By: Cliff Daigle

Today, with Dragons of Tarkir being the new and amazing set, and the beginning of a shaken-up Standard and Modern, I want to take a look back at my wishlist for Khans of Tarkir.

It’s been about six months since the set came out, and now that we aren’t opening Khans packs in drafts and Sealed, the prices are at their floor. How much could I have saved on the cards I wanted if I were willing to wait? How much is my patience worth?

I have gotten a few of these cards already, but I want to demonstrate the value of patience. These are all Commander cards for me, cards I’ll be adding to decks (or already added) to make them a little more awesome.

Foil Deflecting Palm
Foil Empty the Pits
Foil Hooded Hydra
Foil Kheru Bloodsucker
Foil Nomad Outpost
Foil See the Unwritten
Foil Sorin, Solemn Visitor

You don’t need me to tell you what these do or how good they are, since they have been out for six months now. You’ve likely traded or opened some of these already.

Here were the prices on Sept. 23, the Tuesday after the Prerelease, when prices are generally at their highest:

Foil Deflecting Palm $8
Foil Empty the Pits $17
Foil Hooded Hydra $14
Foil Kheru Bloodsucker $0.50
Foil Nomad Outpost $4
Foil See the Unwritten $17
Foil Sorin, Solemn Visitor $48
Total: $108.50

It’s a list with four mythics, two uncommons, and two rares, all in foil, because I am totally a collector. If I could find them in foreign foil, all the better. I feel this is a good sample from any given set, with a range of things I want to play right away.

I’ve been upgrading EDH decks for years and I’ve learned to wait, though. The longer I can stand to wait, the cheaper the cards will be in almost all cases. The cheapest path is to wait until Standard rotation, but even at the accelerated 18-month timeline, that’s just not good for me.

Let’s see what I saved (or would have saved) if I waited until today to get these cards:

Foil Deflecting Palm: $3.23
Foil Empty the Pits: $5.55
Foil Hooded Hydra: $6.38
Foil Kheru Bloodsucker: $0.43
Foil Nomad Outpost: $3.45
Foil See the Unwritten: $9.56
Foil Sorin, Solemn Visitor: $27.52
Total: $56.12

Even with a recent bump to See the Unwritten, even with the Manifest synergies of Hooded Hydra, even with Sorin seeing some play in assorted Abzan lists, the price has gone down by nearly half. Some of the cards went down by lots more than half, and the only ones to have even stayed the same are the two uncommons!

What does this mean for you?

It means that when you seek value, patience is key. There is sometimes money to be made in buying things up right away. I am not good enough at predicting Standard and Modern to take that approach, but I can tell you that cards like See the Unwritten will always be amazing in Commander. (for spice, add Quicken, and add the tears of your opponents to taste.) 

It means that if the 50% figure holds (and the actual figure does vary, mainly due to spikes in prices) then I can determine how much of a premium I’m paying to have this card right now. It’s possible I could have beaten that $108 figure with judicious use of eBay or TCG sellers, too. I shouldn’t presume that I’d be paying full retail.

In this case, is it worth $50 or so to me to have the cards at the beginning of the format? Would I have been more content to get a nonfoil Sorin, and save $25 or so? That’s half of the value I gained by waiting six months, but foils are a much better bet over time.

As for what I did get: I picked up the Outpost and the Bloodsucker immediately, and I opened nonfoils of most of these. I’m still trying to trade for the foil versions. I haven’t bought any of these directly…yet.

I’m going to bring up another option here: PucaTrade goes nuts when a new set becomes available. There’s a lot of points and cards flying around, and the key to success on Puca is selling into hype, which is especially true this first week. Rack up the points while you can!

By: Cliff Daigle

Dragons of Tarkir has no shortage of awesome cards. Some of these are build-around-me additions to a Cube, others will make waves in Tiny Leaders, and several seem to be designed for the kitchen table crowd. I am going to talk about a few of these, along with the price I’m comfortable getting in at. If something blows up in Standard or other Constructed format, my pricing will undoubtedly be off.

Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit – Sure, she’s amazing in Tiny Leaders, but she’s also an enabler in all sorts of White Weenie strategies. Her mana cost is probably the biggest thing holding her back, as it’s not easy to get double white on turn two. Pick her up for $1 or less.

Hidden Dragonslayer – The rule about Morphs in EDH or Cube was this: it’s either Exalted Angel or Willbender. Khans block has given us some amazing morphs, and this cycle of cheap, powerful Megamorphs might be among the best of all. Singleton formats are where you really want flexibility, and you have a range of useful things to do here. That said, I think this is another dollar rare.

Profound Journey – I had Obzedat’s Aid in my Kaalia deck for the longest time, and it’s…serviceable. It has been cut, and while this is potentially twice as powerful, it costs even more. What’s really going to bother you is how often you spend seven mana and get back something that costs a lot less. Bulk rare.

Radiant Purge – I think this might be one of the sneakier cards of the set. Two mana for an instant-speed exile effect is not to be undervalued. It’s true that it would be better if it said “Exile target multicolored permanent” but we just got Utter End for such universal applications. I think this will hold a price due to being a popular sideboard card in Standard, so around $2.

Secure the Wastes – Believe it or not, while we’ve had numerous versions of this effect before, we’ve never had one this cheap, especially as an instant! This is an auto-include in any EDH token strategy, and I think it’s good enough for Cube too. I’ll be especially interested in foils around four or five dollars.

Clone Legion – In case you forgot, Wizards R & D plays a lot of EDH. This is a neat way to either win more on your own awesome board, or play catch-up with just one card. This is not a Standard card, this is absolutely a haymaker, battlecruiser, giant Commander effect. This is going to be better than you think it is, no matter if you’re ahead, behind, or at parity. It’s not going to be bulk, but I’ll be surprised if it’s ever more than $2 in nonfoil.

Living Lore – Some people are going to try and make this good. Don’t be one of those people. Bulkiest of bulk, until some weird Legacy combo pops up.

Stratus Dancer – I think this card is good enough for Standard, though to be honest, I’m not someone who plays a lot of that. Nonetheless, every mode on this card seems good. A 2/1 flyer for two is a good starting point, and if you have the time and mana, holding up an uncounterable counterspell for their sweeper is pretty amazing. I like this a lot in Cube and Commander too. This might be the priciest of the cycle, at around $3.

Hedonist’s Trove – This basically gives you a second library to play cards from. There’s a lot to be said for effects like this, but the problem is that you have to do a lot of work to fill their graveyard. I love it, but I’m not going to try and play it. Bulk.

Blood-Chin Fanatic – Kresh the Bloodbraided has a new best friend. So does Hamletback Goliath. The pieces are there on a decent body for the price, but this will struggle to be more than a dollar or two.

Damnable Pact – There is a lot of fun to be had with these two modes. With a little mana, it’s a way to get a couple of cards. With lots of mana, it’s the finisher against people with low life or small libraries. It’s a surprisingly versatile spell, and should be considered in most decks. The card I’d measure it against is Diabolic Revelation, except that Revelation is a terrible card at less than seven, whereas there’s plenty of games I’d be happy to cast this for two or three. I think this will have a nice home around $2.

Virulent Plague – Hear me out. You should be giving serious consideration to playing this in most of your Commander/Tiny Leaders games. There’s very few tokens that can survive this without help, and mostly those are 3/3 Beasts and 4/4 Angels, which need to be cut down in size anyway. This is also an intriguing sideboard card in Modern, at least until Splinter Twin gets banned. I’ll be looking for foils of this around $1.50.

Descent of Dragons – I know that lots of people have fooled around with this, looking for combos that generate all sorts of advantages, but I’m thinking about how if I already have a bunch of creatures, I should be winning anyway. This is a mana less than Devout Invocation, and that’s a dollar mythic.

I think Descent’s price is going to open high on assorted hype and will trickle downward. I won’t be trying to get these until they fall to $5 or lower.

Impact Tremors – If you see someone lay this down on turn two in a Commander game, your target is acquired. This is half of the cost of Purphoros, for half the damage, so you’ll need twice as many tokens to be generated. Very doable. I’ll be watching for foils under $1.

Lightning Berserker – This card might be the real deal in mono-red decks. It also might not be. It’s not quite as durable as Monastery Swiftspear, but is there a better late topdeck? Perhaps the question is, would a red deck play this over Crater’s Claws? Some combination thereof? I think it’ll be worth picking these up in trades throughout the draft season, just in case.

Rending Volley – This might as well say “Best Sideboard Card Against Twin” on it. Spellskite can’t touch it, and it’s got Combust beaten by a full mana. I’m going to be looking for these around 50-75 cents, and I’m game for $5 foils. This is a very Cube-able card as well.

Roast – Yes, the damage can’t hit a flyer, and that’s a big mark against it. But everything else is amazing. Two mana! Who cares if it’s a sorcery, just get in there! Tasigur, Siege Rhino, you name the wingless problem and it’s solved. I feel good about this being about a dollar, and the foils should be around $5. This and Rending Volley might well be some very premium foils if eternal red decks decide it’s worth it.

Zurgo – He is who he is. He’s certainly not who he was. Poor guy. Stay away.

Assault Formation – Even in foil, I’m not interested. Rolling Stones has been a card for a long time, and neither of its foils can crack $5.

Inspiring Call – I meant to add this to last week’s piece, as this is something my Experiment Kraj deck wants very very badly in foil. I expect I’ll pay about $2 for that.

All Foil Commands – Be very wary of picking these up without having a specific plan in mind. Some of the multicolor modal cards are very high in foil, some are not. I want a foil Silumgar’s Command, and others will be wanting these in foil, but the key is in their eternal playability. Boros Charm is the best example, but even Golgari Charm is getting good mileage and expensive foils. I’m going to let the metagame sort the commands for me before I move in.

By: Cliff Daigle

I play a lot of Commander games. I used to play even more, but with my family’s growth the last couple of years, my EDH time isn’t what it used to be. Nonetheless, I keep my decks updated when new sets come out. I usually tell people to know what they will take out before you go and add new cards, but I usually end up getting the new card and then figuring it out.

I am working from an incomplete spoiler. Next week, I’ll be completing the list and targeting prices.

I can’t remember if I have introduced you to my six decks, so here we go!

Existing Commander Decks

Commander: Adun Oakenshield
Philosophy: “Creatures rule!”

This deck has six noncreature spells: Lavalanche, Xenagos, the Reveler, Garruk, Caller of Beasts, Green Sun’s Zenith, Lurking Predators, and See the Unwritten. Everything else is a creature, and I want to focus on spell-like creatures in this deck. Mostly, it’s enter the battlefield effects, but I keep some others around like Viridian Zealot in case of Torpor Orb.

Commander: Kaalia of the Vast
Philsophy: Wreck some face!

I have spent the time and energy and money to get this manabase ‘perfect.’ There’s three fetches, three duals, three shocks, three filters, three buddy lands…you get the idea. This is my most competitive deck, capable of the fastest kills, and the most expensive, due to the Angel foils that just keep climbing! I have a mix of Angels, Dragons, and Demons because I don’t want to choose just one!

Commander: Garza Zol, Plague Queen
Philosophy: Shiny Vampire Control

I didn’t intend for this to become my all-foil deck, but it happened. I kept finding shiny replacements, and then it was just a few cards…and now it’s done. The vampire tribe is surprisingly strong, dating back to 2011 Standard: Bloodghast into Nighthawk into Nocturnus can end even Commander games fast. I’ve got a lot of fun and flexible control cards, and my MPR cards are here too.

Commander: Sliver Queen
Philosophy: For the Swarm!

This is my token deck. I try to have about a third of the cards be an army contained on one card, including Planeswalkers that make tokens. Everything else contributes to big mana and winning more. It’s five colors but light on nonbasics, so I use a lot of green mana fixing.

Commander: Experiment Kraj
Philosophy: Incredible abilities without going infinite

While I have lots of fun ways to untap Kraj for profit, I’ve shied away from any infinite-mana shenanigans. I found that style of deck to be unfun. The best card in here is probably Reveka, Wizard Savant, as a great way to deal damage.

Commander: Balthor the Defiled
Philosophy: Rise and rise again!

This zombie tribal deck is a lot of fun, as I have lots of mass reanimation and that’s what the general is for as well, sorcery-speed mass return. The combination of Vengeful Dead and Noxious Ghoul do a lot of work, and a sneaky-great zombie is actually Gutless Ghoul, giving a sacrifice for profit.

Pickups from Dragons

Dragon Tempest – Kaalia decks are going to love this card. Very few Angels, Demons, or Dragons don’t have flying, and having Kaalia enter with Haste is quite awesome. This will be a strict upgrade over Fervor for me. I will be trying to get a foil around $3-$5, but this will be a bulk card before long.

Shaman of Forgotten Ways – I’ve tried Somberwald Sage in decks in the past, and found it underwhelming. Acceleration and fixing are not as needed in 99-card formats. The additional ability on this, though, is an ability that has been deemed too good on a sorcery: Biorhythm. I will be picking this up from every trade binder I see it in. I want regular ones around $5 by the end of April. The foils will probably not go below $20 for a while, if at all.

Sidisi, Undead Vizier – Just amazing in my zombie deck. I’ve no shortage of things to Exploit for profit, and this is something I’ll be happy to do over and over again. This appears to be good enough for Standard, so I think it’ll stay between $5-$10 for the next couple of months. Foils should easily be $15, if not more.

Sarkhan Unbroken – I will put one of these into my Sliver Queen deck, because of the token ability. I will never ultimate this, since there aren’t any Dragons in that deck. The first two abilities are just so good, you’ll need to have him in a dedicated Dragon deck to ever really have the ultimate be worthwhile. I think this is one of the best cards in Standard, if you can cast it, and I have a hard time thinking this will be less than $30 at any point. I want a foil, but I’m not going to drop $100 on it.

Risen Executioner – Another easy addition to my Balthor deck, as it’s a zombie lord. I might sometimes pay the tax on recasting this, but mostly it’ll be there alongside Cemetery Reaper and the like. I think this will be a bulk mythic fast, and the foils should hover around $5.

Silumgar’s Command – I’m already playing Spite//Malice and I’m trying to decide if this is good enough to be included as well, or if I’ll just be replacing it. I’ve got Countersquall as well, so I’m going to try and fit this in. Bloodlord of Vaasgoth just isn’t pulling his weight…

I expect this command to be around $1/$4 for the foil, and I’m okay picking it up at that price. The modes are good enough that I think it’ll keep value for a while. The ‘noncreature spell’ part is most relevant, as there’s few enough creatures that need countering. That’s what Wrath effects are for.

Those are the five cards I’m planning on adding, next week with the full spoiler I’ll talk about some of the cards that are almost there, and the ones you’ll see a lot in casual games.

On an unrelated note, I want to clue you all in to Channel Fireball’s “Yard Sale” and a finance trick I’ve been using for years.

Full Disclaimer: I don’t work for Channel Fireball, though I do live in driving distance of their shop. This month, they are having a series of sales, and it’s the sort of thing that Star City has done, and other sites too. Systematic sales are your chance to exchange cards at a fair rate with full value.

Allow me to explain. Normally, when you deal with a vendor, you are never going to get the full retail value of your card. You’re going to get around 40-50% of its value in cash, and maybe 70-80% if you choose store credit.

These wide-scale sales allow you to get cards at enough of a discount to make it tempting to trade directly with a store. Here’s an example:

Hero’s Downfall has a Fair Trade Price of $7.54 as I write this. Anafenza, the Foremost, has a FTP of $7.81. I would happily trade my Downfall for your Anafenza, since it’s so close in price. However, lots of people are savvy to the fact that Downfall is going to rotate out in a few months and tank in value, while Anafenza has nowhere to go but up as a Standard card and a Tiny Leaders powerhouse. So you would have trouble finding someone to make this trade with.

Enter the vendor’s sale. Channelfireball will give four dollars in cash for Hero’s Downfall, with a 30% bonus for store credit ($5.20) and their sale currently has Anafenza down to $5.99. This is not perfect, as you see, but it’s pretty close and it’s an effective tool to use when a vendor decides to hold a sale.

You don’t have to spend the store credit during the sale, but doing so allows you to treat a vendor as a trading partner who gives nearly equal value, which is something that doesn’t happen often. Enjoy!

ADVERTISEMENT: Checkout the brand new 3rd edition Grimoire Deck Box – a card storage for your inner red mage with capacity over 1000+ cards.

By: Cliff Daigle

It’s going to be an expensive summer.

First of all, there’s going to be a very short window in which to buy Dragons of Tarkir cards. This will be under-opened in proportion to other big spring sets, like Rise of the Eldrazi and Avacyn Restored. Those sets were 6-of or 3-of for Sealed or Draft respectively, whereas Fate Reforged is still part of Dragons of Tarkir limited events.

Let’s return to our fictional LGS, where they do one FNM draft per week with exactly eight people, and look at the packs opened during the three ‘seasons’ of Khans block:

Totals: 480 packs of Khans of Tarkir, 192 packs of Fate Reforged, and 192 of Dragons of Tarkir.

From a ratio standpoint, we have a 5:2:2 ratio, meaning that Fate Reforged and Dragons of Tarkir will have been opened less than half as much as Khans of Tarkir! Keep in mind that Dragons is a big set, with more potential mythics and rares.

Let me repeat myself, so you can see the severe disparity in packs opened. For three months, we drafted triple Khans. For three months after that, we drafted two packs of Khans, giving us a very large supply of Khans cards. We are about to have three months where just two packs of DTK are opened, and that three months is going to be reduced by some amount, depending on how much time stores and players give to Modern Masters in May. 

Modern Masters 2015 is released on May 22, a mere two months after Dragons of Tarkir arrives. If all events switch from Dragons to MM for that month, we reduce the third season’s numbers by a third, and have a ration of 480:161:130, or about a 4 : 1.2 : 1 ratio. That’s the worst-case scenario for doing DDF events, the reality is going to fall somewhere between that and the 5:2:2 ratio.

It seems unlikely that all stores will have enough product and enough interest to run a full month of Modern Masters events, but if there is enough money and enough hype around this set, Dragons might be the most chase of sets. Investing in singles from this set is likely to pay off well.

The analogy last year would be how Theros – Born of the Gods – Journey into Nyx drafting was impacted by Conspiracy. Even if it’s just a couple of weeks, a month tops, that’s a big chunk of already short time, and money that’s being spent elsewhere. I would imagine that Magic Origins will be drafted thoroughly (more on that in a moment) so don’t expect to have some drafts taken away from a boring set and given to the slightly older format.

The urge to pick up Dragons of Tarkir singles will be with me at all times, but especially this spring leading into summer. This is a big, ally-colored, powerful set, with cards that will be relevant for their entire Standard lives, which will end in fall of 2016. I fully expect to be trading for lots of these and buying a few too. I’m even thinking about pre-ordering some of these…no, wait, I won’t.

I’ll reiterate this piece of advice: Preordering is only good if you have to have a card for the first week that it’s legal, or if you’re 100% sure that the card is going to have immediate and thorough impact in Constructed. Most of the preorder speculation you do will not be profitable, as card prices drop.

Dragons of Tarkir might be different, but probably not. We will see. The small quantity and small window has me wondering. Imagine if there were 40% less Hero’s Downfall, or Siege Rhino out there! The Rhino might be a $25 or $30 card. As the spoilers emerge, we’ll have to be on the lookout.

In just a couple of months, we have Modern Masters 2015 dropping. At $10 a pack, this is going to bust your wallet into pieces. There’s going to be more of this printed than in 2013, and there’s already a markup involved…but that’s not going to stop stores from having $45 drafts.

I am leery of buying packs/boxes for value, but this will especially be true for MM2015 packs. I’m reserving judgement on what I’ll do until I know more of the set, but there is going to have to be TREMENDOUS value in the cards to make cracking packs worth it.

Plus, that value will have to stay high even as those super-valuable packs are cracked! The low print run and increased demand of new Modern players meant that cards like Vendilion Clique, Dark Confidant, and Tarmogoyf didn’t lose value (and went up in some cases!)

Perhaps this will be the fabled “No bad cards” set. Even the first Modern Masters had the Kamigawa dragons as a mythic cycle, so we will see what Wizards does to make four packs of this have the same MSRP as a From the Vaults set. Maybe we get the Praetor cycle, but those values would take quite a hit, likely losing half their value or more.

(As an aside, I know that MSRP is not a rule, especially for the FTV sets, but it’s still a number Wizards attaches to products.)

Next, we have Magic Origins in July. Not just any Core Set, apparently, and they wanted to avoid all the ‘M16’ jokes.

So far, we know that Nissa, Gideon, Jace, Liliana, and Chandra are getting the attention. We have been told that ten worlds will be featured, two for each planeswalker: an origin world and the first plane they went to.

I’ll talk more about those worlds soon, but we have it confirmed that Nissa’s home of Zendikar will be among the locales. It seems quite possible that the enemy fetches will be in Origins!

Since the ally fetches were spoiled in Khans, it’s been a matter of when, not if, the Zendikar ones would be reprinted. What a way for the Core Sets to go, with this one having Scalding Tarn and its brethren.

It’s been pointed out in several places that putting the fetchlands in a set will guarantee high sales, and that’s true, but Wizards has evolved its model to not need the summer set to be the big seller. There’s also the philosophy that Standard doesn’t need to have all ten fetches legal at the same time. Both of these feel true, but I’m aware that Wizards’ logic is not laways the same as mine.

I would advocate selling/trading your extra Zendikar fetches soon, no matter what set they are reprinted in they will take a hit. Keep the ones in your Commander deck, keep a set for Eternal play, and move the rest. Don’t get caught with excess stock when the spoiler hits.

We also have FTV: Angels arriving in August. I’m already on the record with my predictions, and I’m going to make a further proclamation: this will keep its value very well, and not just Avacyn. Angels are one of the premier and most popular tribes, and these foils are going to get snapped up and locked into thousands upon thousands of casual decks.

I think that you’ll be able to get these for around $60 once the initial IMUSTHAVEITNOW wave is done, and at that price, I’ll be happy to get an extra set or two for long-term storage. That price will change if the Angels in the set are pricier than I expect (It’s not out of the question for Wizards to go financially big and give us Iona, Linvala, Avacyn, and Baneslayer, for example) but that seems unlikely to me.

Patience on an FTV is often rewarded. Even Legends, which didn’t go for much over MSRP at the time, is more than $100 now. Part of that is the passage of time, since anything from four years ago has an increase in value, but there’s been a real increase for FTV: Realms in half the time.

Bonus Buy: I told you about Dragonspeaker Shaman a few weeks ago, and now Dragonlord’s Servant has been spoiled. It’s an uncommon, so it looks like the Shaman will not be in the set and the old foils are due to go up, what with all the new Dragon decks being built. I tweeted about it Wednesday, when TCG had 11 foils under $10 and 4 more between $10-$15.