Editorial Section:
Another week here, another week gone. We have a decent amount of new products and items in the pipeline. Elspeth vs Tezzeret, Elspeth Breaking, From the Vault: Relics.... Scars of Mirrodin teasers...
So where to begin? I'll probably start with the smallest impact (overall) and work forwards. To that end, the fact that Elspeth has been broken into a useless lump of bits. The change is likely due to the additional Command Zone which is where her Emblem of "x/y/z are indestructible" will live. Early thoughts are that this will be the zone where poison counters may live as well. And of course this is the zone that commanders will live instead of the Exile zone. If the assumptions are correct then the fact that we're getting this right now will help to alleviate some of the issues when more things begin to use the new zone.
Next up is Scars of Mirrodin teasers. MTGSalvation has a great thread with the compilation of new arts for Scars of Mirrodin. These have been picked through pretty well but just the names alone have gotten me interested in some cards and combinations. Cards like Darksteel Axe sound like a great way to keep Phylactery Lich on the board. Other cards like Mox Opal, which have been talked about a ton, but still. MOX. And OPAL. Okay, so, a solitary "Opal" isn't that amazing, but the mox part is. I wonder what balance they'll add to it and what restrictions, if any, it'll have. It almost appears to be having a humanizing impact on the holder. If so, I start to wonder if it forces a loss of artifacts each turn, or requires an artifact sacrifice of some sort. I am eagerly awaiting the full text for this card.
The first item I'll cover quickly is Elspeth vs Tezzeret's duel deck configuration. The first thing you'll notice is that there are two new frame Swords to Plowshares in each. The last place we could get them was from the Coldsnap Precons. These will be hot commodities for those two alone. On top of them, you get a couple new Scars of Mirrodin preview cards (abilities unknown) to toy around with. Looking through the lists there are a lot of one and two of's that are solid in older and casual formats.
But that's small potatoes compared to the new products that are on their way! On August 30th, 2010 we'll be seeing some of the craziest cards come to MTGO for Elder Dragon Highlander (Commander) and MTGO in general. Dangerlinto has already written a beautiful Ode to Sol Ring. Sol Ring, for those who are unfamiliar with it, is like a Mox in that it accelerates your mana each turn and gets you further and further ahead for resource availability. If you haven't seen the amazing power of this card consider yourself very lucky indeed. The speed at which your opponents can ramp up spells is amazing. The new art Mox Diamond is also staggeringly beautiful. And Nevinyrral's Disk is a staple for the EDH format as it provides board sweeping for every deck and style of commander. Even if you're only toying with the idea of getting into Commander, I would strongly urge you to pick these up. The likelihood of using these in the next two to four years is very high.
All in all, this looks like a very expensive fall for collectors and foil-chasers... and if I had to allocate funds, I'd probably lean towards purchasing the From the Vault item first followed closely by the Duel Deck in terms of long term worth.
Discussion Items:
Crazy Changes to the Payouts -
In July there was an uproar about the breakdown of the Urza's pack payouts and WotC responded and modified them. Then, shortly afterwards, things went back to the previous way and were heavily slanted towards specific packs in the payouts. Although after this change it appears to be more intentional than just an accident.
Mox Ruby art added:
Speculation abounds about why this art is being added at this exact time. Nothing more than speculation at this point of course, but still, it's an interesting turn of developments for sure.
Card Prices Discussions:
What a change a weekend can make. And by that, I mean the deck tech to appear from National's! Vengevine, Avenger, Ranger, Serra Ascendant and Felidar are all due to the powerful showings they've each had over the past week. Serra/Ranger/Felidar are all tied together a bit thanks to the newest deck from Conley Woods (Soul Sisters aka white weenie lifey gainey). Not to be outdone, Survival, Intuition and Doomsday all yelled "ME TOOSUS!" and went up-up-up in Legacy.
The biggest crash was Underground sea, which lost over four dollars since two weeks ago, likely due to the influx of more and more and more MED1, 2 and 3.
Card Price Tables:
Card Price Graphs:
vengevine chart
avenger of zendikar chart
survival of the fittest chart
primeval titan chart
inferno titan chart
ranger of eos chart
intuition chart
doomsday chart
serra ascendant chart
felidar sovereign chart
ranger of eos chart
luminarch ascension chart
serra ascendant chart
thought hemorrhage chart
inferno titan chart
darksteel colossus chart
admonition angel chart
student of warfare chart
summoning trap chart
awakening zone chart
underground sea chart
time warp chart
vampire nocturnus chart
entomb chart
tropical island chart
bitterblossom chart
maelstrom pulse chart
time warp chart
mutavault chart
taiga chart
traumatize chart
leyline of anticipation chart
platinum angel chart
nantuko shade chart
dark tutelage chart
mitotic slime chart
temple bell chart
troll ascetic chart
sword of vengeance chart
day of judgment chart
11 Comments
The funny thing about Conley Woods' deck is that we (AJ and I) were tinkering with variants of said ideas before Nats trying to get them to work in Tribal Wars Classic. I am certain others were working along the samelines (One guy brought a clerics deck with a similar theme to the PRE one weekend.) Of course when a pro brings the same deck its components become more valued.
Honestly it's kind of upsetting, but I suppose it's unavoidable. Every time some card(s) look interesting to me, or finally tank in price (Ranger of Eos), and I decide to go pick them up, some "pro" has top 14'd a large event, or wrote an article, and the card value increases by 500%! Ah well...
I hear that. I ended up selling my 2 rangers to finance some other decks I've been working on. The rise was good for me but I would have liked to have a spare for singleton use.
after readint his Im glad I picked up Felidar Sovereign for my mono white edh deck last week before nationals..phew.
Just glad I sold off all my dual lands when I did, theyre so good but such a capitol soak, and with events firing so often now and presumably for quite some time to come they seem likely to continue to go down gradually until med5 and med6 come out and 3 set drafts stop including dual sets. I would suspect FOW to begin to go up and break its old records once med4 is released for similar reasons (insightful I know). The Mox ruby art being released is pretty strong evidence that at least one mox will be included in the next set, maybe one mox and one other power card per med from now on. Like one mox + one of time walk, ancestral, black lotus, and time twister per set. Seems like a reasonable way to go to me if they reprint FOW with one of them as an alternate "power" card to fill out a 2fer for each set.
I think they said somewhere that FoW will be getting reprinted online anymore, so I finally broke down and picked mine up for the "bargain price of 75 a piece >.<
One Mox per MED would be awkward I think, especially when we don't know how many more MED's there will actually be. I'm also not in the crowd that says the added art is undeniable evidence, but I'm DAMN hopeful. Regardless, they've already printed FoW and Duals, so they're gonna have to do something big to make MED4 relevant, and as much as I want Wheel of Fortune, Sinhole and Channel, I wouldn't consider them "big" at all.
What really has my mind going though is the implications of printing ANY P9 online. They're an obvious auto-ban in every format but Classic, but Classic is so poorly supported, what incentive does WotC have to add to it? Add this to the long list of comments where I say Vintage is coming to MTGO with MED4!
The price charts are missing Linvala, Keeper of Silence. She's up from $4.00 to $10.75 in the last week.
Eventually they will probably add all the power nine so that they can have sanctioned events in Vintage and legacy.
Am I the only one making this connection? Doubtful, but I havent heard it from anyone yet....
As Hammy notes, the card's art seems to indicate that the person taking possession of it is becoming less of an artifact. Taking this to mean you would need to get rid of an artifact as a drawback makes sense.
However - there is a PILE of MTG cards with the word Opal in them that all have the same exact drawback, that they don't become useful until the opponent casts a creature spell. If you reverse the loss of artifact in that guys hand, it could be an increase in creature.
Mox Opal (0)
When an opponent casts a creature spell, choose a color. Mox opal gains: "T: Add one mana of the chosen color to your mana pool."
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Missing some neat stuff in the price change charts. Wouldnt want anyone to go without knowing....
Linvala 3.25-10.75
Renegade Doppelganger 0.12-1.75
Extractor Demon 0.40-1.75
Best regards -
Correction Hammy. If you are talking about the art for Mox Ruby being in the Pics directory, it has been there for almost 2 months now, along with every other card from Alpha and Beta, yes that included Ancestral Recall. Not sure what all the commotion is about, unless people are thinking those will be in Master's 4.
the commotion is because they made a point to mention they fixed card art...they rarely mentioned card art. Hence people are freaking out that this is 'clearly a sign' mox ruby is in med4