Readers!
We have a non-zero amount of new New Capenna (awkward) cards revealed and 3 of them are commanders. Hot damn, at 2 specs each that’s a bonus spec, unless I go down a rabbit hole and hit you with more than that. Who knows? All I know is that this is the part of the process where I brew something really cool and no one else cares so I’m stuck with a million copies of March of the Machines because everyone who built Eloise BUILT IT WRONG. This is the part of spoiler season where I figure out what people should play in my opinion, not what they will. That said, if you want to get ahead of people buying reactively, buy now. If this were easy, everyone would do it. Let’s do it.
The most annoying color combination got another annoying commander. This has the potential to turn Raffine into a huge monster, but if you have other creatures, probably fliers, that benefit from the +1/+1 counters, you can go tall AND wide. I think in general this will be a Thopter token deck, but there is only one creature I want to throw +1/+1 counters onto, and it ain’t Raffine.
This is like the 4th time in a year Droggy has been in the spotlight, and if you got them a year ago when I mentioned them during Kaldheim previews, you have doubled up already. I don’t think this is done, especially with how solid it is with Raffine. This is a mythic from a very old (sigh, the year I started making content) set and with pressure on it from other sources, what exactly stops this from hitting $20?
While we’re at it, this is a card. This is NOT in the high synergy cards because while this is a powerful commander, it’s a powerful enough commander that the boring brigade showed up to build the Thoracle deck they always build with every commander that has Dimir in it.
Here are the high synergy cards if you don’t believe me.
ONWARD
This is also a really brutal commander for bad people to play. While Raffine encouraged the people who only know how to build Thoracle goodstuff piles to build another Thoracle goodstuff pile, Xander appeals to the one guy at your LGS who swears his Tergrid deck isn’t “that” Tergrid deck before he casts Pox on turn 4.
I sound like a bit of a curmudgeon but it’s only because I had to write about 35 other legendary creatures LITERALLY 3 WEEKS AGO and this is honestly just a slog with no end in sight.
Should I go to TCG Player and pay $5.50 for a card that flirted with $9 on Card Kingdom last year? What if it’s unlikely to be reprinted, older than most people think and not a card competitive players even think to take out of the trade binder where they stash the 99% of the cards they open because they only play competitive formats? What if it already spiked and the cheap copies are all accounted for? This seems like an absolute slam dunk to me.
Phantasmal Image is always either $10 or $20. Right now it’s $10. I cannot imagine adding more to this paragraph will make this seem like a better spec than the graph does.
Nexus of Revels? I think someone hit the Halo a little too hard and named every card in the set in one 6 hour bender so they could take 2 weeks off. I respect the hustle because that’s how I got through Law School – Adderall-fueled study sessions followed by dropping out of Law School.
I know I tell you every few months to buy Tendershoot Dryad, but hear me out – it’s half of its peak and every Jetmir deck will run this unless they don’t have a copy because you teamed up with other members of the pro trader discord to take down the grand total of 230 copies on TCG Player. Put another way “This card is always either $10 or $20 and right now it’s $10.”
I feel like I JUST wrote about this card, but look, I was right. Now if you didn’t buy then, buy now because I can be even righter.
Here are the EDHREC pages in case you are super lazy or aren’t lazy but also see me as kind of your employee since I’m on the clock right now and you’re reading this on your phone on the toilet.
Xander (I know about the X, but I’m like a paragraph away from being done so just let me off the hook, I literally don’t have the spoons to fix it)
Thanks for reading, and thanks to EDHREC’s programming team for making constant improvements to the scrapers and page generation elements so we get data earlier and earlier- some of these cards were spoiled 24 hours ago.
That does it for me – until next time!