you get the Commander 2021 print. However, the Scourge printing is the only version in the old cardframe and will get you the highest premium.

And while the best shell for this card probably still needs some testing, we just have to wait and see if it finds its home in Legacy. While Mind's Desire is absolutely a powerful card, I feel it was a safe card to unban in the format.

Preordain $1.99 (+400-1600%)

This sorcery was unbanned in Modern, and here we also see people flocking to get their hands on a playset or two. The price shot up between 400% and 1600%, depending on the print, meaning you now pay between $2 and and $29 for a single copy. Preordain is known as a cantrip, which refers to a spell that draws a card, in addition to its other effects, and can therefore be said to replace itself. Cantrips are pretty important for a wide range of decks to find the cards they need to get their combo together, find an answer to an opponent's troublesome spell, or just general card selection to set yourself up.

Other cantrips like Ponder and Gitaxian Probe are banned in the Modern format, with the latter also banned in Legacy. Brainstorm, which is very popular in Legacy, has never been printed in a Modern legal set. The unbanning of Preordain is a pretty big deal in the format and can fit in a lot of decks that play .

$23.99 $22.99

Preordain has 12 prints, is of common rarity, and has even been reprinted very recently in Commander Legends. And to be honest, since it has just been unbanned in Modern, I wouldn't be surprised if it shows up in Modern Horizons 3 in 2024. There ought to be plenty of copies around, and that's why we see the most spikes in special printings. We see the same effect in Brainstorm, where you should be able to find copies between $1 and $2, and can fetch quite the price for special or foil versions.

Preordain	CardKingdom $2.99	TCGPlayer $1.91
Preordain	CardKingdom $4.99	TCGPlayer $5.54
Preordain	CardKingdom $9.49	TCGPlayer $6.95
Preordain	CardKingdom	TCGPlayer $7.43
Preordain	CardKingdom $22.99	TCGPlayer $23.99

#2 Creative Technique $8.99 (+799%)

Remember: "Legacy does not drive prices!" That's one sentence you'll often encounter, or used to, anyway, when reading about Magic finance. But in the past few months we have seen several cards move up because of this format. The most recent was Mind's Desire. And here we have another card that found its way into a Legacy archetype.

The deck aims to resolve Creative Technique, making you flip the cards from the top of your library until you reveal a nonland card, which you get to cast. If you get to flip Emrakul, the Aeons Torn, chances are, you're winning that game. However, there are plenty of other cards in the deck of which its more likely that you'll flip one of those. The deck is focused around spells with Cascade, where Creative Technique is the lowest mana value of spells in the deck. This means that if you don't flip your Emrakul, you'll flip another expensive card with Cascade. Which means you will always hit another copy of Creative Technique to cast. This way, even if you fail to hit Emrakul with Creative Technique, you get to keep casting copies of Creative Technique, putting all these huge creatures into play which gain haste through Maelstrom Wanderer, or you have sufficient Boarding Partys on the battlefield.

What is very important to note on the card is the Demonstrate ability. This is a trigger on cast, meaning it can give your opponent and yourself a copy of Creative Technique. This means your opponent now needs to have two counterspells to prevent you from doing your thing. And the same holds true for Cascade, which is a triggered ability upon casting the spell, meaning that if you get to cast Boarding Party, you get to Cascade into the Creative Technique and get the ball rolling. The main issue of the deck seems to be that it's relatively slow compared to a Reanimator or Storm deck.

Because of the deck showing up in MTGO Challenges, the card has jumped from about a dollar to $9. You can see the deck in action on YouTube. And while it's been in the spotlight recently, it seems like it also showed up in a tournament somewhere in January.

Creative Technique	CardKingdom $4.49	TCGPlayer $3.12
Creative Technique (Extended Art)	CardKingdom $6.99	TCGPlayer $5.50

#3 Taunt from the Rampart $2.96 (+101%)

Sometimes when you want to stay ahead of the curve in Magic prices, you simply need to follow the right people. A content creator showcasing a deck on their stream or channel can boost prices of a card. Especially if the deck does well, and features a previously unknown strategy in that format. But it doesn't always need to be a deck to do well. An article can definitely do the trick if it talks about a card. Or sometimes even a tweet is all it takes.

At the end of June, in Weekly Winners 2023 - 26, we talked about Raise the Palisade going up. Back then I couldn't find much to prove of why this card was moving up as quickly as it did all of the sudden, except for one person making a tweet about it. And it seems like this week that is happening as well. Tomer, from MTGGoldfish, tweeted about this card on the 9th of August. But when looking at the chart, it does seem like it was already moving up two days before that. And to be fair, in the Riders of Rohan precon where it was printed, there are also plenty of new commanders that it can be played in.

The card slots into almost any Boros decks that exist now and in the future. It makes sure you can't be attacked for a turn cycle (except for new hasty creatures), you get to attack your opponents without them being able to block, and your opponents can potentially kill each other since they have to attack. Seems pretty powerful for only five mana.

All-in-all it seems like a pretty good card to play.

Taunt from the Rampart	CardKingdom $6.49	TCGPlayer $5.23
Taunt from the Rampart (Extended Art)	CardKingdom $6.49	TCGPlayer $5.50

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.

Escape to the Wilds (Extended Art) $3.57 - Moving up!

Escape to the Wilds (Extended Art) has been identified by the upcoming MTGStocks Premium Rapid Riches feature. This feature tracks the buylist prices of stores and identifies the ones that they feel they should buy more of. Be the first one to be able to use this feature by being a Premium member!

Sword of War and Peace $7.40 - Moving down

Sword of Once and Future $5.00 - Slowly moving down

Escape to the Wilds (Extended Art)	CardKingdom $2.99	TCGPlayer $3.31
Sword of War and Peace	CardKingdom $6.99	TCGPlayer $6.64
Sword of Once and Future	CardKingdom $4.49	TCGPlayer $3.94

 

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