All posts by Cliff Daigle

I am a father, teacher, cuber and EDH fanatic. My joy is in Casual and Limited formats, though I dip a toe into Constructed when I find something fun to play. I play less than I want to and more than my schedule should really allow. I can easily be reached on Twitter @WordOfCommander. Try out my Busted Uncommons cube at http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/76330
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Building And Speculating on Witherbloom, the Balancer

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Witherbloom, the Balancer was revealed at PAX East on Thursday, and the obvious combo has already caused a big spike in Sprout Swarm.

Maybe you can find some in binders or leftover stores, but this has always been a card that didn’t need much help to be infinite. 

Witherbloom as a Commander opens up some interesting avenues, and might unlock a lot of value. I love when a Commander does something new like this, so let’s go over some potential includes in a Witherbloom deck, for you to get as personal copies or maybe a stack as a spec. 

Some of these were discussed in the ProTrader Discord, so thank you to the hive mind, and let me remind you, if you’re not on there already, you’re missing out on some big value-adds. 

Let’s talk about the things the deck wants!

Mana Dorks – Lets you get Witherbloom out sooner and gives you creatures to have affinity with! This is where the deck should start, and while there’s no shortage of amazing ways to accelerate into the seven-drop, we prefer creature-based strategies in this particular deck. 

Enduring Vitality – I’d go with the baby deer in the Showcase, without going all the way to the fracture foil. 

Citanul Hierophants – A card that has been around a long time, turning everything into a mana dork has come a long way.

Jaheira, Friend of the Forest – I’m a huge fan of this card, and fully expect her to get a very good Secret Lair version sometime soon. If you’re going to make tokens (see below) then why not power them up?

Fanatic of Rhonas – Two mana to make four is a great deal! More of us should be playing this card.  Don’t forget that if you Eternalize it, it taps for four.

Llanowar Tribe – The creature version of Basalt Monolith, minus the inherent tapping and the potential combos. 

X Spells – You want to make good use of mana reduction, and X spells are high on that list. Anything that makes X tokens is going to be good, but let’s go over some big-time spells that will make the table sit up and be super jealous.

Awaken the Woods – this might be the most versatile spell in your deck, being good at ramping you and being good when you’re ramped and ready. Only special version so far is the FEA.

Dregs of Sorrow – A pet card of mine, it’s pretty amazing what a little reduction in cost can do for this card, making it a board wipe and a hand refill at the same time. I don’t promise it’s good all the time, but you get this off once and you’ll never take it out of the deck. 

Exsanguinate – The classic, the undefeated, the starting point for ‘How am I going to win this game?’ and there’s even a sweet foil in the $6 range that I ought to go buy a few copies of. 

Finale of Devastation & Finale of Sorrow – Yes, these work the way you want them to. Choose X=10 (or more, party on) and then apply your cost reductions, followed by you paying the leftover mana and your opponents groaning in disbelief at your amazingness. Devastation got a reprint in Commander Masters but that was 2023!

Gelatinous Genesis – A favorite of mine in my Zaxara deck, I love making lots of big tokens all at once. Big reductions in cost mean many many big creatures.

Torment of Hailfire – Another classic of the genre, we’ve even got a couple of pretty choices for the card, depending on how you feel about Comic Sans as a font. 

Valgavoth’s Onslaught – In case you forgot how good this is after dying to it a bunch in Duskmourn limited games, this is really good at just about anything over X = 3.

Pest Infestation – You are never short of targets at the average Commander game, and this is going to give you more token creatures for the spell after this!

Big Swingy Spells – You’ve got a handful of creatures, your Commander in play, now it’s time for some big silly spells that cost you a whole lot less. 

Death Mutation – The best Commander for this card that there ever was. I adore the idea of casting this for 3-4 mana, getting a stack more creatures, then firing off a big X spell. 

Crush of Wurms – Yes, the cost reductions will get the flashback too. What’s not to love?

Army of the Damned – Similar to Crush, where the first one makes the second happen almost immediately if you needed it to. Everyone loves 26 Zombies!

In Garruk’s Wake – With enough mana, you can be pretty one-sided. Time to take advantage. 

Plague Wind – Amazingly, this pair doesn’t see much play, but when you cast it for a lot less than nine mana, you’ll create a warm fuzzy feeling for yourself that no one else at the table will share. 

Overwhelming Forces – Pretty rough that you have to pick an opponent for this, but then you draw a few cards. Or a lot, depending. 

Rise of the Dark Realms – Another card I can never play often enough, with the right opponents, this might just end the game, especially if someone got a Terror of the Peaks killed at some point. 

Worst Fears – I can see why this needs to be exiled after casting, but still, this leads to some wonderfully broken interactions. Use with glee!

Casual Fridays, Uncategorized

Dump Week for the Roll For Initiative Superdrop is coming!

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We’re all finally getting shipping notifications on the Roll for Initiative Superdrop, and it’s been odd, seeing other drops arrive in a different pattern. Many people will get the D&D drops in hand after both the Fallout drop and the Dandan decks arrive. So as the Initiative drops arrive, we need to be ready for the lovely phenomenon of Dump Week.

Dump Week is a weird thing: There is a group of people who are connected enough to get a Secret Lair drop, even ones that sell out, but they are motivated to sell the cards immediately, as soon as things are in hand. I like to think that they wanted one specific card, and are dumping the rest, but if they waited even two weeks they’d almost always get more money for their sales than selling immediately. I would hate to think they were buying Lairs on credit cards or other debt spending.

For whatever reason, Dump Week is a thing, and we can plan for it. Let’s go over my favorite cards and some price predictions.

For each card, I’ve listed their EDHREC number, as well as the prices for other special versions of the card (if any). I will also be predicting how cheap it’ll get in Dump Week, but please remember that the lowest price is often measured in hours, maybe a whole day. Dump Week doesn’t mean it stays cheap for a week. 

Bloodletter of Aclazotz (138k decks, Borderless foil $35)

The Bloodletter has gone up and down in its life, but the key feature here is that it’s the only card of value from the Lair. This often means the undercutting is severe indeed, and the most desperate resellers will definitely get into the $25 range. It might have one or two copies go as low as $20 before it rebounds up.

Klauth, Unrivaled Ancient (2k as Commander, 55k as card, EA $30)

Klauth is an interesting case. I am a fervent player for the leather-winged demons of the skies known as Dragons, and I can tell you, Klauth gives some big big turns indeed. This was a featured card in the Commander decks of AFR back in 2021, and hasn’t been reprinted except for a tiny few copies via The List. As such, the price will start high but drop quickly to the range of $15, or maybe even $10. Understandably, I am a buyer at such a price. I expect this to settle above $20 pretty quickly.

Miirym, Sentinel Wyrm (25k as Commander, #18 over last 2 years, plus 65k as card, Showcase foil $7)

Miirym, though, no one needs to be told that this is a ridiculous card. There are three valid choices to be the Commander for your Dragon deck: The Ur-Dragon (all hail, he cheats at Magic), Tiamat (tutoring in the command zone is busted as hell) and Miirym, who was too good to be put in the Temur Dragonstorm deck last year. Miirym has a special version, but it’s the Monster Manual sort of art, which you either adore or abhor, there’s no middle ground. Clearly this Drop has the best version, but copies will be under $10, possibly $5, before going back up between $10 and $15.

Grim Hireling (137k decks, EA $20)

Never available in foil, since this was only in the two Commander products and The List, this could do some interesting things. Prosper was a very popular commander when introduced, but isn’t in the top 100 for the last two years. Treasure decks, though, get better and better and better. I expect this to go down to $15, maybe even $10, but bounce back up pretty fast.

Xorn (135k decks, Ampersand foil $30, SLD $14)

I’ve already made some money on the other SLD version of Xorn, which was available at half its current price at one point. With a second printing, I am prepared for this to get as low as $5 when Dump Week hits, and settle out around $8-$10.

Displacer Kitten (199k decks, FEA $33)

Most cards do not take off immediately, but there’s been a few that dropped on release and just started climbing. I think the Kitten will be one of those cards, because it’s part of two trillion combos, it’s already in a boatload of decks, and this is easily the best version ever. My expectation is that it starts at $25-$30 and just climbs to $50 within a week or two. After that, the sky is the limit. 

Victimize (491k decks, SPG foil $45)

Another card with a really wide appeal (some of that EDHREC number is boosted by the number of precons it’s been in) this is still a pricey card. The SPG version gives us a ceiling, and I’m thinking that the new D&D version gets down to $8 before coming back up some. It also helps that there are other, more expensive cards in the Drop, so people will be willing to sell this card for that much cheaper. 

Ancient Bronze Dragon (49k decks, Borderless foil $35) 

Unquestionably the worst member of this cycle, it’s interesting to see the green card mixed in with a black Commander. As the headliner for this Drop, at least in terms of value, I don’t think it’ll drop too much but it also can’t rise too high. I think the cheapest this will get will be around $15-$20 and even though I’m a Dragon devotee, I’d have a hard time buying in on this one once it’s $25 or higher. At that price, all copies, both this one and the previous versions, would need to increase to $45 or higher to be worth it.

Black Market (166k decks, SLD foil $16)

The other Secret Lair foil is more of the movie poster look, something that feels more out there. I don’t think this version will match it for some time, but because there are other expensive cards in this Drop, this has a chance to get very cheap. I’m watching it for it to get to the $5 range, and then creep back up to $10.

Cliff (@WordOfCommander at Twitter and BlueSky) has been writing for MTGPrice since 2013, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the co-host of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at an event and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.

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The A to Z of Buying The Encyclopedia of Magic

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There’s a lot of basic principles that we harp on when it comes to Magic finance, but one of the most fundamental is buying when a card reaches low and we expect it to rebound over time. That rebound is either because it’s a Commander card that lots of decks want or because there’s an upcoming Commander or release that will want the card. 

I also want to stress that a card isn’t necessarily at its lowest point when supply is at maximum. I preach the wisdom of Dump Week for Secret Lair releases: The week that everyone gets their SLs in the mail, a certain number of folks immediately need to undercut everyone else and sell hard, getting as much as they can in the moment. That’s definitely an occasion for maximizing the bang for your buck, as those sellers get their copies snapped up, prices often rebound, and then logic takes over.

We’re at a point with the Secret Lair Encyclopedia cards where many of them, including Halo Foils, have drifted so far downwards as to be worth buying in on, now that the frenzy has passed and these are still the best versions. So let’s go over them, A to Z, and determine what’s worth buying right now.

For each card, I’m going to list the version that I think is most worth buying. You’re free to disagree, and go after the ones you like best, but I like to look for growth, and if the Halo Foil is mega-times the price of the regular foil, maybe I just want those foils. Or perhaps the nonfoils are woefully underpriced compared to every other version, and that’s where I want to put my cash. If it’s $8 for a regular, $10 for a foil, and $60 for the Halo, I generally like the foil. Much easier to get that to go to $20 than the Halo to go to $120, especially depending on other special versions.

I also want to note that the sealed prices for the Encyclopedia are on the rise, selling for just under $300 on TCGPlayer, and a lot of the cards in the set are on that rise too. Finally, a reminder that we never got actual information for the foil rate or the Halo foil drop rate, but the community has settled on about 1 in 4 for the foils and 1 in 25 for the Halo foils. 

Altar of the Brood – Foils are what looks good here, at 1/6 the price of the Halo foils.

Brain Freeze – $11 foils, $115 Halo. The Cube players are the ones getting copies, and there’s only 9 Halo left. I like grabbing a Halo or two and reselling at $175 in a few months. 

Crop Rotation – The Halo price is pretty stable, and with the other special versions, I like the $85 Halo Foils more than the $13 foils.

Demonic Consultation – Honestly, I don’t want to buy any copies of this. I like some unique art, but this is the cheapest of all. Grab some nonfoils if you want, but it’s had more printings than you think. 

Eerie Ultimatum – Love the card, but I’d rather be in on the SPG version. One of the cheapest Halo foils for a reason. 

Field of the Dead – I recently recorded an episode of MTG Fast Finance and picked these Halo foils, just a great value on a redonk card. 

Gray Merchant of Asphodel – Another podcast pick, there’s more than a few special versions, but this one is worthy or recurring and killing a table.

Hymn to Tourach – I don’t feel a need to move in on this, Commander players don’t use it enough.

Isochron Scepter – Halo Foil and FTV: Relics versions are real close in price. Cheesy art, but both are outclassed by the Eye of Sauron FNM version. Regular foils have a chance to grow nicely here.

Junji, the Midnight Sky – Junji is great, and I like $6 regular foils here. NEO borderless foils are $25+, so that’s a lovely comparison.

Krark-Clan Ironworks – Foils are $15, Halo foils $40. No contest, get me the swirly shinies.

Llanowar Elves – I like the regular foils at $25 or so best, as there’s a lot of special versions around. 

Myrel, Shield of Argive – Halo foils are leading the way at $100, but the regular foils at $25 compare nicely to the original FEAs in the $40 range.

Narset’s Reversal – Regular foils $5, when pack foils are $10 and Halo foils $45. Give me a stack of regular foils.

Ob Nixilis, the Fallen – The ZEN and IMA foils are surprisingly pricey, but really, I don’t want to buy any of these.

Phyrexian Altar – Tough call here. The other borderless foil is about the same $50ish price as the regular foil, with the Halo foil the biggest at $120. (pack foil Invasion at $350+ is something else entirely!) I’d watch the Halo foils, as they have only trended downwards so far. Once it starts going up, that’s when I want to buy.

Questing Beast – Just avoiding.

Retrofitter Foundry – It’s so cheap, and in so few decks. I feel no need to buy copies.

Sol Ring – If you bought in at $100 early, you’ve doubled up. It’s only sold 9 copies in a month, though, so growth will likely slow down from here. Will this grow to $250 faster than the regular foils go from $20 to $40? Hard to say. 

Temple of the False God – This is a bad card. I refuse to buy it or play it. 

Urza’s Saga – Amazingly, the Halo Foils have now passed the textless (lol) Store Championship versions. If I wanted to buy in, I’m leaning towards the countdown foils, even at $100. They are already more expensive than the pack foils, and in Modern, you need your playset to be matching. 

Vesuva – Halo foils all the way, as this is the only special frame and there’s so little demand, but skipping this entirely is just fine. 

Wasteland – No need to go for Halo foils, get the regular foils if you want to spec, but with the glut of special versions, I’d stay away.

Xantcha, Sleeper Agent – Ugh. I opened two kits, and this was my one Halo foil. Stay away.

Yarok, the Desecrated – There was ALREADY a Halo foil of this, plus a serialized! I don’t want to spec on this. 

Zo-Zu the Punisher – Halo foils have bottomed out in price, but why are you buying this?

Alhammarret’s Archive – Love this as a spec, it’s the only special version, looks classy as can be, the low was $6 and it’s been climbing since. Still cheaper than the original frame version, too. 

Cliff (@WordOfCommander at Twitter and BlueSky) has been writing for MTGPrice since 2013, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the co-host of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at an event and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.

Casual Fridays

If A Lair Is Dropped, And No One Buys It, Does It Have A Value?

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It’s a tortured title, yes, but the philosophy is sound. 

We’ve got a wild situation here with the current Secret Lair pace. Last year, there was a whole series of bangers from the Secret Lair folks, and this year, we’re off to a more tepid start. Several days since it became available, and none of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle lairs are even low stock.

What does this mean for those Lairs, and what does this mean for the SLD genre? Let’s discuss.

First of all, the big thing, the overarching concept, the idea that matters above all else: Card choice is still the most important thing in a Secret Lair. Other factors can help, and we’ll get to those, but really, it comes down to the cards themselves. The folks who are aware of Secret Lair as a website/buying platform are mostly savvy to value and demand, and in this case, we’ve sussed out that the value mostly isn’t there. These are neat, and I certainly got some personal cards to appease my inner twelve-year-old, but highly collectible these are not.

Not all reprints are the same. Master of Ceremonies, Species Specialist are the newest examples and illustrate a concept that makes a lot of sense to you, if you’ve bothered to find and read this article on this site: High price is not the same as high demand, and many SLs highlight this. A lot of cards from Commander sets have a surprising price, but only because you had to get them from a deck or they were mixed in with other tough pulls from Collector Boosters. There’s also a subset of cards whose only foils were from the promo packs, and that is pure scarcity, not power or demand. Life Insurance is one card that’s an example of this, with foils being more than 10x the price of either nonfoil copy. 

As far as we can tell, Wizards isn’t making more copies of each Secret Lair. There’s some datamining of the SL website that indicates what quantity of sales triggers a ‘Low Stock’ warning, and that’s the only sort of data we have on the relative numbers of Lairs out there. I’m not convinced on the numbers, but Avatar’s drops and more recent drops all experiencing the same slow trickle of demand has me leaning to think that the quantities are similar. 

Related, though, is that I completely believe Wizards cranked the overall quantity up from last year. The line must go up, and Secret Lairs are an easy place to make 5-10% more cards and sell them to consumers, and the margin on these cards is pretty damn disgusting. I’ll be interested to see if these more mediocre Lairs are the new standard, or perhaps they are going to slow down the pace a little.

So what happens if you bought these Lairs and now you’re looking at them while they laugh at you? Well, you can sell them around $40, and depending on your taxes, fees, and shipping, you’re going to lose $10-$20 overall. I’m amazed at people who sell Lairs at that cost, considering what they are losing. I recommend against selling at those prices, and if you’re that desperate for cash, you likely shouldn’t have bought that Lair, or any Lair, in the first place.

Your best bet is its own truism: On a long enough timeline, everything gets profitable. Most Lairs creep upwards in price, as time and collectors take their toll. Chucky, NOT A WOLF, even the Foil Full-Text Lands are up in the $70 range. There’s no guarantee about age, though. A 2020 Women’s Day lair is still just $80, but a Lair from the same year called The Path Not Traveled is selling on TCGPlayer for under $30. Demand, even small demand, adds up over time. 

There’s another factor to consider: When Lairs don’t sell out, that means there isn’t a lot of stock online. This can cause singles to go up in price, to the point that the Lair becomes awfully tempting. An excellent example of this is the still-available Dreaming Darkly. The Guardian Project at Dump Week was under $10 but now it’s close to $20. The Archmage is $14 in foil, and the Soulherder gets you over the top. The quantities available are quite low, with under 30 vendors for each card (Project has 13!) and almost no walls of copies to be had. 

I’m annoyed that I missed Dump Week on those Projects, as I knew that was the card to watch, but the $40 is still a fine deal.

Currently, 48 out of 96 individual Lairs are currently sold out – perfectly half, though that number is off by a bit because of the Prints of Darkness Lairs that were sold at different price points. There’s a wide range left, from Furby to a couple of Marvel lairs and a scattering of Fallout and D&D Lairs. I expect that sometime soon, Wizards will purge a bunch of the older Lairs from the site, as they do every so often, but they aren’t in a hurry here. All it takes is someone adding an extra Lair here or there to increase their profits just a little more. They don’t need Lairs to sell out immediately, they just need them to sell eventually. They don’t care if sellers on TCGPlayer or eBay undercut them, so long as the originals move, slowly but surely. 

Finally, let’s talk about the ones that aren’t sold out which I think are worth it and why.

A Lot to Learn (foil and nonfoil) – As previously stated, the value of Serra Ascendant is high, and this should eventually recover nicely. 

Trick or Treat (foil and nonfoil) – Already profitable given the cards inside it, so worth buying. 

The Last Ronin (foil and nonfoil) – I wrote about it before, but the Misstep alone will make this worth it over time.

Greet the Dog (foil and nonfoil) – This would be the first cat or dog themed Lair to miss, which seems pretty unlikely to me. 

Cliff (@WordOfCommander at Twitter and BlueSky) has been writing for MTGPrice since 2013, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the co-host of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at an event and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.