Daily Financial Value Of Born Of The Gods (1/21)

Hello everyone and welcome back to my daily series of financial articles about Born of the Gods. The last God (and last mythic rare) was spoiled along with a pair of interesting rares. Let’s delve into the new cards right away!

How I review:

Starting Price: The first price we assign to this card as a preorder.
Current Price: The current price of the card by the time this article goes live.
Future Price – Short Term: The price I believe this card will be at before Magic Online redemptions go live for Born of the Gods.
Future Price – Medium Term: The price I believe this card will be at by the time the next set (Journey into Nyx) comes out.
Future Price – Long Term: The price I believe this card will be at a year from now when the next winter set is released (name unknown still).

Hero of Leina Tower

Starting Price: $2

Current Price: $2

Future Price (Short Term): $1.50

Future Price (Medium Term): $1

Future Price (Long Term): $1.50

I think we can agree that for the most part the heroic mechanic has been a much bigger success in Limited play than in Constructed play. There are a lot of creatures that get a power/toughness boost due to heroic, but Hero of Leina Tower is probably the one pushed hardest. Turning on Hero of Leina Tower equals turn 2 Rancor + 2/2 creature for formats that have Rancor available for a 4/2 trampler on turn 2.

However, you’ve already got creatures that get bigger than this with Rancor on turn 2 in Modern, including Steppe Lynx, Kird Ape, and Loam Lion. You’ve also got Deathrite Shaman as a and Experiment One as first-turn plays, the turn 2 plays of Tarmogoyf, Lotus Cobra, Qasali Pridemage, Flinthoof Boar, and hey wait—these decks aren’t running Rancor anyhow for the most part!

Long story short, Hero of Leina Tower seems like one of those cards that looks like it has a lot of potential but the mana and effort you have to put into making it work (versus just playing a creature that is naturally better or as good, as Hero of Leina Tower’s best-case scenario) isn’t worth it.

Phenax, God of Deception

Starting Price: $12

Current Price: $12

Future Price (Short Term): $10

Future Price (Medium Term): $10

Future Price (Long Term): $15

Uber-mill cards have a huge casual appeal and tend to go up a lot in the long term. Traumatize was once a $10 card (before it was reprinted nearly a half dozen times). Glimpse the Unthinkable and Mind Funeral pull a good sum of money. Phenax might be the best mythic mill card printed yet—think Altar of Dementia that doesn’t sacrifice your creature (and yes, I know Altar counts power and Phenax counts toughness, but it’s a fair comparison in what they actually accomplish for the board).

So is Phenax destined to only be a casual favorite? I’m not so sure, and the credit for that goes to a post I saw on Reddit by Firebird4life. While I’m not sold on the idea of Wall of Frost, I am sold on the idea of there being so many cheap "untap" blue effects in Standard right now that there’s a shell of a combo deck you can build around Phenax. This includes:

Blistercoil Weird (U, plus untaps and gets bigger each time you cast an instant/sorcery)

Hidden Strings (1U, untaps two creatures and has potential to untap them again the next turn)

Ral Zarek (2UR, untap target creature each turn)

Triton Tactics (U, untap two target creatures)

Also of note:

Aetherling (pump to some arbitrary toughness, mill for X, exile it, mill for five when Aetherling returns)

Faerie Impostor (play it for U, put sacrifice trigger on stack, tap to mill for one, have it return itself, repeat)

I’m not saying that Phenax is great, but I am saying that as far as combo pieces go ones that cost U and U1 to enable a win in one or two turns are ones to keep a very close eye on.

Whelming Wave

Starting Price: $2

Current Price: $2

Future Price (Short Term): $1

Future Price (Medium Term): $0.75

Future Price (Long Term): $1

While I appreciate the flavor on this card, returning all creatures at sorcery speed has rarely been a winning strategy of blue. You need this effect to be instant speed to really shine (see: Cryptic Command, Evacuation, Turnabout as ways to tap down creatures for a turn). Hint: there are no playable Krakens, Octopuses, Leviathans, or Serpents in Standard right now.

Double Hint: Works great with Changelings since there are so few playable Krakens, Octopuses, Leviathans, or Serpents in other formats. Hooray for casual Changeling decks!

Changes

Instead of putting the changes here, I’ll note them below under the "pack value" section since I’m already listing prior and current values there.

Pack Value

To determine the value of a booster pack, I’m going to start with the following formula:

(2R + 1M) / 80

That isn’t enough of a picture though. In fairness, $0.50 to $1 bulk rares don’t really amount to "real" value if you’re looking to trade with other players. So I’m omitting the value of any rare that is below $2 (rounded from $1.99) and any mythic that is below $4 (rounded from $3.99).

There were two rares spoiled today, and both of them breached the $2 threshold to be included on this list. 22 out of 35 Born of the God rares have been spoiled. Nine of them top the $2 mark:

Hero of Iroas: $2
Hero of Leina Tower: $2
Heroes’ Podium: $2
Pain Seer: $12
Spirit of the Labyrinth: $10 (up from $5)
Temple of Enlightenment: $5
Temple of Malice: $5
Temple of Plenty: $5
Whelming Wave: $2