I’ve done too many pun titles to articles. I got halfway through writing “What to expect when you’re expecting Vampires and Werewolves” and I’ve done basically that title exactly. Not just once, either.

“Finnistrad” is the best I can come up with, and it’s an OK title, but I think the advice is going to more than make up for it.

Innistrad Jacob vs. Edward is coming out within a year and while we have a long time before those sets are spoiled, we actually kind of want to be ahead of everyone else. Being ahead of people means that the cards don’t actually have to be good, or playable.

Card Kingdom has NM copies for $3 and the duel deck promo is under a buck. Someone had the chance to buy these at $0.50 and get out for $4. In fact, these were buylisting for $3.25 before the end, so people made some literal free, easy money. Turn that into CK credit, crank it over for the next round of easy specs. If you have some CK credit burning a hole in your pocket, maybe we should talk Vamps and Werlvs. Werewvs? There’s no cool way to shorten “Werewolves” like you can “Vampires.”

I think for this one, I’m going to fall back on my old method of jamming every card from every average list into a big old list and looking at cards played in most decks. We may find some cheap gems, and we may find that some obvious cards just go up on principle. They don’t have to even go in the deck to increase in price, remember, Lovisa Coldeyes isn’t being played more than it was. Some of these cards will go up because people think they will, and it’s not too early to think about that.

Vampires

I am doing vampires first because I feel like it will be easier. There is more data but at least it’s obvious where to look. There are basically 0 real Werewolf commanders so I have to fiddle a ton with filters to find them, whereas vampires are obvious. As always, I snagged the average lists for each commander, put them in a list comparison tool and generated a list of cards that is in every deck. Once we filter out EDH staples, we’re left with cards that have a lot of chances to go up, and could get some more attention once everyone remembers they’ve known about Twilight the set for months already and forgot to do anything with that information.

I compared the top 5 Vampires lists – Adgar Markov, Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose, Elenda, the Dusk Rose, Olivia Voldren and Anje Falkenrath. I could have done more, but a few things popped out at me when I compared these 5.

Anything on this list that isn’t an EDH staple is likely a vampire tribal staple. The fact that we’re seeing creatures in all 5 lists when crazy tribe-specific cards like Blade of the Bloodchief aren’t makes me want to look at those creatures.

I’d like to think I told people to buy these in 2017 when they got reprinted. The truth is, this was a secret promo of sorts because it was included in M11 precon decks as a foil, which made the foil and non-foil price be about the same. Remember when a foil costing about the same as a non-foil was alarming and not the new reality? Anyway, this card rules and foils are a little more than the non-foils, finally.

Modern Horizons 1 was such a juicy set that it’s tough to move the needle on non-mythic rares that aren’t format staples. However, the subtle over time when people weren’t especially building Vampires and the fact that this is pretty bonkers in any Vamps build makes me think this could hit a tipping point and become nuts quickly. I don’t hate foils, either.

If you can find foil copies under $10, don’t delay. They’re drying up, which bodes well for non-foils.

Only NM in stock on CK but there are over 150 listings on TCG Player. I like these but it will take a big nudge to get them going. That’s good, we can buy as much as we want without nudging.

Not much doing here. Infinite supply given its rarity and the foils are already like $12, which is higher than I care to buy in.

Sanctum Seeker is growing like it should and I see no reason why it couldn’t pop. It’s barely above its historic high and, given the set it’s in, this is a good candidate for a double up to a buylist.

I also like Blade of the Bloodchief and Champion of Dusk. Cards that show up on “merely” 4 of the lists are fine picks, too.

One more thing – we can let EDHREC do some of the work for us, too. I still use the multilist comparison tool, but EDHREC’s page for Vampire tribal does the same analytics as other pages, including high synergy and top cards. High synergy, as a refresher, means that the ratio of inclusion in vampires lists to inclusion in all decks of those colors is especially high, indicating it’s a card more less likely to be found in non-vampire decks. Stromkirk Captain has a very high synergy score, the synergy score for Sol Ring is a negative number. Peruse that page thoroughly as well.

Werewolves

This was tougher, and I leaned on EDHREC’s page a lot more.

Wow. OK. Not even Morophon? Maybe this won’t take that long

As a note for you when you use EDHREC, your pathing through the site matters. To find the decks we want, you’ll want to first go to the Werewolf tribal page and then click on the commanders’ portraits. That will take you to a specific page that only displays cards in Werewolf tribal decks for that commander. You won’t miss much if you mess up and go straight to Urlich’s page, but there are 20 Xenagos Werewolf tribal decks and if you don’t take the correct path to Xenagos’ page, you’ll get all Xenagos decks and that tiny signal will get washed out.

We’re not so much looking at tribal staples as we are looking at 2 decks that run basically the same cards because they have to. If anything, the cards that are unique to either deck are more interesting to me from a building perspective, but let’s parse the… sigh, 62 common cards between decks.

Afflicted Deserter
Arlinn
Arlinn Kord
Beast Within
Beastmaster Ascension
Breakneck Rider
Cinder Glade
Command Tower
Conduit of Storms
Cult of the Waxing Moon
Cultivate
Daybreak Ranger
Decimate
Domri
Duskwatch Recruiter
Evolving Wilds
Full Moon’s Rise
Gatstaf Shepherd
Geier Reach Bandit
Gruul Signet
Gruul Turf
Guardian Project
Hermit of the Natterknolls
Heroic Intervention
Howlpack Resurgence
Huntmaster of the Fells
Immerwolf
Instigator Gang
Kessig Forgemaster
Kessig Wolf Run
Kodama’s Reach
Kruin Outlaw
Lambholt Elder
Lifecrafter’s Bestiary
Mayor of Avabruck
Mondronen Shaman
Moonlight Hunt
Moonmist
Neglected Heirloom
Nightpack Ambusher
Rhythm of the Wild
Rootbound Crag
Rugged Highlands
Sage of Ancient Lore
Scorned Villager
Silverfur Partisan
Smoldering Werewolf
Sol Ring
Spirit of the Hunt
Stomping Ground
Temple of Abandon
The Great Henge
of the Krallenhorde
Ulrich’s Kindred
Ulvenwald Captive
Ulvenwald Mystics
Vanquisher’s Banner
Waxing Moon
Wolfbitten Captive
Wolfir Silverheart
Anarch of Bolas
Voice of the Pack

Let’s take out duplicate cards, lands and staples like Guardian Project.

Afflicted Deserter
Breakneck Rider
Conduit of Storms
Cult of the Waxing Moon
Daybreak Ranger
Duskwatch Recruiter
Full Moon’s Rise
Gatstaf Shepherd
Geier Reach Bandit
Hermit of the Natterknolls
Howlpack Resurgence
Huntmaster of the Fells
Immerwolf
Instigator Gang
Kessig Forgemaster
Kruin Outlaw
Lambholt Elder
Lifecrafter’s Bestiary
Mayor of Avabruck
Mondronen Shaman
Moonlight Hunt
Moonmist
Neglected Heirloom
Nightpack Ambusher
Rhythm of the Wild

Sage of Ancient Lore
Scorned Villager
Silverfur Partisan
Smoldering Werewolf
Spirit of the Hunt
The Great Henge
of the Krallenhorde
Ulrich’s Kindred
Ulvenwald Captive
Ulvenwald Mystics
Vanquisher’s Banner
Waxing Moon
Wolfbitten Captive
Wolfir Silverheart

This is a list of a bunch of $0.16 cards. A lot of them are more expensive in foil, and maybe that’s the play, but I’m not thrilled here, nor when I look at the Werewolf tribal page.

The cards that I think won’t get cut when they add better Werewolves plus a better commander are as follows.

Foil Immerwolf isn’t quite at an all-time high and with the supply basically what it is, this has potential. It’s been on the move a bit since the announcement of the Innistrad set, but it’s not done moving for that reason since not many people caught on.

This has flirted with $5 in the past and now it’s half that? This is a no-brainer.

I had to use ABU’s graph since this is basically gone everywhere else.

I don’t love anything else. Luckily, we have so many Vampire picks, I’m sure you have more than enough to mull over. FWIW, if you like foils more than me, I think you’ll likely mitigate some reprint risk since the set will likely be accompanied by one or two precons that could have Vampire and Werewolf reprints in them. Mitigating reprint risk is a fine strat, and a $3 foil Howlpack Resurgance that could go to $8 looks better than a $0.69 nonfoil that will only stop being $0.69, which is all it has going for it right now.

That does it for me. Until next time!