MTG Battle for Zendikar Spoilers - Felidar Sovereign and Sylvan Scrying

by ElspethFTW, Old School Duelist

Battle for Zendikar has within it two reprints that each will have their financial impacts on the game, one from a casual perspective and the other from a competitive view. Felidar Sovereign is a casual bomb that sees lots of play in a wide variety of Commander decks and Sylvan Scrying has long been a great way in Modern to search out specific lands, especially the Urza Tron lands (Urza’s Mine, Urza’s Power Plant, and Urza’s Tower). Let’s see what sort of impact these cards may have on Standard, in the set’s Limited environment, and their overall financial impact on their previous printings.

Felidar Sovereign has long been in the range of a $10 card because of the fact it’s a mythic from an extremely popular set, Zendikar. As a reprint, this is a pretty awesome card to bring back, not only because it provides a win condition (having 40 or more life on your upkeep), but is a 4/6 with vigilance and lifelink, a huge bomb in Limited. In a format full of huge creatures, this could be a very high pick in Draft and definitely a worthy top-end creature in Sealed deck. However, being bumped down to rare status from mythic means that the market will soon be flooded with new copies. This will devastate the original printing’s price. The good news is that players that may have wanted a copy before but didn’t want to bother with it at $10 or more will grab their copies, so it should probably remain above a bulk rare. You may want to out any mythic rare copies you have hanging around right now, though, since BFZ will be opened massively and supply of rares like this will be plentiful.

I highly doubt the Sovereign sees much Standard play, unless there are decks that can consistently gain tons of life. One archetype that comes to mind is the Mastery of the Unseen deck that popped up awhile back. Along with Whisperwood Elemental, flipping over a Morph creature could gain you ridiculous amounts of life, but that in itself wasn’t really a win condition. Imagine manifesting this as a 2/2, and flipping it for 4WW at the end of your opponent’s turn when you’re over 40 life. Good games. That’s about the only way I see the Sovereign making serious competitive headway.

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Sylvan Scrying, on the other hand, is currently a $5 uncommon that sees 4-of play in several Modern archetypes including Red/Green Tron (to seek out the Urza’s lands) and some builds of Infect (that want to find their Inkmoth Nexus quickly as possible). It’s a perfect time to reprint it while we’re in a “lands matter” block. While the huge influx of new copies may short the price a bit, being a card that a good number of Standard decks may want full playsets of anyway, the previous Mirrodin and Tenth Edition printings should be fine to hold onto at the moment. Add to the fact that the new printing of Sylvan Scrying has different artwork and the valuable previous printing foils may be in OK shape, as well. This is one of the best reprints in the set. It’s straightforward, grabbing you any land you want for 1G right to your hand. Need that man-land? Sure thing.

While the Sovereign will take a major price point hit, I’m happy to see it become much more accessible. Sylvan Scrying needed a new printing, too, so while this will make the previous printing a bit less valuable, there should be enough demand that this will remain a valuable uncommon.

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