Rotation happens as of today, and as we say goodbye (finally) to Streets of New Capenna, Kamigawa, Neon Dynasty, and two Innistrad blocks, I want to take a moment and figure out what lessons the calendar can teach us. Rotation is going to happen every year, and we can’t say for sure what the exact date is, since Wizards likes to mess with release schedules and dates.

However, what we can do is look at heavily played Standard cards, and see when (or even if) their impending rotation caused people to sell on a card. This will impact what we do in the early part of 2025, as we look ahead to the next rotation.

When I say that the schedule changes, I mean it. Innistrad: Midnight Hunt was released on 9/24/2021, Dominaria United on 9/9/2022, Wilds of Eldraine on 9/8/2023, and now Bloomburrow on 8/2/2024. Those release days influence when rotation happens, and that’s a two-month window. I’ll be looking for a timeframe of ‘X months before rotation’ instead of February 28.

Another complicating factor here is that a card’s Standard use is not the only factor in its price. Commander drives most of the sales these days, but the other Constructed formats using a card will also affect its price and can make that card resistant to rotation dips. (See: Sheoldred, the Apocalypse) So when we’re looking at price trends, we want to find cards that aren’t seeing much use in other formats.

An example of unhelpful data is Xander’s Lounge:

This is an extremely good card, but because it’s all over the place in Commander, rotation is barely affecting the price. I would be surprised to find this price dropping, and considering its inclusion rate in Commander decks, I’d buy it up if the price were going down. 

Most lands aren’t good indicators for the effect of rotation, because they are either on their first printing and getting wide use (triomes, the MID/VOW slowlands) or because they have been printed more than once and their price can’t move without major, major things happening (painlands).

Our first bellwether card is Wedding Announcement.

Wedding Announcement is not used in any other Constructed format, and it’s only listed in 19k Commander decks online. Which makes sense, this is a card that gives you one token a turn and then it’s an anthem. Commander can do better. 

The high price for this card was at the beginning of the year, when it was close to $20. Now there’s hundreds of sub-$5 copies on TCGPlayer and plenty available close to $3 as people try to get what they can for the card. We’re looking at about six months for the card, and that’s a good starting point. It’s important to be early on this card: at the beginning of summer it was around $5.50, and that’s clearly too late.

Our second example is Topiary Stomper:

More than 74,000 decks have listed this card, which is more than I’d prefer for something like this but that’s still a mere 4% of decks that have been put online since it was released. Stomper has had some good times, most recently as part of assorted Domain strategies. Its drop is not just about the switch from the Domain deck to the Aftermath Analyst decks, there’s still plenty of Domain going around. 

We see a similar price trajectory here, with the card being cheap most of its time in Standard, spiking at the first of the year, and trending down after that. 

For the last example, let’s look at more of a format staple, something that saw play in a range of archetypes, The Wandering Emperor:

TWE is only in 18k Commander decks, and while she’s a player in some Pioneer decks, that hasn’t kept her price high. This graph shows only the last year, and her early price was above $40, trended down a little, then bumped back up to $30ish before reaching her current spot just above $10. There’s been times where she wasn’t as popular, but her price during her time in Standard never got below $15 until just recently. That is exactly the sort of trend I’m looking for. 

As for what to buy now, I’m leaning away from singles from these four sets. Singles don’t appeal to me as much as the easy money of recent Secret Lair purchases, and it’s all too easy for me to see cards either languishing or getting reprinted.

I’m hesitant to spend money on things from the two Innistrad sets, because the Double Feature printing just put more copies out there. As an example,.Shipwreck Marsh has copies as cheap as $3 but there are enormous walls of the card on TCGPlayer. That might eventually pay off, but the quantities are too high and I’d avoid them as specs. 

Many staples have already had reprints, such as Farewell, but I think the Legendary Lands from Neon Dynasty are strong contenders to start ticking upwards for a while, now that they are no longer Standard legal. They are too expensive for one Secret Lair set by themselves, that would be something like $60+ of cards even in nonfoil. There’s going to need to be a bonus set, or some reskinning, to get these reprinted. I like their growth potential, but the reprint is 100% coming.

Still, it’s good to know that there are cards that can be sold profitably when rotation hits, so we can plan for that around the beginning of the year with cards from DMU, BRO, ONE, MOM and Aftermath. 

Cliff (@WordOfCommander) 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 official substitute teacher 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.

This coming Monday, July 29th, at 9 am Pacific time, 12 pm Eastern time, and 4 pm GMT, the next Superdrop becomes available. There’s a whole lot to unpack here, and I’m going to go over all of the cards with you and determine what I want to buy and why.

Let’s get to the cards!

One caveat before we dive in: We’ve gotten no hint that there will be a Hatsune Miku drop as yet, and given that there are two big collaborations in this drop, a third would be a lot going on at once. We also don’t know if there’s a bonus card, a reward for spending X dollars, but with how popular the last drop was that didn’t include a bonus, they might have given up on that completely.

The exact dollar amounts for bundle discounts isn’t known yet, but I would be surprised if it went much over 15%, even for the biggest bundles. Wizards understands that they are selling a lot of cards, and the discounts have been slowly shrinking. The line must continue up and to the left!

For each drop, I’m going to look at the EDHREC numbers, as that’s the biggest driver for cards like these. EDHREC is a great database, even if its numbers are a little weighted towards preconstructed decks, and while it’s a small percentage of players overall it remains useful. 

MTG x Brain Dead

Brain Dead is an art group that’s done a lot of cool stuff, and they get three sets of cards here. Wurmcoil is only listed in 85k decks online, which feels low for such an iconic creature. Its cheapest version is $11, and there’s both Inventions and Serialized versions released over the years. Sphinx is $23, has a borderless version, and is in 106k decks. Kiki-Jiki is $7, and this would be the first printing that isn’t the traditional frame, though it’s not far off. He’s also got just under 80k decks, including a thousand where he’s the commander. Meteor Golem was in a SL drop in 2021, with Jen Bartel and a badass look in a borderless frame for $6, and is in 97k decks! Again, be wary of that number due to how many precons the Golem has been in, and the Goo is just filler that only the hardest-core coin flipper plays.

Sphinx, Wurmcoil, and Kiki make a decent start for the set of cards, and if the discounts are right, I might buy some of these. It doesn’t sing to me, though, and I’m being a bit more selective with buying sealed drops vs. singles these days.

Brain Dead Lands

All of these were put into one image, making me think that this is the first time they are putting two of each land into one drop. I’d be tempted by ten foil lands for $40, but ultimately I think this is a pass for me. It’s been a couple of drops since we were given lands, and I’d been hoping we were past this. The lands are great art, but there’s just so many choices for great art these days that we need something truly unusual to break through.

Brain Dead Staples

There are staples indeed (none listed at less than 400k decks), and all of these are worthwhile pickups. Four of these cards were in the ‘Through the Wormhole’ drop, and with galaxy foiling plus sweet art. The frames for the Brain Dead cards ought to look pretty cool, with the textured frame, and I’m probably going to buy a couple of this drop.

Showcase: Bloomburrow

These are neat, and I’ve learned not to overlook the power of ‘cute’ when it comes to Magic cards. None of these are cats or dogs, and a lot of the value here is predicated on Tezzeret being only available as a buy-a-box card. Because of that scarcity, he’s a $20 card but that’s going to fall pretty hard. He’s an auto-include in artifact decks that can play him, but those numbers aren’t too huge. I’m going to get singles here, instead of spending $40 or $50 on the set.

Featuring: Andrew MacLean

This is a great set of art, and I remain thankful that Wizards has listened to me as I begged for the art series to be bigger than the regular frame. So here we are, borderless cards from the gloriously beared artist of the Head Lopper series. This is the first special frame for Nirkana (34k), Terastodon (68k) and Arbor Elf (142k). Maelstrom Wanderer has a profile version in Commander Masters, is the number #199 commander all time (5400 as commander, 38k as card) and so this drop will likely have the most expensive versions of all four of these cards. 

At $40, I’m not a buyer. I’ll be looking for singles the week this lands, especially on Arbor Elf. 

MTG x Monty Python vol 1 and vol 2

I generally avoid swearing here but HOLY SHIT I did not see this coming. This is a phenomenal crossover, headlined by something which will sing to Magic boomers like me. The original pinger (as an aside, to demonstrate how powerful this ability to tap and deal damage to any target is, there’s only two of those creatures legal in Pioneer: Endbringer and Syr Carah) has a whole bit of lore about why Prodigal Sorcerer was nicknamed ‘Tim’, and it was so prevalent that it was used as a verb back in the day. 

The bonus cards, according to Reddit (and I believe it, the Monty Python drops are already on sale this weekend at SDCC) are worthwhile, and I 100% believe that this was slated to be a single Lair, but they see how Evil Dead and Princess Bride did, and decided to double their money. Can’t blame them, really.

I will be maxing out on these, and if the limit is 5 per order, I may think of telling friends to order some too. This is going to pay off, and I also expect this to be the Lair that sells out fastest. 

I would not be shocked if they went back and gave us a volume 3 or 4, given the quotable moments that didn’t get covered (Grail-shaped beacon! Huge tracts of land! Coconuts as horses! ELDERBERRIES!) because they want to get every dollar out of us and this is the way to do it.

My rankings for the drop overall:

1 and 2) Monty Python

3) Brain Dead Staples

4) Brain Dead Gallery 

5) Featuring Andrew MacLean

6) Brain Dead Lands

If they surprise us with big discounts or some awesome bonus card, I might adjust what I buy, but my plan currently is to max out on Monty Python and dabble a little in the Staples. Come chat in the Discord if you want to talk other plans!

Cliff (@WordOfCommander) 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 official substitute teacher 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.

Bloomburrow is officially out in two weeks, and I want to make sure you know your odds before you start going crazy with preorder pricing. We have more than a few card variants to look for, and thankfully, we’ve got all the information we need to calculate drop rates.

So let’s get into some of the specifics for the set, and see what the numbers tell us.

First of all, The List is dead! (for now) and Special Guests are the only leftovers of a targeted reprint policy. We’ve got some others in the subsets too, but that happens in every release. Special Guest nonfoils are in Play Boosters, and foils in Collector Boosters. We’re told that for a nonfoil, you’re at a 1.5% chance to get one in any Play Booster. That’s 67 packs for any nonfoil SPG, and with ten cards, that means 667 packs to get a specific one (or 18.5 boxes). I’ll compare that to the foils in a moment.

There are three groupings of cards in Bloomburrow, outside of the expected Showcase and Extended Art cards we see in every set. First is the Courageous Critters (20 cards), the Field Notes (8 cards), and then a set of 20 Anime Art cards done by Mitsuhiro Arita. Of note, these aren’t bonus sheets but they are subsets, though they lack their own set code, like BIG and OTP were for Outlaws of Thunder Junction. 

Play Boosters can’t open any of the big money foil variants, so aside from knowing that the SPG nonfoils are tough to pull, we’ll move on. If you really want to know about a card from Play Boosters, drop me a message on Twitter or in the Discord.

The Collector Boosters have three slots at the end that are noteworthy. First, we have two slots in a row of nonfoil cards we’ll care about. Please note that the listed percentages add up to 200%, because there’s two slots.

With these percentages, it can be a little misleading, so let’s make a table. 

Please note, Wizards isn’t entirely clear about which Field Notes mythic is a standalone, or why it happened that way. I’ve reached out to those who might be able to clarify, and we’ll see if I get any answers.

And yes, you’re seeing that correctly: 9 out of 10 Collector Booster packs will have a Showcase rare in one of these two slots. While that seems like a lot, even those will require more than three boxes to get a specific Showcase nonfoil rare. 

Now, the same table for the foil options of the last slot in the Collector Booster: 

So two things jump out at me right away, given the data.

First of all, 573 packs to get a specific Raised Foil Anime version is pretty out there. If a box of 12 packs is $200, then you’re looking at about $9,500 of product to get one copy! In terms of past sets, a Raised Foil Chatterfang is about as difficult to pull as a Foil Vault Frame Vaultborn Tyrant. The Raised Foils are also going to have a very wide gap from the cheapest to the most expensive, so I’m expecting to see some swingy reports of the value opened. 

Second, the foil Special Guests are 325 Collector Boosters to get a specific card, while the nonfoils are 667 Play Boosters. There’s clearly a disparity in terms of the prices involved, and how much would be spent to get a single copy, but this gap is more pronounced than ever and I’m going to be keeping a special eye on these nonfoils, as they are difficult to get. 

I hope these numbers help you make decisions about what to buy and when. If you’d like to talk about my methods or conclusion, please feel free to reach out on Twitter or in the ProTrader Discord.

Cliff (@WordOfCommander) 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 official substitute teacher 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.

Bloomburrow has a prerelease in two weeks, and the previews are flowing freely. Often I’ll take a look at all the mythics, but the big price driver is Commander.

This is the first one that made me stop and think that there was a lot of good stuff coming. Birds are already blue-white, adding red doesn’t do much, but this is token greatness. 

To be fair, we don’t know what’s in Zinnia’s deck yet, so there’s some significant reprint risk. Please keep that in mind. If you want to wait on buying these until the decklist is revealed, please feel free to be cautious.

Step 1: Make our creature spells cheaper so the Offspring is free or reduced. Cost reductions can apply to additional costs, so if we get something for 2 less, the Offspring just tags along!

Conduit of Ruin (BFZ nonfoil $11) – The Eldrazi have made this go through the roof, but it does exactly what we want in a deck like this. Offspring is free if it’s in play, and if you happened to make a token, then yes, it’s four less! Feel free to fetch up a Myr Battlesphere with it.

Medallions (Borderless foil from $7 to $20) – I am a huge proponent of this set of mana rocks, and frankly, I think they are underplayed. You can play more than one color, and it’ll reduce multicolor spells by that much mana. 

Seal of the Guildpact (Retro frame foil is bulk) – A lot of what you’re going to be doing is multicolor, and while it’s five mana, it does what you want. 

Grand Arbiter Augustin IV (SL Fallout foil $5) – People kill this blatherer on sight, because it’s annoying, but when a card is good, it gets targeted.

Monuments ($3 to $9) – Especially Oketra’s Monument, as it gets you more tokens for more goodness.

Semblance Anvil (Retro Schematic foil $2) – It’s two cards, yes, but you’re going to be doing a lot of things to make up for the disadvantage.

Urza’s Incubator (MH3 foil $10) – The regular frame foil is half the price of every other version, and with the coming emphasis on kindred decks, it’s a good a time as any to stock up.

Urza’s Filter (INV nonfoil $4) – If you’re casting and copying multicolor spells, this is your new best friend.

Step 2: The most fun things to copy are tokens that come with tokens. You’re going to be spoiled for choices, but if you want a full army to come from one creature, these are the frontrunners.

Captain of the Watch (surge foil $1.50) – A time-honored choice, as the original and the Offspring will boost the resulting army, giving you six 3/3s and a 2/2 token.

Geist-Honored Monk (INN foil $2) – You’re likely to go wide with a deck like this, so why not grab two 6/6 Monks that can get a lot bigger and four flyers?

Regal Caracal (AKH foil $5) – Amusingly, there’s not a lot of Cats or Dogs on Bloomburrow, so this is likely safe. Again, a lot of boosting each other going on here and a whole lot of lifelink too.

Wildfire Awakener (EA 50¢) – The card is fantastic as the first thing to cast or if you already have a boatload of tokens. If you’ve got haste enabled, watch out!

Riders of Rohan (Showcase Scroll foil $1) – The Dash ability is really sick here, if expensive. You will not have to return the Offspring (I think) but you’re going to get four hasty tokens each time.

Precursor Golem (bulk) – Too many printings and frames, and with some real risk, but it’s one card for seven 3/3 and one 1/1 Golems!

Step 3: Hyperdrive!

Purphoros, God of the Forge (etched foil $20) – There’s a reason that everyone with tokens plays this, and it’s because it saves you an attack step, just dealing damage directly. 

Flameshadow Conjuring (Magic Origins foil $7) – If 2 is good as an Offspring cost, then 2R to get double offspring is even better! It’s absolutely overkill, and you shouldn’t stop yourself from living the big dreams.

Warleader’s Call (Showcase foil $10) – The other versions are cheaper, but the card is very popular and very powerful.

Serra Redeemer (Foil EA $4) – Most of the 1/1 boosters are touching green, but if you want to make a lot of tokens become a lot bigger, this is a great place to start. And yes, if you Offspring this you’ll get double the counters. (The Offspring will even get a boost from the original!)

Optional: Artifact Creature builds of this Commander are going to kick a lot of butt. These colors have a lot of ways to pay you off for doing what you’d do anyway, just adding artifact synergies.

Artifact reducers (too dang many to list) – The really great thing about a Zinnia build of artifacts is the way that you can make Offspring of Etherium Sculptor and the like, going just wild on the reductions and the benefits. 

Simulacrum Synthesizer (BIG foil $28) – This especially needs mentioning because the Offspring tokens have the mana cost of the original, so if you Offspring something like a Solemn Simulacrum, you can get two Constructs to go with the two originals! I can’t wait to see how people break this card. 

Cliff (@WordOfCommander) 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 official substitute teacher 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.