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Welcome back everyone to another edition of Budget-Focused! Before we dive into all of that, I wanted to note that Quickling foils have been on the rise as of late! I highlighted this in an article a few months back that you can read here. There are even a few other gems mentioned that you should acquire as well if you have not already. Today, we shift gears a bit off the older cards of the Pioneer trail and look at some Zendikar Rising favorites to keep an eye on!
Another Toy for Sram and Feather Brews?
Akiri, Fearless Voyager is a card that, to me, screams Commander and Pioneer. The extended art foils and foil promos seem the most interesting. The current price for promos is at $2 and the foil extended art is coming in at around $15, with the foil extended art version starting to trend downward. I recommend keeping an eye on these, as we'll soon be nearing the floor.
Looking into where this can be used should be relatively simple. Immediately, Sram Commander decks come to mind as Akiri deals with equipment. Keep in mind that Sram cannot be the commander using this card, I'm just referencing the style of build this would fit into. Anything that can give us extra card advantage is a bonus to any build, especially more aggro decks prone to board wipes. Additionally, we can get behind using this in a Feather, the Redeemed build in Pioneer, or other decks utilizing equipment cards in the format.
The ability to unattach an equipment card to give a creature indestructible is another factor to consider with this, as it adds depth to a defensive scheme. Boros Weenie styled brews will really benefit from this in the case of a board wipe play. Overall, this may seem narrow, but the upside is worth noting and keeping an eye on long-term.
The Spirit That's Turning Heads
Skyclave Apparition is another card with long term potential. The extended art foil is already kind of high for budget-minded players sitting at $14.54. The thing we need to note here is that it is being used in both Modern and Legacy, which is great for long term value as we know. In Pioneer, it could easily be shoved into spirit builds given its lower-cmc and control ability. The ability to exile a threat for only 3 mana is huge, especially in a format like Pioneer.
The other thing to note here is that even when it is removed, the exiled card stays exiled. The downside is that your opponent gets an X/X Illusion token. It's far easier to play around a vanilla threat in most situations, so no biggie all things considered. Nonetheless, the upside of speed and control outweigh the only con with this card. This is one that could potentially hit over the $25.00 range long-term given its usage in Pioneer, among other eternal formats.
A Mana Rock to Get Long-Term
The current price for Skyclave RelicExtended art foils is at $8.40, but has plenty of room to grow. There are plenty of artifact-focused Commander lists that could benefit from its unique kicker effect, creating two additional token copies of itself. Being indestructible adds even more value to this, in case our opponents are packing artifact destruction. As more Zendikar Rising packs are opened, this will likely trend downward, making it an attractive spec in the very near future.
In Pioneer, this has the potential to be utilized in both ramp and lotus filed styled brews. Regarding a long-term price, I wouldn't be surprised if this approached the $20.00 range should it see more widespread adoption in Commander.
Mill's New Favorite Crab?
Ruin Crab extended border foils are near guaranteed to go up and price as time goes on. Foils are $3.00 on average, and given the casual appeal of this card, I think this is a steal. Compare this to another crab we are all familiar with, Hedron Crab. The current price for Hedron Crab foils is $23.00 on average. Now, one could argue that Hedron crab has only a non-foil, a foil copy, and the mystery booster print, whereas Ruin Crab has four printings in total.
The reason for Ruin Crab to go up is simple: Commander. Looking at the text on both crabs, one word sticks out, and that word is “each”. Hitting each player versus target player is something every mill commander player will love! Sure, there may be situations that you would rather target a specific player to mill, but the ability to mill each player has more advantage over targeting in a multiplayer game. If Hedron Crab foils over $20.00 are any indication, there is no reason the extended art Ruin Crab foils won't exceed a $10.00 price tag.
Relic Robber: Great for Gobbos and More!
Relic Robber extended art foils are our last diamond in the rough for this article. The current price for this is at $1.55 on average with plenty of room for growth. The price has gone down a bit since its release, but it should bounce back. Relic Robber seems like an auto-include in goblin tribal Commander decks, but also just compliments red decks in general. Creating pingers is fantastic, but there is another angle to consider with them. Having creatures on the board that ping your opponent(s) when creatures die is where this can come into play.
A converted mana cost of three may be a bit steep for this effect, but the upside is certainly there if this connects with an opponent. Playing this any time turn three or later is a benefit to us. This isn't necessarily a build-around card in most brews, aggressive, combat-focused decks could do some serious damage with this. Accelerating this out early with the various fast mana available in Commander isn't so tough, and it can get ugly for our opponents very quickly given an empty board and a lack of board wipes. The current price tag should not hold long term, and it could easily be over the $5.00 range.
Wrapping It Up
Wrapping up things today, I will say to keep a close eye on Zendikar Rising extended art cards going forward. There are others that we didn't touch on here that have great potential in the future. This set has a slew of interesting cards that have a lot of great synergies, and the hunt for Expeditions in collector boosters will ensure that these cards hit the market en masse.
Hope you all enjoyed the article, and be sure to come back for the next installment!
The problem is that Standard is far slower than Modern and has worse answers. This let Omnath sit on the board more often and accrue value. Or, even better, take advantage of weak aggro decks and let Omnath hang out in hand until the time was optimal to cast it, play a land to trigger the lifegain, follow up with Fertile Footsteps, trigger the mana ability, then end the game with Escape to the Wilds. Modern's aggro decks kill on turn four and usually have some kind of disruption, so the optimal Omnath line isn't possible. And this isn't counting how much harder four-color decks have it in a format with Blood Moon and 
The only ramp comes from 2 Growth Spirals. The rest of the spells are interactive, with the only constants being 4 Path to Exile. Everything else is negotiable or a metagame call.
The problem is that the four-color value lists, whether this Field/Uro centric or not, are massively durdly. To the point of actively doing nothing a lot of the time. In testing, Uro's had to mulligan very aggressively for hands that did anything. I'm not even talking about curving well, I literally mean that a lot of hands I've pulled have just done squat, playing a turn 3 Uro at most. Most of the problem is that the deck is exactly 48.3% lands. Most hands will be mostly lands by simple math.
thought must go into each fetch because, doing it even slightly wrong will severely constrain available mana down the line. And that's not getting into the additional calculations for Cryptic Command and Mystic Sanctuary. This is a deck that wants to and must hit every land drop perfectly.
makes you dream about crushing opponents that thoroughly again. Which is my explanation for the deck's popularity; gotta chase that high (variance sequence).
splutter out due to unreachable color requirements. Copycat doesn't have to get a Triome first then hit another fetch or die every game! That alone is reason to switch.
No clever deck titles here -- 
David wrote 
Needleverge finds its stride in a deck like this one, that doesn't fetch but loves painless, flexible lands to smooth out its mana. Thanks to the new land, Ideal has little trouble stretching to splash red, which affords it access to heavy-duty land hate in Blood Moon and Boil.
I have been playing and working on Death and Taxes (hereafter: DnT) for 
I won plenty of local events over the years thanks to correctly anticipating metagames and preparing accordingly. However, whenever I took DnT to wider metas, it just couldn't compete. The power and universality wasn't there. And Humans did a lot of the same things but with a faster clock, so why bother with the pet project? Until 2020, of course. DnT has exploded over the past month thanks to Zendikar Rising. So today I'll be looking at these finally successful builds and breaking down the card choices.
This is Parrit's deck from their best result so far, but honestly, I could have picked any event. Parrit's maindeck hasn't noticeably changed since Rising released online. This player is also personally responsible for close to half of DnT's results so far, so I had choices, but it makes the most sense to go with the best result.
The key to the deck are the eight disruptive creatures, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and Leonin Arbiter. I might have seen one list that didn't run full sets of each. Without these speedbumps, DnT cannot keep up with the rest of Modern. Thalia is better than Arbiter in the sense that noncreature spells see more play, and the tax is more consistently disruptive than soft search prevention, but that's balanced by Lava Dart. Arbiter is crippling against unprepared decks and makes Ghost Quarter into Strip Mine while Path to Exile becomes the best removal spell ever.
Both creatures form the heart of the deck. The trick is knowing which one is more relevant. As mentioned above, DnT is very much a deck that requires and rewards format knowledge. Given a choice, it is highly contextual which one to play first: not just the opponent's deck must be considered, but also how your own turns will play out. Playing Arbiter may or may not cripple the opponent's mana development, but it will make it harder to cast Stoneforge for several turns. Thalia may stunt the opponent's gameplan, but will also tax Path. Planning ahead and knowing what's most important in the matchup is key.
Stoneforge Mystic is the card advantage engine in the deck. In the past, it wasn't clear that she was better than the traditional Blade Splicer advantage engine, but every list I've seen so far has been on Stoneforge, so that's no longer the case. Despite 
Equipping on entry is huge by itself, but it also synergizes with Flickerwisp. Thus, it has functions as a combat trick, stalemate breaker, and a normal equipment. A very strong pickup.
Giver has always suffered from not being Mother of Runes. Gaining a point of toughness and the ability to protect from colorless cards is solid, but not being able to protect herself really let the side down. In a world where Jund was a big player, it was too easy for Step-Mom of Runes to die uselessly. In Legacy, Bolting an untapped, active Mom ensures a two-for-one since she'll protect herself from the first Bolt. In Modern, it's no risk to Bolt Step-Mom, then Bolt whatever she tries to protect. I kept running Thraben Inspector over Giver as a result.
Archon of Emeria
Angel is the old standby, and is at her best in a grindy metagame. Blanking even a single removal spell can be backbreaking against Jund or control. Being a 3/4 is also frequently relevant, and when blocking is essential, Resto will always be my pick. Current builds are not the best place for her, as there's no special way to get any value except blinking Apparition. Blocking isn't great right now given Prowess, and true attrition is down. Jund is Tier 2 and Omnath is about drawing lots of cards. The lower removal counts in the Omnath decks do make a single blink far more valuable, but on the whole I think Resto isn't the call, at least this month.
I have a strained relationship with this card. On the one hand, it is the best hard-counter for search effects in white and phenomenal against Primeval Titan, Scapeshift, and Bring to Light. On the other, Mindcensor has a long history of making promises to me it couldn't keep, dating back to failing to prevent Dragonstorm from going off five times at 2007 Regionals. Mindcensor can't prevent the opponent just having it, and counting on it does just lead to heartbreak. I think that having a few in the 75 is a good idea given how the meta is moving. However, the body is fragile enough and effect narrow enough I'd keep Mindcensor in the sideboard.
Every mono-white DnT list I've seen is running 23 lands. A few Boros lists run 21-22 because they're swapping a Field of Ruin or two for Cleansing Wildfire, but they're outliers. The overall breakdown has also very consistently been 11 Plains, 12 utility lands. The utility lands are typically distributed as 4 Horizon lands, 4 Ghost Quarter, 4 Field of Ruin. Again, as of writing, this specific distribution is at least 90% of the lists I've processed, so I'd call it the default. The main deviations are whether to run Horizon Canopy, Silent Clearing, or Sunbaked Canyon, and it really doesn't matter.
Eiganjo does nothing against Lightning Bolt, rarely saves Thalia in combat, and requires two mana to stop a Lava Dart. It's a pale shadow of Karakas and I wouldn't bother.
Forge-Tender is a very good card in a format where specific red spells need to be answered and/or blocked and/or Anger of the Gods is everywhere. This is pretty accurate at the moment. The issue is that Auriok Champion is generally better in more matchups, especially the Scourge of the Skyclaves decks that have started spiking up. Also, given Champion's popularity, a lot of decks are giving up on Anger in favor of Kozilek's Return. Therefore, I'd run Champion as my anti-red card and pack Selfless Spirit for sweepers.
If the only deck that needed Relic-Warder as an answer was Affinity, that would be ok. Exiling a counter-laden creature is very good. However, the main decks with artifacts run Karn, the Great Creator. This lets them wish for Torpor Orb, and most do run a copy. Orb means all the ETB creatures are effectively textless, which means no answers to the Ensnaring Bridge follow-up. For that reason, DnT is better off with Disenchant or Revoke Existence.
To make the tier list, a given deck has to beat the overall average population for the month. The average is my estimate for how many results a given deck "should" produce on MTGO. To be a tiered deck requires being better than "good enough". For September, the average population was 8.37, meaning that a deck needed 9 results to beat the average and make Tier 3. Then, we go one standard deviation above average to set the limit of Tier 3 and cutoff to Tier 2. The Stdev was 9.71, so that means add 10 results and Tier 2 starts with 20 results and runs to 30. Another Stdev above that is Tier 1, meaning 31 decks or more.
On that note, Humans is second place with 37 results after spending August just barely squeaking over the Tier 3 threshold with 8. That's not an increase, that's an explosion, more akin to the deck's 
Tier 1. Mono-Red did improve itself, moving from Tier 3 to 2 with ten additional results. However, that's still a net loss of eleven decks from the top three prowess decks. And unlike in August, I didn't record any other variants that just didn't make the Tierings.
The numbers never tell the full picture. The Mark Twain 
Tracking the metagame in terms of population is standard practice. However, how do results actually factor in? Better decks should also have better results. In an effort to measure this, I've started using a power ranking system in addition to the prevalence list.
If Tier 1 was small and static, then it's Tier 2 where everything is happening. The power Tier 2 is larger than the population one, and is very different in rankings, too. This again indicates that power was more evenly distributed in September compared to August, and decks had a harder time outshining each other. I'd also like to draw attention to Ad Nauseam moving up from Tier 3 to being fourth place in Tier 2. The deck was clearly being underestimated in September and was able to rack up the points despite not being popular. Which may help to explain Humans's rise as an anti-combo deck.
