plfeudo

(*CFB dropped bonfire back to 45 on 8/9 apparently >.>. I don’t think my opinions have changed, will reflect later.)

Bonfire got bumped to 50$ at my lgs today (they mirror channelfireball’s pricing so this is a bigger deal than it might be otherwise), and I promptly traded one for a Jace the Mind Sculptor when I sat down with my binder. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Read that again. What has the world come to? I had started to do some research on price trajectory comparing Bonfire to Baneslayer Angel during its first year in standard, arguing against Bonfire being on a bubble at 40$, but that point seems to be moot now due to the price increase.

Is Bonfire’s price tag sustainable? 

SCG being sold out of a standard card is very telling, especially a standard card which should theoretically be easy to keep in stock, and especially when they’re charging 40.00 a pop. Where did this increased demand come from? It seems like all the pod players would have gotten theirs by the time the card hit 35 when thragtusk came out. It took me a little while to figure it out, but when I saw that Temporal Mastery hit 20 on mtgo today it all kind of clicked.

Wolf Run Blue
A Standard Magic deck, by Reid Duke
1st place at a StarCityGames.com Standard Open tournament in Washington DC, District of Columbia, United States on 2012-08-05

Artifact Creatures
3 Solemn Simulacrum

Creatures
2 Frost Titan
2 Phantasmal Image
4 Primeval Titan
1 Snapcaster Mage
2 Thragtusk

Sorceries
1 Blasphemous Act
3 Bonfire of the Damned
4 Farseek
4 Ponder
4 Rampant Growth
4 Temporal Mastery

Basic Lands
5 Forest
4 Island
1 Mountain

Lands
2 Cavern of Souls
4 Copperline Gorge
4 Glimmerpost
4 Hinterland Harbor
1 Inkmoth Nexus
1 Kessig Wolf Run

Sideboard:
2 Thragtusk
2 Beast Within
3 Crushing Vines
2 Negate
1 Karn Liberated
1 Blasphemous Act
2 Whipflare
2 Cavern of Souls

Why would you not play this deck? It has freaking time walk in it. You also get to go turn 4 titan turn 5 hard cast mastery  and give your opponent the ‘Why are you so dead?’ face.

The ramp this deck has lets you cast bonfire for 2/3 early in the game while not being blow out by the opponent’s miracled plague winds, a vulnerability naya players have become very familiar with. This list is the best way I’ve found to explain the increased demand that bought SCG out at 40 and prompted CFB to raise their price so high.

There has only been one standard card to sustain a retail price of more 50$ in the mythic era, and Bonfire is no Jace TMS, but as I alluded to earlier it might be Baneslayer Angel. Obviously there is no angel tax in play with a red sorcery, but it’s also easier to incorporate in a variety of decks whether it belongs there or not due to the single red in its casting cost. I do not think Bonfire will go above 50. Now is the time to sell, but then again I thought that at 40 and 35. I don’t think the card will go below 40 while its in standard so I suppose the answer to my question is ‘probably not’ in the long term (approx 1 year/ it’s life in standard).  However  it’s too powerful to go down very far if it does, and people are going to remember Bonfire hitting and being 50 even if its usage starts to wain somewhat. Price memory is a powerful thing and if you choose to keep copies to play with it should be easy enough to move them down the line.