The first week or so of actual sales are in the books, and we’ve got some prices that have risen impressively. Some of these we sort of saw coming, others arrived from the clear blue sky.

Let’s get into what is what, and where they might go from here.

See Double (Low of fifty cents, now $4) 

See Double is a good card. It’s already strong at 2UU for an instant-speed clone of a creature in play. It’s also 2UU: Copy target spell, which will never ever feel bad, especially if you’re getting a sweet permanent into play. Go ahead and copy someone’s Commander! Having the flexibility to do either of these things is a big game in modern Commander games, and feels pretty great.

In the later turns, being able to do BOTH is nigh ridiculous. Cleary you’re getting a 2-for-1 on pure cards, but it’s not hard to imagine you getting a lot more. Did you copy a Time Stretch and then clone someone’s Etali, Primal Storm? Perhaps you liked that Crackle with Power enough to kill the original caster AND give yourself someone else’s Avacyn, Angel of Hope?

This is a clear case where the people have spoken and the people speaking don’t use EDHREC. See Double is only listed in 1500 decks so far, and that’s good for #40 on the list. For perspective, Hoarding Broodlord is in about 150 more decks, is the same rarity, and is half as much. Give the people their best clone spell ever!

I think See Double can hold its current price nicely. TCG will backfill copies in, seeking the low points, but this has been popular enough early enough that it’ll stay above two dollars. You might see a copy here and there for $1.99 plus shipping, feel free to believe that’s a steal.

Ancient Imperiosaur (fifty cents to $2.50) 

There are ways to make this redundantly huge. If you can tap four creatures, making this cost 1GG, then it’ll come in as a 14/14. If you get to turn four, and have five creatures, you can spend GG casting this as a 16/16 with enough mana left over to Surge-cast Reckless Bushwhacker and smash some real face. 

Ward 2 is really underestimated for Constructed play. Decks in the modern day are optimized to the millimeter, and adding a big tax like this is probably going to take a whole turn. Doesn’t matter if they have a Plains and Swamp untapped, your dino is going to live and do a lot of work, at least this turn. 

The really good news here is that Ancient Imperiosaur will sell by the playset, not by the singleton. This is another card that I think will hold its price, even as an in-print rare. There’s a lot going for it and if the deck places high in results for a week or two, it could easily be a $5 card. Keep an eye on where the price is in a few months, because this might end up being a very attractive brick target.

Faerie Mastermind ($4.50 to $11) –

If you’ve listened to MTG Fast Finance, you’ve heard James talk about this card and he’s been right. It’s a standout in Commander, easily drawing you a lot more cards than it does for other people. Right away, it was expensive and like most cards, it dropped pretty far. However, it’s rebounded up from a $5 floor and come back up to $10, which is about the limit for in-print rares unless they are mega-staples like Ledger Shredder or Fable of the Mirror-Breaker. 

The deterrent factor is real here too. People don’t like giving cards away, and Flash gives you the chance to get the card back quickly. After that, people won’t want to do things that end up giving you cards, so you get to have that hanging over their heads. I can also see this in group hug strategies, where you give something to everyone, but you get more!

There’s also a Rogues deck running around in Pioneer that’s playing this as a four-of, and when you add that to the #1 ranking from March of the Machine on EDHREC, you have a recipe for staying in the $8-$10 range. There’s a lot of copies being opened, but there’s also a lot of copies being bought. Keep in mind that this is a delightful target for stocking up on if it’s nearly to $6 in a couple months.

Invasion of Ikoria ($6 to $18 to $15)

We know tutors are good, so good that Green Sun’s Zenith is banned in Modern. Finale of Devastation is so good that it’s a $40 card, though it’s avoided reprints since its original printing in 2019. This battle is showing up in Pioneer’s Mono-Green decks in dribs and drabs, less as a combo piece and more as something to do with all the mana Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx is making for you.

Invasion of Ikoria is also very good, though its restriction of non-Humans rules out a big section of potential targets, including a target that would probably play this in Devoted Druid combo decks. This is the #3 card from MOM currently, being in just over 5000 decks. It’s pretty awesome to have a tutor put the creature into play, and then for the low price of getting six combat damage in, you get a free 8/8 with reach and sort-of-unblockable-ness. 

All that said, it’s a rare and it’s very difficult to have a rare keep a price this high in a Standard set, especially one being opened at the rate MOM is going. I think that this price is reflective of the number of people who open one and don’t sell it, putting it in a Commander deck instead. Even with the invisible hands at work, though, I expect this to come down to the $10 range over time.

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 a GP and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.

My favorite leak of all time has got to be the New Phyrexia Godbook being shared on IRC chat way back in the day. A new favorite of mine, though, is the YouTuber who filmed a couple of box openings for March of the Machine: Aftermath and decided to release those a couple months early.

As a result, we know a lot of the cards in the set ahead of schedule, and if you don’t like unofficial spoilers, you can read what I think and avoid specifics card images. I’m not going to post any of those, but I am going to talk about potential gainers based on the cards.

Krakens, Leviathans, Serpents, and Octopus cards – There’s a new blue-green legend that cares about these creature types, giving you a free card off the top based on the creature’s mana cost. You have to cast it from hand, but then you get a peek at some number of cards, then cast the spell for free. A pretty great deal for any circumstance, but what if there was a huge Kraken that reduced its cost for playing special lands, and could even return itself to your hand?

Step right up, Icebreaker Kraken, this might be your time to shine:

(disclaimer: I bought 101 of these at forty cents each when Runo Stromkirk was previewed. It’s up to sixty cents now!)

Really, this is everything the new Kraken commander might want, letting you look at a ton of cards, but not costing full price because of the built-in reduction. Then once you get the cast and ETB triggers, you can bounce it to your hand to be replayed when you want to do it all again.

There’s a lot of sweet Kraken, Leviathan, Octopus, or Serpent (hereafter known as KLOS) cards that could rise. Breaching Leviathan hasn’t had a reprint since its debut in C14 and if it dodges a reprint in Commander Masters, it might shoot to the moon. Quest for Ula’s Temple has already spiked hard once and could hit $10 again. Whelming Wave is probably the best card in your deck but it’s had so many printings that I don’t think it’ll rise to a good value. Spawning Kraken used to be a lot cheaper than it is, but making 9/9 tokens is an experience every player should have.

Special notice for Hullbreaker Horror, though. 

The Double Feature foil is over fifty bucks, so there’s unlikely to be huge gains made there. The FEA versions can still be had under $20, especially because this is going to rotate out of Standard in a few months. It still sees a sprinkle of Standard play, most often as a control finisher, but blue decks of any type, even KLOS, love to leave mana up for shenanigans then resolve something bonkers like this.

Moving on from KLOS cards, there’s a new Ob Nixilis who is an immediate game-ending combo with All Will Be One, with the catch that every damage dealt exiles the top card of your library. This doesn’t immediately lose you the game, as it never says ‘draw a card’ but it’s something to be aware of. We’re also going to see a certain number of pingers spike, things like Pestilence and Pyrohemia as well. Repeatable ways to deal one damage, like Shivan Gorge, the unloved child of Urza’s Saga’s five rare lands. Gaea’s Cradle, Tolarian Academy, Serra’s Sanctum, Phyrexian Tower, and then poor ol’ Gorge. Tough times.

Since it triggers off of opponents losing exactly one life, there’s a range of cards that might go haywire. Ayara, First of Locthwain or Bastion of Remembrance are good, Bontu’s Monument is already a $10 foil in uncommon. Cryptolith Fragment is possibly going to jump too, but the deeper cut is Karazikar, the Eye Tyrant, from the AFR Commander subset. Lots of fun for everyone! Ob Nixilis of the Black Oath, one of the original planeswalker-as-commanders who will also work very well in the deck.

There’s a new Karn, who cares both about having a high mana value artifact in play as well as having lots of artifacts in play. Gotta go big and wide. Myr Battlesphere comes to mind, and while that’s had twelve printings, there’s foils only from Double Masters and Scars of Mirrodin, reasonable targets both. 

Snake Basket also comes to mind as a way to take a lot of mana and make tokens, as does Hangarback Walker. Thopter Assembly is slow, but can be a fun way to do the thing you want to do. The big thing I’m thinking of, though, is a card that I can’t advocate speculating on because it cries out to be in Commander Masters: Mycosynth Golem.

It was in Fifth Dawn and it had a presence on The List for a short while, but the card is pushing $40 on the idea that there’s almost no copies in circulation somehow. This will get reprinted, and remind players all over again how busted a mechanic this truly is. I can’t say if it’ll be in a Secret Lair or Commander Masters, or when the reprint will arrive, but it’s a matter of when, not if.

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 a GP and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.

Ah, here we are, the dawn of a new set and a whole lot of numbers for me to crunch. Wizards has given us some information, and I can make some good estimates based on research, that combine to paint a pretty good picture of what we should expect in terms of how often the rarest cards drop.

A gentle reminder that this is statistics, not certainties. You might open two serialized cards in the same box, beating the odds. You might open two hundred CBS and not see a single serialized card.

Let’s get to the math, shall we?

Here is the official link for Collecting March of the Machine: https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/feature/collecting-march-of-the-machine. That’s got all the information we need for most of this.

Serialized cards: There’s 65 Multiverse Legends, 500 of each. In the next slot, there’s a spot for the five Praetor-Sagas to show up serialized. Then after that, a slot which could contain a serialized Uncommon from the set of 65. For any serialized card, you’re estimated to get one every 142.8 packs.

The serialized cards overrule whatever else you were going to open in that slot. We know that you’re less than 1% to open one, even with it being in three slots. There will be a total of 35,000 serialized cards to open, and given all the data we have, I’m estimating that it’s more like 0.07%, or one in 143, to open any serialized card of any rarity. Uncommon or Mythic, that’s your odds. If you want a specific card, you’re looking at 70x as many packs, or 10,010. Good luck!

Theoretically, you could open a pack with two serialized cards (one ML and one PS) but that’s something like .7% times .7%, which would be one in 20,408 packs. I would expect to see that a couple of times if I were watching every CB be opened. Three in a row? Sure, that’s only 1 in 2,915,452 packs. Possible, but incredibly unlikely. We estimate that there’s around 5 million Collector Booster packs printed per Standard set. If you get better information, please, reach out to me in the comments, on Discord, or Twitter.

I also want to talk about your odds of pulling a MUL card in Draft Boosters. Every Draft Booster gets a card from that subset. The ratio has traditionally been three uncommons for every one rare and for every .5 mythic rares. Means now it’s 6:2:1, and given the number we have at each rarity level, the pool you pull from for a MUL card is 15 mythics (1 of each), 60 rares, (2 of each), and 120 uncommons (6 of each). Total of 195, and that’s how many packs you’ll need to open to get a nonfoil Ragavan. Only six boxes!

We have a handy graphic for what’s in a Collector Booster, thank you Wizards:

Let’s work from the top of the image downwards (This would also be from the last card in the pack forward, whichever terminology works for you.)

We are given this ratio in the Collecting article for Collector Boosters, and each version has its own collector number: 

Traditional foil in 75% of boosters

Foil etched in 14% of boosters

Halo foil in 10% of boosters

Serialized double rainbow in < 1% of boosters

This first (last) slot is only rares and mythics, and we’re also told that there are 20 uncommons, 30 rares, and 15 mythic rares. The uncommons will be in a different slot, so we get to focus on the rares and mythics. Wizards likes a 2:1 ratio for rares and mythics, so the pool of available cards will be 75 cards deep. Your chances of getting a specific rare are 2/75, or 1/37.5. Specific mythics are 1/75.

However, that’s for any version. We have no less than three foil treatments to choose from here. Given the ratios, we can figure out that for every Halo Foil Ragavan, we’ll get 1.4 Etched Foil and 7.5 Traditional Foil versions of the same card. In execution, this means we have to roll for a card and then roll for the version, not counting serialized versions because those are just miracle pulls. Let’s have a table for this slot only, so no uncommons:

This is a clever trick by Wizards to make new rarities of a card without extra frames or art direction. It will add both a lot of traditional foil copies for those who like shiny things and at the same time, give high-end collectors something to chase that isn’t the serialized version.

The next slot is more of ‘everything else jammed in here’ feeling from the main set. This has all of the following, all rares and mythics in traditional foil. We’ve established that Praetors are around every 142.8 packs, but let’s count up what numbers we’re looking at for these cards.

Important to note that these are foil pulls, and so there will be FEA versions of all the Commander cards. Other sets, there have been occasional foils, or EA only with no foils, and here we get the full FEA. 

Our pool in this slot is 219 cards, which is lower than a lot of other sets have been if you compare them. ONE was every 326 for Phyrexian planeswalkers, and BRO was every 299 packs for FEA mythics. The big difference in MOM is that we don’t have multiple versions of the same card, aside from the Praetors. 

I’m expecting a LOT of these cards to be out there, given the chase for serialized cards and the way players go after lotto tickets like this.

The MUL uncommons get two whole slots to themselves: one for Halo and Etched foils, plus the serialized versions, and then a slot dedicated to traditional foils alone. With 20 uncommons in that subset, you’ve got this set of odds over those two slots:

With all this in mind, let’s put the data together and get some outcomes for different cards we might be after: 

And finally, let’s look at examples of the rarest cards:

There’s a lot of numbers here, and I’ve tried to clarify what is going on in each, as well as explain my math. If you want to discuss this, or point out my mistakes, please reach out on Twitter, in the Discord, or the comments below! 

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 a GP and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.