Kaldheim is available to be bought today, and while people are going to get their preorder product and crack it in a fervor of foil and new-card smell, I want to look at the most expensive stuff that’s been printed since War of the Spark gave us the Amano Liliana: Commander Legends. Jeweled Lotus has all the attention, but there’s a lot of very good cards in the set that you should stock up on before it becomes too expensive.

First of all, I want to talk a little about the composition of the Collector Boosters. The main thing is that there are dedicated slots for the uncommon etched foils and the rare/mythic etched foils. These aren’t commonplace exactly, but they don’t have the 30% chance of upgrading that the Extended Art cards had. That means it’ll take that much longer for the etched foils to take off, generally speaking. Some of them are already pricey, but it’s important to know that there’s a lot more etched foils in circulation than there are Extended Art/Foil Extended Art. 

Thrasios, Triton Hero (etched foil) – $26 – This price comes after a high of $80 during 2020, the reprint couldn’t have come along better for the little merfolk who makes you want to flip the table:

There’s nothing that UG decks love more than ramping and drawing, and Thrasios gives you the chance to do both at once. When he’s on the table, you know it requires an answer, but next thing you know, there’s a Training Grounds and a Heartstone out and you watch this player get six more lands into play before untapping and doing irritating things. Thrasios made a lot of sense as an expensive card because it was featured in the Commander 2016 set, no one had extras. We’re at maximum supply for Thrasios, and the really powerful thing is the Partner mechanic. Add whatever colors you’d like to this card and the deck you’re building, just go to town. 

We know how expensive Thrasios can be, and this remains one of the most deceptively powerful Simic Commanders, not least because dying once or twice doesn’t affect the mana too terribly. It’ll start rising soon, and before summer 2022, it’ll be $50 again.

Yuriko, the Tiger’s Shadow (etched foil) – $11 – What’s really appealing here is that the etched foil is competing with the Judge foil. That has fallen to about $14, down nearly $10 since the reprint. There aren’t quite enough Ninjas for an all-Ninja deck, but you can build a sweet deck and there is always the chance of more Ninjas (like in Modern Horizons) or a return to Kamigawa. When that happens, supply on this will vanish, and I would want to have a few of these ready to go.

Reliquary Tower (FEA) – $6 – The pack foil from Conflux is two bucks more, and the FNM is slightly more than that, but this has a huge Commander demand baked in, though there’s a whole lot of foil versions to choose from. This is the only special frame, and I want the foil version to make the shiny-hunters happy. I can’t predict when this will be the most expensive one, but that’s only a matter of time.

Seraphic Greatsword (FEA)/Profane Transfusion(FEA)/Soulfire Eruption(FEA) – $7 – These are the three cheapest FEA mythics from the set, and this would be pure speculation. We know how expensive these FEA mythics can be, thanks to Jeweled Lotus, which makes these a fascinating pick. The red and black ones have much lower stock on TCG, but the Greatsword has a ton of very optimistic listings on TCGplayer. If you pick these up, you’re doing so out of pure hope and recognizing the scarcity of these cards. 

Phyrexian Triniform (FEA) – $15 – So far, only about 1000 people have listed this in their Commander decks on EDHREC, but I’m looking at things like Darksteel Colossus and artifact-based decks, because this enables a lot of fun combos or represents enormous value with the 3/3 creatures that get left behind. Again, FEA mythics from this set are crazy rare, getting one of a particular mythic about every 400 packs. If you might want one, it’s time to hurry up and get it. The high casting cost doesn’t faze me, there’s a ten-mana card that’s already jumped $20 since the set came out:

So yeah, get your Triniform whilst you can.

Arcane Signet (FEA) – $26 – As much of a staple as staples can be, I like this card but I’m very certain it gets a reprint in FEA at some point. Will it have the same art? If it’s the same art, it’ll fall pretty far, like what happened to FEA Fabled Passage. Nearly $100 when the reprint hit in Core 2021, now reduced to $25. If the art is different, it’ll be a decision between preferences, and then who knows? Again, I think you get your personal copies now while they are cheap, but don’t try to stock up too hard on these.

Return to Dust (FEA) – $1.50 – Finally, let’s look at a card which is in 28,000 decks online, has only two foils, and this is the only special frame. A buck and a half is a crazy low price for this, given that only one out of every 2.5 packs had any of the FEA uncommons, but here we are. It’s not the cheapest, that honor goes to Humble Defector and likely always will, but this is the best version of this staple. Time Spiral is the original foil, that’s $10, but that’s also a set with a tiny supply and so many years of copies being lost/damaged. This is the first foil since then, and copies aren’t yet being snapped up but time will tell on this. Picking up a brick of these now is a no-brainer, in anticipation of the inevitable rise up towards the price of the original foil.

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.

So the set is out on Arena and MTGO, and won’t be available on paper for another week. If you preordered, it’ll ship out on February 5, when the set is officially released in paper. We’ve still got a little time for prices to go nuts, but we’ve also got some preliminary data on what’s selling and what isn’t. Let’s take a look, shall we?

Reflections of Littjara (Currently $3) – First of all, this is available as an alt-art foil promo for those who purchase the Kaldheim bundle. I am very likely to take a stab at picking up a lot of those versions, as well as some number of regulars and FEA versions. This is an excellent payoff for tribal decks of just about any flavor, and the only problem here is that Legendary creatures are not always great to make copies of, depending on the enters-the-battlefield effects. This has trended down from a high of about $5 so far, and I completely expect it to approach bulk status. It’s not going to do much in Standard, and buying large amounts of awesome Commander cards is exactly where I want to be.

Cosmos Elixir ($4) – What’s notable about this is that it isn’t legendary. If you wanted to build a control deck and put three copies into play, you’d get three triggers. Lifegain is a popular theme in Commander games, and this does what you want, giving you the lifegain trigger or a card. I expect this to be an easy slot into whatever the next good lifegain Commander is, as Oloro is a bit too old to gain attention this way, even though it’s on The List. To be clear, I’m not buying these until they come way down in price.

The World Tree ($12) – It takes a lot to have a rare land hold a price higher than a booster pack. It’s got to have enormous appeal across several formats, and while I love what this offers to five-color Commander players, that’s pretty much it in terms of the potential market. The activated ability means that you can’t add this as free fixing in anything less than fully prismatic decks. As a counterpoint, EDHREC has more than 30,000 five-color decks in its database, and this is remarkably easy to slot into such a deck and feel pretty good. Still, this won’t hold $12 and will be lucky to hold $5. 

Esika, God of the Tree ($14) – Another card that’s five colors or bust, the attention is mostly on the flip side, The Prismatic Bridge. Every turn you get the first creature or planeswalker out of your deck, but the extras are sent to the bottom. No Polymorph-style tricks here. This is a mythic, so the price will stay higher for longer. I’m hoping that it gets down to the $5 range as no one plays it outside Commander, but being the new awesome card will probably mean $10 is a more realistic price point.

Mystic Reflection ($13) – There is a graph via Frank Karsten that shows the interaction between this card and Master of Waves. Do keep in mind that this reflects the total power on the field, not the number of creatures. 

Kooky stuff, and yes, it combos very well with a range of token makers, but the memes are not enough to keep the price this high. It’s possible to use this offensively, to turn their cool thing into some lame thing that’s already on the field, but really, wouldn’t you rather have a counterspell or an Ixidron to deal with that problem? This is going to drop like a rock, and if I could short sell a card this is the prime candidate. I have trouble imagining that it’ll hold a price above $3.

Koma, Cosmos Serpent ($8) – Again, this is a mythic so it’s got that many less copies out there, but this is a card that MIGHT be a singleton as a finisher in some Simic deck and that’s about it. There’s not a huge amount of Serpent synergies to exploit, whereas if this was a Hydra it would at least have those decks going. This is going crash hard, being bulk or nearly so in a couple of months.

Tibalt’s Trickery ($7) – Another meme card, but one with potential and it’s showing up with Violent Outburst and Emrakul, the Aeons Torn to work together and get the spaghetti monster on the field on turn 3. Basically, cast the cascade spell, and the only hit is a single Trickery. Then the Trickery starts flipping cards, and the only legal hit is Emrakul. It’s a glass cannon, but so are the new versions of Oops! All Spells and Charbelcher, so let’s not go throwing too many stones. If people want to play instant-win combos in Modern that require aggressive mulliganing and folds to hand disruption or a Censor. This will also be bulk status in a few weeks.

In Search of Greatness ($6) – This is a bad version of cards we already have. Hibernation’s End is the most reliable of these, as you pay the upkeep cost and then get something that size, no matter what you have in play. ISoG requires you to have something on the board, and then have something else exactly one mana more. The fail-case plan of scry 1 is a pretty lame gift, but at least we have that going. This can only ever cheat you ahead to something that you would have been able to play if you had drawn another land, and for this to be good, you’re going to need quite a string of fortunate events. Bulk rare incoming.

Alrund’s Epiphany ($3) – Finally, a card I’m planning to stock up on. Extra turns cards are generally very good, and some decks want to play every single one they can. Part the Waterveil comes with a 6/6 if you get it going, and two 1/1s is also nice for speeding up the process. This has alternate art as a Showcase, and when this is cheap (and it’s going to be quite cheap) I’ll be happy to pick up a couple playsets for very little down. 

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.

There’s a lot to unpack in Kaldheim, in terms of how rare the rarest cards are, and considering Commander Legends just taught us a very Jeweled Lotus lesson, let’s pay attention, yes?

First, some basics. I’m going to be breaking down the special versions of cards, as those offer some of the highest upside possible. We all like to get the prettiest version for our Commander decks, so let’s keep our eyes on the prize.

There are 64 rares you can open in a booster pack, plus five themed rares available in Set Boosters, Theme Boosters, or Collector Boosters. There’s an additional 15 uncommons only in the Set/Theme slot which will merit their own discussion later. Wizards designed these cards to go with different themes but not affect the Limited experience. At least these can be opened in a booster, though it seems they are not available in foil.

There are 20 mythics in the set, and all of them have at least one variant, either Showcase or Extended Art, and no additional ones past that. Two of these mythics have two variants: Vorinclex has a Showcase frame and a Phyrexian frame, while Valki, God of Lies has a Borderless frame and a Showcase frame.

In addition to that, the five mythics with Foretell as a mechanic don’t just have an Extended Art treatment, they have alternate art to go with their Borderless-looking frame. 

It would appear that Draft Boosters and Set Boosters can have both foils and nonfoils of Showcase or Borderless treatments, but no Extended Art at all. If you find a post/article that says different, please clue me in.

In Commander Legends Collector Boosters, there was some variation that led to Foil Extended Art mythics being ridiculously rare. A lot of that variation has been taken away in Kaldheim, which should lead to lower prices on most things. My focus today is on the five CB slots with rares/mythics, because each CB has a pair of slots for Showcase uncommons, one foil and one non-foil. There’s going to be plenty of those, and they will make a delightful spec in a couple months.

So, in those last five slots, we have the cards that we care the most about. Please keep in mind that these numbers are statistics, these are predictions. Some people will have better luck and some will have worse luck. Would that we all had the good luck all the time!

A foil rare or mythic in the regular frame. This does include the Sagas from the next slot, giving you a chance of opening a foil Saga here and a nonfoil of the same Saga in the next slot. In this spot we have 64 rares and 20 mythics possible, so that gives us a drop rate of 1/84 for a particular foil rare and 1/168 for a particular foil mythic. Keep in mind that these are the same cards as in Draft Boosters, though that’s a bit balanced out by the lower number of Draft Boosters getting opened in the middle of the pandemic. 

A nonfoil rare saga/theme rare/Commander deck rare or mythic. There are only ten rare Sagas, five theme rares, and 17 Commander rares/mythics available. It seems like the mythic symbol doesn’t matter as much for this, the assorted Wizards releases indicate that they all drop at the same rate in this slot. Plus, all of these are nonfoil. Your odds are 1/32 for one of these, making them relatively common as a side effect of the hunt for more valuable cards.

A card in non-foil Extended Art. This is the slot for everything without a special border, and there’s 36 rares and four mythics that fit this bill. Since rares (until they tell us different) come along at twice the rate of mythics, you have a 1/38 chance of a particular EA rare and a 1/76 chance of a particular mythic EA. Yes, that’s nearly twice the rate of the regular frame foil mythics in these same CBs, offset by the other places you can get those foil regular mythics. 

A nonfoil Showcase/Borderless. For this slot, we have 18 potential rares and 16 potential mythics. So to nail one of these, it’s 1/26 for a specific rare and 1/52 for a specific mythic. This is slightly complicated by the double-up of Vorinclex and Valki. Wizards did the math on having two special versions of Vorinclex and Valki, God of Lies. Their two treatments are combined to drop as often as other mythics. Think of it as a coin flip. You have a certain chance to hit the mythic, but then you are 50/50 on which version you’re going to get, making each version half as common. If you like the real numbers, in this slot, for nonfoil, you have a 1/104 chance of each version of Valki or Vorinclex.

A foil Showcase/EA/Borderless. The big money slot, given that there’s 54 potential rares and 20 potential mythics. The only difference between this slot’s potential and the foil regular-frame rare/mythic slot is that you can’t get a foil Saga here, as there are no special frames for Sagas. Your odds are slightly better here: 1/64 for a specific rare and 1/128 for the specific mythic EA/Showcase/Borderless. The Valki/Vorinclex odds are that much worse, being 1/256 to get the version you want.

Let’s have a tl;dr table, shall we? 

The good news is that Vorinclex and Valki are among the priciest cards from the set right now, so hitting either version is profitable, for now. Jeweled Lotus is the comparison people want to make, but that was significantly rarer, needing 400 packs to get there. 

We shouldn’t see the huge prices out of the gate in Kaldheim that we saw in Commander Legends, mainly because of the switch from the 30% chance of foil upgrade to the slot dedicated to foils. That 30% chance wasn’t there in other Collector Boosters, and represents quite a shift. It’s very likely that the shift in CL caused much more of a selling frenzy than would have otherwise happened. We will see if having a single, mega-chase version of a card (the Phyrexian Vorinclex) has a similar effect on prices. 

One more item that I’ve encountered that may end up being super relevant: The uncommons from the Set/Theme Booster exclusives are ONLY in those specialized boosters. The entire list can be found here, but the rares can show up in Collector Boosters while the uncommons are trapped. They are Standard-legal, so there’s a scenario where in eight months, a new interaction occurs and some price gets out of hand.

Finally, if you’ve found an error in my math, please reach out to me in the comments here, on the Discord, or on Twitter. 

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.

People, I can’t say it enough: Don’t preorder new cards. 

This may seem counterintuitive to you. After all, new Magic sets are chock full of new interactions, sweet characters, and mechanics begging to be exploited with old cards. 

Please, please, please. I’m begging you. Resist the urge to buy things right away. It’s terrible value and you should only do it if you play enough in person to make it worthwhile. 

Maybe you don’t want to believe my experience. That’s okay. I’ve got the receipts. 

It’s been a long-standing phenomenon in Magic that when a set comes out, it’s at its most expensive. You can get into the economic principles if you’re so inclined, but that’s not my area of expertise. I’ve simply been around enough new sets to know that things are almost never worth buying right away, except in the case of the most format-defining cards, or the biggest cross-format stars. 

Before you buy that new card, understand that for 99% of the cards, you should wait two weeks, at minimum. Let’s take some quick examples from early in Zendikar Rising:

Ancient Greenwarden has some delightful Commander synergies and is probably worth a look at buying, given that supply is at max right now. Preorders were all above $20, some as high as $25. 

Forsaken Monument is a card I like right now, especially in FEA around $13, but the regular versions were going for $17 at the start of the set, a full $10 higher than they are now.

Let’s take a trip back farther, to Throne of Eldraine. How about a low-circulation card, only available in a Commander deck, which might run out? 

Nope, dropped like a rock. How about a regular mythic, The Royal Scions?

Ouch.

Now, on a long enough timeline, some of these can look solid. For instance, from early 2018, here’s the graph for Bramble Sovereign:

It was preordering in the $15-$17 range, so you had a chance to preorder at that price, wait 18 months, sell at $22, and make $2. Nothing to trumpet, but hey, profit is profit.

One thing I want to make clear: I’m talking about the preorder prices for the regular frame, nonfoil versions of cards. Stores generally aren’t preselling the premium versions of cards, because it’s difficult to know what you’ll get in the boxes you open, especially during a pandemic. The presence of special frames and foils will generally drive down the price of the nonfoil regulars, as the collectors with more to spend will go after those versions and leave the more basic ones behind. 

In Kaldheim, we have some pretty bad offenders, and hopefully, you’re not thinking about buying these until the dust settles.

Koma, Cosmos Serpent ($8) – I freely admit that this is a limited bomb, requiring an answer before that first upkeep trigger. It’s got some potential in Commander, but in the best Commander colors, it’s got some big competition. It’s going to drop, by at least half. If you have to have it right away, recognize the extra that you’re paying.

Esika, God of the Tree // The Prismatic Bridge ($10) – I love this card and I can’t wait to add it to my Ur-Dragon deck. The problem is, I’m going to need precisely one copy. Its color identity means that it’s five colors or bust, and that’s a niche market indeed. I can absolutely see a world where the foil showcase of this goes for $25+ and the regular nonfoil is under $4. Please don’t overspend on this when you don’t have to.

The World Tree ($7) – It takes a lot for a land to hold a price above $4 as a rare. It needs to be popular in more than one format, it needs to be useful, and pop up all over the place. Just like Esika, this is five-colors only, and yes, it’s a very sweet land for those decks. It’s not going to see any Standard play, and it’s got a big price drop coming. Please be patient.

Tibalt’s Trickery ($8) – This seems bad to me. Yes, it’s a red counterspell, but they are going to get something after all. Chaos Warp has a 33% chance (or so, most decks are around a third lands) to just whiff and give the controller a land to replace what you shuffled into the deck, but Tibalt’s Trickery guarantees a spell. I imagine this will see more play than it should, but price-wise, this is going to fall like a rock and you definitely don’t want to be an early adopter here. Wait till it’s a $1 card.

Valki, God of Lies // Tibalt, Cosmic Impostor ($19) – This seems absurdly high, even for a mythic that switches between being good early or good late. Yes, if you cascade into this card off of something like Shardless Agent you can choose to cast the backside, a decently-powered seven drop of a planeswalker, but that’s a pretty niche application. I think this card has potential, just not $20 a copy potential. More like $10, or $7.

Eradicator Valkyrie ($6) – Is this a decent card? Yes. It’s got good stats and an ability that can be relevant, but isn’t Rankle, Master of Pranks just better in every way? Lifelink is good, but this is destined to be outclassed for a long time. I think this falls a long way, approaching bulk mythic status.

There are some cards in this set that I think are fantastic, and I can’t wait to buy up some cheap stacks of cards in six weeks or so, but please, save yourself the money and don’t preorder anything.

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.