The word “Maelstrom” should make your ears perk up. Err, you know what I mean. Like, when you hear it, it should make your ears perk up. If you’re just reading it in the article, you’re just reading it. Maybe you hear, like, your own voice in your head so technically you’re hearing it, but you’re not, like, “hearing” hearing it so your ears won’t perk up. Let me start over.

The word “Maelstrom” should make you take notice. “Maesltrom” is a word they put on magic cards to let you know they are going to be worth money. Cascading is a form of cheating in Magic that is somehow legal. When you cascade, you get hecka card advantage and it’s also random so it’s fun, more fun than just tutoring for something. Maelstrom Wanderer is a popular commander so it stands to reason that another cascade commander will also be popular. Did I mention this one lets us play black spells? Because this one totally lets us play black spells. Behold.

This guy does it all, I mean, mostly. You still have to make contact with him, so cards that enable that are worth a look as well as spells that have a higher printed CMC than you end up paying. If you can cast an expensive spell you can both dome them with Vial Smasher and also cascade into good stuff. Yidris has been the number 3 most popular commander searched for on EDHREC every day for the last month and Vial Smasher is not far behind. With a new focus on spells that enable these two strategies, we could see some movement on a few key cards. I have some ideas.

This card is underrated and I feel like I bear some responsibility for that because I slept on this in my set review. I feel like I filed this under “I like this card OK but I don’t like it financially” which may have been because it was $2 or $3 pre-sale (I don’t remember) but I’m warming to this. If you think about it, you’re most likely playing in a pod with 4 players which means 3 opponents which means a 3 mana reduction. You look at EDHREC and notice that like 3,500 people are jamming Go for the Throat in their decks. With Curtain’s Call, you’re paying Dark Banishing mana and getting a double Go For the Throat with no color or type restrictions. Not only that, but you’re paying Dark Banishing mana for a spell that’s going to dome them for 6 with Vial Smasher and cascade into any CMC 5 or less spell when you cast this after hitting them with Yidris. All of the undaunted stuff is good in this deck (ish) but this is by far the best and I feel like it’s not relegated to decks where you’re trying to cast high CMC spells.

Granted, there is inherent weakness with this spell given you need two legal targets to cast it, but this isn’t Hex in Limited we’re talking about. We’re not trying to cast Decimate. We’re looking for two legal targets in a game with multiple opponents – it’s hardly a drawback. Speaking of Hex and Decimate, both of those spells are better in EDH and scale well into larger playgroups. This is the same and I feel like this is too cheap at $0.50. I doubt undaunted stuff gets reprinted soon and I feel like any black deck can jam this if it wants to. If you’re playing with 5 people this is like 5 times better than Go For the Throat. At its current price, I feel like the risk is pretty low, the upside is pretty high and people are going to start noticing this card. I feel very strongly about this. There is a lot of supply to soak up, but we’re up to the challenge. A lot of the copies that get opened will end up in the deck that gets built as a result.

This card is good enough to be banned in Modern and Legacy. A card good enough to be banned in both of those formats is worth looking at, don’t you think? We’re about to see one of two scenarios pan out – either being banned in Modern and Legacy is too strong and EDH won’t be able to muster enough demand to soak up all of these copies and the card will go nowhere or the fact that it’s banned in Modern and Legacy means the card is stupid powerful and EDH will make a stupid powerful card end up worth money. Treasure Cruise was reprinted in the Yidris deck which was a great opportunity to reprint Dig that they missed (or just didn’t decide to take). When else can they reprint Dig? It’s not going in Eternal or Modern Masters, not in Standard. It basically has to go in Commander 2017 to hurt the price. Commander 2018 will bring it back down, but by then it will have gone up if it was going to. I think this is as cheap as it will ever get, it’s bannably good, it’s stupid in Yidris, it’s tough to reprint and I don’t feel like I need a fifth thing. This card seems like a pretty good target and I will be a little surprised if this isn’t $2 or $3 in a year or two. There are a lot of copies to soak up, but the card is powerful.

This is the best red wrath ever printed. We have seen this card basically shrug off one reprint already. Do I expect it to shrug this one off? Not exactly, and therein lies opportunity. I think this printing in Commander 2016 will make it pretty cheap and cheap means there is a chance to scoop these. You know how I love those backward-J-shaped graphs because they’re an indication that we’re at the part of a U-shaped graph where we can still make some money. Blasphemous Act is unlikely to be reprinted in Commander 2017 because they seem to be skipping years which means you can get these for bulk and wait two years to see if this gets up to $3 again. You can make money on this card, so make money on this card.

That’s all I want to talk about in terms of cards that are expensive and get cast for less expensive because there is another trend I am noticing in Yidris decks. That’s that people are tending to play wheel effects in Yidris. A lot. Nekusar is using a lot of these wheels and since Nekusar isn’t going anywhere, we’re going to see more competition for these cards, even from people who already have copies of them that they’re using. When Leovold was printed, we saw an increase in Teferi’s Puzzle Box and Anvil of Bogardan because those can go in Leovold decks. Red wheels, however, cannot and this gives us a chance to grab red wheels before they go up. Will they? You tell me.

This graph is for Wheel of Fate. There is quite a drop-off to the next-most used but you will notice that Yidris uses it as much as Nekusar, maybe more as time goes on. The demand for this card just doubled. Its price might not double, but its demand doubled and that’s pretty significant. Is there money to be made on Wheel of Fate? Dunno, let’s look.

It would appear Nekusar demand has made it creep up. Now we’re looking at a potential second spike happening, which is even more promising. I think there is money to be made here, and out of all of the wheels, this is the one I’m most enthusiastic about. It’s really tough to reprint suspend cards often and this just had its demand double with more sure to come later. We have seen what could happen based on other wheel effects that Leovold spiked. Speaking of which, I imagine Puzzle Box isn’t done going up. You’re late to the party but sometimes even people who show up late can grab the last few cold beers at the bottom of the cooler if they’re willing to get their sleeves a little wet.

Finally, there’s one more thing that makes me want Wheel of Fate right now.

If this is a cycle, casting Suspend cards for free off of decent spells is a game-changer. I think you buy all of the suspend stuff.

The rest of the wheels don’t seem as juicy because they either got reprinted or are too expensive. Puzzle Box may be worth a look, though. Leovold hype is still powering it, but it’s not good in the Yidris deck.

Finally, we want to be hitting them. There isn’t a ton of money to be made on Whispersilk Cloak unless you’re picking it out of bulk, so let’s look at cards that let you get through again if you did once.

Second spike HYPE. Nekusar made this and other Relentless Assault effects go up and this is on its way back down. We’ve seen where one card making it spike and bringing all of the loose copies out of the woodwork made it go, Yidris is sure to at least hit the benchmark set by Nekusar and very likely exceed it. This is silly with Yidris, so, you know, play it in that deck. And buy it. A lot of copies are concentrated in the hands of dealers which means buying will signal the market and the cheap copies in binders and boxes that filled in the bottom of the price pyramid last time around are exhausted. Expect this to go up.

I feel like I talk about this every 6 months and whenever I do, it’s more expensive than it was the last time I talked about it. This card is on the uptick, anyway, they missed a chance to reprint it in the Kaseto/Ezuri deck and it pairs very nicely with hitting them in the face with your commander. Saskia could honestly use this, also. This card seems solid and it was growing already. I like this a lot and you should pick it up. I would be remiss if I mentioned this without also mentioning my favorite aura.

Bear Umbra is nuts. It’s an infinite combo with Hellkite Charger and that has been a staple of durdly EDH decks for years. This is Nature’s Will but only for your lands and you have to attack them with a specific creature. The upside is that you’re only really relying on hitting them with your commander anyway, and this also keeps him alive. This is going to go up until they reprint it. Luckily this isn’t in Planechase or Archenemy already so we’re not getting more copies of it dumped on us with some Anthology reprinting – this is in ROE and that’s it. ROE boxes are expensive and not getting popped so the umbras we got is the umbras we got. I like this long-term and Yidris being popular certainly won’t hurt this price.

I feel pretty good about most of these. I am interested in particular to see what happens with Curtain’s Call because I like that card and think it can go up and also Dig Through Time because that case can help us evaluate cards like it in the future. No matter what happens, wheels and Relentless Assault effects have some upside. Look into that stuff to see if there is anything I didn’t like the margins on if you’re feeling ballsy. Don’t forget to bookmark EDHREC – it’s the best resource for this sort of stuff and just glancing at the page for a commander is enough to give you a sense of what to pick up. That’s all for me this week – join me next week where we’re sure to have more accidental Aether Revolt spoilers and updated EDHREC metrics for other popular commanders. Ciao, nerds!

I was wondering there might be some overlap when I decided to steer this column into EDH territory since I’m already writing an EDH article. How would I differentiate the two? What I’m interested is not going to change day-to-day, is it? If I write about what I’m interested in, I’m obviously going to write about the same stuff and the two columns will bleed together. That’s what I thought, at least. The truth is, Commander 2016 has taught me that what I’m interested in when it comes to finance couldn’t be more different from what interests me as a deck-builder. When I build, I am super bored by the boring ways people are choosing to build Commander 2016 decks. The collective mass of all those stupid, boring, basic builds feels like a weight on my chest, crushing any creative impulses I have for fear of straying too far from the charted course and losing credibility somehow. When I buy cards, I like that weight. Heavy is good.

Boring means predictable. If everyone is going to build their stupid Atraxa deck the same way, we can predict what they’re going to do and get ahead of them and snag those cards for ourselves and a few extra copies to sell after they spike so our cards were free. If that is how you use M:tG Finance, you’re doing it just fine, in my view. You don’t need to be a hardcore financier to play EDH for free, you just need to think like one or listen to someone who is. Let everyone else build so basic that you could fetch their whole build with an Evolving Wilds. That just means it’s easier for us to figure out what they’re going to do before they do it and be ready for the cards they buy to go up. So what’s a build everyone seems to be doing the easy way?

How about the #2 most popular deck on EDHREC? Atraxa is #1 and we had a look there already, so let’s see if, unlike with Atraxa, people are being basic by adding cards that aren’t already in the precon. I think they will do some fairly predictable stuff and there’s money to be made.

This is like $9 everywhere and Modern isn’t really picking up the slack we had anticipated it would when it was unbanned. Spiking to $30, this returned to reality quickly and might not be done sinking. So why are we interested in a card that may be overpriced at its current $9 and isn’t getting the play people expected in Modern? That’s fairly simple – Thopter Foundry comes in the same precon Breya does and Sword does not. Anyone who has been playing Magic long enough or who checks EDHREC to see that 43% of the decks that run Breya as a general are running Sword of the Meek (compared to 70% for Foundry so far. Even people who haven’t been playing long enough to know the Thopter Sword combo are smart enough not to take Foundry out of the precon when they tune it up) will want a copy to go with the deck; and why not? Breya can do a lot of work with a pile of thopter tokens and you can make as many as you have mana for and then use them to win the game. Make 12 thopters with your mana, sac 6 to Krark-Clan Ironworks and use the other 6 to blast someone for 9 damage to the face. Since you can get two mana for each token you sac to KCI, you can go off with these cards in play and gain infi life and hit infi faces infi times. Sure, it’s a 4 card combo, but one of those cards is your general and the KCI isn’t totally necessary since you can do the thopter sword combo with Breya and go non-infinite to generate a ton of life, damage or murder a ton of creatures. Speaking of which,

this is $4ish. I feel like this card is super reprintable, but it always seems to dodge reprinting. It’s unlikely a set that will be legal in Standard will print this because it’s so abusable and curtails the cards they can print alongside it. That leaves supplemental product and they’ve decided not to print this so far despite having lots of chances. I don’t hate this as a pickup at its current price but I feel a little hesitant. It just feels like it could get reprinted any minute. I realize that’s not a very anaytical approach to this, but I don’t like to buy in when I have a bad feeling even if data doesn’t bear it out. There are enough good opportunities I do feel good about, after all. If you don’t have some weird sense about this, I suggest buying a combo piece that goes in decks with artifacts. We’re getting Aether Revolt soon which means more artifact shenanigans which means every artifact EDH deck gets better and new ones will pop up. I don’t see a KCI reprint in Aether Revolt so I think this is safe-ish. This has seen $10 in the past and could again, so I feel good about this around $4 or $5.

Remember how much we like second spikes? Well here’s a card that’s due for one.

Some shenanigans in Modern made this spike a bit a while back to around $4 and I think it’s super reasonable for it to get there again. This is a very good card and does a ton of work in a lot of different decks. Artifact decks need sac outlets and tutors and this is both. A 4x multiplier indicates there is either EDH or Vintage interest (or both?) and while this is reprintable, it wouldn’t likely happen for at least another year. Breya plus Aether Revolt is pretty good for artifacts and this has spiked recently which means a second bout of interest in the card will increase the price more sharply. You want to get these now if you need them, and maybe buy extras. This seems like a fine target.

Thopter Assembly is a shoo-in for this deck, but with a million $0.40 copies of the stamped prerelease foil floating around, there isn’t much money to be made on that card. Still, its inclusion in the deck is natrually going to lend itself to people playing Time Sieve, another combo card. Time Sieve and Thopter Assembly go together like shocks and fetches and while there isn’t much money to be made on Assembly, it’s showing up increasingly in Breya decks (enough to make the EDHRCEC page at a 35% rate of inclusion – not bad for a card not in the precon) and that means cards that combo with it have upside. Again, Aether Revolt could give us some cards that combo very nicely with Time Sieve, also and by the time those cards are revealed, it will be too late to buy in because everyone else will notice, too. Accordingly, we’re not going to rely on Aether Revolt to give us stuff to make these cards go up, but we can allow for the possibility that prices will go up more quickly than anticipated and it makes me want to act on my artifact-based specs a little quicker than my general specs.

Out of everything we talked about today, this feels the “heaviest.” It has the most inevitability and the least sex appeal. No one is going to laud you as a genius for identifying this as a spec but you’re literally just going to make money if you buy this. This is your M:tG Finance 401k. It’s not very exciting but you can retire off of this. This is a card from Coldsnap. Coldsnap is a set they didn’t sell a lot of and which didn’t have any exciting cards at the time. Now Coldsnap is a $300 booster box (some on eBay are $400 and even $500 Buy it now) and has a lot of $5-$10 cards years later, including foil snow-covered lands. I’m not saying buy a box, I’m saying buying a box probably isn’t worth it. If Arcum isn’t reprinted and no one is going to pop those boxes of Coldsnap, $7ish starts to look like a great buy-in point for a card like Arcum. After all, he’s not just a great inclusion in artifact decks who can serve as a way to murder pesky artifact creatures like Steel Hellkite before they wreck you, he is also a decent commander in his own right, although EDHREC only has about 150 entries for him. He’s got combo potential, pairs well with cards like Umbral Mantle and Intruder Alarm and he’s only going to get more popular as we get deeper into another artifact block. His growth has been steady and consistent and I actually got a few of these in bulk rares sold to me a while back which goes to show that people underestimate this card. Demand isn’t the highest compared to other cards and the price still got to where it is now so any boost in demand should change the slope of the graph pretty precipitously. I like this as a pickup.

This is another card that’s obvious. I hope this gets cheap and someone doesn’t decide to go 3-1 on MODO with a deck that has this in it so we can scoop these affordably. This is Parallel Lives levels of obvious. It’s Hardened Scales reprintable, also, so watch that, but I feel like if you can trade any $2 Kaladesh card for this at $2 you’re almost certain to win in two years when the card you traded away is a dime and this is $5. Should I mention this card every week? It’s worth watching periodically because as soon as we deem the price to be cheap enough that it makes sense to buy in, there is real money to be made on a card this good. It does everything you need a card to do in EDH and it is even colorless so decks that don’t typically get effects like this can use it.

Obvious is good for us because obvious means a lot of people will all think of it independantly of each other. If you want an obscure card to catch on, someone has to point it out for that to effect the price and that person has to have enough reach and influence to make a big enough group all follow along to do anything to the price. Who needs that? Give me obvious any day. Let hundreds of people come to the same conclusion and fight each other for a limited amount of stock in obvious cards. Obvious means we’re less likely to miss it, also, and we don’t have to go to a bunch of obscure sources all the time to catch weird, obscure tech. Keep an eye on what people are doing and always remember, obvious doesn’t always mean there is no opportunity. WotC bundled a bunch of obvious cards with the Atraxa deck, which was frustrating, but one look at Breya shows us there are still a lot of avenues to profit. If they reprint half of a ridiculous combo, there is upside in the other piece. Half of a lot of combos are showing up in the Breya deck and it’s only a matter of time before people put two and two together. When they do, be ready.

That’s all for this week. Next week I’m sure there will be some more to look at from Commander 2016, so stay tuned, nerds. Until next time!