The Price of Power

If you're a Magic player with functioning eyes and internet access (and if not I applaud your patronage to the site) you're no doubt aware of the Jace, the Mind Sculptor/Stoneforge Mystic banning, the news that's in every corner of every Magic site. Geez, even the FNM promo announcement had a "P.S. No Jaces." But what does this mean for trading and secondary market/tix sales?

In my opinion, Jace's prices have nowhere to go but up. Yes, it is a hit that he's no longer the most broken card in Standard, however, least we forget that Zendikar block was about to hit the bricks in three months-ish anyway. Jace is still a force to be reckoned with in older formats, featured as a four-of the the Landstill and U/W Stoneblade decks from the Star City Games Legacy Open in Baltimore last Sunday. The ebb and flow of any metagame, let alone one years into the future can be a challenging thing to predict, but I think I can say under no uncertain terms that Jace is a staple that's going to be around for quite some time. In addition, the EDH renaissance this summer means that, theoretically at least, a whole new batch of blue Commander players will be looking for copies to compliment their decks. Plus, with the murmurs of Modern/OverExtended as a possible new eternal format, Jace is almost certainly bound to be included in just about any blue decks the format may spawn. Long story short, if you're looking to get your hands on one, do so now while Jace-a-mania is at relative ebb; the prices are only going up from here.

As for Lady Stoneforge, I'm going to withhold my opinion for a bit. Any time a card sees Legacy play its certainly an auspicious sign, but is SFM mind-blowing on its own? No. Does it slide into any deck that can run it and wreak havoc like Big Daddy J-man? No. Right now she's only seeing play in one kind of deck. Now of course as long as there's potent equipment SFM is certainly formidable, however I'm waiting to see what Innistrad brings to the table before I can make any realistic long-term projections outside of being a cog in the (X)blade "Hey, look, Batterskull!" archetype.