This week Jason Alt discusses trading in the smart phone era, GP Strasbourg and SCG Milwaukee.

Jason brings us news from the bannings and restrictions front, the worlds of reddit, and results from the StarCityGames Invitational in Indianapolis.

Ryan analyzes the recent showing of Hypergenesis and explains why Sneak and Show is an all around superior deck. What does Hypergenesis offer better than Sneak and Show is already doing?

I’m back again this week, scouring event results for more Modern speculation calls for your trading profit. Why should you care about Modern? Even if you don’t play, there is a lot of official support for the format. The Pro Tour for Avacyn Restored features Modern, as do several Grands Prix this year. Modern events fire almost every day on Magic Online, which brings us a steady feed of information. No doubt, pros are looking at these same results and compiling the best decks to bring to the Pro Tour. We’ve seen double-digit price changes during Pro Tours and I don’t think Modern events are any different. It’s the perfect time for breakout cards to shine. Let’s take a look at a few that I’ve identified early in the lead-up.

I love doing my financial recaps of older sets where I mine the expensive cards, but going back further is a little harder in two ways. First, there are just so few good cards in older sets. Second, the good ones don’t often turn over, so it’s hard to establish prices. Luckily, Mirage Block was the first “modern” block and it brought in some great spells that wizards still sling today. Let’s take a walk through time as we re-acquaint ourselves with the block. Below is a list of some of the choice picks from the block; I left out the cards worth under two dollars, leaving only the prime cards on the list. There are some cards in here that I guarantee will surprise you.

Speculation and market investment in Magic is in its Golden Era right now. We have access to information at a speed that we never had before in Magic. If you’re spying for new tech, you don’t have to wait for a tournament report on the Dojo or read about it a month later in Inquest – you can hustle over to GGSlive and watch Kibler cast Huntmaster of the Fells in real-time. This article is about Magic speculation and price bubbles in what I am calling the “early modern” era.

Conflux was the second set from Shards of Alara – more gold spells, more interesting monsters and of course, more pricey cards for you! The set has a good amount of tournament-worthy cards, on top of a solid base of fun Commander spells. Let’s take a look at the set!

Neale Talbot continues his series on how to build a better mono-green commander deck.

Who lives in some value inside your deck? Cromat! Cromat! Who’s Carlos commanding this week for us? Cromat! Cromat!

Mark Hinsz explores some uncharted opportunities Green Sun’s Zenith has in Legacy, pointing out silver bullets and worthy considerations that may help in those sigh-worthy matchups.

Jason Schousboe reacquaints himself with an old friend by taking Lands for a spin around the block, with the value-added Scapeshift and Valakut. See how he fared in this quixotic quest below.

Mike returns this week with his weekly calls, drawls, and howls, inspired by a recent film binge.

Mike recounts the adventures and lessons learned at this past weekend’s Gen Con.