Going Mad

Going Mad – The Numbers are In

45 Comments

By: Derek Madlem

This last weekend saw the world of competitive Magic pause while big stupid monsters flooded out of hedron-lined crates to do Battle for Zendikar. Every social media channel was jammed full of Expeditions #humblebrags as players showed off their newly unearthed wealth.

Frequency

When we were introduced to the concept of Expeditions in that now infamous Wil Wheaton conducted train wreck stage show. During that deluge of faux-enthusiasm and butthole jokes we were given the approximation of “slightly more common than premium Mythic rares” which equaled out to roughly one per case. Initial reports from the field have these showing up at roughly 1 in 100 packs…a far cry from the “one per case” that we had all anticipated and based our theorycrafting on.

For now we can probably just ignore all the conspiracy theories about loaded prerelease packs, higher occurrence rates in the first print run, or reptilian illuminati overlords. While we’ve seen that it is incredibly easy for Wizards to manipulate print runs and collation, there isn’t much incentive for them to make a set less desirable to consumers. They’re in the business of selling packs of colored cardboard, not in bamboozling their clientele.

This heightened occurrence rate is going to put MASSIVE downward pressure on singles from this set as retailers are going to be incentivized to open more product during the initial scramble for competitive staples. This isn’t even taking into account the number of misguided mouthbreathers that conspired to buy case upon case of sealed product to cash in on the Expedition lottery.

Poluted-Delta

Numbers

With the release of Expeditions into the wild, we’ve got real numbers to look at. TCGPlayer and eBay are both providing actual real world data for the actual selling prices of these cards. Here’s a rough breakdown of what these things are selling for:

Tango lands:
Smoldering Marsh – $50
Canopy Vista – $55
Cinder Glade – $55
Prairie Stream – $65
Sunken Hollow – $65

Shock lands:
Temple Garden – $100
Overgrown Tomb – $100
Godless Shrine – $100
Sacred Foundry – $110
Watery Grave $120
Blood Crypt – $125
Breeding Pool – $125
Stomping Ground – $140
Hallowed Fountain – $145
Steam Vents – $180

Fetch lands:
Marsh Flats – $170
Bloodstained Mire – $170
Windswept Heath – $170
Wooded Foothills – $175
Arid Mesa – $220
Verdant Catacombs – $260
Flooded Strand – $335
Polluted Delta – $375
Misty Rainforest – $375
Scalding Tarn – $440

There’s not too much surprising about the initial price spread on these lands. The tango lands are a little higher than I would have guessed while pretty much all the shocklands with the exception of Steam Vents are spot on. I expected the lower fetches to be a lot closer to $100 than they ended up, but the market is still in flux on all of these cards.

The average price of an Expedition land comes out to roughly $170, this is a number we’re going to use going forward but it’s important to note that the average is heavily skewed by those blue fetches at the top end of the spectrum.

Wooded-Foothills

Wholesale

A huge piece of the puzzle that is aggregate pricing for Magic cards is the wholesale price that retailers pay. A booster box costs most retailers between $75 and $80 each. We’ll just call it $80 a box because it’s a nice even number that equals out to $480 a case.

With a case containing 216 packs and a frequency of one Expeditions land per 100 packs, we can expect two Expeditions lands per case (three Expeditions lands in every sixth case) providing an average value of $340 to retailers. This means that retailers only have to make up $140 out of the remaining 216 rares/mythics, 216 full art basics, 6 foil rares, 1 foil mythic, and some quantity of sweet full art foil basic lands to break even.

When you average the EV of the Expeditions across every box, it’s basically adding $56 in expected value to every box, or 70% of the wholesale cost. Factor in another $18 just off of selling full art basics at 50¢ a piece and you’ve got that booster box nearly paid for without selling a single rare. I know there’s a subsection of you out there getting ready to point out that the full art lands will not sell for that much, but if these weren’t already in high demand how is SCG preselling fat packs for $60?

With Expeditions contributing this much EV to booster boxes, it’s a doomsday scenario for individual card prices after the first week or so – nothing makes it out alive this time folks.

Demand

Right now (Sunday night) on eBay, there are a total of 16 total Scalding Tarn Expeditions lands for sale (U.S. only) and only 7 “completed” listings. What do I take away from this? That even the people in the market for these cards are not quite in the market for them at current prices.

Here’s the thing about people with disposable income – outside of lottery winner and trust fund babies, there isn’t a large number of stupid people with boat loads of money…it’s a self correcting ship. So those avid collectors know that now is not the time to buy into Expeditions, which may be a portent into a future where the price on these pornographic landscapes comes tumbling downward. In other words, $400+ Scalding Tarns are likely unsustainable.

Balancing Act

Ok, we’re likely looking at decreasing Expeditions prices. Why doesn’t that mean that we’ll see other prices holding up better? Well, there’s twice as many as we expected for one and we’re not likely to see the prices drop THAT much. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your perspective, we’re not likely to see this set’s flagship cards take the big hit.

We previously predicted that this set wouldn’t retain much value thanks to the one Expeditions land per case. With two Expeditions land per case that outlook hasn’t changed even if the Expeditions lands end up at half their current value, which is unlikely. I expect to see all of the Expeditions lands to dip in price, but that decline won’t be spread evenly across the entire set. We’re much more likely to see the blue fetches take a minor hit while we see the tango lands and lesser demanded shock lands take more significant hits to their value.

Something like this:

Tango lands:
Smoldering Marsh – $30
Canopy Vista – $30
Cinder Glade – $30
Prairie Stream – $35
Sunken Hollow – $35

Shock lands:
Temple Garden – $80
Overgrown Tomb – $80
Godless Shrine – $80
Sacred Foundry – $80
Watery Grave $110
Blood Crypt – $80
Breeding Pool – $90
Stomping Ground – $90
Hallowed Fountain – $110
Steam Vents – $150

Fetch lands:
Marsh Flats – $140
Bloodstained Mire – $140
Windswept Heath – $140
Wooded Foothills – $145
Arid Mesa – $175
Verdant Catacombs – $200
Flooded Strand – $300
Polluted Delta – $350
Misty Rainforest – $350
Scalding Tarn – $400

This is all purely hypothetical, so don’t hold me to these numbers, but in this scenario the average value of an Expeditions land is still around $140, which still provides $280 in EV per case. At that rate, the expeditions are still covering nearly 60% of the EV in a case, add in those basic lands for an easy 80%. With Expeditions soaking up this much value, we might be entering a world of unprecedented low prices for standard cards.

Ignore everything I said last week (you probably did already), it’s looking like the value of paper Battle for Zendikar cards might end up being so low that it’s not even economically feasible to redeem MTGO sets.

Sacred-Foundry

The Grand Experiment

If anything’s becoming apparent, it’s that Wizards is leveraging popular cards to line its own pockets while making standard cards more accessible. Modern Masters is a glaring example, but even the event decks and clash packs are becoming regular value bombs. We used to look at these decks as “almost worth it” and now they’re basically free money.

What are we getting this time around? In case you missed it:

Warden of the First Tree
Whisperwood Elemental
Tasigur, the Golden Fang
Hangarback Walker
Llanowar Wastes
Evolutionary Leap

That’s six quality rares for one low price, plus you get all that other crap along with it. This pattern of reprinting Standard staples and leveraging powerful reprints to depress the prices of other cards is definitely something Wizards is keeping an eye on…will increased accessibility make tournaments more appealing to a larger audience? Does the average Magic player really care how much “value” they get out of a booster pack as long as they have a chance to get something they personally value out of that booster?

If the Expeditions lands weren’t enough downward pressure for BFZ prices, we can almost count on Standard’s most popular cards showing up in the Oath of the Gatewatch clash pack in just three short months, so just the looming threat of reprints is enough to keep me from going deep betting on any Standard cards going forward. Tasigur was a sure thing right? Hangarback was right up there with him. Now neither of these cards look like too great an investment.

The End

During Worldwake people bought booster after booster just because they had a chance to open a $100 card. We saw the same behavior with Modern Masters and Modern Master 2015 (to a lesser extent) packs. With Battle for Zendikar we have the same thing all over again. Whether foil Scalding Tarns end up at $400 or $300, they’re still a big shiny carrot that’s sure to appeal to the degenerate gambler in all of us, even after every last bit of value is sucked out of the regular cards in this set.

There’s even a good chance that we’ll continue to prefer Battle for Zendikar once Oath of the Gatewatch comes out because there’s frankly no land cycle that’s going to be more appealing to open as an Expeditions card than the fetch lands.

 

45 thoughts on “Going Mad – The Numbers are In”

    1. I think they’ve traditionally announced the Clash Packs and Event Decks separately from set announcements because they don’t contain 100% cards from that set.

  2. There are a lot of rumors that Wizards increased the rate of expeditions for prerelease product. If that’s the case, any estimate is just completely off.

    1. There are a lot of conspiracy theories about this sort of thing, but ultimately there is no incentive for Wizards to do this. People hate being sold an inferior product and they are just conjuring these out of thin air, which is different from the limited number of “priceless treasures” the first time around.

      1. It’s not a conspiracy theory when the prerelease packs are labeled differently and the prerelease boxes have been having incredibly weird trends since they started the new system. Origins had an issue where mythics were clumping in the prerelease boxes (2-3 or 0 per box).

        My point isn’t to argue that this absolutely, definitely is true, but that is a possibility is there and wouldn’t be out of line with previous results.

      2. Agreed. I pulled a DL Ojutai and an Ugin in my DTK prerelease box. Extremely small sample size, I understand, but the fact remains that prerelease boxes are just packaged differently than standard booster boxes.

  3. Hi Derek,

    As always, nice article.
    What effect will the Expeditions have on ‘regular’ foil versions the shocks (RTR) and fetches (KTK)?

    1. I think RTR and Khans foil lands will be unaffected. These will put a ceiling on the price of the others as the pimpiest of versions has to be the most expensive. Realistically these are in a completely different market than their predecessors – think similar to the SDCC walkers affecting the price of pack FOILS.

      1. My two cents: each box has a 1% likelihood of getting any particular Expedition (lets focus on Khans Fetches). Each Khans box had a 1.7% likelihood of getting any particular Fetch. If BFZ gets opened 20% more than Khans, then there will be 1.2/1.7 = ~70% of the supply of any Khans Fetch added to the population. In other words, if there are say (completely hypothetical # here) 100,000 FOIL polluted Deltas in the world…after BFZ, there will be 170,000 FOIL Polluted Deltas in the world.

        How can that NOT affect the price for FOIL Polluted Delta?

        Similarly for RTR Shocks. You’re getting a rough double on supply. Demand isn’t doubling. So, prices have to fall. Just watch…in 3 months the average ebay completed auction for FOIL RTR shocks and FOIL Khans fetches will be down by 20-30%.

      2. I think you are far of with a 30% decrease in price for foil Khans and RTR. Couple of reasons:

        1. The expeditions are NOT increasing Khans foil stock. They are something different. Yes, they increase foil fetch stock, however:

        2. Most of the expeditions are very ugly. Not full art, VM artwork (I mean: just look at that Flooded Strand. Estathics is important for pimping, and that card is simply unrecognisable as a Flooded Strand).

        3. I don’t beleive current owners holding foil khans fetch are willing to part their stock for a 30 percent discount, period.

        4. New people will pick up pimping and foil collecting once they have their first peice. On the other side: I have already seen players that opened their expedition be eager as hell to get rid of them in the face of short term profits. More so than during Khans drafts… The gap is simply to great.

        All in all I expect however that the expeditions WILL put a ceiling on the price of Khans and RTR foil lands. They had a nice trajectory that has now been postponed for maybe two years.

  4. 1 per 100 is precisely correct. I shared a few weeks back that they’d be 2 per case. 2.16 was the number per case my inside source quoted to me. The forums didn’t seem interested in my response at the time.

      1. So a scalding Tarn is 1 in 1,500 packs.

        Is anyone else reminded of what happened with sports cards in the early 90s?

      2. I had this exact same thought, in regards to the price of the rest of the non-insert cards.

        Thing is? You can actually DO something with Magic cards, so it only slightly resembles this trend.

  5. Curious about your logic behind disregarding the theory that prerelease packs were seeded more highly in an effort to drive up case/box sales. If they make an initial statement of 1/case but deliver 2x that very shortly at prerelease, that bodes well for them at the very beginning of the set’s actual release. And when the true rate comes out to be 1/case, we as consumers couldn’t be that disappointed because that’s what they told us from the beginning.

    1. Yeah, and they’ll do this…why exactly? Just to annoy their customers? That makes zero sense. And that’s also the only argument you need against this kind of conspiracy theory. No company would do something that annoys their customers when they have no reason at all to do it.

      1. They do it not to “annoy their customer”. They do it bc it makes them money. Their average customer is not your or I, debating Expedition rates in an online forum. Their average customer is the guy who sits around the table playing with his friends and decides to go to a prerelease event. And when he sees people around him opening Expeditions at relatively high rates, he thinks to himself “gee that could be me. Maybe I’ll buy a box”. My point is that it doesn’t make sense for their head designer and primary PR guy to make a completely inaccurate statement, and them to actually deliver something else entirely. They’re in the business of making money, and you know what makes them more money? Saying “twice that of a foil mythic” if that is truly the case.

    2. I guess what I’m saying is that, if Mark Rosewater states “slightly higher than a foil mythic”, I don’t know how we can completely disregard that based on preliminary rates coming from non-standard prerelease packages.

      1. Mark Rosewater is the third person in a game of telephone, he was told by someone else who was told by the person in charge of pack collation algorithms. Now they could have given him a very complex explanation, or they could just tell him “slightly more common than whatever”

    3. So you have to think of this from a game theory standpoint.

      What does Wizards have to gain by reducing the print run after the initial deployment? Nothing.

      What do they have to lose? If word got out, they would face a customer backlash.

      There’s no incentive for them to be deceptive in this manner.

      1. “What does wizards have to gain from limiting after pre release? Nothing” WRONG! do you even think? They screw themselves over for next set by not cutting it back, if they ran lottery ticket cards like some of you morons assume, that wont sell much of the next half of it now would it….smh ill let you continue to breed stupidity I guess because maybe a guy will read this then trade me one better :0

  6. You had to tease me with the Polluted Delta art….I was/am that guy. I opened up the lottery ticket of an Expedition Land and it was a freakin Smoldering Marsh as my friend opened a Misty. As I told people: “it’s like getting lucky with the fat ugly chick…yeah I got lucky but just wish I did a whole lot better for myself!” lol

    I showed up to as much prerelease as I could because I felt that the prerelease packs would be juiced…I feel the same about mtgo prerelease and release as well. Whether I’m right or wrong they definitely were opened closer to that 1:100 level and not the 1 per case some people predicted.

    More importantly, and I’m not ripping your info, some/most of your projected values are higher than what you can currently find cards for on ebay and your “current price” listing is already out of date. The Race to the Bottom is super real. Expedition Wooded Foothills for $130, Mires for less, etc. The Tango/Battle Expedition lands seem to be between $50-$90 so they haven’t adjusted yet and $40-50 might be the bottom, but your prices wouldn’t surprise me. And this is before larger retailers begin auctioning them off. Also, THEY AREN’T FULL ART!!!! The generally look nice, but they maybe have 1cm larger pics. In the future I can see Wizards repackaging the “good” lands and doing real Full Art without the text like Foil Full Art Lightning Bolts…then that would crush the price of these. Regardless, if I wasn’t a huge Veronique Meignaud fan I would have 0 interest in these cards. I do have the goal of trading unused modern cards and Jace and Gideons to acquire some and any of the Expedition lands, but I am wholeheartedly underwhelmed after seeing them in person. Maybe I’m a bit jaded, but if your intro art was a real card and just said Polluted Delta on top then yes, my dumb ass would probably spend $400+ just to get one 😀

    P.S. I’ve seen a lot of Expedition lands with rough foily edges (primarily the right edge), both live and on ebay auctions so if people are interested make sure you get a good scan before buying. Really disappointing to open a somewhat damaged mythic foil, reminiscent of MM2015 issues.

    1. To be fair I wrong this on Sunday, so that race to the bottom is under way. Also I ignored results from foreign countries like the Czech Republic, because regardless of feedback, a lot of people won’t order from a foreign country.

  7. A couple points:
    (1) I think you hit the nail on the head, that the Demand for these Expeditions is unsustainable. Your article assumes a minor reduction in pricing for the expeditions, then comes to the conclusion that other things (mythics, rares) will be essentially worthless. However, what if the expeditions are the thing that loses value?? What if the average expedition value per case were to fall to something more long-term sustainable like $100 / case? Or $150 / case? Or $75 / case? It seems much more likely to me that the expeditions will take a HUGE fall from the ~$200-$280 / case value they currently hold. Depending on how many per case (my point #2 below), I could see the value of these things plummeting. If the average expedition value per case is, say $100…and we assume 1.6 expeditions per case…then tangos probably average $20, shocks probably average $40, and fetches probably average $100 (non blue ~$70, blue ~$150). In other words, I would guess they probably average 30-50% more than regular set foils (average set foil tango ~$15, average RTR foil shock ~$25, average Khan foil fetch ~$70 – non blue $50, blue ~$90). This is much lower than the current 200-400% multiplier they currently enjoy.

    They are really rare and really cool NOW, but in 3 months, you’ll see them everywhere. Also, the fact that the text box basically covers up the art means that it really isn’t FULL ART the same way other cards have been in the past….they really do look pretty much exactly like normal cards (in terms of their “full art-ness”).

    (2) I had read somewhere that the statement was “each individual expedition was as rare as a foil mythic” – but since there are 25 expeditions, and 15 mythics, and Foil Mythics are 1 per case…that Expeditions will be roughly 1.6 per case. This is pretty close to your number. If this is the case, the likelihood of you pulling a specific expedition in a given box is 1.6 per case / 6 boxes per case / 25 expeditions = 0.010667 = ~1%. The likelihood of pulling a specific foil fetch in a box of Khans was ~1.7%…so assuming BFZ sells more boxes than Khans…there might be a roughly equivalent amount of Expedition Polluted Deltas, Flooded Strands, Windswept Heaths, etc. vs. their Khans counterparts. If you’ve been holding onto FOIL Khans Fetches…you better have a VERY long term outlook because the supply is going to come close to doubling.

    1. (2) I had read somewhere that the statement was “each individual expedition was as rare as a foil mythic” – but since there are 25 expeditions, and 15 mythics, and Foil Mythics are 1 per case…that Expeditions will be roughly 1.6 per case.

      He actually said they would be slightly more common than a foil mythic. But this statement made me realize: What if we’re looking at it all wrong? We all thought that meant they would be roughly 1 per case– you’ll get 1 expedition per case, just like you get 1 foil mythic per case.

      But what if he actually meant it the way you said? That each INDIVIDUAL expedition shows up with the same rarity as each INDIVIDUAL foil mythic? That is, for each foil Gideon, there is one foil Expedition. So if you bought 15 cases, you’d (theoretically) get one of each foil mythic, and you’d get all 25 expeditions, leading to the 1.6 per case number that you mentioned.

      Now add in the fact that he actually said the expeditions are slightly MORE common than that… and you could get to the 2.0 per case or 2.16 per case number that seems to represent the actual distribution.

      That’s a decent theory: That all along Wizards was actually hinting at 2.0 per case, but we just misinterpreted it.

      1. “What does wizards have to gain from limiting after pre release? Nothing” WRONG! do you even think? They screw themselves over for next set by not cutting it back, if they ran lottery ticket cards like some of you morons assume, that wont sell much of the next half of it now would it….smh ill let you continue to breed stupidity I guess because maybe a guy will read this then trade me one better :0

  8. eBay BIN on the Scalding Tarns is $299 right now. This seems overly low (I just bought three). Long term, I still think $400 is right around the correct price point.

  9. Jason Huang, I was with you until you said that the number of Foil Khans fetches are going to double. In order for that to happen so much product needs to be opened that BFZ will truly have 0 value outside of the Expedition lands and few foil Mythics. This is possible, but I think you under-estimate how much Khans was opened simply via draft and sealed, let alone cracked to find fetches.

    I said in my previous post that the Expedition lands aren’t truly “Full Art” so I agree, I think this is going to lessen the inflated demand for these rare lands and dec the amount of product that is opened by a small fraction, but a dec nonetheless.

    Foil Khans Fetches are in fact a long term hold already. Anyone thinking they would spike is kinda out of their mind. Delta and Strand had mini spikes when it was announced that Tarn and Misty weren’t going to be reprinted yet, but have mostly fallen back to their previous levels save for a few dollars gained in price. The fact that Khans hasn’t been opened in limited for a while is one of the only reasons there’s hope for the set to regain value this fall. There’s a chance next Modern season that the fetches go crazy in price if they aren’t reprinted in Oath. From that aspect I hope they don’t get the reprint but it’s doubtful the Zendikar fetches survive a reprint for that long.

    Actually one more point, THE EXPEDITION LANDS ARE NOT REDEEMABLE VIA MTGO! This means that no matter what all the regular BFZ cards are going to continue to outnumber the Expedition lands and be more available. So Ulamag, Gideon, and Drana, etc will fractionally increase in supply compared to the Expedition lands with every redemption thereby further diluting the value you can get from BFZ by cracking a box or drafting. I’m with D Mad and the writers on here, if you play Standard buy what you need and have fun with those cards, unfortunately don’t expect them to be worth anything in a few months let alone a year. Look at the price of the Theros Temples and of Siege Rhino…the only thing going to be worth anything when the dust settles are the Expeditions, and even as you said it’s gonna be less than many think or hope.

    1. Spencer – you’re 100% right, I forgot about the MTGO redemptions. I *still* think that people are way underestimating the aggregate supply that these will represent.

      If we interpret the statements correctly, each individual expedition will be “more common” than any individual foil mythic. In other words, there will be more of any of these than any of the Foil Mythics. When was the last time we had a single in-print $300 foil mythic in a standard set, much less 4 of them? I don’t think Liliana ever got to $300 in print…was Jace, the Mind Sculptor the last in-print $300 foil mythic? When was the last time we even had a $100 in-print foil mythic in a standard set?

      These HAVE to come down in price, and not just down, but way down. I think at the max-supply point, the blue fetches will be ~$100-$120 on ebay. The non-blue fetches will be $50-$70, the shocks $30-$50, and the tangos $20-$30

      Think about bulk Mythic Foils…they’re usually worth a couple bucks? This is a Mythic Foil run with literally no bulk. Stores are going to keep opening product until there’s a supply equilibrium…and that happens when the average price of these is much much much lower than it is today.

      1. I don’t know how far these come down, but they definitely have to once the supply faucet gets turned on. Early openings by stores stocking inventory have demonstrated that the ratio is much closer to 1 per case from booster boxes than the 2/case we saw in prerelease packs, but there will still be WAY more of these on the market shortly, since very few players that open them will choose to hold on to them in the face of the immediate cash in value. Peak supply should be in place by early December, a period that is already good for MTG deals as people sell off key cards to pay for presents. Look for entry points then.

      2. Not questioning the integrity of your store sources or you as a journalist, but where are you getting that “closer to 1/case” data? How many stores and cases are we talking about?

    2. Lol the day your right and expeditions arnt worth much of anything is the day wizards loses their lottery ticket sell-point, and leaves the game a bad taste for investors as a whole imo, so you get some investors to offload youll see hell happen to magic card prices 😉

  10. Derek,

    You’re one of the biggest draws for me to this site. You’re topical, you think outside the norm, and you give people something to discuss—not for the sake of talking, but because somebody’s thinking it, and others should think about it, too.

    1. Hey thanks for the kind words, I’m glad that you recognize that a lot of the information I include in my articles is for the purpose of discussion and not necessarily my opinion on a topic – some people don’t recognize that.

  11. There’s a reason you have so many comments on your article Derek. I hope you enjoy writing as much as we like reading and commenting. Again I wasn’t ripping your dollar amounts, I tried to say that but not sure if you caught that. I know you have deadlines and submit articles before they are printed. My main point was that I’m blown away by the Race to the Bottom for these cards. $275 and free shipping for Delta, $245 for Strand…I sure didn’t see the blue fetches (except misty) falling below $300 any time soon. I guess people are figuring they can’t afford a playset so just sell them now??

    Was at my LGS tonight. Was told that through the first 25 cases 50 Expedition lands were opened. But by the time they got to 75 cases only 100 were opened (so 1 per case over the last 50). This is what I was told by the workers opening them and I don’t see why they would lie. Just wanted to drop some info for everyone tracking these things.

    Thanks for your great work, info, and opinions D Mad. Good discussing and debating things with you jason.huang and others 🙂

  12. Unrelated to their price what do you think are the odds that the art is exclusive to the expeditions? I think it’s a given that enemy fetches will be reprinted at some point and it would be disappointing to see them show up in foil w/ the same art as what we are getting now.

    1. I doubt we’ll see the art used elsewhere, these are all “zendikar specific” artwork and we’re probably not returning to zendikar again for another five years.

  13. I’m curious where foil mythics will end up. I think there will be a few with some decent multipliers but I’m just as skeptical as everyone else about non-foils and the expedition lands.

    Prices have to come down somehow… We shall see what part of this set takes the biggest hit. Obviously non-foil uncommons and rares will be nearly worthless right? But I’m a believer in casual demand and EDH so I think there could be enough demand for some foils to keep prices high.

    In the scenario in my head, at least 5 foil mythics are worth more than the foil tango lands, worst case. Best case is that the shocks fall as well and maybe some foil rares take their place in the EV. I think the higher end foil fetchlands will be fairly safe. I can almost guarantee that a foil mythic (Gideon perhaps) is going to take eat up some of the EV of the “crap” expedition lands.

    1. FOILs basically need strong commander or eternal format demand to be worth anything long term, people just don’t generally pimp out their standard decks because of constant rotation. Commander is saturated with quality cards so I don’t think there are any “must play” cards in any color anymore. I’m also not a huge fan of anything in this set outside of Standard.

      Long story short: I’m not real excited about any of their prospects.

  15. Keith, I think when the enemy fetches are reprinted they will have different art work. When the Onslaught fetches were reprinted in Khans they had a Khans/Dragon death flavor to them. Then got new more generic art for the Expedition cycle. Without any proof and just IMO I think when the Zendikar fetches are reprinted we will get new flavor rich artwork for them consistent with the set they are printed in and flow of the story line.

  16. There were 4 (a 5th unconfirmed) expedition lands opened at one pre-release I attended with 46 total people (276 packs). I didn’t get an expedition, but pulled two ulamogs (1 promo) and a kiora. Small sample size, but seemed really skewed to me.

    1. Whenever someone caveats with “small sample size” I pretty much ignore what they’re saying. Might as well say, “I opened one pack and pulled a Foil Mythic, there’s one per pack.”

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