Weekly Winners 2023 - 47

This week is all about The Lost Caverns of Ixalan. Dinosaurs are so hot right now, and Discover truly is the fixed Cascade. Also make sure you catch our Black Friday deal!

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

• In 5 Reserved List Cards to Watch in a Sideways Market, Harvey explores the potential of select Reserved List cards as valuable investments in the current fluctuating MTG market, offering insights into their historical and current pricing trends.
• In Commander Staples from Lost Caverns of Ixalan, Steve delves into the potential of new cards from the Lost Caverns of Ixalan set to become Commander staples, analyzing their financial prospects and comparing them to existing cards in terms of utility and value.
• Corey's article, Battles in Magic: the Gathering - a Retrospective, delves into the innovative card design introduced in the March of the Machine set, analyzing the successes and shortcomings of the battle card type and its potential future in Magic.
• Max's Which Printing of Cavern of Souls Should you Buy? offers a comprehensive analysis of the various printings of the Cavern of Souls Magic card, ranking them from most to least expensive to help players decide which variant to purchase.

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MTGStocks Premium: Black Friday Offer

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You can check out the tiers on the Premium page. Here you can find two tiers: Uncommon, which helps support MTGStocks and lets you enjoy ad-free browsing, and Mythic, where you'll get to experience all new features.

Onto the Weekly Winners!

#1 Tishana's Tidebinder $19.00 (+234%)

It's been a week since The Lost Caverns of Ixalan was released on paper, and in the Interests you can spot a lot of cards from these sets. Generally cards that have just released are on a downtrend, since the supply is going up - but not all cards. Some appear to be more popular than anticipated. One of these cards is Tishana's Tidebinder. This is a 3/2 Merfolk with flash that can counter an activated or triggered ability when it enters. And if the ability was from an artifact, creature, or planeswalker, that permanent loses all abilities until Tishana's Tidebinder leaves the battlefield.

So for you get to counter an ability, and then neuter the permanent it came from. That's not bad. It's likely that this card will quickly find a home at least in Commander, especially around popular Merfolk commanders like Kumena, Tyrant of Orazca, who we briefly touched on last week when Ripples of Potential spiked. But since The Lost Caverns of Ixalan has more Merfolk to offer, it stands to reason that we also have new commanders like Hakbal of the Surging Soul.

$1.40 $0.99

However, it seems like Tishana's Tidebinder isn't spiking just because of its Commander appeal. It's seeing play in other constructed formats, most notably in Modern. Recently during the Eternal Weekend at the Modern main event, a Four-Color Rhinos deck went 7-0-2 with three copies of Tishana's Tidebinder in it. The Merfolk also seems to be catching on in these decks on MTGO.

We've also seen the card showing up a bit in Legacy and Pioneer Merfolk builds. Being a permanent Stifle really has a lot of uses.

Tishana's Tidebinder	CardKingdom $13.99	TCGPlayer $19.00
Tishana's Tidebinder (Borderless)	CardKingdom $13.99	TCGPlayer $15.83

#2 Trumpeting Carnosaur $8.94 (+252%)

Here's another card from The Lost Caverns of Ixalan, and this time we have a big fat Dino. It spiked this week because of Pioneer, but for a different kind of shell. Remember the Discover mechanic? You know, the fixed Cascade? Turns out, to everyone's surprise, that it's arguably stronger than Cascade. You'll find it in the new Four-Color Discover decks.

 

In this deck you want to play Geological Appraiser, with which you will find either Glasspool Mimic or Eldritch Evolution. Regardless of which one you'll hit, you'll end up casting an Evolution. With that sorcery you'll find Trumpeting Carnosaur so you'll keep on Discovering. Once you have a huge board of creatures, you will find Doomskar Titan which will give all your creatures +1/+0 and haste, and you swing for lethal. 

But we have another curious card moving up this week because of this deck (probably). We're talking about Magma Opus. In May of this year we discussed this card. When you play this instant you get to deal four damage divided as you choose, create a 4/4, tap two permanents, and draw two cards. But there's a downside here: it costs eight mana to cast. However, it's rarely cast for its regular mana cost. Even when it was Standard legal people used to play it with Hinata, Dawn-Crowned. Now it sees play in Pioneer in Izzet Creativity decks where it's a great target for Torrential Gearhulk.

So how does Magma Opus fit in to the Discover deck? Well, in the early turns you can simply use its ability to discard it and create a Treasure token, so you'll be able to pull off the combo a turn earlier. For the same reason you'll find Elemental Masterpiece in the decklist. However, the latter one is a common, while Magma Opus is a rare.

But we're not done yet. There's another card on the Interests for this very reason: Quintorius Kand. For five mana you can downtick Quintorius and Discover! Quintorius has a static ability as well: whenever you cast a spell from exile, it deals two damage to your opponents and you gain two life. Remember that when you Discover, you're casting from exile. If your opponent's life total is low enough, you may even get to kill them without attacking.

Magma Opus	CardKingdom $4.99	TCGPlayer $6.58
Magma Opus (Extended Art)	CardKingdom $7.99	TCGPlayer $7.20
Geological Appraiser	CardKingdom $0.49	TCGPlayer $0.30
Eldritch Evolution	CardKingdom $4.49	TCGPlayer $4.27
Trumpeting Carnosaur	CardKingdom $8.99	TCGPlayer $8.94
Doomskar Titan	CardKingdom $0.35	TCGPlayer $0.20

#3 Monster Manual $12.77 (+115%)

About seven weeks ago we discussed this card. This rare was originally printed in Commander Legends: Battle for Baldur's Gate, but when the Wilds of Eldraine came out with all of its Adventures, this card went up since it perfectly fits the same theme - especially when played in decks around Beluna Grandsquall, for example. The Zoological Study part is a sorcery that mills five cards, and then returns a milled creature card to your hand. The other part is an artifact with an Elvish Piper effect, but arguably harder to remove than Piper since it's not a creature.

A card like this is best suited in a deck that plays a bunch of expensive creatures, since we want to be able to cheat them out for a far lower cost. With the release of The Lost Caverns of Ixalan a certain creature type has received a lot more cards that fits this description: Dinosaurs. These are usually big expensive creatures that we would love to simply "vial" into play for only .

Monster Manual sees play in decks around the Adventure theme, like I mentioned before, but also in decks around Baru, Wurmspeaker (Extended Art). Wurms are also expensive powerful creatures, but Dinosaurs are more relevant than ever. With Pantlaza, Sun-Favored printed, it also received a new commander that can fit a lot of colors, and with the Discover ability being as powerful as it is, this definitely is going to be a deck that people are playing.

Monster Manual	CardKingdom $6.49	TCGPlayer $12.77
Monster Manual (Extended Art)	CardKingdom $6.99	TCGPlayer $8.88
Pantlaza, Sun-Favored	CardKingdom $2.99	TCGPlayer $3.76

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.

Faerie Slumber Party $2.25 - Moving up!

Faerie Slumber Party has been identified by the MTGStocks Premium Penny Stocks feature as a card that has reached its bottom and is starting a consistent uptrend.

Fiery Emancipation $3.46 - Moving down slowly

Rodolf Duskbringer $7.49 - Slowly moving down

Faerie Slumber Party	CardKingdom $1.99	TCGPlayer $2.20
Fiery Emancipation	CardKingdom $2.99	TCGPlayer $3.49
Rodolf Duskbringer	CardKingdom	TCGPlayer $7.47

 

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