Hello, everyone and welcome to a new edition of the Daily Stock Watch! The Standard market has been very active as of late, and it has pretty much lived up to what we expected in the wake of the arrival of a new set. There are brews of new archetypes and upgrades of old ones, but not everything has been consistent as the meta shapes up. One welcome addition to the competitive scene is the rise of what are deemed to be casual cards financially, and the implications that it has to the current scene at the same time. Today's featured card belongs to that category, although it also looks promising for other formats outside Standard.

Coat of Arms was pretty popular back in the day as it could put your deck over the top with just three to four tribal creatures in play. The same could not be said for Vanquisher's Banner but it gives you that power to draw cards which allows for continuity in case you can't overpower your opponent with what you have in play. The latest reincarnation of Elves in Standard hasn't proven its worth just yet, but it could make a case for something that could be considered going forward as new sets fill the Standard vacuum. For a reference of how the list looks like, here's one that we could use as a model.

The deck looks promising with the tribal concept, but Standard is ran amok right now by Golgari and Boros Angels which could both wipe out our elf friends in one fell swoop. The platoon of removals at Golgari's disposal and Deafening Clarion could just ruin the day for a creature-based strategy like this one, which could be off to a very bad start if we miss out on a turn one Llanowar Elves or Pelt Collector. One thing you could count on this deck though is the steady pressure it will apply given the correct draw, and powering out Vanquisher's Banner before our opponents could answer our threats should be good enough to keep flooding your board with weapons to win the game. It also helps that Beast Whisperer does something of the same caliber as the banner, which then allows you to have tremendous card advantage in match ups where creatures and not spells could win games.

There should be lots of tribes in the format that could try the power that the banner has to offer (I remember featuring saproling-powered decks before with Tendershoot Dryad) but I do think that the elves has the biggest potential to break through because it could power it out faster than any other tribe could. It is no Glimpse of Nature for sure but the power boost it gives, along with the drawing prowess, makes it a good card for Commander. It's current all-time high of $5 is a bit justified for me, and I still see room for growth. Ixalan won't be opened much in the coming months for sure so I would be very interested in getting my copies now before some insane brew happens and this skyrockets out of the gate. It's better that we act now than later on when the window of opportunity has passed.

At the moment, you could get copies of Vanquisher's Banner from online stores such as TCGPlayer and Card Kingdom for anywhere between $3.90 up to $6.49 while StarCityGames is already out of stock at $5.99. The foil version of the card isn't fetching a very huge a price right now so that's an indicator that there isn't much interest in formats outside Standard right now. I would be glad to clean up all copies under $4 that I could get my hands on and sit on it till it peaks at $8-$10 during the course of the season. It's a low risk, decent reward investment that should be paying off in the future. Let's carry the banner!

And that’s it for today’s edition of the Daily Stock Watch! See you again next time, as we check out a new card that should be on the go, or good enough for speculating. 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!