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Daily Stock Watch – Spellskite

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Hello, everyone and welcome to a new edition of the Daily Stock Watch! Pre-release weekend is near and everyone's hyped for Assassin's Trophy Guilds of Ravnica. The return of fair decks in Modern is coming as they say, so everyone who will be trying to take care of their prized possessions from the hottest thing in town should find a new tech that will keep their permanents from becoming a basic land. There aren't too many cheap cards out there that could get the job done with maximum efficiency, so I'm going to spec on one that could pretty much fit every deck in Modern if the need for it arises.

There was an error retrieving a chart for Spellskite

If you don't want your Teferi, Hero of Dominaria or Karn Liberated to become an Island or Forest, here's something that could take the hit for you. Although recent memory tells us that decks don't rely too much now on one card to beat everyone else, a decent strategy still entails the need for a key card to survive (Krark-Clan Ironworks, any of the Urzatron lands that helps it get to big mana territory, Jace, the Mind Sculptor) without having to lose it for a two CMC spell that just erases anything. I'm no Nostradamus, but I like how Spellskite is positioned to be a decent hoser to a very powerful card if BGx decks really do get back on track and start to dominate once more. As a matter of fact, we don't have to look too far ahead to the coming BGx days to appreciate how good Spellskite is right now.

Infect

Creatures

4 Blighted Agent
4 Glistener Elf
1 Ichorclaw Myr
4 Noble Hierarch
1 Spellskite

Other Spells

1 Apostle's Blessing
3 Become Immense
1 Rancor
4 Blossoming Defense
1 Dismember
3 Groundswell
4 Might of Old Krosa
4 Mutagenic Growth
1 Spell Pierce
4 Vines of Vastwood

Lands

2 Breeding Pool
1 Dryad Arbor
2 Forest
4 Inkmoth Nexus
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Pendelhaven
1 Temple Garden
3 Verdant Catacombs
2 Windswept Heath
1 Wooded Foothills

Sideboard

1 Dismember
1 Dispel
3 Geist of Saint Traft
2 Grafdigger's Cage
3 Nature's Claim
1 Shapers' Sanctuary
2 Spell Pierce
1 Spellskite
1 Viridian Corrupter

It's so hard to beat an Infect deck that has a turn one creature followed up by a turn two Spellskite. This puts the defending player in a precarious position to lose by turn three or four based on the pump spells that the Infect player has. Spellskite does the nasty job of protecting it from two to three damage burn spells, Fatal Push, Path to Exile, or Dismember. It also does the same thing in Counters Company's approach to combo-ing out by protecting the key pieces of the deck such as Devoted Druid, Vizier of Remedies, and Duskwatch Recruiter until it could power out the other pieces needed to go infinite. Without having too much of a payoff to use its ability, (two life to salvage a permanent from becoming a basic land) I don't see why people can't resort to Spellskite to save their beloved cards from Assassin's Trophy.

Spellskite Will Hose These

There are tons of other cards out there that Spellskite could save you or your permanents from whenever it has the chance to do so. As a Hardened Affinity player, I hate Spellskite to the guts as it could easily prevent you from going bananas with your artifacts by slamming everything to Arcbound Ravager before giving it to Inkmoth Nexus. Spellskite would easily eat those modular counters if you're not aware, and that's a one card blowout if it catches you off-guard. I will stop overselling the card for what it can do but I think that at $8, there's a lot of room for financial growth when the new set comes in and the meta just goes BGx for Modern. It's another low risk/high reward investment in my opinion.

At the moment, you could still get copies of Spellskite from StarCityGames, Card Kingdom, and TCGPlayer vendors for as low as $6.94 (lightly played condition) up to $8.99 (near mint) for non-foil copies. I love how the Judge foil version of this card is positioned right now, and I don't think that we would be losing a lot of cash for speculating on this if it doesn't turn out as I expect it to. If you're with me on this, now's the time to pull the trigger.

And that’s it for today’s edition of the Daily Stock Watch! See you again next time, as we check out a new card that should be on the go, or good enough for speculating. As always, feel free to share your opinion in the comments section below. And if you want to keep up with all the market movement, be sure to check in with the QS Discord Channel for real time market information, and stay ahead of the hottest specs!

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