Dragon's Maze is scheduled to be released May 3, 2013 and will contain 156 cards.

About Quiet Speculation's Dragon's Maze Spoiler Coverage:

A team of Quiet Speculation contributors will be following the gradual spoiling of the upcoming Magic: The Gathering set, Dragon's Maze. Stay tuned to this page for insights from some of the brightest minds in the MTG Finance community on the noteworthy mechanics, cards and guilds.

Wanna know how we did on Return to Ravnica and Gatecrash? Check out our coverage (and note Sigmund's spec on Angel of Serenity) of Return to Ravnica here and Gatecrash here.

And if you're an Insider, be sure to check out the Spoiler Season section of the QS forums for more Gatecrash discussion.

Release Date	May 3, 2013
Prerelease Events	April 27-28, 2013
Magic Online Release	May 13, 2013
Pro Tour Dragon's Maze	May 17-19, 2013
Official Three-Letter Code	DGM
Twitter Hashtag	#MTGDGM
Number of Cards	156
Guilds	All ten

Latest Spoilers:

04/24/13- Gervaise's favourite picks

I have to be honest with you; my exams are coming up so I had to play the Delver of Secrets // Delver of Secrets the Accumulated Knowledge in the world of Business & Psychology.
Since Wizards have spoiled their whole set at http://www.wizards.com/magic/tcg/article.aspx?x=mtg/tcg/dragonsmaze/cig# I feel I can highlight my favourite finance picks/to watch cards.

For simplicity sake I will use http://www.ChannelFireball.com as Price benchmark.

CFB Now: $5.99
Acquire: Trade during prereleases
Rationale: This card needs to proof himself for being 'fit' in the relevant decks. I don't see this being good in aggro decks but more in midrangey decks. However I am not a professional player. I believe trading this card cheaply at 3-4$ will offer some opportunities. Buying this card is definitely not recommended as $5.99 is definitely overpriced.

 

CFB now: $0.49
Acquire: Trade at prerelease / stock up during the season
Rationale: This will be a casual hit wonder in EDH or any casual format at your local game store. Since he will be floating at 50cents up to a dollar, I always want to make sure I have one in my binder to catch the lucky trade. it is a Zombie. It is a Cleric. Most casual players will ''WOW'' at ''Other creatures you control have extort'' and their emotions will overwhelm their intellect (Overwhelming Intellect) with the awesome plays they can make. Instead of buying a pack of chewing gum, I am fine acquiring this throughout the season at $0.49.

 

CFB now: $3.99
Acquire: Trade
Rationale: It just looks like an expensive Maelstrom Pulse or any other GB benchmark card you can imagine (Pernicious Deed). These two benchmarks are expensive cards but I feel $3.99 looks cheap but I do not want to preorder this card. It is however on my wishlist to acquire during trades.
It sweeps though so in Standard it will provide a nice goodie card to Jund, Junk or straight GB. I am excited to see if this gets a home in midrange/control decks. If it fails to perform then it's a tough loss of 2-3 copies I am going to acquire by trade during the prerelease

 

CFB now: $5.99
Acquire: Trade or below $4 preorder
Rationale: I looked through the spoiler again and again. I found besides Vexing Devil, a Spike Jester:

 

Now I already wrote about Varolz and Vexing Devil. The addition of Spike Jester creates an interesting take on Jund Aggro expendable style. Now I prefer playing aggro decks due its simple pressure it can apply to players so if you can continue applying pressure post-wrath era (Supreme Verdict et al.), you mostly will be in the driver seat to victory. I am definitely excited to brew a Jund aggro deck and I think other Pro players have the same idea about this interaction. If there is one card I will be looking out for , it is Varolz. If all else fails, your exit plan is to trade away this Varolz with EDH/Casual players since it is a legendary creature in the GB dimension. Interact with me on Twitter if you agree or disagree with my thoughts! Thanks for reading and hope you have a wonderful prerelease!

 

04/21/13- Jason

Here's the deal. You're checking the spoilers on a primarily finance-themed website because you want to know about the financial impact of these cards. Are they going to make other stuff go up? Are they worth buying at their presale price? If you want playability assessments you'll go elsewhere. You're here because you want to make some money this spoiler season. With that in mind, I've gone through the latest batch of spoilers and picked out cards I think will matter finance wise. The spoiler season is drawing to a close and this week is crucial. With that in mind, let's get into some trouble.

Aetherling

I went through a range of emotions when I saw this card. First, I thought of Morphling, but a few seconds later, I thought of Windreaver. So which is it? Is Aetherling the finisher we deserve but not the one we need (huh?)?

Make no mistake, this guy costs 7 mana. That's pretty steep. However, if you're heavy blue, 7 mana means you made the game go long enough to get to 7 and you need someone to close it out. I believe this guy does enough work to wrap the game up, and he gets out of the way if you want to sweep the board clear. Is he better than Obzedat? I have no idea. He doesn't get chump blocked, but you probably have other ways to keep them from having blockers anyway. This guy is an $8 preorder. You have to decide quick if this guy is Boros Reckoner/Thragtusk (both stupid cheap preorders- their numbers were dead wrong in a good way) or if he is Legion Loyalist (Stupid high preorder numbers in a very bad way). I'm inclined to say 7 mana may be too much to pay for a creature, and his not being mythic will do him no favors in price retention, but he should trade out well in the short term and if he sees play I could see him hitting $15-maybe. He'll never be a 4 of, he doesn't go in decks most players want the way Reckoner does, he has no combo potential and you can get a Thornling on eBay for $1.50 right now. I'm not ordering any even though I think he'll see play. However, if I am wrong and he hits like $20 there is a real opportunity here. However, he has to be as good AND as universally-playable as Boros Reckoner to approach $20 since he's not a mythic either, and the window on Reckoner closed already. I'm sitting on like 10 copies and I would love to get $10 for them at this point. If you think this is the next Thragtusk, $8 is what I ordered Thragtusk for and I made a heap. But, like I said, do as I buy not as a I say, and I'm buying 0 Aetherlings even though the card excites the dormant, "actually playing Magic" part of my brain.

Pyrewild Shaman

I can't quite see it, but something about this card says "Combo potential". There are a few double-strikers in the block, also. Bottom line, I don't know how good he is as a beater (for 2 mana you want to be Bloodrushing the 4/4 trample dude) but there has to be some way to make this work- potentially as something to pitch to Liliana for value. At $2 preordered, you don't stand to gain much since even good, playable rares end up around $2. Look at Trostani for Pete's sake, and that's a mythic. Trade for these at bulk and sock a few away in case the combo ever pans out. Picking up bulk for bulk means your worst case scenario is you out it for bulk, too.

Renegade Krasis

Is it just me or is this card WAY better than the $1.50 it's preselling for? The only thing that could be better about this card is if it distributed counters when it got counters for any reason, not just for evolving. Still, I think this card is pretty playable, albeit probably only with undying stuff so its window is brief. Still, this seems better to me than $1.50.

Progenitor Mimic

I have talked to a lot of people excited to pre-order these at $8. I do not number myself among them. Obviously a great followup to Thragtusk, thinking outside of best case scenarios, I'm not thrilled about paying 6 for a creature that needs other creatures to do anything. This is pretty much exactly this set's Prime Speak Zegana except it lacks the appeal of being a potential EDH general so I don't think it will even maintain the paltry $7 Zegana currently fetches (down from $25 at preorder time).  I'm staying away.

Savageborn Hydra

Quick, name a hydra printed only once in the last decade that's worth less than $5. That's right, you can't. You're going to be excited to get $3 on a buyist for these in 3 years. You're not going to be excited to get $3 on a buylist in 3 months because these are pre-selling at $5. Wait for this to approach bulk status (I think it will) and scoop an armload. It will go up, but not soon.

Or I'm misreading the meta and this is just going to KO people. It's a haymaker- super powerful but forecast enough in advance that a reasonably-prepared opponent can avoid it. He dies to removal- a terrible argument against a card until you think about how much mana you'll need to put into this guy. He'll want to be cast at 5 mana minimum, and I like too many other creatures at 5 mana in these colors.

Breaking//Entering

Reprint ALL the Glimpses!

Go on eBay and check how much Glimpse the Unthinkable retails for. Now see how much Breaking//Entering is pre-selling for. Draw your own conclusion.

For what it's worth, this is Glimpse the Unthinkable 5-8 in Modern. Modern being a format where you can also play Mind Funeral. Just sayin'.

Gaze of Granite

This card is preodering for $5. That can't be correct.

04/17/13 - Jason

Warleader's Helix

We COULD have reprinted Lightning Helix, but wouldn't you rather have its clunky, overcosted cousin?

Voice of Resurgence

Now, this card is nuts, and it's the real deal, but I tend to try and stay away from $20 preorders. There isn't a single card in Gatecrash retailing over $20 right now, so if you ordered anything above $20, you lost money. Buy sealed product and expect this guy to trade for full value as people scramble to pick them up to play the first few events. I might even trade for these at $20 at the prerelease just because they could spike to $30 in the very very near term because of the impatience factor. Again, $20 preorders should be avoided unless you hate money or are very, very sure the card will trade for $50 like Jace (now $10) did in the short term.

Obzedat's Aid

Will this ever see a deck? I have no idea, but the effect has the potential to be powerful. I'd honestly invest in cards that this card's power can make better, but the problem is that this card is no Unburial Rites. Rites is great because you can mulch and salvage with abandon and play Rites from the yard. Obzedat's Aid doesn't have that luxury, so you're limited in how you can fill your yard. The one thing this card has over Rites is that you can reanimate Planeswalkers and land and such, but I don't know if that justifies its inflexible mana, lack of flashback and $4 pricetag. High Priest of Penance was a $4 preorder, too.

Notion Thief

I'm pretty "meh" about this guy. He lives in Magical Christmas land where your opponents always cast Sphinx's Revelation for full value and ignore that you left 2UB up. He's not going to do what you want. I'm sure some of you are going to tell me I'm wrong, but some of you told me I was wrong about Aurelia's Fury and Duskmantle Seer, too. Those cards live in the same Magical Land as this guy does. If you don't look at best case scenarios and instead look at practicalities like on which turn you want to cast this dude and how exactly you'll use him, you start to see why I'm not excited.

One application I can see is building around him. I don't think that deck will be all that good (he has 1 toughness) but casting Whispering Madness or Reforge the Soul with him out seems powerful, but so did Vizkopa Guildmage and Exquisite Blood. We can learn a lesson from that exact scenario. I bought Exquisite Blood at a quarter and laughed as they sold for 10 times that on eBay for weeks. Did the deck ever materialize? NEWP! Did that matter? Also NEWP. Sell into the hype around auxillary cards like Whispering Madness and ignore a $30 playset of Notion Thief. I am predicting this guy is a sideboard card barring some other support cards to make him worth making some jankity combo deck around.

Finally, I expect him to negatively impact the price of Sphinx's Revelation the same way Spectral Searchlight made Geist of St Traft worth less money. None. If Sphinx's DOES go down, congratulations. You buy them cheap, wait for Notion Thief not to impact its playability and sell when they inevitably go back up. This is the hottest card in the set in terms of people talking about it, which is fine, but the card isn't overrated and you don't want to be holding the bag when this does nothing.

Legion's Initiative

So this guy is preselling between $11 and $15. Too late to get these cheap (try to open these in packs).

So what deck wants this? It has more applications but less flexibility than Boros Charm so it's going to fight for maindeck slots with that card. It IS maindeckable given its boost to creatures, especially the power of red creatures which should speed up your clock by a full turn in some cases. But on what turn do you want to play this? Turn 4 on the play before they wrath? Turn 2 instead of your second creature? Do red-white aggro decks make a habit of keeping RW untapped? This stuffs Mutilate and Terminus, something that Boros Charm can't do, but Boros Charm doubles as a finisher that deals 4 or more damage to the face. This card has a lot of hype, but I don't know when I want to cast this and that bothers me. People are going to want these (people wanted Legion Loyalist, too, and I was happy to out them at close to $8 at the prerelease) so open them and dump them. If this guy holds $15, I don't understand this game at all.

Emmara Tandris

Hot. Garbage.

They could have made her make your tokens completely indestructible if they're going to make her cost 7 damn mana. I never wouldn't rather have Armada Wurm in my hand.

Potential EDH general? Maybe, but why wouldn't you play Rhys the Redeemed in a token deck instead? You might live long enough to cast Rhys, and all the Sol Rings in the world aren't casting her for 7GW if she dies.

Exava, Rakdos Blood Witch

 

Council of the Absolute

They should have just printed "opponents can't play Sphinx's Revelation and your Sphinx's Revelations are 2 less to play" right on the card.

I think you want this guy in an EDH deck with Grand Arbiter Augustin as the general, and that's about it. Worst case scenario, this is a Nevermore on a stick and has the added benefit of encouraging you to play more than two colors to increase the odds that you'll get the benefit of the last ability. I'm not thrilled to jam with this guy, though. $7 seems low for the preorder price on a Mythic. I'm not saying that means you should scoop it, I'm saying no one else has confidence in this card. Besides, only the sith deal in absolutes.

Blood Baron of Vizkopa

Oh, good. A non-flying vampire. This guy has the hallmarks of a card casual players will like- he is a bit like Divinity of Pride, only worse in EDH. Divinity of Pride is like $8. Try and see if you can guess whether I'll be buying this guy for twice that at preorder. Go on. Guess.

That's enough for tonight, kids. Make sure you ignore the name at the top of this batch of spoilers and continue to blame Sigmund for calls you disagree with. It makes me laugh.

04/10/13 - Gervaise

Hey everyone, I hope we all are excited to see these spoilers running out for the upcoming Prerelease!

Lavinia of the Tenth

It seems that a lot of the newly spoiled cards are EDH goodie cards. I absolutely want to make this my new general. Constructed (thus valuewise) I highly doubt this is going to be a moneycard unless some weird 'lock' is spoiled for control decks in Standard.

 

Sin Collector

I highly doubt it but this might seem play in constructed aggro decks. If it was a 3/1 it had more potential to make the cut. Also the fact it only filters instant/sorceries hurt the cart. I would say it is a fine designed card for Limited and maybe Block constructed.

 

Renounce the Guilds

I have not done an extensive analysis on how many multicolored permanents there are in the early stage of a Standard Constructed game. From the top of my head we have Burning-Tree Emissary, Rakdos Cackler, Loxodon Smiter, Boros Reckoner etc. I think this card can swing either way as in being mediocre at best or a quintessential card in many decks. As soon as there are 2 multicolored permanents on your opponents battlefield, he/she can choose in an optimized way ( The Browbeat dilemma ). It might spike to $8 but gradually will come down below the price of Abrupt Decay.

 

Teysa, Envoy of Ghosts

A seven mana legendary creature? That smells like a Commander card. I must admit her art is ecstatic. Her abilities are - I think - not constructed worthy unless it is Commander and/or Casual games. This card will be highly liquid during prereleases since certain people want to get this card as soon as possible. After that period, this card will be worth around $3-$3.5 tops.

 

Exava, Rakdos Blood Witch

 

Since this card cost 4 mana, its giving haste component to other creatures with +1/+1 is rather mediocre. It is like Primal Visitation giving creatures ''Haste''. More often than not you put the enchantment on an existing creatures that has been casted before.
I'm highly skeptical this card will be played in Standard as it is a bad Falkenrath Aristocrat comparing it to other 4 CMC creatures in an Aggro deck. Like Teysa, opening this card can create trade opportunities at your prerelease as there should be players out there that want to jam this card instantly in their deck.

 

04/09/13 - Jason

Boom. It's Jason here, in your faces with the first of many exciting updates for this spoiler season. There are two big ones to touch on first, so let's get right into it, shall we?

Ral Zarek

Every time I look at this guy, I like him less and less. I can't decide in which deck he'd work, on which turn I want to play him and whether building to his ultimate (and therefore probably not getting more than 1 or 0 bolts out of him) makes him worth casting. I'm sure it will be easier to evaluate when we know more of the set, but for right now I am not going to let excitement over what it would be fun to untap with him (OMG Gilded Lotus! SQUEEE) blind me to the fact that he's likely another Gideon- a powerful walker with a lot of potential that doesn't really do anything that's going to help the deck he's in win. You're probably winning if you take a bunch of extra turns, but in this format where you likely need to wrath on 4, I'm not sure paying 4 mana for a lightning bolt and a dude that soaks up two damage intended for you is worth it against decks like Naya Blitz. Hype around this guy could make good Izzet cards like Niv-Mizzet spike, so buy accordingly.

Beck//Call

There sure is a lot going on here. Fuse looks like a cool ability, as in "hey, we fused split cards with entwine so we didn't have to think of a new ability". I like how the two halves work together for extra value when you use fuse, but they are both powerful on their own. Obviously paying 4UW is just garbage for a bad lingering souls, so this is basically a clunky, sideways Glimpse of Nature and I was lying about both halves being good. However clunky and sideways it is, it is legal in modern until they ban it, which has people scrambling for elf stuff. Cloudstone Curio quintupled today which seems like not even the best card for that role. I have a hint- it's a color that Beck will force you to play. Good luck.

This card is a bad replacement for a card that was good enough to get banned, and maybe it's bad enough that it doesn't get the ban hammer itself. Scoop stuff for elves, and dust off the cloudstone curios you were saving to play Cheerios in Legacy. You're never building that deck, stop kidding yourself. Take the $40 and spend it on packs.

Vorel of the Hull Clade

Of the five words in his name, only two of them are words. It's no wonder people act like we're speaking in code when we talk about this game. Saying stuff like "Hull Clade" is the reason I pre-cut my underwear before I went to middle school.

I can't get excited about this guy. If they would just stop giving us bad, durdly merfolk I would be A-OK with it. R&D just has no idea how to make Simic cards. They are so all-in on keeping the theme of the mechanic they miss the fact that they should make a card that's good. Niv-Mizzet isn't brimming with izzet flavor, it's a dragon that will mess you up and he's silly in commander. Could Vorel of the Hull Clade potentially be a commander? Certainly, but he's not worth building around. He'll see casual play because he doubles things and things that double things get lots of play in casual. Wait for him to hit a dollar then buy the foils at $2 and wait a few years for them to be worth something. I am trying as hard as I can but I still can't get excited, and how lame he is makes my box of Master of the Pearl Trident cry. I wanted merfolk, but not like this.

Melek, Izzet Paragon

EDH? Seems bad in limited where you want to limit the number of non-creatures you play. Seems slow in Standard despite having combo potential. That pretty much leaves "casual" which is fine because casual players need cards, too. Could he be a good commander? I have no idea. I certainly wouldn't hate flipping the top card of my library and seeing that it's Temporal Manipulation or Prophetic Bolt in EDH. Decent potential, probably no home outside of casual.

Master of Cruelties

This guy is going to be miserable to play against in limited. In constructed, if you have the ability to wipe their board he could be good. They need to play at least one creature a turn or they lose, and a 1/4 first strike, deathtouch is going to just smash them in combat. He seems like a decent finisher in Grixis or something, honestly because he'll get them to burn range in one hit. I don't know how playable he is in standard, though, but he's powerful, and powerful stuff, no matter how durdly it seems, gets there. I'd test him a bit. He may actually just smash people and even if he doesn't, the worst thing that happens is that he's just as fringe playable as he looks at first glance. Best case scenario you have a monster of a win condition that just won't die in creature combat, especially if you boost his power somehow to let him take down multiple creatures. Either way, I don't see much financial potential, even at mythic rarity which sometimes makes OK cards really expensive.

Advent of the Worm

In a deck with no populate, he's a Neck Snap that can't kill fliers. In a deck with Trostani or vhitu-ghazi guildmage he does work. This is likely a sub $5 card either way. I'd always rather have Armada Wurm, and the only time you couldn't is in DGM limited.