Welcome back everyone to another week of budget goodness! We are going to continue where we left off last week discussing tribal cards to consider buying before they potentially rise in price! Zombies and vampires are the main topics of interest again, but there are other tribes we will go over in future articles!
The first card of the day is Wayward Servant. The price currently sits at $0.36 for non-foils and $1.62 for foils(mtgstocks.com). I have brought this up in the past, but this card is almost exactly the Blood Artist of zombies. The difference is this one is more versatile. There are more ways to make zombies enter the battlefield to make this trigger compared to destroying creatures to trigger Blood Artist. Also of note is that you do not have to rely on your opponents to get a wide creature base to take full advantage of the ability like you do Blood Artists. We do not have to take any actions other than casting, reanimating, or creating zombies, what we would already be doing. It helps to be able to ping each opponent down for just playing the cards we'd already be playing. Seeing as this has the potential of filling the Blood Artist role in both Pioneer and Commander format, it should push the value. Long-term I don't see this staying put and would not be surprised if the foil gets into the $5.00 range in the future. Just look at a similar card, Cruel Celebrant. It's the Blood Artist of Pioneer, and those foils are going between $9.00-$10.00! If you have some jank/bulk trade available I suggest trading it off soon to get these foils!
Speaking of cards like Blood Artist, Corpse Knight is another gem creeping up in value. It is currently $0.50 for non-foils, $1.34 for foils, $1.42 for promo pack non-foils, and $3.86 for promo pack foils (mtgstocks.com). Like Wayward Servant, Corpse Knight pings our opponents for playing creature spells. There is one big difference between the two that may be driving Corpse Knight up in value over Wayward Servant, and that is the fact it triggers off any creature, not just zombies. Then again, Wayward Servant gains us life and Corpse Knight doesn't. The gain life aspect can be better for synergy with cards like Sanguine Bond. Not to take away from Corpse Knight here, as it is a valuable piece to have in any deck that with lots of creatures. Corpse Knight should not only be used in Pioneer, but in Commander as well! The price has been steadily going up since May, and it looks like that trend will continue. Do not sleep on it, and trade into it as soon as possible!
Next for zombie tribal is Necromancer's Stockpile. The price is currently $0.50 non-foils, and $1.31 for foils (mtgstocks.com). This has been a pet card of mine since it released, and I have no idea how it's not bigger in Commander. I know the ability cost may be a bit of a turn off, but the upside is there. There are plenty of zombies we would not mind being in our graveyard, as it can potentially buff something else. Not to mention, we get rewarded with a 2/2 zombie creature token when we discard a zombie card. We are going to be churning through our deck, creating zombies, and piling cards into our graveyard anyways, so why not get rewarded for it!
To better sell the idea, let's talk about using this with another pet card of mine in Commander, K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth. In this scenario we have K'rrik, Necromancer's Stockpile, and Wayward Servant on the board. We can use K'rrik's ability to pay the one black mana with 2 life, discard a zombie, and Wayward Servant would give us one life upon the zombie token hitting the board. Thus, it would only cost us one life instead of two to use K'rrik's ability, and only cost us one colorless mana source. This would allow us to use the ability more often or keep more mana available! Do no sleep on this for too long, and just get a play set of foils and non-foils to hold on to!
Our next card is not quite as heavy a hitter as some of the previous ones, but Graft Harvest has value! The price comes in at $0.49 for non-foils and $1.50 for foils (mtgstocks.com). It started spiking around June, previously being $0.75 for the foils, and peaked in October. It still has room to grow due to its versatility in both Commander and Pioneer. For only one Black mana, we can give all our zombies menace. No opponent wants to see a board full of menacing Zombies at any point of a match. Zombies can be problematic in of themselves, and adding a form of pseudo evasion to your entire board can be frustrating. If we are in a pinch for zombie creatures, and have no recursion spells available, we can activate the ability to exile a creature from our graveyard to them produce a 2/2 zombie creature token! Plenty of upside from a 1-drop uncommon enchantment! Trade into these as soon as possible!
Next is a Planeswalker whose value outweighs its current price tag. Sorin, Vengeful Bloodlord should be in every collection. With all the different printings, I suggest targeting the promo pack non-foils and the secret lair versions. The current pricing on the promo packs is $1.84 for non-foils, $2.95 for foils, and $3.99 for the secret lair version. The upside with this thing is tremendous for a planeswalker with a CMC of four. It gives everything, including planeswalkers, lifelink on your turn, who does not want that? The bottom ability is really what we're looking to capitalize on, though. What we can do is use this as a secondary win con in our deck. Throw something with a high CMC into our graveyard, beef up Sorin, Vengeful Bloodlord, and use that bottom ability to bring it back. What makes it even better is the fact it will be a vampire in addition to its other types. That means if you are running vampire tribal it will garner the benefit from your lords or other vampire tribal buffs on the board! It only takes two turns to get this up to six counters. By that point we should be able to cast something of note to take control of the board. In Commander, we can use that ability in just about any deck that runs White and Black. For Pioneer, there are different vampire decks that run this, but it would blindside our opponents if it showed up in something else. Trying to not be so predictable is a great thing in Magic, as it keeps things fresh and other players on their toes.
That's all for today, and I hope you come back for the next one!
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