Everything old is new again and everything new seems to care about everything old. The Weatherlight has a new captain and while it’s not a Green/White creature, she is a creature a lot of people have been waiting on for a long time. We finally got the “Izzet-colored, arifacts matter” commander that people have been clamoring for and while she is sort of… linear, she also has a few surprises in that her card drawing triggers off of more than just artifacts. Let’s look at the card, shall we?

We can’t look at the card. Despite the fact that we have all of the information about the card, and it leaked because of a mistake Wizards made, they have decided that unveiling the art when they had planned to will still be exciting and it’s sort of hard to argue. Leaks like this are garbage. I saw someone compare it to sneaking downstairs the night before Christmas and peeking at all of your presents so you’re not surprised on Christmas morning and I’m not sure I agree. To me, it’s like finding out Santa Claus isn’t real and your parents got you socks. Also, I’m in my 30s and I was pissed off this year because no one got me socks. I had to buy my own socks like a peasant. I guess what I’m trying to say is that if I weren’t a financier, I wouldn’t have even looked at these stupid leaks and it’s a good thing I looked because this is the second commander I came across that is going to build a very linear, obvious way and that will bump a lot of cards.

Card Bumps, You Say?

Yeah, man, why you think we’re here if not to talk about the money we’re about to scoop up because we’re even farther ahead of the curve than normal? While it sucks that these leaks happened, the silver lining is that we have a few extra weeks to predict what EDH players are going to build when they finally get ahold of the cards. Normally there is a gap between cards coming out and people buying them in large enough quantities for prices to move but this time the gap will be even larger since we can start thinking about what to buy now. Let’s make the most of this time and look at what I expect to end up in Jhoira decks.

The first thing to remember is that Planeswalkers are now Legendary so they are eligible for the trigger and may get jammed into decks alongside Jhoira.

 

Dack Fayden

With no real impetus for an impending reprint and a lot of this card’s meteoric past rise being predicated on use in formats where people may want more than one copy, how well this pairs with Jhoira could see it gain a few bucks in the coming months. I don’t know what sort of adoption it would need to really go up based on being a one-of in one EDH deck and with so many Legendary creatures being printed in Dominaria and with Commander 2018 promising to be packed with value, we could see a logjam in new decks being built with no clear winner presenting itself, but with the amount of clamoring we’ve seen for Jhoira, I expect this to over-perform relative to other commanders. But there I go again, listening to what people say they want like an idiot.

Saheeli Rai

Currently made out of plutonium, people are dumping copies of this part of a banned combo as fast as they can. At their absolute floor, copies of this card are a steal and those abilities are all really nuts in an artifact-based EDH deck and, hey, playing Saheeli happens to draw you a card, too. Saheeli should be really cozy with Jhoira and their fates are intertwined, meaning if Jhoira is as popular as everyone claims they want it to be, we could see a nice price recovery for this card.

Tamiyo, The Moon Sage

I don’t want to spend too much of my verbal budget on Planeswalkers since this was supposed to just be a bullet point in the larger point I was making, but I found more good planeswalkers than I expected. Tamiyo isn’t really going anywhere but it sure equilibrated higher than anyone would have thought. This is good alongside Jhoira and it’s also an expensive, powerful planeswalker and its current malaise might be snapped by renewed interest. I also have the least confidence in this of every ‘walker I suggested.

Tezzeret, the Seeker

Modern Masters 2015 was a while ago and while this hasn’t begun to recover yet, I don’t think another reprinting is imminent and I think as good as this is, it’s going to tick back up. It probably has some unknown amount of competition from unprinted Planeswalkers. It seems like every time I get a handle on what Planeswalkers are supposed to do, they print another 30 in a a 12 month period and it throws everything off. This is a better than average planeswalker and it is blue and it deals with artifacts and that has to be enough.

What Else?

Well, it isn’t just Planeswalkers that trigger her ability and I think she is going to be a good either eggs or storm commander. I am excited.

Aetherflux Reservoir

The non-foil is on a downward trend approaching rotation…

As is the foil. I think both are good picksups then, I think reprint risk is pretty low and I think this is a solid EDH finisher in Oloro, which is a Top 3 deck of all time in popularity as well as a great inclusion in a lot of storm and spellslinger decks. Its EDHREC profile shows some pretty robust inclusion and speaks to its versatility and ubiquity. More lifelink or lifegain-focused decks coming along only adds new interest in this card and that’s particularly good for a foil that has demonstrated the ability to flirt with $8 while still in-print. I don’t know how much lower foils of this get but this is a no-brainer pickup.

Helm of Awakening

Helping your opponents isn’t always great, but 3,005 people on EDHREC have decided they’d rather play a card that they can really abuse and allow opponents get some tangential benefit from than not play it and here we are. Cheaper and more accessible than Stone Calendar and cheaper mana-wise, too, this is a card I keep seeing pop up in Jhoira lists and I expect that to continue. This makes eggs even better as you get to play them for cheap or free and use their mana to freewheel the activation on the next egg, letting you chaing them. Combine that with the double draw trigger and you will always have a full mitt. This also turns cards like Sensei’s Top into free cantrips and generally makes it easier to go off early in the game. We’ve seen rares from this block hit $10 with less provocation.

Semblance Anvil

This is looking pretty healthy. It’s fluctuating but the overall trend is upward and with a set-specific keyword, its reprint options are somewhat limited (though set-specific keywords have never stopped them from jamming the card in a Commander precon which is the worst case scenario). I honestly think this card has been secretly way better than people give it credit for and I have no idea why it doesn’t get more play. If you name artifacts, you just dump your hand and if you have a Vedalken Archmage in your command zone ready to go at all times, you fill your hand as fast as you can dump it.

Unwinding Clock

Whereas here, I can’t find any possible way to balance this ability against anything in the other precon decks, so anything with an artifact focus would be too good with this and any deck with this but no apparent artifact focus couldn’t really justify the slot. Therefore, I think this would be a very unlikely reprint in a Commander precon. I don’t know if that further limits its reprintability compared with something like Semblance Anvil but I do think it’s unlikely to be in a Commander precon. They invent 5 new sealed products a year, so never say never, but I bet this grows for years and I bet you feel silly for not getting these a few years ago when EDH proved what a driving force it was. I was celebrating with the triple up I got on Caged Sun (meaning I sold them way too early) and I missed an even more obvious card in hindsight.

I think there are a few more cards that have upside and maybe I’ll cover them next week, maybe I’ll tweet about them, maybe they’ll be in the Gathering Magic piece I wrote this week, maybe I’ll podcast about them, maybe I’ll write an EDHREC article for no reason or maybe I’ll be a guest on someone else’s podcast and talk about them. Follow me all over, I have so many insights I can’t hold them all and they fall out of my grasp like hilarious, errant citrus fruit. All of these finance tips will be lost. Like limes in the rain. Until next time.