We’ve been well underway with Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty spoilers previews for a couple of weeks now, and I want to spend today talking a little bit about some cards that I think are going to be ubiquitous, underrated or both.
Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant
Pre-order price: $30
Price I want to buy at: $10
Possible future price: $25
The new iteration of Jin-Gitaxias we’re getting looks to be a very powerful card, and might even outstrip the old Jin-Gitaxias in terms of how oppressive it could be at the EDH table. Copying your spells and countering your opponents’ spells is obviously strong, but the limit of one per turn isn’t nearly as restrictive as you might think at first glance. You can copy your own spell on your turn, counter someone else’s, and then do it again on each of your opponents’ turns – which means that it’s going to take at least two successive removal spells to get rid of Jin-Gitaxias. What’s more is that we’ve also upgraded from a nine mana 5/4 to a seven mana 5/5, a cost reduction which is not at all insignificant, especially if you’re playing this as your commander.
Pre-order prices are as usual a little too high, with TCGPlayer starting at $30 for the regular non-foil versions and a lot more for the EA, Showcase and Phyrexian versions. I’ve no doubt that this is going to be a hugely popular EDH card amongst blue mages – it does everything you want except for draw cards really, and will be a powerhouse in most decks. I expect to see prices come down towards $10 once we start to hit peak supply (pre-orders in Europe are already $18), and bounce back up to around $25 a year or two out from there. I’ll be keeping an eye on prices for the premium versions too, as they’re likely to get very expensive some way down the road, so if we can get those at a reasonable price then they should be a great pickup too.
Scrap Welder
Pre-order price: $2
Price I want to buy at: $0.50
Possible future price: $5
Scrap Welder is another Goblin Welder/Goblin Engineer lookalike, but with the potential for more versatility than either of those predecessors. It’s hard to beat the power level on Goblin Welder, at just one mana and no other cost to activate its ability, and Goblin Engineer’s tutor ability can make for a great setup before you start messing around with reanimating your artifacts – but hear me out.
Scrap Welder doesn’t have the three-mana-or-less restriction on it that Goblin Engineer does, and being a 3/3 it doesn’t die quite as easily as a Goblin Welder might, which falls over in a stiff breeze. What’s more is that you get to give haste to whatever behemoth you’re reanimating, and although you need to give as good as you’re getting in terms of mana cost, giving haste to something like a Kuldotha Forgemaster is bound to instil fear into your opponents.
As far as I can see there isn’t actually a page for this on TCGPlayer yet, but CardKingdom has had pre-orders up at $2 (which is roughly what I expect) so I’m going off that for now. It’s a little cheaper in Europe as pre-orders tend to be, but I hope to see this card getting down to (or below) $0.50 in the coming weeks. I don’t think it will ever hit true bulk rare prices so I wouldn’t hold out for that, or you might miss out on picking them up before the price trends up again. I think that this is going to be just as ubiquitous as its aforementioned cousins and as such should see some nice gains across all versions until its likely inevitable reprint in a future Commander deck.
Satsuki, the Living Lore
Pre-order price: $5
Price I want to buy at: $0.50
Possible future price: $5
This is another one without a page on TCGPlayer or CardKingdom, but prices in Europe are good enough to go off for now – although I think that they’re currently a bit higher than they should be. Don’t get me wrong, I think that Satsuki is a very strong card, but it doesn’t have quite the broad applications of the other cards I’ve discussed today, and as such will probably see prices in the $0.10-0.50 range.
Why is Satsuki so good? Well, if you want to play it as your Commander then the recently (ish) updated rule which enables your Commander to die and then also return to the Command Zone means that you can have your cake and eat it with the death trigger on the card. You can also just loop it with Sagas like Binding of the Titans and The Eldest Reborn, recurring value and card advantage with Satsuki also speeding the whole process up by setting off your Sagas earlier than normal.
Overall I think that this is a fantastic card for enchantment themed EDH decks, either as the Commander or part of the 99, and will likely rebound nicely from bulk-ish prices given enough time. It’s probably going to be a good buylist target down the road, so I wouldn’t be afraid of picking up a decent stack of these. I’d also keep an eye on prices for the Neon version, because those are likely to end up pretty popular too.
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, he’s an active MTG finance speculator specialising in cross-border arbitrage.
