Unlocked Pro Trader: Finnistrad

I’ve done too many pun titles to articles. I got halfway through writing “What to expect when you’re expecting Vampires and Werewolves” and I’ve done basically that title exactly. Not just once, either.

“Finnistrad” is the best I can come up with, and it’s an OK title, but I think the advice is going to more than make up for it.

Innistrad Jacob vs. Edward is coming out within a year and while we have a long time before those sets are spoiled, we actually kind of want to be ahead of everyone else. Being ahead of people means that the cards don’t actually have to be good, or playable.

Card Kingdom has NM copies for $3 and the duel deck promo is under a buck. Someone had the chance to buy these at $0.50 and get out for $4. In fact, these were buylisting for $3.25 before the end, so people made some literal free, easy money. Turn that into CK credit, crank it over for the next round of easy specs. If you have some CK credit burning a hole in your pocket, maybe we should talk Vamps and Werlvs. Werewvs? There’s no cool way to shorten “Werewolves” like you can “Vampires.”

I think for this one, I’m going to fall back on my old method of jamming every card from every average list into a big old list and looking at cards played in most decks. We may find some cheap gems, and we may find that some obvious cards just go up on principle. They don’t have to even go in the deck to increase in price, remember, Lovisa Coldeyes isn’t being played more than it was. Some of these cards will go up because people think they will, and it’s not too early to think about that.

Vampires

I am doing vampires first because I feel like it will be easier. There is more data but at least it’s obvious where to look. There are basically 0 real Werewolf commanders so I have to fiddle a ton with filters to find them, whereas vampires are obvious. As always, I snagged the average lists for each commander, put them in a list comparison tool and generated a list of cards that is in every deck. Once we filter out EDH staples, we’re left with cards that have a lot of chances to go up, and could get some more attention once everyone remembers they’ve known about Twilight the set for months already and forgot to do anything with that information.

I compared the top 5 Vampires lists – Adgar Markov, Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose, Elenda, the Dusk Rose, Olivia Voldren and Anje Falkenrath. I could have done more, but a few things popped out at me when I compared these 5.

Anything on this list that isn’t an EDH staple is likely a vampire tribal staple. The fact that we’re seeing creatures in all 5 lists when crazy tribe-specific cards like Blade of the Bloodchief aren’t makes me want to look at those creatures.

I’d like to think I told people to buy these in 2017 when they got reprinted. The truth is, this was a secret promo of sorts because it was included in M11 precon decks as a foil, which made the foil and non-foil price be about the same. Remember when a foil costing about the same as a non-foil was alarming and not the new reality? Anyway, this card rules and foils are a little more than the non-foils, finally.

Modern Horizons 1 was such a juicy set that it’s tough to move the needle on non-mythic rares that aren’t format staples. However, the subtle over time when people weren’t especially building Vampires and the fact that this is pretty bonkers in any Vamps build makes me think this could hit a tipping point and become nuts quickly. I don’t hate foils, either.

If you can find foil copies under $10, don’t delay. They’re drying up, which bodes well for non-foils.

Only NM in stock on CK but there are over 150 listings on TCG Player. I like these but it will take a big nudge to get them going. That’s good, we can buy as much as we want without nudging.

Not much doing here. Infinite supply given its rarity and the foils are already like $12, which is higher than I care to buy in.

Sanctum Seeker is growing like it should and I see no reason why it couldn’t pop. It’s barely above its historic high and, given the set it’s in, this is a good candidate for a double up to a buylist.

I also like Blade of the Bloodchief and Champion of Dusk. Cards that show up on “merely” 4 of the lists are fine picks, too.

One more thing – we can let EDHREC do some of the work for us, too. I still use the multilist comparison tool, but EDHREC’s page for Vampire tribal does the same analytics as other pages, including high synergy and top cards. High synergy, as a refresher, means that the ratio of inclusion in vampires lists to inclusion in all decks of those colors is especially high, indicating it’s a card more less likely to be found in non-vampire decks. Stromkirk Captain has a very high synergy score, the synergy score for Sol Ring is a negative number. Peruse that page thoroughly as well.

Werewolves

This was tougher, and I leaned on EDHREC’s page a lot more.

Wow. OK. Not even Morophon? Maybe this won’t take that long

As a note for you when you use EDHREC, your pathing through the site matters. To find the decks we want, you’ll want to first go to the Werewolf tribal page and then click on the commanders’ portraits. That will take you to a specific page that only displays cards in Werewolf tribal decks for that commander. You won’t miss much if you mess up and go straight to Urlich’s page, but there are 20 Xenagos Werewolf tribal decks and if you don’t take the correct path to Xenagos’ page, you’ll get all Xenagos decks and that tiny signal will get washed out.

We’re not so much looking at tribal staples as we are looking at 2 decks that run basically the same cards because they have to. If anything, the cards that are unique to either deck are more interesting to me from a building perspective, but let’s parse the… sigh, 62 common cards between decks.

Afflicted Deserter
Arlinn
Arlinn Kord
Beast Within
Beastmaster Ascension
Breakneck Rider
Cinder Glade
Command Tower
Conduit of Storms
Cult of the Waxing Moon
Cultivate
Daybreak Ranger
Decimate
Domri
Duskwatch Recruiter
Evolving Wilds
Full Moon’s Rise
Gatstaf Shepherd
Geier Reach Bandit
Gruul Signet
Gruul Turf
Guardian Project
Hermit of the Natterknolls
Heroic Intervention
Howlpack Resurgence
Huntmaster of the Fells
Immerwolf
Instigator Gang
Kessig Forgemaster
Kessig Wolf Run
Kodama’s Reach
Kruin Outlaw
Lambholt Elder
Lifecrafter’s Bestiary
Mayor of Avabruck
Mondronen Shaman
Moonlight Hunt
Moonmist
Neglected Heirloom
Nightpack Ambusher
Rhythm of the Wild
Rootbound Crag
Rugged Highlands
Sage of Ancient Lore
Scorned Villager
Silverfur Partisan
Smoldering Werewolf
Sol Ring
Spirit of the Hunt
Stomping Ground
Temple of Abandon
The Great Henge
of the Krallenhorde
Ulrich’s Kindred
Ulvenwald Captive
Ulvenwald Mystics
Vanquisher’s Banner
Waxing Moon
Wolfbitten Captive
Wolfir Silverheart
Anarch of Bolas
Voice of the Pack

Let’s take out duplicate cards, lands and staples like Guardian Project.

Afflicted Deserter
Breakneck Rider
Conduit of Storms
Cult of the Waxing Moon
Daybreak Ranger
Duskwatch Recruiter
Full Moon’s Rise
Gatstaf Shepherd
Geier Reach Bandit
Hermit of the Natterknolls
Howlpack Resurgence
Huntmaster of the Fells
Immerwolf
Instigator Gang
Kessig Forgemaster
Kruin Outlaw
Lambholt Elder
Lifecrafter’s Bestiary
Mayor of Avabruck
Mondronen Shaman
Moonlight Hunt
Moonmist
Neglected Heirloom
Nightpack Ambusher
Rhythm of the Wild

Sage of Ancient Lore
Scorned Villager
Silverfur Partisan
Smoldering Werewolf
Spirit of the Hunt
The Great Henge
of the Krallenhorde
Ulrich’s Kindred
Ulvenwald Captive
Ulvenwald Mystics
Vanquisher’s Banner
Waxing Moon
Wolfbitten Captive
Wolfir Silverheart

This is a list of a bunch of $0.16 cards. A lot of them are more expensive in foil, and maybe that’s the play, but I’m not thrilled here, nor when I look at the Werewolf tribal page.

The cards that I think won’t get cut when they add better Werewolves plus a better commander are as follows.

Foil Immerwolf isn’t quite at an all-time high and with the supply basically what it is, this has potential. It’s been on the move a bit since the announcement of the Innistrad set, but it’s not done moving for that reason since not many people caught on.

This has flirted with $5 in the past and now it’s half that? This is a no-brainer.

I had to use ABU’s graph since this is basically gone everywhere else.

I don’t love anything else. Luckily, we have so many Vampire picks, I’m sure you have more than enough to mull over. FWIW, if you like foils more than me, I think you’ll likely mitigate some reprint risk since the set will likely be accompanied by one or two precons that could have Vampire and Werewolf reprints in them. Mitigating reprint risk is a fine strat, and a $3 foil Howlpack Resurgance that could go to $8 looks better than a $0.69 nonfoil that will only stop being $0.69, which is all it has going for it right now.

That does it for me. Until next time!

Dungeons & Dragons

In last week’s article I wrote a little bit about the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons crossover set – Adventures in the Forgotten Realms, and as we edge closer to the set release with more previews heading our way, I want to do a little bit of speculation on what I think is going to be important and which cards are going to be popular when the set hits us.


Coat of Arms (All Versions)

Price in Europe: €4
Price in US: $16
Possible price: $25

Races and classes are a huge part of Dungeons & Dragons, and so when we translate that to a Magic setting that probably means that creature types and tribes are going to be important when this set rolls around. That means that lords and lord effects could well be big game, and one of the most powerful lord effects around is Coat of Arms. Not only does it count your creatures for its effect, but it sees your opponents’ creatures as well which is more likely to matter than not at an EDH table.

As well as being in 17,000 EDH decks, Coat of Arms is the kind of card that’s hugely popular at the kitchen table – tribal decks are always going to do well, and that’s part of why I prefer the non-foils over the foils here – they have more casual appeal.

Aside from being a reasonable pickup in general, the arbitrage opportunities here are pretty wild – mostly due to the fact that this is not at all a competitive card, and so prices in Europe are low. You can grab various non-foils as low as €4 ($5) on MKM, whereas most versions on TCG start at $16+. That’s a huge gap that I think is only going to widen until we see a reprint, and to be honest I think it’s pretty impressive that the Mystery Booster versions are already at $16, after being $10 just a month or so ago. There are a tonne of different versions of this but they’re all a lot cheaper in Europe than the US, so take your pick and collect your winnings.

Dragon Tempest (Foil)

Price today: $5/OOS
Possible price: $15

Dungeons aren’t exactly a big part of MTG, but Dragons on the other hand – they’ve been an integral part of the game since Alpha, and they’re not done yet. We’ve already had one big dragon previewed from Adventures in the Forgotten Realms (a Dragon God no less), which goes and searches up all your best dragons from your deck for you. Dragons are the second most popular EDH tribe just behind elves, and I expect we’ll be seeing a lot more cool dragons with the new set.

Dragon Tempest might ‘only’ be in 8300 EDH decks on EDHREC, but the important fact is that it’s included in 86% of all dragon tribal decks that could play it, which is honestly a huge proportion considering the variety of dragon decks out there. The card was first printed back in Dragons of Tarkir, and since then we’ve had an IMA printing, a Commander 2017 printing (non-foil only) and an FNM promo pack. I was quite surprised to find that there are zero DTK NM foils on TCGPlayer, and only a small handful of LP copies. On top of that, even though it’s only an uncommon in IMA, there are only 13 NM foil listings for those.

I think that if you can find DTK foils under or around $7-8 and IMA foils around $5 you should be good here – both are available in Europe around those prices but not in huge supply, and some US vendors do still have a few copies here and there. I don’t think that this is primed for a reprint in the D&D set, so you should be looking good to grab a few copies and out them as hype for the set starts to spin up properly.

Temur Ascendancy (OBF)

Price today: $18
Possible price: $40

Staying with the Dragon theme (ish) for my last pick here, Temur Ascendancy is another enchantment in a lot of Dragon decks, and I think that the old-border foils from Time Spiral Remastered are generally just a good target here. A lot of the OBFs from the set are already very expensive but I think that some, like this one, are still being underrated.

Temur Ascendancy is in around 8500 EDH decks on EDHREC, a reasonably strong 12% of all decks that could play it. It’s an excellent card draw engine for the type of deck that’s likely to be playing it, and the haste really pushes everything over the top (especially for the dragons that are sorely lacking the haste department).

There are 36 OBF listings on TCGPlayer at the moment, which really isn’t a huge number considering almost all are single copies. With just a handful under $20, I think that those copies are a good buy at the moment to hold onto for 12 months or so. This is the kind of card you’ll probably see reprinted in a Commander set at some point, but I highly doubt we’ll get another premium printing like this for a long time.


David Sharman (@accidentprune on Twitter) has been playing Magic since 2013, dabbling in almost all formats but with a main focus on Modern, EDH and Pioneer. Based in the UK and a new writer for MTGPrice in 2020, he’s an active MTG finance speculator specialising in cross-border arbitrage.

Archive Dive

There’s a lot of things clamoring for our attention right now in Magic. Another overhaul of the OP program, stores are finally starting to open up, Modern Horizons 2 is starting previews soon…making this the perfect time to pay attention to Strixhaven’s mini-set, the Mystical Archive.

Some of these cards are surprisingly underpriced, and it’s time we take a look at what’s worth buying. It’s possible that these go a little lower in price, so you may want to be patient, but I’m calling attention to it all now.

It’s also worth saying that I’m paying attention to nonfoils and foils equally. If one version seems underpriced, that’s where I want to be. Play patterns also account for some differences, but I’m not committed to foils, etched, or plain copies. 

Time Warp (Mystical Archive $14, MA Etched $21, MA Foil $34) – I’m looking harder at the foils here, because as you remember from my piece six weeks ago about The Math of Strixhaven, you got a traditional foil mythic rare 4.8% of the time in a Collector Booster, and one foil Time Warp is found every 309 packs. These aren’t easy to find at all. I know that the Japanese alternate-art is consuming all of our attention, but that card is actually MORE common than the English version. (Every language of packs can open JP alternates, but only English packs can open the English yellow frame version.)

It’s also worth looking at the nonfoil for the simple reason that the price has never been lower, and that always has my attention. Time Warp is included in just over 9,000 Commander decks online, and has the benefit of not exiling itself like a lot of other extra-turn cards do. Other versions haven’t really taken much of a hit, even the M10 version from more than ten years ago has only fallen $3. 

Abundant Harvest ($2/$3/$7) – I didn’t know this was a brand-new card, and I’m not sure why. It’s brand-new and doesn’t exist anywhere else. Yet, anyway. It’s also worth noting that this is getting played as a four-of in Legacy Miracles decks, causing the prices of the foil JP alternate to skyrocket recently. Those should settle back down before too long, but when there’s a leading indicator like that, and this is such a unique card, that this is a very tempting card to buy for the long term. My only concern is the risk of being printed in a regular frame, likely as a common, as Adventurous Impulse was. Oath of Nissa was often called ‘the Green Ponder’ during its time in Standard, to the point that it was included on Pioneer’s initial Banned list. 

If this doesn’t get reprinted, I wouldn’t be shocked for this to be in the $5/$7/$15 range within a year.

Crux of Fate ($3/$5.50/$7) – The English version of this card is admittedly Jason Felix’s demonstration of his ability to copy fan art, and I’m admittedly not sure what that means for the price of the card long-term. I’m skeptical that the plagiarism will result in the card itself being cheaper, but I could also see this version being held back from going too high because of that same factor. Really, for me, this comes down to the announcement last week about Adventures in the Forgotten Realms: Tiamat, the newest five-color dragon.

Dragons were already a popular tribe, but Tiamat offers some amazing opportunities in that arena. One of the best accessories you could run in a Dragon deck is Crux of Fate, since it’ll kill every non-Dragon on the table. The JP alternate version started a lot higher and is showing no signs of decreasing. Keep in mind that it’s already in 13,000 Commander decks online, and that’s before the Dragon frenzy that will show up this summer. Tiamat and the anticipation of Dragon goodness is why the price of the foil from Fate Reforged went up $2 this past week as well.

Regrowth ($0.75/$1.50/$3) – You may be thinking that this is a basic card, and not worth it, but twenty-two thousand people bothered to put it into their decks online, which means a lot more folks have done that. Bala Ged Recovery is more expensive, it’s in 14k decks, but it’s a more versatile card. 

Regrowth is worth it as a brick-worthy spec, especially as one of the cheapest rares in this subset of cards. There’s a surprising number of people who like to collect full sets like this, and that’s why I’d also listen if you wanted a stack of Urza’s Rage or Compulsive Research. If you prefer to get in on cheap foil mythics (remember, one every 309 packs) then you’re aiming at Increasing Vengeance and Channel, each of which can be had for under a buck on TCGPlayer.

Growth Spiral ($1/$2/$3) – Spiral is in 20% of all Commander decks with blue and green in them, as well as being good in some Modern and Pioneer decks. Right now, your only choices for a premium version are the pack version and the sweet FNM frame, as well as the JP alternate art. Granted, both the promo and the original features some amazing work by Seb McKinnon, but these new versions are awesome too. I could be talked into any of the MA versions, but I will gravitate towards the cheapest nonfoil or the most expensive foil when it comes to Commander specs. 

Cliff (@WordOfCommander) has been writing for MTGPrice since 2013, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the official substitute teacher of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at a GP and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.

Unlocked Pro Trader: 20,000 words about C21

Readers!

Typically I shoot for between 1,500 and 2,000 words per article, but today, I wanted to shoot for 20,000 words instead. I know it sounds daunting, believe me, it’s even more daunting for me. Do you really want to read an article that’s 10 times as long as my typical article? I mean, you might, but probably not. I’m certainly not inclined to write that much in one sitting, either. The only way for something like this to work is for me to try and hack it slightly. If we consider a picture to be 1,000 words, we can hit the 20k mark in no time. The best thing about a picture being worth 1,000 words is that you’re going to come to your own conclusions rather than having me either spoonfeed or bias you.

Commander 2021 is making stuff move, finally, and while there is still time to get ahead of some of it, it’s also good to know what is in the process of moving. With all of that in mind, I’m going to try to communicate the rest of my ideas with pictures. Whether or not you think this works, I’m probably never doing this again, so don’t worry if you hate it. Anyway, let’s make with the pics.

Did I make my points convincingly? Are you left with more questions than answers? Should I never again attempt to do a 20,000 word article? Let me know in the comment section or in the Discord if you’re a Pro Trader. Thanks for… can you call it reading? Thanks for your kind attention and I hope you picked up some of these sold-out cards when we called them earlier. Until next time!

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