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Weekly Update (May 31): Five Secret Lairs



Secret Lair Previews


Wizards revealed five new Secret Lair drops this week, each with a distinctive theme and art style. There will be one drop each day starting June 1st, along with a chance to grab all at once. Be sure to check out all the alternate-art cards below:


Budget Magic: $75 (30 tix) Cycling Gift (Pioneer)


Do the new cycling cards from Ikoria mean its time for God-Pharaoh's Gift to make its presence felt Pioneer?Read more


Finance Update w/ Saffron Olive


Greater Good Extract Barrin, Master Wizard

This week, the biggest winner in the finance world are all Commander cards. Greater Good more than doubled in price this week as players realized its combo potential with Ominous Seas. If you can get the two cards on the battlefield together with at least eight power of creatures, you can draw your entire deck by making 8/8 Krakens and sacrificing them to Greater Good, which replenishes the counters on Ominous Seas, allowing you to make another 8/8 Kraken and repeat the process. If you need a copy, look for the Battlebond reprinting which is around $9 while both the 9th Edition and Urza's Saga versions are closer to $20. In fact, you can pick up foil Battlebond Greater Goods for less than the non-foil version of any other printing.

Meanwhile, the Odyssey rare Extract was bought out this week, presumably because Cazur, Ruthless Stalker / Ukkima, Stalking Shadow Commander deck sometimes play a copy, although according to EDHRec, even Cazur/Ukkima decks only play it less than 20% of the time. Combine that with the fact that Extract is quite literally unplayed in any other format, seeing the one-mana sorcery shoot up from $4 to $14 overnight has the look of a speculative buyout. Thankfully it's not a card that players actually need, which means the price should drop; there just isn't a high level of demand for Extract

Last but not least we have Barrin, Master Wizard which jumped from $5 to $15. While the legend does see a tiny bit of play in Commander, occasionally even in cEDH (which has seen a lot of staples spike recently), Barrin, Master Wizard is purely a finance play. How do we know? Because there is a thread on the MTGFinance subreddit discussing how the card is in low supply and might have a bit of demand thanks to the price slowly increasing, which triggered the buyout. The bad news for the people buying out the card is that Barrin, Master Wizard just doesn't have much demand. It's the 63th most popular mono-blue commander, which might sound impressive until you realize there are only 85 mono-blue commanders in Magic. The most popular (Urza, Lord High Artificer) has 1,709 decks on EDHRec while Barrin has 26, which means Urza has roughly 66 times the demand in Commander, and this doesn't include the fact that Urza also sees play in Modern and Legacy. Combine that with Barrin, Master Wizard seeing play in 0% of decks in the 99, and this looks like another misguided finance buyout. The bad news is that Barrin, Master Wizard in on the Reserved List and supply is low, so unlike Extract, it might take a lot longer for its price to fall.

Much Abrew: The Return of Hammer Time (Modern)

This Week in Legacy: Into the Pit

How big of a deal is the addition of Lurrus of the Dream Den to the Hammer Time archetype? Let's take the new and improved non-budget build of the deck through a league and find out! Read more

Joe Dyer gets down and dirty with the Legacy Pit! Read more

Single Scoop: Historic Solar Flare

Against the Odds: Ominous Good Tutelage Combo (Modern)

Guess who's back for the first time in Historic? That's right! Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger so let's try an old deck in Solar Flare and see if a graveyard synergistic control deck can work! Read more

What are the odds of winning (and going infinite with) Ominous Seas in Modern? Let's find out! Read more


Hedron Archive Is Terrible And You're Terrible If You Play It | Commander Quickie


Hello, my name is Tomer and I really hate Hedron Archive. Here's why.Read more

Vintage 101: Vintage UNLEASHED!

Historic 101: Mono Black Devotion

Joe Dyer dives into Vintage Unleashed, a thought experiment format that is extremely high powered! Read more

Are you still devoted to Mono Black? Well, Phyrexian Obliterator might be what you've been missing in Historic! Read more


Commander Clash S8 E6: Ikoria Week w/ Wedge | Chevill vs. Gyruda vs. Nethroi vs. Winota


Wedge joins us for Ikoria Week, where each of us build decks around one of the sweet new commanders from the set!Read more

Know Your Combos: Modern Ad Nauseam

The Fish Tank: Sweet and Spicy User Decks (May 24-30, 2020)

Combos are one of the best parts of Magic, but they can be confusing. On each episode of Know Your Combo, we'll go over everything you need to know about a popular combo. First up: Modern Ad Nauseam! Read more

What interesting decks did viewers submit this week? Let's find out! Read more

Pioneer Peak: Esper Control

Podcast 278: Arena Organized Play, Double Masters and Secret Lairs

With some companion changes bound to shake up the way they're played, TheAsianAvenger tries to send Yorion off into the sunset with a Trophy. Does he get there? Read more

The crew breaks down a ton of Magic news for organized play, some product announcement and answers #MTGFishmail. Read more


Instant Deck Techs


Each day we'll be posting a short, three minute deck tech featuring some of the coolest decks that come across the site. The most popular deck will be made into videos the following week based on your views, likes and comments in the videos. Here's this week's Instant Deck Techs:



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