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Hello, everyone and welcome to a new edition of the Daily Stock Watch! The spoiler season for Ultimate Masters is just a week away, and market movement has been relatively quiet as everyone awaits what other cards could be inside it once the spoilers are up. Since it would be a bit tricky to speculate on what could be in there, let's try to focus on the other cards that will be directly affected by the reprints from the new set. The card I like to talk about today is one that has plunged to its all-time low as of writing time, but is expected to bounce back soon when archetypes that would need its services start to emerge as real threats in both Standard and Modern. I didn't expect I'd be writing about this card on this segment anytime soon, but I feel that now's the time to do it.
Down to $17.38 after starting off as a $34.99, the window of opportunity for those who'd like to speculate on it had just opened up at the right time. I was quite expecting this financial drop for the card after tons of Guilds of Ravnica products have been opened up and the lack of success from Abzan and Jund variants in Modern. In fact, Golgari has been experiencing some success in Standard prior to the Boros invasion over the weekend and they still barely use the card in their main decks. For reference, take a look at this list from one of the top eight players from MTGO's Standard PTQ.
Golgari Aggro
It's actually weird that the best possible single target removal in the deck is a single copy, but such is the case for Golgari in Standard because it relies a lot on its planeswalkers to do this job. Vraska's Contempt is way higher on the curve than Assassin's Trophy, but it doesn't reward the opponent with a basic land and the ability to return the permanent (the contempt exiles while the trophy just destroys) to play or your opponent's hand. This was how Golgari built their decks prior to the blitzkrieg that Boros was, so it's exciting to see if they will adjust for cheaper removals by adding more Assassin's Trophy and going for less Vraska's Contempt. If that happens, expect more trophies to be added to lists and some price increase for it if the deck punishes the Boros Aggro that is popular right now.
The Ultimate Masters Effect
Have you been aching to play Jund for the longest time but think that the deck is very expensive despite its lack of success? I guess WotC just alleviated your problems in UMA (even though no Dark Confidant was spoiled). I'd go back to the same logic that made Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle spike in the first place, so I'm assuming that Assassin's Trophy would enjoy the same boost from the abundance of Jund pieces in UMA. I haven't seen an Abzan midrange variant succeed in Modern for a while now, so I'm not really sure if one would appear in the near future (or even Sultai) to make fair gaming a thing in Modern again. After all, it was the promise of a "fair deck's return" in Modern that made this card pricey to begin with.
At the moment, StarCityGames is out of stock of this card while Card Kingdom has a few left at $17.99, and other vendors via TCGPlayer has it for as low as $12.00 It might be a conscious effort from the big stores to zero out their stocks to boost its price just in time for the holiday season where sales and tournaments will both be abundant. I would go for any copy below $15 because I expect this card to recover in the near future, and be a strong removal in a year's time. The same is expected for its foil copies, and I would be going hard for that one at below $45. You can't go wrong with this card at the said prices.
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!
