Bang for your Buck: Investing in Cards for M14 – Golgari and Simic

Disclaimer: I can not be held responsible for any poor decisions I make in regards to any cards you might buy in response to my article. I’m going to post my thoughts and plead my case for each card I recommend, and if you agree then by all means head out to your local gaming store or buy cards online and try to snap up some good deals. I’m basing my information off of months of standard gaming experience as well as prices in my area and how they’ve reacted to the ever changing metagame. I can only hope that the decisions I make are good ones and that my gamble pays off after buying the featured cards.

Bang for your Buck is going to be a little different this time. With the set rotation coming up at the end of September, the WHOLE Innistrad Block (Innistrad, Dark Ascension, Avacyn Restored) and M13 will no longer be standard playable. Therefore it’s kind of pointless to talk about those sets in this article. Of course some cards will maintain their value due to play in other formats (Take Griselbrand from AVR for example), but for the most part the prices are going to bomb. Today I’ll be focusing mainly on the Ravnica block sets (Return to Ravnica, Gatecrash, Dragon’s Maze). I will be covering the sets rotating out in less than 3 months in the series or articles following this one called “A Whole New World: MTG Post Rotation”. Those articles will be going up at the start of August and will cover what to invest in before the cards become hard to get. With all of that cleared up now, let’s take a look at the cards I think will be a good investment for the M14 metagame.

Previous Golgari, Simic, and Black Card Suggestions

• Mutilate – I didn’t really say that this card would go up or down, but I did say to keep an eye out on it. I said to pick it up if it looked like mono black control might be a thing, and I think that I as correct in that assumption. Mono control will be back in the new meta so if you picked it up cheap, great!
• Griselbrand – I said if you see him drop below $10, buy him, and I stand by that advice. He’s at $12, so pick him up if you plan on using him in older formats! His value will only go up!
• Geralf’s Messenger – I thought BR aggro would get big, but it didn’t. GR blitz is still the way to go for aggro. His value continues to decrease ($2.50 now), so I was wrong with this suggestion. 
• Skirsdag High Priest – I recommended the high priest at $0.80, and he’s at $1.30 now, so I think I was right on with that suggestion. Yay. I actually did good with most of the black cards. 
• Deathrite Shaman – I said he’d hold is value at $13, and he has. Good call, but doesn’t help you out if you were looking for deals. 

Golgari cards

There are a number of good Golgari cards in the current standard metagame, but which ones will continue to see play over the next few months and which ones will drop by the wayside as rotation gets closer and closer? 

Gaze of Granite

Gaze of Granite ($0.75) is a SEVERLY underrated card. I’ve had a chance to play with this a little bit in a BUG Heartless Summoning deck I’ve been fooling around with, and it has been nothing short of extraordinary. It destroys those low costed decks like Naya Humans and GBW tokens, and gives Golgari an effect that is usually reserved for Izzet or Azorius. When the the format gets slower, this card will get better, and as more people switch to two color strategies due to the dual lands not bring reprinted, it will see a lot more play. I’d expect this to hit the $2 range before the end of September.

Another card, Varolz, the Scar-Striped ($3) is currently seeing a lot of play in GBW Aristocrats decks. Hopefully he’ll branch out into some other decks soon, because if he doesn’t he might drop in value. Aristocrats is losing a lot of cards that make it work such as Blood Artist, Tragic Slip, and Doomed Traveler. Whether or not cards will come out to replace these is yet to be seen, but you might want to think about selling him while the deck is hot. Otherwise he could lose some value and hit the $2 range. 

Abrupt Decay

I can’t believe Abrupt Decay is $7.50 now. For the longest time it never dropped below $9. Great removal spell that can target any 3 mana or less permanent. Pick it up at $7.50 right now. It will be back up near the $10 range soon enough. I’d also keep your eyes out on Corpsejack Menace ($1.50). It has gone up in value in recent weeks thanks to successful BG aggro decks, and with all the new M14 cards that put counters on things (Kalonian Hydra, Angel of Thune), I think he could find himself into a few decks. 

Lotleth Troll ($2.60) hasn’t seen much play recently, but he’s a solid card that I think will see more play in the new format and his value will modestly rise in the next few months. Not much, but I could see him around $3. 

Vraska the Unseen

I want to say it’s Vraska’s turn to shine. She saw prices as low as $3 in some places in the last few months, but now she’s back up to $7. I’ve seen her being used in some Jund control decks, and I think she’ll see more play in non traditional control decks in the coming months. Jund of course, but BUG control, GBW midrange . . . the addition of cards like Doom Blade to the new metagame will make a lot of new builds viable thanks to its solid removal. I would’t go as far as to say she’ll top $10, but I don’t think she’ll go down in value.

Simic Cards

Gyre Sage

Gyre Sage has always been tricky to play with. A lot of people want to use her in fast decks, but her true power lies in midrange and slow decks. The sage is at the lowest price it’s been in a while ($2), so I think now is the time to invest in a play set. As decks start to slow down, she’ll see a lot more play and I think she could double in price to $4 or more. Speaking of Elves, I’d like to see Master Biomancer ($6) see some more play, but I don’t think he will any time soon. His value should stay the same.

Prime Speaker Zegana

Really? Nobody is using Zegana anymore? How can she only be $3.50 now? GWU Zegana was a deck type a few months ago. You can be absolutely sure that when people start playing Bant decks again that she’ll double in value to $7. She gives you great value by drawing you cards, as well as turning into a creature that can finish the game for you. I think her drop in value is solely attributed to the rise in aggro decks. As soon as the metagame shifts she’ll see more play. 

Plasm Capture ($1.20) seems like it could be a nice cards in control decks, and it has seen some play in Bant decks but nothing substantial. This is because most decks are running cards that have very low casting costs at the moment. It combos great with Sphinx’s Revelation, but it won’t see play unless midrange decks become big again. 

Progenitor Mimic

My big pick for the new metagame is Progenitor Mimic. Why? Well, thanks to the new Legend Rule, you can have your own copy of their legend now without it dying, and you can also copy your own each turn. How cold that be beneficial? Well, consider Lavinia of the Tenth. She detains everything with a mana cost of 4 and less when she comes into play. If you copy her with this, you can activate that ability again, and then sacrifice the old one. On the following turn, the new copy will come into play and activate its ability, and then you can choose to sacrifice it so that the Mimic will continue to make copies every turn and endlessly detain their permanents. Correct me if I’m wrong, but that combo should work. Regardless of that combo or not, I think this card will see more play and it will go up from it’s $6 value, especially with a Legendary creature heavy deck coming up in Theros. Pick them up now!

Coming up Next time

Well, that does it for Simic and Golgari. Next time I think I’ll cover Rakdos and Dimir, but don’t expect it until after the weekend. I’m going to work on brewing some new decks for the M14 metagame, so be sure to check back before Friday for some decks I’ve been working on! Thanks for reading, comments are welcome, and be sure to check back in a few days!