Monthly Archives: April 2021

Jason Alt, Unlocked ProTrader

Unlocked Pro Trader: Early Quick Hits

Readers!

Usually I pick one commander, the most popular one, and do a whole article going very deep on just those picks before moving on to the next commander. The problem then became that by the time I got to the 4th or 5th article, all of the obvious picks had dried up. I feel like I was doing you a disservice by not mentioning big, obvious stuff while there was still time to get it. I can get granular for granularity’s sake later when the obvious stuff dries up. I think that money is money and picks are picks, but I also think you’re going to get sort of annoyed if I don’t mention obvious stuff because I tackled the subjects in the wrong order.

To that end, for this set at least, I’m going to try and cruise through quick hits for the set this week and for the precons next week. It’s not ideal either way – ideally I’d write a huge primer the second I had any data and you could all read it at once, but since that’s not really an option, let’s at least pick the low-hanging fruit, shall we?

The distribution so far isn’t quite how I expected it to go, but I think the precon commanders are liable to overshadow the set commanders a bit. That’s fine, I don’t love the idea of them jamming 35 Legendary creatures into every set now, anyway. We’re drowning in commanders and that has the effect of making everyone make every good one just to keep up rather than getting to spend some time with some silly ones. I don’t love it but that’s my commentary as a person who cares about the format. As a person who cares about prices, it’s probably not going to tip over the house of cards yet.

I didn’t really expect Extus to be number 1, but I was basing that on the fact that I like Extus a lot and usually the commanders I like a lot aren’t as embraced by the community. I also like Uvilda and Nassari and that deck isn’t even in the top 18 here.

I’m going to do the most obvious stuff from every deck in no particular order. Sound good? Don’t worry if it’s a little jarring, we’ll do this again next week and we’ll go deeper the week after. Let’s begin.

People tend to be running things they can sac, things they can sac creatures with, and ways to copy spells. I think there could be a bit of upside there.

Fury Storm is perfect. It’s cheap for now, on its way up for the second time in the past 4 months, and most importantly, it does more copying for every time you’ve played your commander, which happens to be the spell you’re copying. This card was made for this deck and supply seems to be on the move.

No real deep analysis here – this is a bit of a no-brainer.

This would be a no-brainer if I wasn’t so afraid of a 4th printing, which I am. Still, this card does WORK and if that printing doesn’t come soon, there’s money to be made on a card that gives you an absurd number of tokens. Also, with Divine Visitation out, you never make a Thrull and he goes OFF.

I’ve been on about this for a few sets and I think this probably can’t get cheaper, but it HAS already flirted with $15 and it’s gettable for under $10 on TCG Player but selling out elsewhere. Seems significant.

I’ve called this before but it doesn’t appear to be too late, wow. That’s great growth and while a reprint will stamp on us pretty hard, I don’t know if one is coming in the next year.

While there was never a truly cheap time to buy in, it doesn’t look too bad now. A year on and things are starting to trend up. I wouldn’t wait if you’re going to buy these. Consider the extended art.

While it was obviously better to buy right when this got a Mystery Booster printing, isn’t it nice to know it completely shrugged that off and continued on its upward trajectory? This card is a monster.

After I wrote this, a reader pointed out that Archive is in the Witherbloom precon. Do I think it can shrug that off? Yes, and I think when it bottoms out, you can safely buy in. It will go lower than $10 this time, which is nice.

This card can’t decide if it’s $5 or $10. When it finally makes up its mind, what are the odds it decides it’s going to stay at $5?

With Witherbloom being a lifegain school, I think just about every Witherbloom deck can use this. This is like $2 and it could be like $20 under the right circumstances. If all you want to do is pay $2 and buylist for $5 later, this seems like a slam dunk.

This was going to go up anyway.

That’s a lot of picks! I’ll go deeper later, but make sure you think about what each deck does and buy cards that go across lots of them, Lifegain, copying, saccing – some of the cards there are staples and some of them are specific to these decks. Go to EDHREC and mess around, find your own specs. I’ll be back next week! I’m out!

Watchtower

That’s So Strixhaven

Strixhaven: School of Mages has dropped, and there is definitely a lot to be excited about here. On top of everything from the main set we also have the Mystical Archive cards to consider, and on top of that there are the Japanese alternate art Mystical Archive cards as well. Yeah, it’s a lot. Today I’m going to be doing a shallower dive and taking a look at a few of the top cards across each of the different categories we have, and probably follow up again in the coming weeks with more of the cards that I think are going to do well – so be prepared for a slightly different article format than you’re used to from me.

Mystical Archive

We’ll kick things off with undoubtedly the coolest and most exciting of the cards that have just been released, the Mystical Archive cards. We’ve got two versions here – the regulars and the alternate art Japanese versions, which are all the same cards that you get in the English version, but solely in Japanese and with awesome alternate arts. When it comes to the Japanese cards, a lot of players that don’t read or speak Japanese are still going to be playing with them, and that means that the most popular ones are going to be the cards that are simple and have very little text to remember.

We’re talking about stuff like Counterspell, Swords to Plowshares and Demonic Tutor here – super-staples that are going to be in very high demand by a lot of players. However, prices on all of these are sky high at the moment due to choked supply, and I think that we’re going to see prices fall as we move forward into peak supply 4-6 weeks out from now.

As prices fall I want to be keeping an eye on these staples, in both the regular and alternate Japanese versions, in non-foil and foil. JPN alt foil Brainstorm is sat at $80 right now – I want to be seeing that around $50 or so; the same Demonic Tutor is way up at $400 – I expect to see that halved in the next few weeks as more product is cracked. Yes, these cards are rare but they’re not that rare.

The regular versions are great pickups here as well, and are going to be more readily available than the alternate versions and thus command lower prices, but you can still realise gains with them nonetheless. If we compare English foil Counterspell vs JPN alt foil, you’re looking at $16 vs $74. I expect the English ones to drop a little bit, and the JPN ones to drop quite a bit, but keep an eye on both for lows in a few weeks.

Extended Art and Borderless

I still don’t really know why these are two separate categories of card because it’s honestly just a bit confusing, and relatively easy to mix up which is which – but anyway, it is what it is. Borderless are the ones with different art to the regular versions (and also a borderless frame), and Extended Art are the ones with same art as the regular versions and a borderless frame. Borderless come in regular booster packs, EA only come in Collector Boosters. Easy!

So taking a look at some of our options, I quite like the look of Beledros Witherbloom at the moment. Albeit very early days at the moment, it’s the second most popular commander built on EDHREC so far and seems like a pretty powerful card. Paying 10 life is a lot less when you start on 40 in EDH, and being able to untap all your lands is a very powerful effect, especially when there are a bunch of pretty easy ways to gain either a tonne or infinite life going around. Pumping out a bunch of tokens on top of that is just extra value. Borderless foils are very expensive around $65 right now, but I expect to see that come way down towards $20 or so pretty soon. I like grabbing these at their low, especially as it’s a Mythic, and should look pretty good on a one to two year timeline.

When it comes to Extended Arts, I like the look of Codie, Vociferous Codex. Again it’s one of the most popular commanders built so far, and I’m inclined to compare it to something like Golos, Tireless Pilgrim. A colourless commander with a five colour identity and an activated ability looks pretty familiar, and Golos was (and still is) highly popular. The best thing about Codie is that you don’t need coloured mana to activate it – you actually get coloured mana out of it, which makes the ability a lot easier to use than Golos. Although it’s going to technically be a five colour deck, the fact that you don’t need coloured mana to activate it means that we might well just Izzet Spells builds of this instead. EA foils are around $12 at the moment and I think we’ll see that drop bit, depending on how many Collector Boosters are cracked. If we can get these around or under $5 then I think that should be a great price, but even at $7-10 I think that they’ll look good a year or two out.

Regular Old Cards

When it comes to regular cards, I’m looking at brick targets – cards that I want to be picking up a big chunk of with the view to buylist them at some point down the road. I think that the best for those are cards that have appeal across the board – from EDH to totally casual and maybe competitive as well. I’m looking at Archmage Emeritus first here, a rare from Strixhaven that has a lot of potential. Drawing a card whenever you cast or copy an instant or sorcery spell means that going infinite and drawing your whole deck is probably very easy, making for a win with Thassa’s Oracle or something similar. That’s already looking popular in EDH and will be big with the casual crowd, so I’m looking for bricks of these under $1 for sure (currently preordering around $2-3).

I’m already running up the word count here so I’m going to stop now and leave some more for next week’s article, where I’ll likely be talking more Strixhaven with new data, so tune in then!

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

The Value of Silver

Strixhaven is available online now, and lots of attention is going to those drafts, but take a moment and do some planning with me. I was going to write about the cards that are best to get rid of as rotation approached, but I kept stumbling over uncommons with high EDHREC numbers and prices that may or may not be pretty low for what they are and what they do. 

One thing about most of these cards is that with the pandemic, paper play was nonexistent and thus the supply is really impacted as opposed to uncommons from non-COVID-affected sets. Reprints are a possibility, but there’s also opportunities for gaining value.

Let’s get into these!

Migration Path ($1 regular/ $1.50 foil/ $1.50 nonfoil promo/ $3 promo foil) – Found in more than 11,000 decks online, the promo version is probably where you want to be, but you can acquire solid bricks of nonfoils for very reasonable prices. There’s a case to be made for all the versions, but when you’ve got this many options, I prefer to stick with the cheapest or the most expensive. Cheap ones offer large-quantity buylist exits, and the promo foils offer the highest ceiling. All are decent, even you want to go for the nonfoil promos. This is in less than half as many decks as the original, Explosive Vegetation, but this is strictly better. Vegetation has been printed a whole lot of times, and Path has avoided that so far.

Kenrith’s Transformation ($0.50/$0.75/$0.75/$3.50) – Ten thousand decks have sleeved this up in the last 18 months, and considering the almost-free nature of this spell, it’s not hard to see why. The replacement of a card drawn is always appealing, and this deals very effectively with a wide range of problems. All the abilities go away, no more triggers, and protection goes poof. Generally speaking, people will want to trade this in combat to get the replay value. Almost as good as Ixidron for solving problematic creatures. Again, you’ve got the option of going for bricks of the cheap copies or stocking up on the promo foils, and the promos offer the most insurance against a reprint. 

Syr Konrad, the Grim ($0.50/$5) – More than 20,000 players have put this in decks, and it’s not hard to see why. An amazing amount of things cause this to trigger, and he even hits each opponent instead of just one at a time! The foil gap is real, but there’s no special version to worry about. You had a chance earlier this year at foils for a lot less: 

Even so, if you missed out on sub-$3 foils, the demand pattern is real and the foil reprint shouldn’t come along for quite a while. This was reprinted in the Zendikar Rising Commander decks, so the nonfoil is really at a low right now. I could be talked into purchases of either version, or both!

Destiny Spinner ($1/$4) – I think that the biggest appeal here is the anti-countering clause, but the second ability is a nice bonus too in the right deck. Putting this down early, and feeling confident that your other creatures will stick around, is a real delight. We only have two versions of this, and with the enchantment frame looking as nice as it does in foil, I prefer buying in on the foil version here. Don’t miss out on the opportunity a brick of nonfoils can offer too, as there’s a fair amount of those available on TCG under a buck.

Hydra’s Growth ($1/$1.50) – This is only in 5500 decks, but the decks that want an effect like this, REALLY WANT an effect like this. The slightly lower demand for this accounts for why the foil is so close in price to the nonfoil, and that means go for the foil in this case. Yes, it’s an uncommon, but it’s a popular one from a set that didn’t get a lot of attention in paper. Grab a bunch of foils and be patient as this rises to $5.

Bastion of Remembrance ($1/$2) – Nearly 10k decks have this going on, less for the token and more for the ‘my creature dies, each of you lose one’ effect. Again, they chose to print this as ‘each opponent’ as opposed to ‘target opponent’ and that makes a HUGE difference. This is a really easy effect to abuse in a wide range of decks, and a small gap in pricing makes the foils much more attractive to me. 

Reconnaissance Mission ($1/$2) – Being in 8k decks, 3k more than Coastal Piracy, speaks a lot to how available this is, and it is directly better by any comparison. Having the option to cycle it away makes this super flexible. Gotta love that in Commander, when every card is important. Again, a small foil gap and no other versions makes the foil far more attractive to purchase, which should lead to a delightful gain past $5. 

Ominous Seas ($0.50/$1.50) – Blue decks love drawing cards, and 5500 different decks have decided that this would be a great way to have drawing cards translate to giant tentacle monsters. This is a pretty easy ability to abuse, especially if you go after the looting effects as well as pure card drawing. Foils and nonfoils alike are appealing options here, and the growth potential is clear.

Miscast ($1/$5) – Spell Pierce is in 11,000 decks, and Miscast is only half that…for a card that’s less than a year old. The high foil multiplier also indicates the high level of interest in casual circles for the card, and that’s a very good sign. I’m more inclined to pick up large amounts of nonfoils here, instead of hoping the foils spike to $10 or $15. Having the nonfoils rise to $2 or $3 seems like the more probable outcome. 

Garruk’s Uprising ($2.50/$3.50/$1/$1.50) – Yes, the Showcase versions are cheaper than the regular-frame versions, mainly because the Collector Boosters had dedicated slots for the Showcases. There’s no question that the Showcases look better, though, especially in foil, and that’s the version I’d want to be stocked up on going forward. Even if the Showcase foil rises just to the level of the regular-frame foil, you’ll be able to buylist your copies away for a small profit. With patience, though, these will get even higher and make you a delightful profit.

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

Pro Trader: FIrst Day oF Classes

Readers!

I’m sure you’re all dying for me to give you some good news about Strixhaven specs in Commander but I don’t know that I have great news. I have bad news and weird news, which do you want first?

The bad news is that even with EDH’s help, the individual cards themselves probably won’t go up enough to have been worth buying in. Unless something is Smothering Tithe-tier, the odds of something that’s used in EDH being worth buying this early is practically nill. Can I refer you to some prices from the last few sets?

The cards over $10 are just different versions of the same few cards. The same is true of other sets.

With crazy Japanese language alternate art cards in the collector boosters, I really don’t see that there is much room to do anything with singles. I never think so. As always, I think the money is to be made on old cards that are suddenly good based on new commanders. Luckily we got 50 of them dropped on us over one weekend, so that’s neat. I’m still wading through all of it, but preliminarily, Commander 2021 is much better for EDH than Strixhaven proper. Before you say “Duh,” let me just illustrate how much better. The stuff getting tested the most in Strixhaven is… not good. Better versions of these cards already exist, and that’s a problem.

I’ll show you what I mean.

In my opinion as someone who knows as much about the EDH side of EDH finance as the finance side of it, Rip Apart, Fracture and Mortality Spear are bad. I don’t think they’re going to continue to see play. That said, I felt the same way about Ravenform and people are at least allegedly playing that, so what do I know? I won’t argue too much against data because I’m not a complete lunatic, but since this data is fairly preliminary, I will caution people to not jump to any hasty conclusions yet.

One card I see overperforming my expectations in a way that I don’t think is necessarily wrong is this fella over here.

Archie over here is a card-drawing machine and coupled with Thousand-Year Storm, he can quickly deck you because that’s how decks with Thousand-Year storm work. You win with Thassa’s Oracle or you barely win one spell short of decking yourself. There is no in-between. Making every Instant a cantrip is pretty powerful and I think this could stick around. Foils are pre-selling for $5 for the bundle foil, and that may be the money card.

Archmage Emeritus-bundle, Strixhaven School of Mages:Foil (STX) Price

The new art is pretty sweet for an alternate art, although I bet the tats look good in foil on the set foil, too. I don’t even hate brushing a stack of these around a buck. Creatures are a little flimsier than enchantments, but here’s a card to at least look at.

I think we have a while before Insight pops, even in foil.

That said, the trend in foil is somewhat encouraging. So will how collectible the bundle foil is offset how available it is? I tend to doubt it, and with Ageless Insight growing as slowly as it is, it’s tough to recommend Archie, and if I can’t recommend Archie, what else from the set even looks good?

I think by now people have gotten the memo that cards like this are good and shouldn’t be allowed to get very cheap, but I think people are also trying to compare an in-print common to an uncommon like Relentless Rats that got popular like 5 years after it first got printed and that’s silly. Let’s compare this to the cards it’s comparable to.

7 Dwarves becoming a $5 foil was fairly easy to predict, but I also think Dwarves is a much, much better card than Dragon’s Approach. I think Dragon’s Approach is a trap and while I think it has upside at the price of “rescue from draft chaff” I wouldn’t expect Approach to do Dwarf numbers ever.

Petitioners is a year older than Dwarves and the foil is the same price. I don’t know what that means for Dragon’s Approach, but a spell is harder to put copies of into the graveyard than it is to put copies of into play, so I am not sure this current trends will hold.

I am a little bearish on Strixhaven for EDH, folks. We still have the commander decks to delve into next week, but I don’t love the set preliminarily. That said, some of the commanders are cool.

Extus, Oriq Overlord // Awaken the Blood Avatar

Extus, Oriq Overlord // Awaken the Blood Avatar

Extus is a decent commander with a really brutal spell attached that gives you access to Red and gives you a handy sac outlet that reduces commander tax. I like this a lot.

I’ve called this card before and I was right then and I’m right (?) now. This has flirted with $6 before, I think it gets there now. You want to cast Awaken the Blood Avatar a lot, and now you can do that and then copy it a bunch. This is a no-brainer inclusion in the deck and since it’s currently the most popular deck on EDHREC by a LOT, I think this is a winner.

A few other relevant cards are creeping up. I really like the idea of building this deck, and I plan to as soon as possible.

This card is in a $40 precon with a $50 card, this card should cost -$10 and yet here it is, creeping up in price. Get these before they go, because once the cheap copies dry up after the cheap copies of the precon do, this is going to go up faster than anyone thinks. It’s not even at its historical peak.

I think we can delve more into Extus or other decks next week, but for now, this set is weak for EDH and that’s OK. I’m still busting Collector Boosters to get those sweet Japanese foils, and you should, too. Until next time!