Readers!
We are currently in the very awkward period of time between the first few Baldur’s Gate cards being spoiled and having enough deck data to start to connect some dots, so I thought I’d share some of my thoughts about how these decks might likely be built in order to see if there is anything we can identify early. That’s not my favorite way to spec but we sometimes have a one week break between a set being released and the next set being spoiled and it’s fun to take advantage of that brief window in between releases so I don’t have time to focus on how the relentless pace of set releases coupled with my employing myself by making content about those releases on four different platforms is beginning to feel like a prison.
The good news, though, is that I am getting pretty decent at this. The bad news is that other people are, too, and anything that’s obvious is going to pop before I have a chance to tell you about it. It’s way too late to make money on these cards now, but if you had bought them years ago when I said to, you’d have them to sell to people paying outrageous prices for them, so I don’t feel that bad. There is plenty of money left to be made, but let’s examine the money we can’t make anymore unless we find a mispriced copy somewhere.
Raggadragga is an obvious pairing for a bunch of mana dorks, but people figured out right away that granting creatures a mana ability is a very easy way to upgrade them with Raggitydraggity and they responded by way overpaying for Citanul Hierophants, a card I have never stopped telling people they should play but no one listens to me because I said it in an article and not a YouTube video.
Rite wasn’t exactly cheap last week and this latest push is going to do quite a bit of damage to its price. If you’re holding when this peaks, I might shift out because a reprint could come any day now with 75 new EDH decks coming every 9 months.
The rest of the Raggadragga deck should be pretty easy to figure out.
People seem to be sleeping on Ashaya even though it does the same thing as Cryptolith Rite. It’s newer but the price has been pretty steady for a while, supply is what it is at this point and it’s a very good card in the deck. I think these under $10 are a slam dunk, but, again, there is nothing to indicate Raggadragga will be popular enough for anyone to make money on cards that aren’t so obvious that twitter figured it out in 5 minutes. I like Ashaya long-term but I recognize everything has never been easier to reprint.
To figure out what I think will be good with this card, I first searched Scryfall for Myriad to see how many creatures had it innately to see if it was worth picking any of them up.
Not seeing anything worthwhile, I went to EDHREC to see which cards paired with Blade of Selves.
The only things of interest to me here are Adeline, a card I said to buy last week and Delina, a near anagram of Adeline. This is what happens when you make 300 new Legendary creatures a year, their names become impossible to differentiate.
I like this card’s chances of hitting $5 given how much it has going for it. I think the closer to $1 you buy in, the better, obviously, but this card has already demonstrated a willingness and ability to hit $3 in recent memory and another push won’t be a bad thing.
This got cheap from Jumpstart, hasn’t gone up or down since and is pretty tempting to me right now. I like this as a pickup right now. I wish it had gotten cheaper, but Jumpstart got hit with some global supply chain issues and its weird, continuous release played havoc on prices. As soon as a Jumpstart pack yielded a copy, it was sucked up into the insatiable maw of the EDH community and no real impact was made. I think this is a card we need to pay more than $5 for and I also think it’s worth it, even with a reprint likely.
We do have some ‘REC data for this one.
This is basically exactly the same stuff spiked by Anhelo, but if you read that article and bought Worst Fears like I said, you’re feeling good about how they’re $6 a copy and climbing, I bet.
We seem to be in the beginning stages of the Thousand-Year Elixir Boom//Bust cycle, which is nice.
This probably doesn’t hit $30 again, but it’s very good and very cheap and you should consider buying these since they just tanked.
I think that when we get data, we’re bound to see some surprises but for me, the biggest surprise is that with the exception of myriad tribal and dragon tribal, these commanders don’t do anything particularly special and remind me of New Capenna and Strixhaven commanders. If you read me Anhelo and Zevlor’s text boxes in 2 months I bet I couldn’t tell you which one came from which set. That’s a problem, but we won’t solve it by grousing. So, go. Engage in some retail therapy. Buy some specs and cheer when they hit because EDH isn’t going anywhere for at least 6-12 more months. Thanks for reading – until next time!