Readers!
2022 was a big year for me, both professionally and personally and looking back over everything that happened and that we put up with, it’s amazing we survived this year intact. It was full sensory overload for us 24/7 and it feels like everything I used to like is coming at me too fast, from superhero movies to Magic releases to family and personal milestones. We’re going to wrap up the year by reflecting on how we got better at picking out cards that were going to pop based on clues from EDHREC.
The first thing I acknowledged was something that I had hinted at privately but felt like I didn’t want to exacerbate by drawing too much attention to it was what is dubbed the “Command Zone Effect.” I wrote about the impact of that show on the price of a card like Fervent Charge and how it’s worth subscribing to their Patreon to see the episodes early. Cards that do something crazy, even in a contrived scenario, are bound to pop in the short term and being ahead of the curve.
It is always noteworthy whenever I show tips or tricks about using EDHREC, it might be worth refreshing your memory about it from time to time. I sometimes forget things I’ve learned about the site, and I am looking at ways to make more of our data presentable. 2023 will be a great year for analytics, even the ad hoc, self-taught analytics that you could do yourselves.
This is the first time this year I mentioned Setessan Champion, but I mentioned it a lot after. That card is still way too cheap and if you take nothing else away from this year, get that card. Sell it whenever. If it gets reprinted, buy a bunch of copies. It’s very, very good and it has a extended-art version that is less impacted by a reprint. It’s crazy good, even now.
Baldur’s Gate was one of the biggest sets for EDH of the year and it’s going to be the gift that keeps on giving for a while. I highlighted the cards that mattered then in this article, but I really think it would behoove you to take a look at the set’s page yourself. We got a TON of cards, a TON of cycles, a new kind of companion, Gates support and a ton of Legendary creatures. The set is so dense and we’ve only scratched the surface.
I am not sure how to categorize “Buy The Bottom” but I think it’s the best thing I wrote this year, or at least the article I’m proudest of. Give it a read if it’s been awhile.
With Wizards inundating us with new Legendary creatures all the time, Legendary-only decks seem more and more possible. I wrote about the cards that will get played no matter what the rest of that deck looks like.
This was the first year I really made a habit of going back and checking high-impact sets a few months later to se where the prices ended up when the dust settled, and doing the same for decks was a revelation. This was the first but not last time I made a point to write about my process.
Sometimes I think a card is underplayed and that’s all I have to say about it.
It pays to go back through the EDHREC Top 100 cards, because any cards that got added to that list in the last year are very pertinent. Some of them haven’t quite moved in price despite being very high on the list, so if you want 5 examples of cards to watch, here you go.
In this 2-part miniseries dubbed Brother Vs Brother and Brother Vs Brother 2: the ReBrothering we widened our scope a bit to look at the cards that in general will go up as a result of lots of new artifact decks being built. It doesn’t matter what the individual decks do if you know what the next 6 months of releases will do, so stock up now.
2022 was a year full of slight improvements to my methods and I’m glad I took the time to document them. Signs of growth in my skills at picking specs are encouraging and despite doing this over a decade, I’m pot committed to this life and ready to charge into 2023 with all 3 guns blazing. Until next year!