Readers!

This week I was hoping for some really spicy data, and we got it, but we’re going to talk about how to resort to less spicy data when the kind of spicy you get isn’t the kind of spicy you want. Like, imagine you go to a restaurant and order their hottest curry and they come out of the back like “We’re out of ghost peppers” and they pepper spray you instead. I think that tracks as an analogy and I will not be taking questions.

I think I’d be doing you a disservice if I didn’t first show you the data that frustrated me a bit, and it’s the data I was always going to show you at the top of the article, which is worse in a lot of ways. I decided to sort EDHREC by most popular decks this week and didn’t see precisely what I expected. Was it like a shot of capsaicin to the eyeballs? Not quite, it was more like finding a ghost pepper in your mild salsa – the surprise is what gets your the most.

I was prepared for a few of the Baldur’s Gate commanders to make an appearance but I was not quite prepared for Miirym to come out of nowhere. Look, I get that it’s ridiculous to see a Dungeons and Dragons set and be surprised that Dragons are popular. It’s just that, well… why would you ever build Miirym? Or, as everyone else in the community says, why not?

“Riku of 2 Reflections as long as the thing being reflected is a non-token Dragon” is tearing it up! So naturally, this is the first place I want to look to see if we can identify anything.

Either I am getting bad at this or there is just nothing here. Any Dragon here is high synergy because it’s not played in a ton of other Dragon decks, most likely. Did you manage to get Utvara Hellkite cheap when it was first reprinted? I hope so, I hate to pay $15 now. With so many reprints every year, it really doesn’t feel safe to buy into any Dragons for Dragons’ sake. I would have to look elswhere.

If Miiryn shot up in a week, what’s less surgey and more sustainable? I had to know. My search took me back to EDHREC because of course it did, that’s the site I use, I have been very clear on that this whole time.

This, however, I can work with. If Miirym is kind of boring and linear, maybe some of these others can spice things up.

Myrkul, Lord of Skeleton Dollars is a pretty straightforward deck and honestly so narrow that it’s not much more interesting than Miirym but I managed to root around and come away with some gems.

I would have loved to have caught this earlier since it’s up almost 40% on CK but we’re still below the bottom on CK on TCG Player so if you’re upset you have to pay $14 on CK instead of $10, just pay $10. I don’t hate the regular border below $7.50 either, honestly. This is a good card, they’re not going to stop making Golgari graveyard stuff and Ikoria has been out for long enough that this is going to trend right back up. $30? Maybe not, but you’ll certainly be glad you paid $9.75.

I slept on these EA cards a little bit. Champion has already demonstrated that it can hit $10 on CK and paying less on TCG Player seems like a good thing. I wish I’d called this earlier, but since it was flat for 18 months and I got distracted by a new set every 2 weeks, I missed it.

What do you do when you see a radical price discrepancy like this? My first impulse is to make sure all 3 prices are correct, so I checked them all out. Coolstuff is indeed not sold out at basically TCG’s numbers but all other versions are sold out and CK is indeed charging 50% more than the other two sites for this card. CK sells a LOT of EDH cards, so barring the revelation that a pro-Union saboteur changed the price on CK’s site, I’d say there is indication that this card could hit $20 and you’ll be glad you paid $12 if it does.

Tasha, of Hideous Laughter fame, is an eligible commander, which is always worth doing if only for the novelty. Let’s see how people are building it, shall we?

From a spec standpoint this seems a bit meh, but from a “Wow, these are literally all cards I jam in lots of decks” standpoint, this is my DECK. Also, this card is too cheap and I think it’s because I’ve never been invited to play on Game Knights to wreck people with it.

This card is fully very good and I don’t know why no one cares. Don’t spec on this card, by the way, a card tripling in price isn’t that impressive when it is going from 33 cents to a buck.

Really?

Wow, OK.

This is a truly unhinged set of High Synergy cards, which is what we should see, honestly. This isn’t designed to weed out format staples, it’s designed to find the cards only weirdos building Elminster would think to use. One card that caught my eye was this.

Don’t let the silver ink fool you, there are fewer copies of Future Sight Uncommons than there are of New Capenna mythics. This is a very rare card and it’s worth more than I bet anyone thinks. Should I talk about it 2 years after the price doubled? I should if I think this could hit $5, and I do.

I know I’m back on this again, but Elminster isn’t the only deck that wants this and the Mystery Booster copies aren’t adding as much supply as you think. Check bulk rares in stores, I guess. This is a suspicious card, any card that costs 16 mana in a game where you can deal damage equal to CMC is suspicious. Elminster isn’t the best deck for Draco which leads me to believe a better one could be printed whenever and I want to be ready.

Next week will be more of the same followed by a week of New Dominaria spoilers followed by my resignation from having to keep track of 62 new legendary creatures literally 4 weeks after they released 37 new Legendary creatures. Won’t you join me for some of that? Until next time!