Readers!

If I let my personal taste as a deckbuilder completely influence what I bought, I wouldn’t be very good at my job. The longer this crazy children’s card game of ours keeps going, the more technology steps in to make our lives easier, and the more data we have to look at, the less we have to guess. Not having to guess is good, because if you had to guess the Top 5 commanders of the week, how many would you get right? If you didn’t get at least 2, including the number 1 and number 2, that’s OK but it means you should make sure to read my article every week and read the other free one I write on Coolstuffinc. If you can get all 5, I actually don’t believe you. If you get 2-4, that’s something to be proud of, but to nail all 5, you’d have to have pegged a real curveball.

Golos always looked kind of clunky even though he cheats spells into play and he went a little overlooked t first, but in terms of sheer power, Golos is hard to beat. Ramp a ton, play spells that are unreasonably expensive and cast your deck. If you “whiff” and hit a ramp spell, you’re just increasing the odds you can activate twice next turn or three times after that, so you actually can’t even really whiff. The deck was a bit under the radar but I think there’s an excellent chance a lot of the infrastructure of the deck will overlap with some other decks which means there is a lot of opportunity for staple to spike harder than normal. Let’s look at the deck in depth a bit.

I get asked a lot about commanders and I don’t generally care about their prices. They’re hard to predict and I worry more about the cards in the decks. With Yarok showing up in the 99 a lot of the time, it may be pretty easy to maintain above $10 as a mythic in a core set that people won’t open any longer than they have to. I won’t buy Yarok, but if you have other Core set 2020 or other cards less than a year old, trade aggressively because those cards are even less likely to maintain value and you’re gaining money by hemorrhaging less later. That’s my theory, anyway. Yarok and Omnath as expensive right now and Kykar is like $3 despite being in way more EDH decks than Omnath. It’s other formats that do it for Omnath and it’s other decks that do it for Yarok.

Also in the new cards is Soultender, which is basically a Conjurer’s Closet. Not every deck can run it but that’s OK because it’s in the best colors for these shenanigans. Is there any pressure on this $6 foil to go anywhere but up? ABU, for the record, is sold out at $8.

People are playing Golos as a Gates deck and while Maze’s End will never go above like $1, the prerelease foil is like $3 and the set foil is a baffling $15 on Card Kingdom. Better grab those, though, because here is all that’s left on TCG Player –

The only Near Mint is twice that. Scour your obscure sites for set foils of Maze’s End which, I can’t stress this enough, exists in the same universe as a $3 prerelease promo foil.

ABU still has these foils at $3, everyone else is selling out and TCG Player is about to sell out at $4. I think you buy a card that has basically replaced Explosive Vegetation because it’s just as good but better in Gates decks for that. I don’t know much about foils but I do understand low stock.

There really aren’t many Green decks these days that don’t want the full complement of Worldshaper, Azusa, Lotus Cobra, Wayward Swordtooth, Tireless Tracker and Oracle of Mul Daya. I don’t see any of those cards going down anytime soon, especially since Oracle of Mul Daya is probably never going to get the reprint it desperately needs. The reprint risk is so high that I won’t even buy that card as part of a collection. Everything is on its way up, could Elvish Reclaimer be next? I’m not convinced, and the deck has access to Knight of the Reliquary already, but I think you jam it at least here if not in other decks. Omnath can’t play Knight of the Reliquary.

Try to buy at peak supply. Because I told you so, that’s why. I don’t get paid enough to lie, so try to buy at peak supply. Peak supply is coming soon – the Commander 2019 preview cards were distributed today and the set promises to be bonkers. People are just about ready to forget about Core Set and stop drafting it the second they don’t have to.

This says “land” card. Not basic land, land. That matters a lot and this isn’t really a ramp spell or a removal spell, it’s a both spell. Show some respect and respect how Battlebond stuff continues to climb. It’s been a year, it’s time for this to take off, but it will take more than the EDHRECast talking about it.

The foil looks a little unhealthy to me, so I’m not sure what to think.

For reference, here is the card page. I think a lot of good stuff is pretty high already. Do you need me to tell you Scroll Rack is good in this deck? Brainstorm? Sensei’s Top? Nah, you got this. Golos continues to surprise me and if it gets picked up more, expect prices to surprise both of us. I’m already a little surprised at how high Wayward Swordtooth got in such a short period of time. EDH is making me re-assess how I handle rotation, but that topic is its own article and I’ll write that later. Until next time!