Monthly Archives: October 2017

Casual Fridays

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Prospects of Ixalan

Every set, I like to identify some cards that are going to be awesome in casual formats (unformatted kitchen table, Cube, Commander, etc.) or nonrotating formats and I want to keep an eye on their prices. Ideally, I’ll pick a price and the cards I want will drop below the price I want to pay, so I can get them at that price.

For example: Thespian’s Stage

There were two times, early on in this card’s lifespan, that you could trade for this at a dollar or so, and buy it for fifty cents or so. And I did, as often as I could. I ended up with a stack of them, which I buylisted for $2 each at a GP and had a great time.

If you want a more recent example of this philosophy, how about the foils of Thought-Knot Seer?

My number for that was $20, and I picked up a few at that price, and now I’m trading it away at $35, though I recognize that $40-$50 is in play, considering how popular Eldrazi are in Modern.

With those growths in mind, what looks good in Ixalan at what price?

Settle the Wreckage ($5.50 currently) – This mega-Path to Exile is going to be casual gold, but only if I can get it at the right price. It’s spiked a bit in recent days as an answer for threats like Hazoret the Fervent or The Scarab God, and it can take down Carnage Tyrant too. Where I really love this card is in Commander, because so many people don’t play a lot of basics. This is also a backbreaking spell to cast against Bogles, but that deck is too niche for precious sideboard slots in Modern.

Notice that right now, the foil is only a couple bucks more than the nonfoil. Traditionally, this indicates that Standard demand is very high, and the casual demand hasn’t caught up yet. I’m in on foils at $3-$4, and the plain versions around a dollar, maybe two. A lot will depend on price memory for this card, if too many people remember it as a $5 card then the price won’t have a chance to fall.

Vanquisher’s Banner ($2) – The foils here are about $6, and that feels right for now. The nonfoil is a very huge reprint risk, but considering that we just got the tribal Commander sets, I think it’s safe for a while. Foils are usually safer, but there’s no guarantees. I can tell you that I’d generally prefer to see this than Door of Destinies in my hand, because getting the constant flow of cards is supremely valuable. I’m hoping for this to drop to $1/$3, and I’m optimistic, considering that this was nearly $5 on release.

Primal Amulet ($2) – A couple of special notes about this card: First, it’s got a foil multiplier of five, which tells us that the casual demand for this card is very high. It makes sense, though, because we love doubling our awesome spells when playing at our kitchen table. This has much higher long-term potential than a recent favorite of mine, Pyromancer’s Goggles, because it’s a land and there’s no color restrictions.

The second note about this card is that we have ten rare transform cards, and this is flying in the face of something we were told before: that adding flip cards to a set is logistically problematic. I’ve thought for some time that transforming foils are among the safest investments in Magic finance, because they are hard to reprint in regular sets, but here we are, with a sprinkling of transform. This is something I want to be aware of going forward, as it’s one more sign that nothing is safe, except the Reserved List.

The Amulet is already a $10 foil, and I’d like that to come down a dollar or two. The nonfoil is hopefully going lower, but I’m content to pick these up at $2 in trade.

On a related note, Dowsing Dagger is at a similar price point, and trending downward a bit more steeply. I’m really hoping this is a $6 foil in the next month or two.

Boneyard Parley ($1) – I’m always an advocate for bulk mythics, but the foil being $5 caught my eye. I don’t think this is a good card, but my goodness, this is a sweet card. For seven mana, late in a Commander game, you’re getting the best card in any graveyard, and potentially the best two or three, depending on what you need and who’s choosing the piles.

River’s Rebuke (50 cents) – Cyclonic Rift is going to get banned eventually in Commander, I suspect. I don’t have any evidence or special insight into the Rules Committee, I just despise the card and what it does to gameplay. I’m stocking up on these foils at $2-$3, because the multiplier tells me it’s more popular than the usual foil version of the card. This is a powerful effect, but more fair since it’s just one person being targeted and this is a sorcery. I am looking forward to having a stack of these when we’re done with Ixalan.

Here, have two more that are from recent sets and have the appeal I’m looking for: foils of Eldrazi Displacer at about $10, and foils of Lifecrafter’s Bestiary at around $5. You don’t need me to tell you that these are good cards, but if you want to get some value that’s due to pop, there you go.

Cliff is an avid Cuber and Commander player, and also has a crusade against a few other cards that ruin Commander games. Feel free to drop a message to him and ask for a Cube list, and read his articles every Friday here on MTGPrice.

Jason Alt, ProTrader

Unlocked Pro Trader: Exploring New Avenues

Nerds,

It’s been a week since I dropped some knowledge on you and I’m happy I don’t have to talk about stupid tribal decks and how much people are playing them in EDH because I get to talk about stupid tribal decks and how much people will be playing them outside of EDH. Isn’t that fun? I am honestly looking forward to taking a break from trying to find value in decks predicated on Ixalan Legends because so many of them include cards that are specific to that tribe that were printed in Ixalan which means there are really limited opportunities. EDH finance isn’t easy mode because we spend a ton of time looking at which stupid pirates will go up by a dollar over the next two years because of people build pirate EDH decks, we want commanders like The Gitrog Monster to come along and make a bunch of old cards with low supplies and high upsides go off. Gishnath (or whomever) the dinosaur Legend doesn’t really do much of that – it’s all Ixalan dinosaurs, generic tribal cards like Urza’s Incubator and Coat of Arms and a bunch of lunatics who thought they were going to make a killing buying out foil Deathmist Raptor.

What is more fun is getting to buy cards that hit rock bottom after a reprint and go right back up because they are great cards and demand will soon soak up supply. It’s even better when people overestimate supply based on an initial flood of redemptions and buylist sales and we can really make bank. Remember how I like to talk about U-shaped and reverse-J-shaped graphs? You don’t? How is that possible, I literally talked about that like two weeks ago. The article was above reproach and I can tell that because there are no comments and that only happens when people read it and no one thinks “I’m way smarter than this guy” like what happens most weeks.

I think we have an opportunity to watch a few cards crater and then rebound more quickly than most people will anticipate. Furthermore, I think these cards crept up very sneakily and they have the capacity to creep up sneakily again. A lot of players don’t know what these cards cost now and in two years, they won’t know that the prices went up, then down then up again, they’ll just say “Wow, when did THIS get expensive?” not knowing that there are a lot of answers to that question. Not to dump on those people – they’re the best. They buy our cards on TCG Player. They trade us Standard expensive cards for EDH staples with so little regard for monetary value that how much money you make on the trade depends entirely on your conscience. They buy instant collections in your LGS because they need bulk rares and basic lands and a box to carry their Thallids deck in.  Hyper competitve players will miss these price movements, too, but only because they can only focus on the 50 cards that are expensive in Modern and Legacy and the 20 cards that are expensive in Standard that month.

Being able to see the price depression and subsequent rebound coming a mile away means we’re the ones buying at the valleys and selling at the peaks. We’re not making the price go up, ironically the people buying at the peak and complaining about speculators are the ones who do that, but we are benefiting, and why shouldn’t we? We paid attention to the price of the card every week for two years, after all. So before we mentally spend the millions we’re going to make off of savvy investments, let’s look at the impetus for prices changing.

 

Shut Up And Take Their Money

Settlers of Catan Explorers of Ixalan offers casual players the chance to pay $65 to not have to cobble together their own goofy homebrew Magic variant that someone came up with on the /r/magictcg subreddit that uses Dominion cards, the Ticket to Ride gameboard and the rules insert from Machi Koro to make a game of what is essentially a bad form of Planechase take 5 1/2 hours like casual people like. Instead, they can play some goofy Magic variant cooked up by whatever Hasbro executive is in charge of overseeing Magic development because his uncle on the Hasbro board is grooming him to take over as head of Angry Birds merchandising as soon as his therapist assures him that his hooker-choking days are behind him. This is likely to be a pretty annoying form of casual, bad EDH that snobs like me have no interest in, but what it’s also going to do is provide a pretty reasonable way to get copies of cards into the hands of people.

This is going to reprint some key cards, but with MSRP so high on these sets, prices shouldn’t take a giant dump right away. Casual players aren’t inclined to buy these and immediately ship the good cards and dealers aren’t necessarily inclined to slice into $65 product that they likely paid $35+ for just to cannibalize a few singles. If it’s not super cost effective to pop these sets and the kind of people who likely buy these for retail don’t sell the singles off right away, prices may not crater unless their old price was a lie predicated on low supply and overestimated demand. I intend to look individually at each card reprinted in this set that has been announced so far and see if we think the value of the cards therein is likely to tank or stay mostly the same based on the $65 price tag and mainly casual appeal. If we do think prices will go down, I’ll try and guess at which ones will recover the best and which to target. This is not what I normally do in this column but is “what I normally do in this column” even really a thing anymore?

What Will This Set Do?

Suddenly we have a new product that, if repeated, can be a new avenue to reprint these cards that seemed “reprint-proof” just a few months ago. Planechase, Archenemy and now this; could we get a product like this every year?

Either this sells well and they repeat it in which case we have another mine to dodge when it comes to Commander-based price spikes or they don’t repeat this. In either case, I think buying foils is one way to mitigate reprint risk but there are so few available copies and even fewer move quickly that I’m not advocating that. Buying foils is great for one or two people but the majority of people get left out so I don’t tend to advocate something like that in an article series that, according to google analytics, has a wider audience than one or two people. My Mom, six Russian bots and both of my google accounts (Jason Alt and Ricardo Dangersword) read every article so I’m at least reaching those people. So while foils are safe, reminding people to buy foils seems pretty pointless.

We had some time between Commander 2017 hype and the announcement of this set but the problem is that next year, it won’t be as obvious what to buy for non-EDH players like it was this year. We knew there would be tribal decks so we knew that if at least one deck had red cards in it, Shared Animosity was a good buy if it wasn’t reprinted. A lot of people didn’t even wait for confirmation that the card wasn’t in one of the decks before they bought in. Next year, the cards won’t be obvious which means the prices will move based on real, organic demand. That’s just starting to happen in earnest now, so if we have the same print schedule, there won’t be much time for growth between cards from Commander 2018 materializing as good buys and the reprint potential in “Settlers of Dominaria” or whatever.

Let’s look at the specific cards.

Shared Animosity

Currently the most expensive card spoiled so far, if this maintains its current value due to the set not being worth cracking but doesn’t see a race to the bottom in terms of dealers getting out of copies of the deck, this pays for more than the deck it’s in. Experiencing a recent double-up that we predicted in this series (anyone who paid attention saw this coming but don’t you pay me to pay attention so you don’t have to?) this card is very good in tribal decks. Our prediction that it would go up if it wasn’t reprinted in Commander 2017 was true but short-lived. People made a lot of money getting in early and getting out before Explorers was announced, but neither of those will be a thing next year.

Should Explorers depress the price, this card goes back up. I could see this hitting $5 if the set sells well and maybe a bit more if it doesn’t. The supply likely to be introduced by people buying Explorers is likely to be offset just about equivalently by the increased demand from people building more tribal decks. They seem to be focusing on the tribes from the Standard sets being used outside of just those sets and this year they even tied it in to the Commander release to an extent, introducing white Vampires in Commander 2017 before they did so in Ixalan. It’s an estimate, but I expect new demand to be enough to offset new supply enough to get Animosity back up to the $10 or so it was before Commander 2017 came along. If this hits $3 or $4, I’m a buyer. I still like these up to like $8 in trade because these move briskly, especially if they only get up to like $10. With more tribal focus likely in the future, this seems like the card with the most upside out of all of Explorers, but maybe not the most applicability cross-format.

Aggravated Assault

While I don’t think this has quite the upside of Shared Animosity and this benefited a lot from having pretty low supply due to being from an older set when cards like Narset made this an allstar, EDH seems to be focusing a bit more on combat. This was a great card to reprint, and it’s pretty likely that like 18 months ago when I was saying this needed a reprint, Wizards was planning to jam this in Explorers. I think it’s possible that other Masterpieces are good harbingers of future reprints in sets like Explorers if they continue and that’s a topic we can delve into another day. I think this likely goes very cheap, bottoming out around the same price as Shared Animosity if the set sells well and maybe a bit more if it doesn’t. If this hits like $2 or $3, I’m interested. I think $10 is a pretty reasonable place for this to end up, but $8 wouldn’t surprise me as a worst case scenario. There is a ton of demand – Aggravated Assault is in nearly twice as many EDH decks on EDHREC as is Shared Animosity. I think this could end up above Shared Animosity since cross-format applicability juiced Animosity’s price a bit in the past and got copies concentrated in the hands of dealers sooner. If this ended up the most expensive card in Explorers in a year, I wouldn’t be surprised. I like this a lot when it bottoms out.

Time Warp

This can’t quite maintain $20 owing to multiple reprintings. However, while this reprinting is going to bring the price down, I think Time Warp (Nearly 6,000 decks on EDHREC) seems to be the most played card and with Modern applicability and the possibility that someone will make a YouTube video about a deck with Time Walk effects and spike everything from this to Part the Waterveil again (could that be what happened in 2016 to make this $25, a price it couldn’t maintain?) this also could end up the most expensive card in Explorers when the dust settles. Gettable around $14 right now, this likely tanks as much as anything else. I think it’s safe to call this $8-$10 in a year from now and I think barring more reprints, it can flirt with $20 again. I really don’t know how much Explorers of Ixalan will hit the market, so I could be giving the reprint too much credit, but I think this will be a brief window where players can get a Time Warp without paying more than $10 and they’ll want to. I bet this is the pace card that establishes the rate of price recovery for the rest of the cards to try and imitate.

Beacon of Immortality

Beacon of Unrest went down to $2. Beacon of Unrest is in four times as many decks as Beacon of Immortality. Commander 2016 likely sells way more decks than Explorers of Ixalan. Will it sell four times as much? This could end up really cratering in price the way Beacon of Unrest did, and while the demand seems less than for Beacon of Unrest, the fact that lifegain is something people are excited about means that maybe the current demand being a fourth of that of Unrest is less important than crossing some invisible threshold. Maybe recovery is a yes/no question rather than a “how much?” question. I think this has the goods to hit such a threshold if it exists. Does this end up $0.50 extrapolated from the price of Beacon of Unrest? Maybe. But I think we will see this recover to at least the $2-$3 Beacon of Unrest is a year later.

Quicksilver Amulet

The price of this card is kind of all over the place. Big Dargons caused people to buy these and some retailers sold out repeatedly and ratcheted their price up to about $15 at one point but other retailers don’t seem to be moving them at the old price. It doesn’t seem worth it to snap those $10 copies so they just sit there. I think this is also going to be an EDH allstar and with the big Dargon and Dinosaur decks of the past year likely to be at least a portion of what we see printed in the future, expect this to recover to at least $5. I like these if they bottom out around $1.

Regisaur Alpha

I don’t care about this card. This isn’t an EDH card outside of the Gishath deck and Standard either will or won’t make this a real card. It reminds me of Bloodbraid Elf a little bit but then I reread it and remember it doesn’t have haste, only the token and then I get sad. I don’t know what’s going to happen in Standard and I’m staying out of it. Plenty of people are willing to stick their neck out and talk about that format.

Adaptive Automaton

I feel like the price isn’t done going up on this because I feel like it was just getting started. It was an obvious card and while a lot of sites are sold out, I feel like no one has restocked at a new price and that means TCG Player basically establishes the price itself. It’s not selling out at $7-$8. With the same demand in a year and way more copies, this likely can hit $5 so bear that in mind when you decide if it’s gotten cheap enough to buy. This will always be a decent lord but everyone seems so enamored with Metallic Mimic right now that this is almost an afterthought. This is good for us – Automaton is quietly in 30% more decks than Mimic due to a combination of having just been around longer and therefore registered in more decks even if people later took Automaton out. That’s kind of a problem with EDHREC numbers but considering we’re looking at ratios rather than integers, I think it’s fair to say Automaton has more demand at leave it at that.  I think this is always a $5 card no matter how many times it’s reprinted provided it gets 12 months to recover in between. I think this could tank less than other cards and I think it might grow sooner, but if this does crater at like $1 or below, make like a single mother in the detergent aisle on supermarket sweep and shove these in your shopping cart.

Threads of Disloyalty

A modicum of play in the sideboard of a deck that basically no longer exists in a format that basically no one is excited about got this to flirt with $40. Look at the slope of the price graph when the card was forced to deal with reality. Do you imagine the slope will be less steep now that we have the same demand and more supply? Stay away from these. This is not an EDH card, anyway, what do I care?

I think these are the relevant cards. Everything else spoiled is a bulk rare basically already (Vanquisher’s Banner might have had a chance to do something but got nipped in the bud). Next week we should have something else to talk about and we’ll do that. Until next week!

Watchtower

UNLOCKED: The Watchtower 10/9/17

1 Comment

By: Travis Allen
@wizardbumpin

Don’t miss this week’s installment of the MTG Fast Finance podcast, an on-topic, no-nonsense tour through the week’s most important changes in the Magic economy. And if you enjoy playing Magic, make sure to visit https://scry.land to find PPTQs, SCG Opens, and more events on an interactive map with worldwide coverage. Find Magic near you today.

Congratulations to Huey and the Peach Garden Oath for a strong showing at the World Magic Championship this weekend. Ok now that that’s out of the way, what the hell, everyone that competed. Every single list coming out of this event was a complete snoozer. Ramunap Red. UB Control. Temur Energy. That’s it. That’s like, every single list that showed up. We’re 100% familiar with Red and Temur Energy. UB Control flirted with the idea of being new, but really, it’s just Scarab God, Torrential Gearhulk, and a bunch of commons and uncommons.

If anything had a good weekend, it was Search for Azcanta and Vraska’s Contempt. I wanted to talk about Search last weekend, after it was showing up at the Open, but at $5 I couldn’t recommend it. Well now we’re here with it at $15 and thbpt. I wasn’t sure if Contempt could pull a Hero’s Downfall, as each additional mana on those effects is rough, but it would seem the exile clause is enough to make it worth it, with Hazoret and Scarab running around.

We’ll have to wait until the next Open, or even the Pro Tour for a change to see the juicy lists, I guess.

Heart of Kiran

Price Today: $5.50
Possible Price: $20

While the only vehicle being driven this weekend was Aethersphere Harvester, don’t count Heart of Kiran out yet. It’s without peer in Standard, and even if it didn’t have a place at Worlds, it doesn’t mean it won’t be part of the broader landscape as the format rolls out.

There’s no need for me to sell you on how good Heart of Kiran is; last season’s metagame proves that enough for me. Instead I’ll remind you all of the sage Warren Buffett wisdom: “be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.” Within the context of Magic, it basically serves to put you one step ahead of the trends. Be fearful about your Searches and Contempts — sell them. Be greedy about great cards everyone has forgotten about for the moment — like Heart of Kiran.

A few copies are out there around $5.50, and that number is still dropping daily. Before the Pro Tour we could see it firmly under $5. I can’t predict the future (which may come as a surprise) so I can’t guarantee this is going to return to the format. If it does though, expect prices to climb to $15 or more in a hurry.

Geist of Saint Traft

Price Today: $8
Possible Price: $15

It hasn’t been in the public eye quite as much lately, but Modern is still a robust, exciting format that tens (hundreds?) of thousands play regularly. It’s not unreasonable to say that it’s in the best shape it has been in years. A relative newcomer to this healthy metagame is a deck that goes by several names: Jeskai Tempo, Patriot Geist, Jeskai Midrange, whatever. What’s important is that they all play Geist of Saint Traft.

A former darling of Standard, Geist fell into disuse after rotation many years ago. People have been trying since Innistrad previews to get him into Modern, and for the most part, they’ve failed. I’m not clear on what specifically has changed in the format to finally let him in, but something did, and he’s smashing faces now. Given that he swings for six each turn, your opponent is likely dead in three attack phases, which is good beats for what is often a fairly controlling strategy otherwise.

Geist was reprinted in Duel Decks: Blessed vs. Cursed, which hasn’t helped his price of course, but there aren’t actually that many on TCG Player. Less than 100, mostly all $8 or so. There’s also no more than 30 of the Innistrad printings in basically the same boat. I particularly like the Innistrad copies, as we’ve seen several times in the past that people like original pack printings much more than the promo deck printings. (Knight of the Reliquary has been an example of this in the past.) At this point I don’t think many people own Geist, since it hasn’t been considered a staple card in the format the way so many others are, e.g. Snapcaster Mage. If this begins to turn, we’ll see Geist coast right on up into the $15 to $20 range.


Path of Ancestry

Price Today: $3.50
Possible Price: $10

The more I play EDH, the less I like lands that enter the battlefield tapped. I know I’m not the only one that feels that way, but in this case, I don’t think that matters. Path of Ancestry showed up in all four Commander 2017 lists this year, so supply is healthy, but that hasn’t prevented the card from climbing north of $3 already.

Path is effectively a five color land that likely lets you scry once each turn, so long as you’re playing a tribal deck. Even if you aren’t on a tribal strategy it’s still a painless “all colors that matter” land with occasional upside. That may end up being it’s greatest boon; that not only does it have solid utility in tribal lists, it’s completely playable in non-tribal four and five color decks.

My biggest concern with Path of Ancestry, and this should surprise no one, is how reprintable it is. And it will be. But until then, attrition will take its toll on Path, possibly quicker than we may expect. Could it be a $6 card by January? I suspect so. $10 by July? Sure, why not? There’s going to be a lot of demand behind this, and until Wizards prints it into the ground ala Command Tower, prices are going to continue to rise.

Travis Allen has  been playing Magic: The Gathering since 1994, mostly in upstate New York. Ever since his first FNM he’s been trying to make playing Magic cheaper, and he first brought his perspective to MTGPrice in 2012. You can find his articles there weekly, as well as on the podcast MTG Fast Finance.

 

Casual Fridays

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Will these prices hold?

6 Comments

The first week of Ixalan Standard is in the books, and we’ve got some cards that have taken a big leap financially.

I want to look at a few of these cards, at the jump they have taken, and figure out if those prices are the price they will stay at. There’s a lot of factors to consider at a time like this, and some money to be made. I’ll make money either by selling now, buying now, or holding out.

Heroic Intervention ($2-$5 this week): This is worth looking at because it’s a great Standard answer to Fumigate, as pointed out by our reader hargismb. It’s in enough sideboards to cause a decent spike, and $5 feels about right.

That said, I’m not convinced. I can’t tell if it’s my own bias against this card, but it’s bad in a lot of situations where you’d hope it would be good. I don’t want to play this card, I’d rather have proactive ways to get cards back in Commander. I would be trading these away like mad at $5, especially since you likely didn’t get them at that price.

Approach of the Second Sun ($0.75 – $3): Alternate win conditions are always going to have a certain appeal, and this one offers a certain inevitability. Counterspells or bust! The assorted Approach decks had a pretty good first week, and I don’t think this is done growing.

I am in favor of trading for this card until it gets to $5 or so, and I think buying copies for a total price under $2 is a winner too, but only if you’re going to trade the card away. The margins eat you alive if you buy at $2 and sell at $5. It’s not worth it in that context.

Hostage Taker ($5-$18): This was the card of the weekend, doing work in a variety of decks and it’s earned that praise. This pirate is an awesome creature, demanding an immediate answer before you get control of their creature. It plays very well with The Scarab God too!

However, it’s a rare from the current set. It’s been a long time since such a card held a price at or above $10, so I’m telling you to let these go pronto. Get as much as you can as fast as you can, because hype or not, this price just can’t hold.

I will be watching this closely, though, because when we aren’t opening Ixalan packs, this will be a prime contender for a jump back to $15-$20 in a few months.

Fumigate ($0.50 – $4): Wrath effects have often ended up in the $5 range, and I don’t think this will be much different. It’s a year old, and I think this will be no different. I’m getting out of extra copies, and I’m putting some of my profits into a few sets of Dusk to Dawn, as Dusk appears to be the best pairing if Approach needs some extra removal. Bontu’s Last Reckoning and Yahenni’s Expertise are also good specs on this basis and won’t cost you much.

Gifted Aetherborn ($1-$2): There is a black-red aggro deck doing well online right now, and this is a four-of in that deck. I would be raiding my old draft boxes with gusto, because if I can buylist a stack of uncommons for $1 each (or more!) I’m all over that. You have to strike while the iron is hot, though. This deck won’t be popular forever, so you’ve got just a few weeks to sort your uncommons out and get them in the mail. Ebay auctions are closing near to $10 a playset, and that’s really tempting too, even with the fees.

Deathgorge Scavenger ($1.50 – $6): The winning deck and the 3rd place deck each ran a playset of this Dinosaur, mainly for the ability to mess with Scarab God interactions. (Each deck also played a miser copy of that God, and bringing this back Eternalized must have felt great!) Again, it’s an in-print rare but the necessity of some graveyard hate appears to be the hot tech right now. Six bucks feels a touch high, I imagine this settles a dollar or two lower than that, unless the next sets give us more graveyard recursion. This has great potential as a spec if it drops to $1-$2 at rotation.

Fetid Pools ($4 – $8): What makes the cycling duals great is the interaction with the checklands from Ixalan. Play the cycling land tapped, and all the checklands come into play untapped, so you can cycle the extras away. Value ensues.

Fetid Pools was the biggest gainer, due to control decks, but Irrigated Farmland isn’t far behind and all of them should go up another dollar or two. I’m letting all of my spares go, and I’ll be picking these up at rotation for the long-term Commander value.

The Scarab God ($25 – $40): If you’re going to play it in the next year, bite the bullet and grab your copies now. I suspect this is going to hit $50, as a small-set mythic which casual demand has made more scarce than most. This God is awesome in Zombie decks and offers so much value in a Commander game, it’s no surprise that the combination of format demand results in a super-pricey card.

I’d be surprised if this fell below $20 at rotation, too. Being on an Invocation isn’t helping the price much, the gameplay value is just ridiculous in casual games.

Samut, the Tested ($2 – $5.50): Travis picked her a few weeks back at $2, and said that $10 was his target. It’s a two-of in a deck that finished 45th at the SCG event but has won some online leagues. I’m going to trust him on this, and tell you to hold this card a bit longer. My inclination is to take the double-up and get out, but if you got in at $2, then it’s all profit. Hold on a bit longer, as she needs a bit more publicity, camera time, and a publicized win. Then sell out with huge profit margins!