Today’s MTG Ban announcement promises some incredible changes to formats central to competitive Magic. Pioneer, Modern and Pauper are all seeing a series of bans and unbans, granting much needed shakeups by eliminating polarizing strategies. This is, understandably, incredibly exciting!
Players who speculated on some cards earlier this week are likely to be even more excited! One Universes Beyond speculation went really well for participants, as the Fortnite Battle Bus, perhaps better known as Smuggler’s Copter, was unbanned this Monday.
This, and other changes, are hitting the MTG secondary market running today!
Smuggler’s Copter
Both Smuggler’s Copter and its Universes Beyond variant are seeing big spikes in price. Let’s start with the normal variant of the card.
For those who don’t know, Smuggler’s Copter just got unbanned in the Pioneer format. The Copter has found itself on Standard and Pioneer ban lists in the past, thanks to the unnatural amount of power it offers to aggressive decks in all colors. Granting these decks a way to turn their summoning sick creatures into evasive attackers, while looting away bad cards, proved too powerful for weaker formats.
That said, Pioneer has powered up quite a bit. As mentioned in multiple articles, multiple archetypes, while uncommon, can win the game on turn three, which does not give the Copter a lot of time to provide value. Turn four is very reasonable for multiple Pioneer decks in the current metagame.
As a result, we think this unban is perfectly fine, but time will tell in terms of how the Copter ban shakes up.
Regardless, many players believe that Smuggler’s Copter is powerful enough to see play in the Pioneer format. Thanks to an excited rush of buyers getting playsets of their own, Smuggler’s Copter has jumped from 50 cents to $15 in just a week!!! That’s a 2900% increase!
That said, sales at the time of writing are understandably a bit unstable. $11-16 appears to be the current range of nonfoil Smuggler’s Copters for the Kamigawa Commander variant. The original variant from Kaladesh is selling for a bit less ($10-11 on average), but many of these copies are not in near mint condition. $20 is the outlier for the Kaladesh variant’s sales.
Foil variants for the Copter from Kaladesh appear to be settling around the $20 mark, but could increase further.
Battle Bus
Pioneer players now need to fear their games being ended by this absurd Fortnite school bus. Many players love this idea, and swiftly desired to employ these wacky school busses for themselves.
The Battle Bus is a premium Universes Beyond skin for Smuggler’s Copter, meaning that the card is and was worth more than normal variants of Smuggler’s Copter before and after the ban.
Sadly, players who want to bash their opponent with this quirky skin will need to pay a premium in order to do so. Nonfoil copies of the Fortnite Battle Bus are currently selling for between $27 and $30. Post-unban, these cards were worth about $5, representing a 500% increase from $5 to $30.
Foils copies of the Battle Bus are rather unstable at the moment, selling for a wide range of prices. $30 seems to the most expensive that they are selling for at the moment, but listed (not sold) prices are commonly higher than this, asking for prices over $50.
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Cursed Totem
Considering the recent ban list changes for Modern that occurred this Monday, Cursed Totem’s sudden rise in price should not surprise you. The recent bans in Modern are absolutely incredible for the Yawgmoth combo archetype, and Cursed Totem, thanks to recent upgrades to the Yawgmoth combo, is one of the best ways to stop it.
Much of the Yawgmoth Combo’s strength comes from activated abilities. Traditionally, Pithing Needle has been a good way to stop problematic permanents’ activated abilities. Of course, the Needle can also hit noncreature abilities like Urza’s Saga and Wrenn and Six, which can make the Needle a bit more flexible than Cursed Totem. Do remember that Pithing Needle cannot stop mana abilities, but can hit non-mana land abilities like Fetch Lands.
While Pithing Needle is still a fine choice for battling Yawgmoth, they can combo through that now thanks to Agatha’s Soul Cauldron. This card stores the activated abilities of creatures it exiles and can grant it to other creatures. This allows creatures to use Yawgmoth’s activated ability without being Yawgmoth themselves, essentially outing the Needle.
Cursed Totem, on the other hand, will stop all activated abilities from creatures. This turns off the Yawgmoth combo, Soul Cauldron or not, and can even stop some of the ways that Yawgmoth would otherwise interact with you or remove the totem like Haywire Mite and Fulminator Mage.
Now, Cursed Totem did get a reprint in Modern Horizons 2, and the base version of that reprint has not changed in price much. That variant of the card remains a 50 cent one.
Other variants of Cursed Totem, however, have seen price spikes. The foil Modern Horizons 2 printing is incredibly volatile, selling for anywhere between $9 and $30. The Mirage copy of Cursed Totem has increased as well, rising to a market average price of $11 from $4, beginning the spike at the end of October. Near mint iterations of this copy also have a wide price range, selling for between $8 and $29.
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Flaming Tyrannosaurus
This Doctor Who card has experienced a massive price spike over the last week, and it likely has little to do with the Universes Beyond IP, and more to do with the fact that this card is a Dinosaur.
This card fits like a glove in the new Veloci-Ramp-Tor Lost Caverns of Ixalan Commander pre-con as an upgrade option. Flaming Tyranosaurus cares about players casting spells from outside their hand, and Discover just happens to be a great way to do that. This means that Pantlaza, Sun-Favored, especially when combined with the Dino Scam strategy we recommend for upgrading the pre-con deck, can grow Flaming Tyrannosaurus into a massive threat, allowing it to remove a ton of creatures as it grows.
Thanks to its insane synergy with Discover, Flaming Tyrannosaurus has jumped from just $2 in early November to $12.50 for its base variant. Traditional foils, more or less, go for a very small premium.
Past that point, both the Surge Foil and Extended art variants of the Tyranno appear to retail for about $15. The Extended art Surge Foil variant, finally, has quite a ride range of prices.
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Price Drop – Fury
If you’ve ever wanted to get a Fury for a good deal, now is the chance. Of course, Fury is now banned in Modern, where it saw most of its play, by far. That said, this doesn’t mean Fury is suddenly useless.
Fury still sees play in Legacy and Dual Commander, which may mean Fury is good enough to see play in good ol’ regular Commander as well. This is a free spell that can remove threats, or is a relevant body that can still remove threats. In a blink-focused deck, you can essentially do a Fury Scam in Commander.
You can find Fury for as low as $12 right now, which is a huge price drop from its recent $44 price tag before it started plummeting. Fury could continue to lose value before it finds its new price point but, since the card still sees some Legacy play and some Dual Commander play, Fury is likely to retain some secondary market value.
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