Unlocked Pro Trader: To Infinity and Beyond

Readers!

I sometimes use naughty NSFW swears in my tweets so I don’t like them here, but if you have a cool boss or don’t browse on your company’s network, you should read my tweets because they are insightful and my number of followers shows that I am underrated and you are a hipster on the bleeding edge of Magic content made by people who don’t make YouTube videos or Tik Toks. Want to talk to a guy who is launching 2 different written-article-based content sits in year of our Lord two kay twenty3? That’s me, do it. I’ll even link my twitter for you. Now, on to the picks!

I called this article what I did because Wizards used to let a Saheeli Cat slip through once every 5 years or so, but that was when they were making 4 sets a year, not 4 products a month. It’s tougher to keep track of what you’re doing when you do nothing but fart out a steady stream of products. Imagine how much broken junk is coming down the pike now that the products coming out were made during COVID lockdowns by people who likely had trouble playtesting. It seems likely that we’re going to see a lot more boring combos where 1 part of the combo is a card and the only other combo piece is your commander. Super fun format, guys, thanks for focusing on it.

Whether or not you agree Saheeli Cat and its ilk are boring (I’m right but you’re allowed to disagree), we are getting more stuff, and there seems to be a very common culprit.

Now we could do an entire article about cards that combo with The Red Terror, but I might as well show you a website EDHREC helped build.

Commander’s Spellbook from Day 1 was a community-driven passion project where dedicated absolute lunatics set out to think up every Magic card combo and compile them in an indexable database. EDHREC is a good resource for how people are going to build decks, but Commander Spellbook is great for days like today where they show us a card and we have to quickly figure out what else that card combos with. Today, we got this.

Now, Shalai amd Hallar are not unique in being very, very new cards that combo with The Red Terror. Some of the combo pieces are VERY recent.

However, since an entire deck will get built, and everyone is going to build the exact same deck, we should try and anticipate what will be in there. Luckily, the internet saw fit to give us a ton of examples and I also know a bit about EDH so I compiled the best 5 cards to look at for going in this dumb combo deck where, again, you only need 1 card that isn’t your commander. Also, The Red Terror isn’t the only card that combines with Shallar over here, so let’s look at it first them move on.

Is this a real price, though?

OK, so this card plus Shalai and Hallar ends the game and it’s actually trending down despite the combo with All Will Be One. The card, not the set, the official full name of which I never learned.

I don’t think I can make a stronger case for The Red Terror than “Shivam tweeted about it” and Shivam, who is legitimately a lovely human and wonderful source of information, has a wide reach and a way of building decks that resonates with the people who want to have fun with Commander. This isn’t the way to do it, true, but that’s his base anyway.

He seems roughly as thrilled as I am. Still, if this dumb. obvious, linear commander is what we’ve got, let’s buy the rest of the deck so the people who build it next week have to buy from us.

I am not thrilled by a $20 buyin, but this is also a card that is other combos, including one in Modern. By “one” I mean “one deck” not one combo. People play up to 4 copies of this in not EDH so the fact that this has cross-format applicability and is a 1-shot KO with a new card means that we are unlikely to see the price stay the same. Maybe it won’t be $35 again, but it won’t be $15 again, either. You know, barring a significant reprint.

Historically, reprinted cards are capped at about midway between the pre- and post-spike price. $9 barring another reprint is respectable, but anything under $5 is very wrong based on the present circumstances.

This will never go up, they farted out too many special versions no one asked for. There are a million listings for this card under a buck on TCG Player. Shame.

A modest bump in buying in January saw this insane price leap for the foils, which we all probably have in our bulk foils but they’re too curly to flip through so they just stay jammed tightly in 4 rows under a dessicating lamp waiting for the day the moisture content is perfect and they flatten out to a pringles shape.

The non-foil is $3. What do we think the non-foil does under ideal circumstances?

This, ideally. I think Pure Flame is more likely to synergize with new cards even if Renewal is way better. Different sets, mind you, but same block and Worldwake packs got bought a ton because of course they did.

This is a good card. I wanted people to play Thief of Blood but they never did. Can I get people to play Blightbeetle? I doubt it! If I had any influence, Helm of Possession would be $20. Still, this was $5 at one point and now it’s 1/3 of that. Seems relevant.

I think new cards can cause a lot of shakeup, sometimes more than others, but with so many linear commanders every few weeks, only the truly popular will impact prices. Will this deck? Who knows, but in this game you’re either quick or certain and today I wanted to be quick. Thanks for reading, everyone. Until next time!