There are so many cards in this set that I think have the power to move prices based on brand new archetypes being built but I think we can take a week off of trying to get that far ahead of the crowd. I’m gambling that Reddit is wrong when it says that speculators have figured out EDH and now we don’t have the luxury of waiting for data from EDHREC, Yeah, sure, speculators bought a lot of copies of Raksha, Golden Cub, so congrats on being ahead of the curve. You even bought foils so you wouldn’t get blown out by the reprint. Did they predict that 40% of decks running Mirri as the commander would run Leonin Abunas? Did they forsee a 33% spike in the price of Reconnaissance? Or did they just buy a bunch of kitty cats and I made money on cards like Hateflayer, Shakuu, Endbringer and Tree of Perdition because I waited to see what people were actually going to play?

The downside to this approach is we need to kill some time waiting for people to brew, build and register and since the set isn’t out until this weekend, they haven’t done any of that, yet. Do we twiddle out thumbs in the mean time? I maintain that we do not actually do that, because we have some data to look at already. It’s not even based on the printing of a new commander either, but rather a lowly common, non-Legendary creature that happens to be special because it’s only the third card like it ever. We don’t have to guess what’s going to happen because it’s already happened twice. Let’s drill down.

The Card in Question

Bewm.

This is a card that in a lot of situations seems better than Relentless Rats. Its toughness doesn’t get a buff, but that’s secondary to the fact that this scales off of all rats meaning its lower casting cost is more important than the toughness boost. Accordingly, this is good in both a Ripple Rats build but also a more general Rats build and the cards for both likely have upside given the new interest. Making a ton of Pack Rats boosts Rat Colony as well, something you can’t say for Relentless Rats opening up potential hybrid builds. I think there is a lot that could have upside, here.

First but not least –

Thrumming Stone

Reluctant to go up much, this card is snagged as a 4-of by 60-card casual players and is unlikely to see a reprinting anytime soon given how narrow and specialized it is. It’s got a bad ability in EDH except for in this very rare instance. Could you print this in an EDH precon? I’m not paying $40 MSRP for a precon with 30 Relentless Rats in it, personally, though some might. This also has spillover into Shadowborn Apostle decks which get a new Demon every once in a while, most recently (A year ago? Wow. That was the last time I got a preview card, last year in Vegas.) Razaketh. Really, though, there are a finite number of these and Arcum Dagsson shows how quickly Coldsnap cards can disappear when there is renewed interest. I think this can’t stay below $10 much longer.

Coat of Arms

I shudder to think how much this card would need to be printed for it to go under $5 and stay there. I don’t think that’s ever going to happen, fortunately, and while this card has been quiet for a while, recent interested in tribal decks should give it some upside. Tribal is always going to be a thing and it’s hard to imagine this getting printed hard enough to completely tank it or becoming obsolete. Every Coat variant that comes along tries to give you some additional value but nothing really comes close to being good enough that you won’t run this in your deck. It’s going some printings but it’s also got some upside regardless of whether a single Rats deck gets built.

Patriarch’s Bidding

This is a card that is going to cycle until it’s reprinted. Is there any hurry to reprint it? There doesn’t seem to be, and that’s an issue. This is going to go up again next time there is a juicy chance to reprint it, maybe even as soon as Commander 2018 and it’s not reprinted. I don’t like paying $18 hoping to get out at $25 especially with a non-zero amount of reprint risk, but much like the people who buy Stoneforge Mystic every year before B&R and sell into the B&R hype for free money, you can probably get these at their floor and make money on them one more time when this is inevitably not in Commander 2018. I don’t expect a tribal theme in Commander 2018 per se, but this card will go back up next time there’s a whiff of tribal stuff happening and if you think it won’t get reprinted at the same time, that’s free money. This is risky but so is all MTG Finance speculation and I just felt I would be remiss if I didn’t remind us all that this is a thing that happens.

Soul Foundry

My favorite use for this is putting Biovisionary into play, but you can make rats in a pinch. Combine with untap effects for more hilarity.  Not much to say other than that the graph for this looks awful and I’m not sure why. It could be renewed interest in Ripple Rats that kicks this in the ass because it sure needs it.

The Relentless Rats EDHREC Page yielded these interesting cards. I could spend next week checking out the Shadowborn Apostle page but I think next week I want to get into a deck like Jodah with some data. In the mean time, feel free to find some interesting cards I missed and ask me about them in the comments. That does it for me this week – it feels like we’re in a bit of a holding pattern but that doesn’t mean we can’t use our time wisely and think to the future a bit. That does it for me this week. Until next time!