Monthly Archives: November 2020

Watchtower

The Watchtower 11/30/20 – Revisiting Zendikar (Again)

I last wrote about Zendikar Rising back in September, before the set had been released and talked about some EDH cards I wanted to buy when they bottomed out. Let’s check back in on those shall we?

  • Thieving Skydiver at $1: check.
  • Ashaya at $5: well it’s $6 so I’m counting that as a hit.
  • Moraug Showcase foils at $15: They’re down to $10, so even better!

So some free advice: now would be the time to buy some of these if you fancy some good returns in a year or so.

Seeing as most things from Zendikar Rising seem to have bottomed out now, I wanted to revisit the set and take another look at what I think some of the best pickups are at current prices (other than my previous, incredibly prescient picks).

Skyclave Apparition (FEA)

Price today: $16
Possible price: $30

Talking about things I’ve talked about before, I’ve also talked about Skyclave Apparition before in one of my articles. That was a mouthful that I probably definitely could’ve worded better, but oh well. A couple of months ago I called Skyclave Apparition FEAs to move from $10 to $25 based on the back of some early competitive play for the card, and I’ve got to say it’s only gotten better since then.

Skyclave Apparition has been showing up in a bunch of different top tier decks across Standard, Pioneer, Modern and Legacy (and Historic I guess?). It’s been heralded as the best white card printed in years, and to be honest I can’t really dispute that when it comes to these competitive formats. The card is fantastic and is doing even better than I had hoped for when I wrote about it back in September.

You can go and read what I wrote about the card back then, but I want to update my projection for the FEA copies and call them from where they currently are at $16 to land north of $30 before too long. There are only 25 listings left on TCGPlayer, a grand total of five of which have more than one copy listed (and even then only contain 2-3 copies each). When paper play picks back up (and yes, I know I keep saying that but trust me – eventually it will and you’ll be glad you picked up cards when they were cheap because oh boy are some cards from sets released during the pandemic going to get pricey), these are going to be in very high demand and you’ll feel quite smug outing your copies you got at $10-15.

Ancient Greenwarden (FEA)

Price today: €18 ($21.50)
Possible price: $40

Is it a competitive staple? No. Is it a big EDH card? Yes. So where are we going to buy it? That’s right, in Europe! Well done, we did it. That wasn’t so hard now was it?

Jokes aside, you can follow this logic for most Magic cards. Competitive-focused cards are generally the same price in the US and Europe, or cheaper in the US, and EDH cards are almost always cheaper in Europe. There’s already a steep ramp formed on TCGPlayer of these, starting at $23 and heading to $30 in no short order, with only 22 total listings. Over on MKM however, there’s a relative glut of supply at the €18 mark – some tasty pickings if I ever saw them. The healthy supply in Europe might mean a weaker demand profile for the card on this side of the pond, but that just makes it an even better arbitrage opportunity to ship Stateside.

Ancient Greenwarden has been one of the most popular EDH cards picked up from Zendikar Rising, because it’s green and says ‘land’ and ‘graveyard’ on it. At a touch over 2400 decks, Greenwarden clocks in at the number 5 include from the set – it’s effectively a beefier Ramunap Excavator that is actually a relevant body on the board, especially seeing as it has Reach strapped onto it (because it wasn’t doing enough already).

Given the steep ramp on the card already, I think we’ll see these up to $40 within 12-18 months or less, which makes for a nice return if you’re picking a bunch up in Europe.

Thieving Skydiver (FEA)

Price today: $7
Possible price $20

Sorry to disappoint anyone hoping for a non-foil pick today, but these foil extended arts are just too good to skip out on. They’re the lowest supply versions of cards being printed into Standard sets at the moment as well as being the prettiest things around, so what am I to do really?

Thieving Skydiver has uh, taken a dive in price (unimaginative, I know) since the release of Zendikar Rising, but remains one of the most popular EDH cards from the set and takes the number one slot for blue cards. Mana rocks are such a huge part of EDH, and so being able to steal them for such a low opportunity cost is a huge boon – especially in a blue deck that may well not be playing green and so be worse off when it comes to ramping out.

Although this is only a rare and not a mythic, I think that $7 is way too low for an FEA EDH all-star, and before long this is going to start climbing significantly. You should probably be playing this in every blue EDH deck you own, so I’d grab some personal copies here alongside some more to spec on. They’re around the same price in Europe at the moment so grab whatever is easiest, but give it a year or so and these aren’t going to be very cheap at all any more.

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.

Casual Fridays

Ikoria on the Floor

Look, I’ll be honest: I don’t think you should buy anything from Commander Legends this weekend unless you’re getting a great price and/or it’s something you have to have for a deck. I just bought a couple of things for my Commander decks, but I’m waiting for people to finish opening their Collector Booster boxes. 

Instead, I want to look at the set we left behind, and compare prices to their Commander usage, and tell you what to stock up on.

The reason I want to just look at Commander numbers and nothing else is simple: I don’t think we will be playing in person (in North America) until next summer, when this is on the verge of rotating. Plus, all the big movers during the pandemic have been Commander-based anyway, and I’m looking for cards that are going to increase in value.

Some caveats: nonfoil, regular frame and foil regular frame mean about the same thing at this point when it comes to prices. I’m working on the math and crunching a lot of numbers, and I promise, I’m close to having something I’m comfortable reporting to you.

So, about Ikoria. It’s a fun set, with a lot of cool interactions, but to no one’s surprise, the most popular Commander card is a set: 

Not a shocker, really. These lands are incredibly versatile: fetchable, three colors, and can be cycled away. That’s really, shockingly, amazingly useful. Commander doesn’t tend to be a format with a whole lot of ‘got to hit my mana on curve every turn’ action, and in my Ur-Dragon deck, I fetch for one of these before I go get a dual land. 

Naturally, I think you should be all over these versions: 

They are prettier, that’s a given, but they are also a lot more rare than the originals. We don’t yet have data on what happens to a reprint of a card that has an Extended Art version, aside from the pure reprint of Fabled Passage, which included EA and Foil EA. Frankly, the data on that is stunning: 

This was a $100 card during Throne of Eldraine, it’s still the only fetchland in Pioneer, and it’s in 32k commander decks online. I know that I meant for this to be about Ikoria, but the ToE version is about twice as much, and there isn’t a huge supply of either version on TCG. Picking up FEA versions from Core 21 for $25 and under feels like a great deal at this point.

The Triomes are technically Showcase, not Extended Art, and that’s an important distinction. A reprint on these cards is inevitable, perhaps in the right set of Commander decks in a year or two. What won’t be the same is that these Showcase version have different art and a different frame, making the price gap between the Showcase versions and the regulars just too small. Why on earth would I buy the regular for $7, when the Showcase is $1.50 more?

I absolutely think you should get Showcase foils of these lands if your budget can accommodate it, because these are gorgeous. They are going for $20-$30, depending on the specific land, but they are among the best you could hope for in that color combination. 

These lands have a high EDH pedigree, even popping up in Modern, they are fantastic to look at and they are available for a good price. Proceed accordingly, but again, focus on the Showcase versions and not the regular frame.

One more aside: Lurrus of the Dream Den and Yorion, Sky Nomad are the only companions worth paying attention to. Lurrus gets a LOT more play, across a lot more formats. Again, I think you should go for the EA versions, but the reprint risk here is more random. Companions probably won’t be another mechanic in Standard again for a long while, but Secret Lair: Companions is much more likely in my view. 

Back to Commander, and what might be the most unfriendly card in this article:

Yes, that’s right. No Commanders for anyone, no flashback, no recast from the yard, etc. Just pure, good, wholesome fun. This is the most used card by the numbers, and 8000 people using this in just seven months is pretty impressive for a card. It’s pretty fun to deny things to other people.

The FEA foils tell the same story, starting at $19. There’s only 26 vendors on TCG with NM FEA versions of the card, and only one of those has four or more. That’s a really small number for a mere rare, not a mythic. For comparison’s sake, there’s about the same number of copies of General Kudro of Drannith in FEA.

A card with very little Constructed play but a lot of potential as a Commander hate bear is somewhere I want to be. $20 is reasonable for the foil, and EA versions at about $5 would be decent pickups too.

Surprisingly, the next card has a promo to chase, and it’s already been chased pretty hard: 

The Promo Pack version has a foil and a nonfoil, but there’s no Extended Art version at all, since it’s an uncommon. We see Cultivate and Kodama’s Reach as two of the most-played green spells in Commander because of the ramp, but Migration Path is a worthy #3 and is several dollars less for the sweet foil version. 

Cultivate and Reach are still good late-game, but Path gives you the flexibility of a re-draw if you don’t want to ramp up and cast your Commander again. It’s been widely adopted and you should have some copies handy when the day comes that the foil promo version is $7. 

Finally, I want to talk about the Ultimatums. Yes, they are hard to cast, but two of them are clearly the best, with the other three still being good but not game-breakers the same way. Eerie and Ruinous are enormous card advantage, and have the prices to back it up. Genesis will get you some amazing plays, and the other two are just not as powerful.

I think the EA versions are decent pickups, but the FEA copies are still $15 or less and that’s really where you want to be for the best two, and possibly Genesis as well. This is a card that’s difficult to reprint unless they add it to a Commander deck of exactly these colors, which isn’t impossible. Even then, you’d be looking at a regular frame nonfoil copy, while you’ve got the sweet ones. Get yours while you can.

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.

Jason Alt, Unlocked ProTrader

Unlocked Pro Trader: Overlap

Readers,

I have talked a lot in the past about how cards that are spread over multiple new decks are more attractive picks to me than “obvious” cards in just one deck. Sure, Final Fortune spiking to $20 makes headlines when the MTG Stocks twitter account posts it for everyone to see, but the stuff that spikes slower attenuates more slowly, also. I have made it clear that I don’t feel bad when we miss “obvious” cards because obvious cards are sometimes wrong despite being obvious. I hate to keep harping on my “Vannifar or Teysa” comparison but it’s one of the most important lessons I’ve learned in evaluating cards when they’re spoiled and you can read all about those lessons here and in a few other articles you could probably find by googling my name. The takeaway is that no one expected Teysa to be the most popular commander in a set with Vannifar spiking cards from Intruder Alarm to Thornbite Staff, but here we are, almost 2 years later and Vannifar was a dud and Teysa is the 12th-most-built deck in the last 2 years. Could some Vannifar specs have had a better chance of paying off if they had multiple decks they belonged to? Let’s test our hypothesis, shall we?

I use a multiple list comparison tool to quickly input the average decks from EDHREC and see which cards overlap. It’s quick and dirty but it helps us sift through a lot of noise very fast and uncover some cards that aren’t as sexy but which will not fall off a cliff when no one actually builds the deck. Obeka is top dog right now, but is it another Vannifar? What if we had cards both Vannifar and Teysa played – you don’t have to pick a winner at that point, you can just buy cards both decks need. Wouldn’t that be something?

Does it matter if Obeka or Araumi is the winner here? I don’t think so – I contend there are cards common between the lists and that not all of them are UB staples. Let’s prove it with a very quick and easy test that you can do yourself whenever you feel like it.

I don’t feel like finding the article where I showed you how I do this so I’ll show you again.

On a commander’s page, there is a place to select the average deck for that commander. It’s not all-inclusive, it’s an average, but the odds aren’t great you’ll miss something because it’s simultaneously played enough to go up in price but little enough not to make the average list. This isn’t perfect but we don’t need perfect, we just want some ideas.

Drop the list in the comparison tool.

Do the same for the other commander you want to compare it to. Click the big plus sign if you want to add a 3rd or 4th commander to compare.

We have 25 overlapping cards. Obviously a lot will be land, mana rocks and other deck staples, but we only need 1 or 2 hits.

1 Araumi of the Dead Tide 2 Araumi, Obeka
1 Arcane Signet 2 Araumi, Obeka
1 Buried Alive 2 Araumi, Obeka
1 Command Tower 2 Araumi, Obeka
1 Counterspell 2 Araumi, Obeka
1 Cyclonic Rift 2 Araumi, Obeka
1 Dimir Signet 2 Araumi, Obeka
1 Drowned Catacomb 2 Araumi, Obeka
1 Fact or Fiction 2 Araumi, Obeka
1 Feed the Swarm 2 Araumi, Obeka
1 Frantic Search 2 Araumi, Obeka
1 Hullbreacher 2 Araumi, Obeka
1 Lightning Greaves 2 Araumi, Obeka
1 Morphic Pool 2 Araumi, Obeka
1 Rakshasa Debaser 2 Araumi, Obeka
1 Rhystic Study 2 Araumi, Obeka
1 Sol Ring 2 Araumi, Obeka
1 Solemn Simulacrum 2 Araumi, Obeka
1 Sundial of the Infinite 2 Araumi, Obeka
1 Swan Song 2 Araumi, Obeka
1 Talisman of Dominance 2 Araumi, Obeka
1 Toxic Deluge 2 Araumi, Obeka
1 Underground River 2 Araumi, Obeka
1 Watery Grave 2 Araumi, Obeka
1 Windfall 2 Araumi, Obeka

BINGO. Do You see it?

We discussed sunnyboi already when we talked about how it was a little redundancy insurance in Obeka but it turns out Araumi likes the idea of keeping those encore tokens around for repeat performances. Sundial has two printings and the price was deflated more than I think was necessary due to a supply of Mystery Boosters that was smaller than people realize. Sundial is a $5-$7 card waiting to happen on the basis of being used in both of the two most popular Commander Legends decks and if you didn’t buy them when I wrote my Obeka article, it’s not too late. Imagine if Vannifar and Teysa both played the same card – except you don’t have to imagine it, it’s real and the card is quite good and quite underpriced. As soon as this sells out on Card Kingdom the next price won’t be below $5, I’m sure of it.

Let’s do some more decks, shall we?

Yarlok and Jared are #3 and #4 respectively, which doesn’t make them Vannifar and Teysa, but it does make them Nikya and whatever is 4th place in that set, I’m not looking it up. Lavinia?

1 Arcane Signet 2 Yarlok, Jared
1 Beast Within 2 Yarlok, Jared
1 Birds of Paradise 2 Yarlok, Jared
1 Blasphemous Act 2 Yarlok, Jared
1 Cinder Glade 2 Yarlok, Jared
1 Command Tower 2 Yarlok, Jared
1 Cultivate 2 Yarlok, Jared
1 Eternal Witness 2 Yarlok, Jared
1 Exotic Orchard 2 Yarlok, Jared
1 Farseek 2 Yarlok, Jared
1 Heroic Intervention 2 Yarlok, Jared
1 Kodama’s Reach 2 Yarlok, Jared
1 Lightning Greaves 2 Yarlok, Jared
1 Rampant Growth 2 Yarlok, Jared
1 Rootbound Crag 2 Yarlok, Jared
1 Sol Ring 2 Yarlok, Jared
1 Spire Garden 2 Yarlok, Jared
1 Stomping Ground 2 Yarlok, Jared
1 Swiftfoot Boots 2 Yarlok, Jared
1 Three Visits 2 Yarlok, Jared
1 Wooded Foothills 2 Yarlok, Jared

This IS at its floor, how interesting. Like I said, we’re not going to get a ton of hits – there will be 20 cards that overlap if the decks share at least 2 colors and a lot of those will be lands and mana rocks. However, you’ll also likely get a hit or two.

It’s so quick and easy to do this, you can pick any two commanders that share a couple of colors or at least have tangentially-related strategies. Remember, commanders in this set will overlap an co operate a bit more than in an average set because they were designed to be played in Limited. Blim can go in a Ghen deck. This set has partner commanders that can be used in any combination. This is the set to plug in two wacky decks, hit compare…

1 Arcane Signet 2 Ghen, Blim
1 Blasphemous Act 2 Ghen, Blim
1 Blood Crypt 2 Ghen, Blim
1 Captive Audience 2 Ghen, Blim
1 Command Tower 2 Ghen, Blim
1 Court of Ambition 2 Ghen, Blim
1 Court of Ire 2 Ghen, Blim
1 Curse of Opulence 2 Ghen, Blim
1 Demonic Lore 2 Ghen, Blim
1 Demonic Pact 2 Ghen, Blim
1 Dragonskull Summit 2 Ghen, Blim
1 Luxury Suite 2 Ghen, Blim
1 Rakdos Signet 2 Ghen, Blim
1 Sol Ring 2 Ghen, Blim
1 Talisman of Indulgence 2 Ghen, Blim
1 Treacherous Blessing 2 Ghen, Blim

…and see what happens. Predictably, we got some hits.

Good ones.

This flirted with $10 when it was in Standard and while it’s going to take some work to get there again, 2 decks that make use of pernicious Enchantments like this – Ghen to draw the cards then bin the Pact before it bites and Blim to give it away while cackling like an idiot, help out a ton.

Do we love bulk foils? Probably not. I think Collector Boosters have completely murdered set foils and that’s another article for another day. I don’t like any recent set foils, but it only took a few seconds to pull up the graph so why not just do it?

This is only going to get you non-partner commanders. Partner commanders are a much trickier situation to parse, but with some work you can figure it out.

1 Amphin Mutineer 2 Zara, dargo
1 Arcane Signet 2 Zara, dargo
1 Azure Fleet Admiral 2 Zara, dargo
1 Blasphemous Act 2 Zara, dargo
1 Brainstorm 2 Zara, dargo
1 Breeches 2 Zara, dargo
1 Captain Lannery Storm 2 Zara, dargo
1 Captain Vargus Wrath 2 Zara, dargo
1 Captivating Crew 2 Zara, dargo
1 Cascade Bluffs 2 Zara, dargo
1 Chaos Warp 2 Zara, dargo
1 Coastal Piracy 2 Zara, dargo
1 Coercive Recruiter 2 Zara, dargo
1 Command Tower 2 Zara, dargo
1 Corsair Captain 2 Zara, dargo
1 Counterspell 2 Zara, dargo
1 Cyclonic Rift 2 Zara, dargo
1 Dockside Extortionist 2 Zara, dargo
1 Evolving Wilds 2 Zara, dargo
1 Hullbreacher 2 Zara, dargo
1 Impulsive Pilferer 2 Zara, dargo
1 Izzet Signet 2 Zara, dargo
1 Merchant Raiders 2 Zara, dargo
1 Myriad Landscape 2 Zara, dargo
1 Pongify 2 Zara, dargo
1 Port Razer 2 Zara, dargo
1 Protean Raider 2 Zara, dargo
1 Reconnaissance Mission 2 Zara, dargo
1 Shivan Reef 2 Zara, dargo
1 Sol Ring 2 Zara, dargo
1 Spell Swindle 2 Zara, dargo
1 Spirebluff Canal 2 Zara, dargo
1 Steam Vents 2 Zara, dargo
1 Storm the Vault 2 Zara, dargo
1 Sulfur Falls 2 Zara, dargo
1 Swiftfoot Boots 2 Zara, dargo
1 Talisman of Creativity 2 Zara, dargo
1 Temple of Epiphany 2 Zara, dargo
1 Training Center 2 Zara, dargo
Brazen Plunderer 2 Zara, dargo
Keen-Eyed Navigator 2 Zara, dargo

Sometimes you get hits, sometimes you get a lot of noise an no signal. The important thing to remember is that you will spend a half hour at this and find 10 potential specs and it’s some of the best time you can spend scouring a set. Don’t try and figure out the whole format, let a few simple techniques maximize the time you spend.

That does it for me this week, everyone. Thanks for reading and thanks for the good discussions we’ve been having in the Pro Trader Discord channel. Until next time!

Watchtower

The Watchtower 11/23/20 – How Uncommon is an EA Common if an Uncommon Could Be Common?

We’re only a few days past the official release of Commander Legends, and already we’re seeing some crazy numbers from these Collector Boosters. Turns out that the Extended Art cards (which can only be found in the Collector Boosters remember) are a lot less common than you might think, especially when it comes to the Common and Uncommon slots. I can already tell I’m going to be sick of typing ‘common’ and ‘uncommon’ in a few minutes.

It looks like there isn’t a difference in terms of print run between EA commons and uncommons in these Collector Boosters, so the rarity difference doesn’t actually mean anything there. Thanks to some maths run by James at MTGPrice on the collector boosters, we have some pretty solid estimates of how many copies of each card exist in the world…and it’s less than you might think.

Judging by the data we have available to us, it looks like there are less than 10,000 of each FEA common and uncommon from the entire print run of Commander Legends collector boosters, and that estimate is probably on the high side by quite a bit. Don’t be fooled by the common and uncommon rarity symbols they have stamped on them; these are premium pieces of cardboard and should be treated as such. We’ve been given quite a few EDH ultra-staples here in FEA for the first time, and some of those cards have never really had a fancy version printed before, making them a must-have for many EDH players.

I’m focusing on a few of those cards in my picks today, but you can apply this logic to plenty of the other FEA commons and uncommons and go have a look at targets for yourself. There are definitely too many good options to fit into one article!

Command Tower (FEA)

Price today: €12 ($14)
Possible price: $30+

It’s been a little while since I properly dedicated a slot to an arbitrage pick, so here you go! EDH players in the US have already been taking a shot at these, because other than the Commander’s Arsenal version and Judge Promo (which are both $100+), Commander Legends is the only other place you can find a foil version. And what’s better than a foil? An extended art foil, of course. We know by now that EDH is much more popular in the US than in Europe (and if you don’t, then go and read my article on arbitrage here), and that’s reflected in the pricing here. €12 on MKM compared to $24 on TCGPlayer is some serious arbitrage immediately, let alone if you wait a few months to sell.

Let’s talk some more numbers. Command Tower is listed in 277,283 decks recorded on EDHREC. 64% of all decks (and I’m surprised it’s that low), because duh – it’s a free untapped land that taps for any colour for you. The only real reason not to run it is because it doesn’t have a land type and so in mono-colour (and sometimes 2-colour decks) it can be worse than a basic land for you. But anyway, 277k decks that could want this card, and less than 10k FEA copies in the wild? Looks like some easy maths to me.

We are getting another foil Command Tower printing in Commander Collection: Green next month, but the premium versions of those sets (the ones that have the foils) are only being distributed to WPN stores and so allocation numbers are low – like, really low. Judging by the direction Wizards are going in we’ll most likely see another premium printing of Command Tower at some point, but I doubt we’ll see a FEA for a fair while. And remember, numbers on these are very limited compared to the number of players that are going to want them, so prices are going to be headed upwards pretty quickly.

I’m already racking up the word count on this article, so I’ll try and be a little more brief on my next two picks. Most of what I’ve said above in general and about Command Tower applies to both of these next picks, so I’ll explain a little more about them but not more than you should need to be convinced.

Terramorphic Expanse (FEA)

Price today: $2
Possible price: $10

Myriad Landscape (FEA)

Price today: $3
Possible price: $10

Terramorphic Expanse is an interesting one here, in that there have been zillions of printings and plenty of foils alongside that, but other than very slight border differences they all kinda look the same. The only one with a different art is the version printed in Jumpstart, and there weren’t any foils in that set so it’s not quite hitting that true premium spot. Getting this FEA version in Commander Legends is going to really scratch that itch for a lot of players, aaaaaand let’s check EDHREC…yep, 116k decks. Less than 10k copies. You know the drill!

Myriad Landscape is on a very similar footing, but with only one previous foil in Masters 25, this FEA might be even more popular than Terramorphic Expanse. It’s “only” in 81k decks, which is obviously still a huge number but not quite the territory that the other two hold – but it is a very good option in multicolour decks to go and find the lands you need to cast your spells. Fewer people are probably running it than should, but demand is still more than high enough to run down the supply.
Both of these can be picked up at around $2-3 both on TCGPlayer and MKM at the moment, which is just way too cheap. Yes, they’re technically commons and uncommons, but It’s better to think of them more like regular rares or mythics than what they’re labelled as. Demand for these is going to be super high and supply is much lower than people might think. It’s basic stonks.

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.