All posts by Guo Heng Chin

Guo Heng started kitchen table Magic as a kid, during Urza's Destiny. He played intermittently and casually until Innistrad, where he began to grind the competitive circuit. It was then that he became hooked on the magical substance that is cardboard crack and it dawned upon him that Magic finance is a good way to subsidize his habit. Guo Heng started writing for MTGPrice in October 2014. A competitive grinder himself, he focuses on the mtgfinance of competitive Magic. Catch him on Twitter @theguoheng.

Foreign Language (Cards) for Dummies

By Guo Heng Chin

First and foremost, I have to apologise to you readers and my editors for the late publication of this article. I am currently in Tokyo with intermittent internet access. With that out of the way, let’s dive into a topic that is close to my heart: foreign language foils.

Foreign language cards and foils never used to catch my interest. I delegated them to the realms of hardcore Commander, Legacy and Modern players with wallets thicker than their decks.

Then on one fine day, my girlfriend brought back two boxes of Korean Theros from her trip to South Korea, and I opened this in one of the boxes:

It's hammer time!
It’s hammer time!

Oh my, it looked gorgeous. I grew up speaking English, Malay and Cantonese but I only wrote in English and Malay, which also used Roman alphabets. The Korean script read to me like ancient runes, fittingly on a card that summons a god, and it looked absolutely fascinating in foil. After going through two boxes of Korean Theros, I started to find myself with a thirst for foils in scripts intelligible to myself.

The Tiers of Foreign Cards

One of the first thing every foreign language cardphile learns is the rarity tier of languages and their corresponding price multipliers. This would be exceedingly familiar to many of you, and countless articles have been written about the topic, so I am going to quickly skimp through it for the new entrants and the uninitiated.

English cards are the baseline, being the default language of Magic cards. The European languages, French, Italian and Spanish have a similar or lower valuation in relative to their English counterparts. From my own experience, when I was living in London Spanish, Italian and French cards were valued slightly lower than their English counterparts, both on player-to-player trading and on magiccardmarket.eu, and for both non-foils and foils including eternal staples like Thoughtseize. German is the only exception; some cards have awesome, punny and sometimes politically incorrect names in German:

Athreos, God of Passage (German)Myr Superion

However, back in Malaysia, most European language cards command a higher price than English cards. A rule of thumb for valuing non ‘tier one’ foreign language cards and foils is that they are only worth the amount your trade partner is willing to pay for them.

Non-Roman alphabet languages generally demand a higher price for their cool factor: 

Foil Japanese Brainstorm from eBay user kidicarus.
Foil Japanese Brainstorm from eBay user kidicarus.

The cheapest of the tier one languages is Japanese, considered to be the third most expensive but most accessible of foreign language cards due to the fact that most LGSes worldwide have Japanese booster allocations.  Big Japanese stores like Saito Card Shop also have an English-friendly online presence with a large Japanese non-foil and foil inventory making it easier for anyone around the world to acquire Japanese singles.

The top two rarest languages are Korean and Russian. While most local game stores have a small allocation of Korean and Russian boxes, most stores do not stock them unless requested, or the stocks fly right off the shelves if there are demand for them due to the small allocation. Buying Korean and Russian singles online are  much harder. I tried looking for an online venue to purchase Korean singles to little avail. Even the large Korean Magic: the Gathering stores recommended to me by a Korean friend do not have English websites and Google Translate was horrible at it, especially when I tried to use the search function. I have not done as much research for Russian singles sites but a quick search did not yield any website in English.

The only way to acquire Korean or Russian boxes en masse would be to be in South Korea or Russia yourself, or hope that your LGS stocks them or is willing to order them for you using whatever limited allocation Wizards gave them.

Simplified Chinese cards are cheaper than their English counterparts due to Simplified Chinese cards being perceived to be in high supply, and while Traditional Chinese cards are scarcer, the difficulty in differentiating Simplified and Traditional Chinese for the untrained eye made it that Traditional Chinese cards do not command a significant bump in price.

Non-foil foreign language Japanese, Korean and Russian cards are only slightly more expensive than their non-foil English counterparts, even for eternal staples. As of writing, Korean Thoughtseizes are going for just about $10 more than an English one. The Japanese store I visited were selling Japanese Polluted Delta for 1950 – 2000 yen, which is just $4 – $5 more than an English one.

The foreign language price multiplier gets insane when you look at foil eternal staples, even those currently being opened. The Japanese stores I visited were selling foil Japanese Polluted Delta for 20, 000 yen, which translates into roughly $170. Completed listings on eBay for Korean foil Polluted Delta showed winning bids at around $320. The last sold Russian Polluted Delta on eBay went for slightly higher than $1000.

Pricing Foreign Foils

Foreign non-foils are pretty easy to price, the tier one languages are usually a few dollars more than English versions. Pricing foreign foils is a more arduous task.

The first thing I did after cracking foil Korean Purphoros was to check if I have struck gold.  While I easily looked up the prices for my English foils on MTGPrice.com, attempting to pin a value on foreign cards required more digging, and the fact that Korean was the second rarest language made it felt like trudging through a wild west of card price. When I first looked up on completed sales of foil Korean Purphoros, God of the Forge on eBay, I was estatic to see one sold for $120, which was six times the price of a foil English Purphoros, God of the Forge at that time (January 2014). A few months later, a Korean-based seller was relisting a foil Korean Purphoros for $80 multiple times and no one bought it.

Japanese cards are easier to price thanks to Saito’s Card Shop.  Without any English-friendly online Korean or Russian stores to check for prices (and assuming that like me, you do not speak Korean or Russian), your best bet would be either eBay or the High End Magic Stuff for Sale Facebook Group. While eBay shows you the price at which a card was sold at, it is not often that you can find a card you are looking for and eBay archives old listings, making it more difficult to research. More often than not, you would find no recent sold listings for foils that are not in high demand. The High End Magic Stuff for Sale have a larger listing for you to search through, the prices listed there may not be the price at which the card was bought, and many posters are open to best offers.

Keep in mind that foreign foils, especially the high end ones are only worth as much as the party on the other end of the transaction is willing to pay. The price for foil Korean Purphoros, God of the Forge is a good example. The listing that sold when I first looked it up early this year so happened to meet a buyer willing to fog up $120 for it (Purphoros is popular in Commander I hear), but later listings struggled to find even someone willing to pay $80 for it. As for my own foil Korean Purphoros, I probably will not part with it even for a foil Korean Polluted Delta. The sentimental value attached to it is worth much more to me than a foil Korean Polluted Delta.

I hope you have gleaned some useful information on foreign cards and foils pricing tiers and  how to find out how much they are worth. Join me next week as a recount my Magic adventures in Tokyo.

Edit: The price for foil Japanese Polluted Delta was corrected from 200, 000 yen to 20, 000 yen.  The author would like to thank reader Ben Q who pointed out the extra zero typo.


 

Commander Foil: Blue & My Modern Keeps

By Guo Heng Chin

Blue and I go a long way back. Throughout my competitive Magic life, I was a hardcore blue player. I would never attend a tournament without my arsenal of counterspells and card draw, be it a casual Friday Night Magic or a Pro Tour Qualifier. I still play blue nowadays and card draw spells have yet to cease to excite me but my love affair with blue has been less intense, in no small part due to Wizards pushing Magic’s design paradigm towards more interactivity (read: less counterspells, more creatures). Nevertheless, the majority of my Commander decks still run blue, as the number of design mistakes in blue is too damn high.

Before I begin, yes there was no typo in the title of today’s article. Its Commander Foil: Blue because I only wrote about a single Commander foil today.

My research initially yielded four blue Commander foil to discuss, but the Modern Masters 2015 announcement threw a wrench into my plans. It was no surprise that Helene Bergeot’s announcement before the finals of the World Championship would unveil the next Modern Masters set, however it was beyond my expectation that Modern Masters 2015 would include the blocks from the first Modern Masters( Eighth Edition through Alara Reborn) on top of the new blocks (Zendikar and Scars of Mirrodin).

I made my picks with the assumption that Modern Masters 2015 was going to pick up where Modern Masters left off, and at the very least includes Innistrad with Snapcaster Mage and Liliana of the Veil carrying a hefty price tags today. In retrospect I should have saw the hints: handing out Geist of Saint Traft and Griselbrand as tournament participation promos and Liliana of the Veil as the prize for winning a Preliminary Pro Tour Qualifier were Wizards’ attempts to alleviate the price of expensive Modern staples from Innistrad (someone mentioned this in an article or tweet but I could not seem to retrace it. Drop me a comment if you know who it was and I shall add a reference to that person). While I was happy that my Snapcaster Mages shall retain their value for a little longer, and potentially even experience a bump in price, the Modern Masters 2015 announcement meant that three out of four of my undervalued blue Commander foil picks, which were from the original Mirrodin block, were invalidated due to the increased risk of a foil reprint. Oh well, I guess I can’t have the cake and eat it too.

Nevermind that. The announcement of Modern Masters 2015 gave me plenty of writing fodder. Jared Yost wrote a marvelous overview of the cards that could see a reprint in Modern Masters 2015, so I am not going to discuss that that, read his article if you want an overview. The announcement of Modern Masters 2015 made me reevaluate a whole bunch of my Modern stakes, so after discussing the single remaining blue Commander foil, I am going to delve into an in-depth audit of my Modern holdings.

Stealing Spells in Style

First, put your hands together for the Commander foil of the day:

All your spells are belong to us.
All your spells are belong to us.

Gatecrash Foil Price: $1.97

No. of Foil Printings: 1

Gatecrash’s Primordial cycle was blatantly aimed at Commander players, with each Primordial triggering an iconic spell effect in its color upon entering the battlefield. Sylvan Primordial, the green one, was so game-warping that it was banned in Commander. While Diluvian Primordial was not the best Primordial in the cycle, it came pretty close to second. Commander games are full of powerful spells and stealing them and then casting them for free is just plain awesome and makes for many epic moments.

Diluvian Primordial also holds the virtue of being in the same color as the dreaded Deadeye Navigator, because stealing your opponents’ spells just once is not good enough. Foils of Diluvian Primordial are going for under $2 as Gatecrash is relatively fresh in the Magic community’s memory, but I doubt its price would remain the same as Gatecrash fades further away in time. Diluvian Primordial is technically a cheat card and as I have described in my article on the Increasing Savagery Theory, these sort of cards increase in potential as more cards are added to Magic’s card pool.

The risk of Diluvian Primordial getting reprinted in future blocks is relatively low; while the Primordial cycle cards have names and creature types that are generic enough to fit into most planes, I doubt Wizards would be keen on reprinting the whole cycle given that Sylvan Primordial is banned in Commander and the Primordial cycle is pretty much geared at Commander players. If the Primordials were to be reprinted, it would most likely be in a supplementary product like the now-annual Commander releases where Wizards has the liberty of printing each Primordial independent of the cycle. The annual Commander releases would not impact the foil price of cards.

A Personal Modern Audit

The cards in my modern portfolio whose fate I was most excited to hear about in Helene’s announcement were these guys:

Snapcaster Mage was not a snap pick in limited, but he made up for it by snapping a few Lightning Bolts in Modern.
Snapcaster Mage was not a snap pick in limited, but he made up for it by snapping a few Lightning Bolts in Modern.

I was watching Worlds at my local game store after their Preliminary Pro Tour Qualifier (spoiler: I did not do well with RG Bees) when Helene came on screen. I literally jumped with joy when I heard that Modern Masters 2015 would only cover sets up to and including New Phyrexia.

Those Tiago Chans have been sitting in my folder since Innistrad was legal. Snapcaster Mage’s growth has been slow but steady, sitting at $32 as of writing, slightly less than double my buy-in price. $15 in growth in two years was not a great investment admitedly, but I bought those Snapcasters with the intention to sit on them for a long time, a decision spurred by a thought experiment suggested by @rezaaba which went along the lines of How many Tarmogoyfs would you buy if you can go back in time?

Snapcaster sees more play than Tarmogoyf in Modern, and nearly as much presence as Tarmogoyf in Legacy according to mtgtop8.com. Snapcaster Mage is also played in Vintage. I am not saying that Snapcaster has the potential to reach the hallowed price of Tarmogoyf, and I highly doubt it ever will, but I do expect Snapcaster Mage to see a slow, sustained growth through the years along the lines of Dark Confidant and Vendilion Clique, both cards that saw less play than Snapcaster Mage. Granted those cards came from the pre-mythic era and were from sets with a significantly smaller print run than Innistrad, they were also played much less than Snapcaster Mage.

I am of opinion that Snapcaster Mage would still retain his price even with an eventual reprint, with a multitude of outcomes dependent on a few variables:

Outcome I: Snapcaster is reprinted as a mythic rare in the Modern Masters set after Modern Masters 2015 (lets call it Modern Masters 201X). Assuming the set would still be a limited print run and the boosters retain a premium price tag, Snapcaster Mage’s price would not tank at all. I am hesitant to predict that Snapcaster would follow in the footsteps of Tarmogoyf, Dark Confidant and Vendilion Clique as the third Modern Masters edition is unlikely to spur that many new entrants into Modern as with the first Modern Masters.

Outcome II: Snapcaster is reprinted as a rare in Modern Masters 201X. Refer to Cryptic Command’s price trajectory after Modern Masters. It took a dip for a few months following Modern Masters’ release before clawing its way back up to higher heights, like a phoenix. From an economic point of view, I speculate that it is unlikely for Wizards to reprint Snapcaster Mage as a rare in Modern Masters 201X. By the time Modern Masters 201X comes around, Snapcaster Mage’s price would be much higher than his current price, and Snapcaster would be one of the marquee chase card of the set. Putting your marquee chase card as a rare reduces its exclusivity.

Outcome III: Snapcaster is reprinted as Grand Prix or World Magic Cup Qualifiers promo. These two scenarios would probably tank his price the most. However, I am using most in comparing it to the other outcomes, rather than in general. It is hard to predict how much of a hit Snapcaster’s price will take if he is handed out to every Grand Prix participant. Batterskull and Griselbrand, both eternal staple mythics with a single printing, have yet to recover from the dip caused by their Grand Prix promo, as with Geist of Saint Traft who lost half his value over the summer after being handed out as a WMCQ participation promo.

A note on cards with new art: The Modern Masters version of Dark Confidant and Sword of Fire and Ice demand a higher price tag compared to their older counterparts on average, with a more pronounced difference if you look at individual shops. This could be due to the fact that the Modern Masters version perceived to have a lower number of circulated copies. It is hard to predict the financial implications of a new art Snapcaster Mage. There are too many unknown variables here: how well-received will the new art be and how limited the print run of Modern Masters 201X would be. Regardless, I doubt new art would have an effect on the price of the old art version. It is not as if hordes of players would irrevocably reject the old art Tiago in favor a new face.

I am personally keeping my Snapcaster Mages for a few more years at the very least. Yes, I am taking a risk in which  one out of the three outcomes would result in a drop in price. I am willing to bear the risk because a) Snapcaster could not drop any lower than my buy-in price in 2012 and b) Snapcaster has the potential to be so much higher than he currently is it makes the risk tolerable.

Battering opponent's skulls since 2011.
Battering opponent’s skulls since 2011.

Thankfully those three Batterskulls above are my only copies and they are for personal use. A third copy just in case there comes a day when a tier one deck runs three copies of it. One day. Well, at least I do not need to share Batterskulls between my Duel Commander decks!

Tarmogoyf was pretty cheap. It only took three mana to turn it to your side of the board.
Tarmogoyf was pretty cheap. It only took three mana to turn it to your side of the board.

Threads of Disloyalty dodged the reprint bullet the first time around, but I doubt it will dodge it again. After a spike early this year, Threads is now sitting at $21, making it one of the more expensive sideboard cards in Modern and a good target for reprint. I am not sure how much would a Modern Masters 2015 reprint would hit its price in the long term. After all, Blood Moon is now twice its pre-Modern Masters price after taking a dip for a few months post Modern Masters.

Wizards laughed at the sanctity of the price of Modern staples.
Wizards laughed at the sanctity of the price of Modern staples.

See Threads of Disloyalty. Wizards be damned if it cost Modern players $81 just to hedge against Burn decks and discard spells (Three is the usual number of Leylines in the sideboard). Leyline of Sanctity is another card that is best bought a few months after Modern Masters 2015 comes out.

I scryed and I saw a bleak future for the price of Serum Visions.
I scryed and I saw a bleak future for the price of Serum Visions.

As Jared mentioned, Serum Visions is a highly likely candidate for reprinting. Theros had the scry mechanic, but unfortunately the plane does not have serum-producing Blinkmoths and Wizards is edging away from one mana blue cantrips from a design standpoint. Bad Wizards. I too think that there is a high chance we would be opening Serum Visions in Modern Masters 2015, seeing that Wizards chose not to reprint it in any of the supplementary products they could have fit Serum Visions in. I envision my $7 Serum Visions to be worth much less this time next year.

Eating Lighting Bolts since 2011.
Eating Lighting Bolts since 2011.

Another card I am glad that I only kept a personal playset.

Wizards is taking their promise to keep Modern accessible seriously and no Modern staples are safe from reprint. I think the era of insane Modern-induced spikes is coming to an end. That key four-of card in that new breakout deck at that GP/PT/SCG is too expensive? Just wait for the next Modern Masters/supplementary product/block set.

Modern staples are still viable investments but now with a lower profit margin and higher risk. If you want to speculate on Modern cards, do not get too greedy, leave the remaining 10% to the other person as per Corbin Hosler’s advice, be acutely aware of any news of upcoming products, and try your best to stay ahead of impending reprints with compulsive research.


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Picking Through Standard

By Guo Heng Chin

Today we will be deviating from our usual Commander foils to take a look at a few undervalued cards in Standard. I know, the price for the majority of Standard cards have already settled and we are at that time of the year again. No, I am not talking about the holiday season, though I very much look forward to it. I am referring to the annual December Standard price trough, when cards from the fall set experience a set-wide drop in price. December is the month when Magic Online redemptions have hit the market for a couple of weeks, and coupled with two months of heavy drafting (well, the fall set was all we had to draft with) creates the first price bottom of the fall set cards.

If you are looking to acquire the Standard pieces you need for your decks and complete your personal playset of Khans of Tarkir cards, now is a good time to do so. However, I would not move in on specs yet as most of the playable rares and mythics still have room to drop. The Khans will rule for another four more months before the Dragons of Tarkir evict them in March 2015.

Well, most of the rares and mythics anyway. Khans of Tarkir Standard proved to be a reasonably diverse metagame. Just as we thought the Abzan and Mardu decks have established their grip on the Standard landscape, a different clan shook the status quo. Sidisi Reanimator, or Whipdisi for those who prefer a more kinky nomenclature, is not a new kid in town. The deck debuted at Pro Tour Khans of Tarkir in the hands of Christian Seibold who missed the cut to top 8 by one win. Seibold then top 8 Grand Prix Stockholm with the same list a few weeks later. The very next week Jund master Willy Edel ravaged through Grand Prix Santiago with Sidisi Reanimator only to have his hot run tragically  ended by manascrew in the top 8. While Sidisi Reanimator possessed a phenomenal matchup against the creature-centric midrange decks, it fell out of favor and was relegated to the depths of tier two, surfacing only occasionally on Magic Online Daily Events.

Hail to the Queen

The new queen of Standard?
The new queen of Standard?

Sidisi, Brood Tyrant came back with a vengeance last weekend, taking down the Star City Games Open in Atlanta and making top 8 of Grand Prix San Antonio. The deck ripped through a field full of Abzan and Mardu midrange decks and turned Standard into Commander games. Sidisi Reanimator is well positioned in the current meta  due to the fact that most creature decks find it difficult to handle a resolved Hornet Queen, let alone multiple recurrences of Hornet Queens with Whip of Erebos.

You can currently buy the Sultai Khan  at $3.10, which is close to bulk mythic. For a mythic that sees play as a four-of in an archetype that is poised to be a tier one deck, $3 feels like the bottom or close to the bottom for Sidisi, Brood Tyrant.

Another reason to be bullish on Sidisi at $3 is the amount of love she has been getting from Commander players. Milling is perpetually popular with the Commander community and Sidisi is the ultimate self-mill commander, who by the way also churns out zombies (tribal fetish alert). Anyone following the Commander scene would have encountered a sheer number of articles written about Sidisi, Brood Tyrant as a commander since she was released. She is also in scoeri’s list of top fifty most played Commander (for the previous year). Granted, her position in the list could be down to the buzz of having a new Commander to tinker with, nevertheless it showed the amount of enthusiasm the Commander community have for Sidisi.

I have hopped on the Sidisi bandwagon myself and built a Sidisi deck. If I am not wrong, Sidisi, Brood Tyrant is the first tricolor self-mill commander, and the addition of green to a traditionally blue and black domain opened up a lot of intricate and awesome interactions the deck have access to. The design space for a Sidisi, Brood Tyrant deck is extremely deep, with a plethora of approach to building it (do you want go down the dredge path, or do you want to do a zombie tribal, or a mix of them both, or a Jund-like midrange deck).  Every Sidisi, Brood Tyrant deck exudes its own flavor and I can personally attest that Sidisi, Brood Tyrant is a commander that is both a fun exercise in deck construction and is enjoyable to pilot.

Which brings us back to our original point: Sidisi, Brood Tyrant, a mythic rare that is the engine of a potentially tier one archetype and also a really fun commander to build around, is only $3. I would not go in super deep, but I like the idea of having a few playsets of Sidisi as she is about as low as playable mythics go. If Sidisi Reanimator keeps on posting results, her price would spike. Worse case scenario, if Sidisi Reanimator does not gain widespread adoption (an unlikely outcome in my opinion, seeing how well the deck is positioned against the creature-centric midrange meta Wizards has been not-so-subtly encouraging), Commander demand would drive her price higher than it is now once Khans of Tarkir stops being drafted.

While I am bullish on non-foil copies of Sidisi, I am less so  for foil copies of the Sultai Khan, at least right now. I am confident that foil Sidisi will slowly inch up as with foils of popular commanders, but at $10 she still have room to drop. I would trade for foil copies of Sidisi over the next few months rather than buy them outright. Foil Sidisi is a long-term spec target with the aim of doubling or tripling up within a few years of Khans rotating out.

I have seen a lot of questions regarding the next two cards on the MTGFinance subreddit’s Weekly Ask MTGFinance Anything thread. While they are Standard-legal cards, the driver for their price stems from Modern and/or Legacy.

Laying Siege

The elephant in the room.
The elephant in the room.

The first card is Siege Rhino. What is the financial potential of non-foil and foil Siege Rhinos right now? Non-foil Siege Rhinos are on their way down as with most Khans of Tarkir cards due to the December price trough. I would not spec on them right now and I would only acquire them for my own use if I need them right now (Hey, I can finally afford to play Abzan). Siege Rhino still have some leeway to drop and it is okay to wait a month or two before moving in. Siege Rhino might also be reprinted in upcoming Clash Packs or Event Decks, ala Courser of Kruphix. Wizards has proven over and over again that they will reprint expensive Standard rares to make them more accessible.

The future of foil Siege Rhino is contentious. Foil Siege Rhino demands a hefty price tag due to the amount of play the card sees in Modern. While everyone was clamoring over the perceived warping power Treasure Cruise asserted on Modern, the first post-Khans Modern Grand Prix in Madrid featured more Siege Rhinos in the top 8 than Treasure Cruises. So did the subsequent Star City Games Premier Invitational Qualifier (but not last weekend’s though).

Siege Rhino is the best arsenal Abzan-based decks have against UR Delver and I suspect that played a role in the widespread adoption of Siege Rhino in Modern. If UR Delver were to drop from its current level of dominance, would Abzan and Pod decks still retain their Rhinos? Would Abzan still prefer Siege Rhinos over Dark Confidants in a meta with less Forked Bolt and Lightning Bolt?

Personally, I think those decks would still run a non-zero amount of Siege Rhino. Siege Rhino is the epitome of a value card: it is a Lightning Helix on an undercosted, trampling ⅘ body, exactly the kind of card Abzan and Pod decks love to play.There are not many cards in Modern that trades with Siege Rhino on parity. Regardless of the Delver threat, Siege Rhino is good enough to be included in Modern, I am just not sure if it would still be a four-of in a meta with a different bogeyman.

At $13, foil Siege Rhino has room to grow, but I am not keen on getting foil copies right now. I am inclined to wait and see if Treasure Cruise gets the ban come the Modern Pro Tour early next year.

The second card is Eidolon of the Great Revel. Many Redditors asked whether Eidolon’s price right now makes for a good buy-in. Eidolon of the Great Revel is on a downtrend after its double-spike over the summer and can be picked up today for $6.6.

The Other Broken Red Two Drop

Reveling in its new status as a Modern and Legacy staple.
Reveling in its new status as a Modern and Legacy staple.

Lets see, Eidolon of the Great Revel is a four-of auto-include in Modern and Legacy Burn and it comes from a small spring set (low supply alert). Eidolon has a slim chance of being reprinted anytime soon with its Nyx-ified border and ‘Enchantment Creature’ type unique to Theros. Is Eidolon of the Great Revel a good buy right now? You bet. The card has the hallmark of an eternal card poised for appreciation over the years. It is a good time now to secure your own playset and any extra playsets for investment. Modern Masters II is likely to come out next summer and it would instigate another wave of Modern players. Burn is a budget-friendly entry level deck into Modern and those new players would be looking for their Eidolon of the Great Revels. I am not a fan of waiting until rotation to pick Eidolons up; it seems to be a new trend for Modern staples to not buck in price upon rotation. See Snapcaster Mage and shocklands.

How about foil copies? Eternal players like to foil out their decks don’t they? I am afraid the cruise has left the port a long time ago for foil Eidolon of the Great Revel. If you did not acquire your copies back in June when it was $7 apiece, it is probably best to stay away from speculating on foil Eidolons. I do not think $30 is the ceiling for a foil Modern and Legacy staple from a small spring set, but I have no idea when foil Eidolons would make the next jump and there is a significant opportunity cost at its current buy-in price.

Speaking of Standard cards with Modern application, the last card we will be looking at in this article is another Modern staple with a surprisingly low price right now. I revved up my competitive Magic engine again two weekends ago after a six-month hiatus from competitive Magic, in anticipation for the upcoming PPTQ season. I decided to start out with Caleb Durward’s GR Bees which seemed well positioned against a creature-heavy, midrange-fest of a metagame. And also because I already own most of the cards and I would not have to spend a fortune on getting the cards in real life (for practice) and online (for more practice). When I was purchasing the missing components, I could not believe the price Chord of Calling was going at. I thought the shopkeeper must have got the price for the wrong card!

What Calls?

The best way to call for the cavalry.
The best way to call for the cavalry.

When I took a hiatus from competitive Magic back in June, Chord of Calling was a $40 Modern staple. Now Chord of Calling is just a $4 rare. While Chord of Calling is not as ubiquitous like Eidolon of the Great Revel, it remains an integral piece in Birthing Pod. Chord of Calling may be out of vogue in current Pod lists, but it was not too long ago in Pro Tour Born of the Gods where Jacob Wilson and co.’s Pod list ran three Chord of Calling.

It is a great time to buy into Chord of Calling now. It does not see much Standard play and has fallen out of favor in the current Modern meta, being a bit slow against Delver. Modern’s metagame is constantly in flux and Chord of Calling could easily be a $10 card (and that me being conservative with my prediction) before the end of next year, with a much higher long-term value.


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Commander Foils: Red

By Guo Heng Chin

Today we will be taking a look at popular red Commander foils that are criminally underpriced. I have been tinkering with the new Daretti, Scrap Savant deck which was an absolute blast to play with, and has about the best combination of Vorthos appeal to me Wizards could ever conjure up in a deck. I have an affinity for artifact decks and I love dragons but I never once imagined the day where a preconstructed deck would combine my favorite kind of deck with my favorite creature type. Thank you Wizards.

So I spent the last week or so looking for cards to bolster my Daretti deck, and at the same time kept an eye out for any potential foil Commander specs in red.

The most obvious one was a card already in the Daretti preconstructed deck :

It is blasphemy not to run Blasphemous Act in your red Commander decks.
It is blasphemy not to run Blasphemous Act in your red Commander decks.

Foil Innistrad: $3.74

No. of Foil Printings: 1

The price of foil copies of Blasphemous Act in relation to the amount of play the card sees in Commander is sacrilegious. Blasphemous Act is the third most played red card in scoeri’s database of most popular cards in Commander (compiled from all the Commander decklists posted or updated on mtgsalvation.com within the previous 365 days), and was also highlighted as a Commander staple in other lists of Commander staples here and here.

Blasphemous Act is the best red sweeper in Commander, in terms of damage to mana cost ratio. While most red sweepers scale in damage with the amount of mana spent to cast it, in Commander games Blasphemous Act is often a one mana spell that deals thirteen damage to everything, taking out even Eldrazis (at least those that are legal).

I am fairly surprised to find foil Blasphemous Acts sitting at just $3.74, with a stagnant price since the beginning of this year. Non-foil copies dipped in price slightly when Blasphemous Act was reprinted in the Commander 2014 Daretti deck, but the price of foil copies remained static.

Blasphemous Act is a very flavorful card and is not easy to fit into any block set. It could be included in Modern Masters II where there would be foil reprints, but I doubt Wizards would want to spend a rare slot on a card that was just reprinted in a supplemental product. Even if Blasphemous Act is in Modern Masters II and they significantly increase the print run of Modern Masters II compared to that of Modern Masters, the set will probably still be a limited print run product and I doubt that will tank the price of foil Blasphemous Acts by a large margin, if any at all.

At $3.74, I am bullish on foil copies of the best red board wipe in Commander.

Red has always been weak in the card selection and advantage department, which explains why some of the most popular red cards in Commander are Windfall-style cards.

It’s a Miracle!

Reforge your hand together with your soul.
Reforge your hand together with your soul.

Foil Avacyn Restored: $5.43

No. of Foil Printings: 1

Wheel of Fortune, the second most played red card in the list is a bit pricey, with the cheapest copy going for $20.80, but you can pick up foil copies of a functionally similar card at $5.43. Reforge the Soul has a near to nil chance of being reprinted in foil form with the highly polarised reception of the miracle mechanic. Furthermore, miracle cards have a special card frame, a point which I will return to in a bit. Reforge the Soul is currently the sixth most popular red card in Commander according to scoeri’s list.

Food for Thought:

I am going to delve into the realms of speculation here and argue that the unique card frame of a foil Reforge the Soul grants the card extra value in terms of collectibility. I would not say that a non-foil copy of a miracle card looks significantly better than cards with normal frames, but if you have seen a foil miracle card in real life, you would understand what I am trying to say:

Cameras do not capture miracles well, the reason why miracles are hard to document.
Cameras do not capture miracles well, the reason why miracles are hard to document.

Tell me the foil miracle card above does not have a sweet, shiny border. I think many would agree that the miracle border design brings out the shine in the foil.

While aesthetic appeal is a subjective issue, collectibility can be roughly defined as being correlated with the rarity and uniqueness of a card. Magic is a trading card game, and a card’s collectibility affects its price. Reprints with different frames (pre-Eight Edition frame versus the Modern card frame) or art are valued differently and I have an inkling that Commander-playable cards with a miracle border would possess a higher collector’s appeal based on the merit of being printed with a border found only in Avacyn Restored.

My argument is extremely speculative; discounting Judge Foil reprints in old borders, playable foils in miracle and Nyx-ified borders are relatively new and there has yet to be data to validate my point.

It’s a food for thought though.

Red Smashes Better than The Hulk

One of the reason I play Commander is that besides the camaraderie and insanely fun interactions, the format allows me to indulge in my sadistic tendencies in a socially acceptable manner. Back when Commander 2013 was just released, my pet Commander deck was a griefer Bant build that abuses the power of Derevi, Empyrial Tactician. I did not made many friends in the local 1v1 Commander scene with that deck. Thankfully Derevi got banned in 1v1 Commander before I alienated the whole community.

In my search for ways to spice Daretti up with a little grief, I stumbled upon the next card:

Foil Vandalblast
Vandalising Commander games since the fall of 2012.

Foil Return to Ravnica: $3.64

Number of Foil Printings: 1

Cheat in a Mycosynth Lattice with Daretti’s second ability. Overload a Vandalblast for a one-sided Obliterate and the ultimate schadenfreude moment, combo courtesy of Reddit user smokedoor5.

Destructive revelries aside, Vandalblast is the fifth most played red card in Commander as detailed by scoeri’s list above, and it is easy to see why: the power level of overload cards increase by magnitudes in Commander games. And they are asymmetrical, which is nice.

Vandalblast also sees play as a two-of in the sideboard of Modern Blue Moon and UR-based decks as a flexible Shatterstorm. Foil price alert there. Check out the price for another popular Modern sideboard card from the same block.

Foil Vandalblast is $3.64 as of writing, double its price from a month ago but if foil Wear//Tear broke $10, I am confident about the prospects of foil Vandalblast, which is a also a Commander staple on top of its Modern playability.

Talking about Commander staples that are also played in Modern brings me to the next card, a creature whom I have lost countless Modern games to.

Come to the Infinite Side

Conscripted into your Kiki-Jiki combo.
Conscripted into your Kiki-Jiki combo.

Foil Avacyn Restored: $1.81

No. of Foil Printings: 1

A Threaten on a pair of hasty legs, Zealous Conscripts is a decent Commander card on its own. However, the bulk of Zealous Conscripts’ popularity stemmed from the fact that Zealous Conscripts comprised the other half of the infinite combo with Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker which is popular in both multiplayer and 1v1 Commander, and is the centerpiece of Modern Kiki Pod.

Being the only mono-red creature that can go off with Kiki-Jiki, Zealous Conscripts’ popularity hinged on Kiki-Jiki, who is well-loved in Commander both as one of the ninety-nine or as a Commander for his ability to go to town on value and his ability to pull off infinite combos. Any deck that runs Kiki-Jiki would want to run Zealous Conscripts and vice versa. As of writing, Kiki-Jiki placed seventh on scoeri’s list of most played red cards in Commander, and Zealous Conscripts barely trailed the cloning goblin at ninth place.

Being the foil rare in one of the Avacyn Restored preconstructed deck depressed the price tag of foil Zealous Conscripts. However, I highly doubt foil Zealous Conscripts would stay under $2 in the long term with the amount of play it is currently seeing.

Blazing Ahead

Judging from comments on Reddit and Twitter, the Daretti deck seemed to be very well received. Both Daretti and Feldon of the Third Path allow you to cheat-in creatures (and artifacts for Daretti) at well below their casting cost, an ability that is immensely popular with the Commander crowd. Daretti and Feldon’s popularity could equate to an influx in demand for Commander staples that fit into  mono-red Commander decks, driving up the prices of currently undervalued red foil Commander staples.

We are beginning to see the effect Daretti has on cards that fit into the deck: foils of Kudoltha Forgemaster, an artifact that fits perfectly in Daretti decks just spiked to $15 the day before this article is written and published.