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Hello, everyone and welcome to a new edition of the Daily Stock Watch! Modern has been a very busy format lately and I have joined the fun in trying out the best decks that could help me win some tournaments in the coming months. To my surprise, decks that follow a more synergistic approach have been successful in culminating wins for its pilots in recent events as exemplified by the emergence of Aura Hexproof and Gruul Land Loss. Despite these impressive showings from the decks I've mentioned, the 5-Color Humans have continued its consistent run in landing multiple players in the top eight of big events such as Grand Prix Kyoto 2018 and a recently concluded MTGO Modern PTQ. A new creature that has made it debut in these winning lists is our preview card for today.
Dire Fleet Daredevil is a Standard card that just made its presence felt in Modern via the Humans deck that Collins Mullen made popular late last year. As the deck's innovator, Mullen has used three copies of this pirate in his sideboard en route to a top eight finish at SCG Team Open Cincinnati. Latter builds by other players included just a pair of it and it might change again anytime soon once they've figured out the magic number that works best for the deck. One thing I've learned thru years of playing Magic is that the people who built the deck probably know it better than we do, so take a look at the latest rendition of the Humans deck from Collins Mullen.
Humans by Collins Mullen
This deck is almost packed entirely with creatures and lands outside of Aether Vial, and the pirate's job off the board is to give the deck some flexibility in creature-based matchups by trying to steal some Lightning Bolt or Fatal Push off the opponent's graveyard, and making it your own. It's a very efficient card with a Snapcaster Mage-like feel that falls very much within the concept of the deck, plus the added strength of having first strike makes it harder to deal with in hand-to-hand combat. Along with Dark Confidant and Whirler Rogue, the Humans deck is ever-evolving and should be the best aggro deck, if not the best deck overall, in the format for years to come.
Those Pesky Humans
Above are the different cards that you could see on varying Humans builds that have made top eight finishes over the past few weeks. Dire Fleet Daredevil has the most upside from among them as a possible spec target since there are still a plethora of copies out there in the market due to its Standard availability. It's also worth noting that the other cards on the list are of a higher CMC (outside of Bob) and should see fringe play even if they do become successful from time to time. At $6.31, we could be looking at a possible $10-$15 card in the future if this trend continues. It might be best to starting buying in now.
At the moment, StarCityGames is out of stock of this card at $6.99. You could still grab a few normal copies via Card Kingdom and TCGPlayer for anywhere between $5.79 up to $7.49, and probably even less if you have a way of getting them directly from the vendors that's registered at TCGPlayer. The foils are at $14.99 and above, and I also like the idea of getting them at that price. Although WotC has the penchant for reprinting cards from Standard sets in supplemental products such as the recently released Challenger 2018 Decks, I still like getting this card for $5 or less in bunches. There's a lot of potential for a future superstar in this pesky, red pirate.
And that’s it for today's edition of the Daily Stock Watch! See you again tomorrow, as I preview new cards that should be on the go, or good enough for speculation purposes. As always, feel free to share your opinion in the comments section below. And if you want to keep up with all the market movement, be sure to check in with the QS Discord Channel for real time market information, and stay ahead of the hottest specs!