All posts by Jason Alt

Jason is the hardest working MTG Finance writer in the business. With a column appearing on Coolstufff Inc. in addition to MTG Price, he is also a member of the Brainstorm Brewery finance podcast and a writer and administrator for EDHREC's content website. Follow him on twitter @JasonEAlt

Commander 2016 Reprint Guide

There are a LOT of reprints in Commander 2016 and I’m not going to cover them all. However, there are quite a few that I think are worth discussing either because their value will decline more than you might think or because the value is likely to recover. This is a pile of weird Conspiracy exclusions and busted specs. Let’s do this by color because that’s how the WotC visual spoiler is organized and you’re not my supervisor.

Blind Obedience

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This was experiencing some pretty modest growth and I liked it long-term. Not anymore, though. I think I may have underestimated the reprint risk a bit by even mentioning this in the past. They have printed so many cards that do what this does, minus the extort so I thought they forgot about it. This won’t recover.

Cathar’s Crusade

They are just going to reprint this forever. Since it was never old in the first place, there are infinity copies of this card. Stay away.

Ghostly Prison

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This was doomed from the moment they banned Splinter Twin. It was a $5 EDH card that became a $20 Modern card. Now that this just an EDH card again, it will be hard-pressed to be $5 in the near future with this new reprint. I think long-term this is a loser, despite being very good. It may grow, but not enough to bother. This is a trap.

Reveillark

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This shrugged off a Modern Masters reprinting. I think we’re going to see that there is a big difference between a Modern Masters reprinting and a Commander one. I think this will either not recover, will recover more anemically or will take longer. I wouldn’t bank on this being $9 anytime soon no matter what happens.

Master of Etherium

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This HAS shrugged off Commander-sized reprints, though. Planechase was as big as the first Commander set, which, admittedly, wasn’t on the same scale as C16 is. It also saw a duel deck printing in the interim, though. This will dip but I bet Modern demand drives it right back up. If this his $4 or something absurd, and it might, buy in. Since this is in a deck with Solemn Simulacrum, Daretti (Man….) Hellkite Tyrant and Baleful Strix as well as a bunch of new cards, there isn’t much pressure on Master to be worth more than $4 or $5 and that means opportunity. Modern just eats copies of this card and EDH demand doesn’t help. I think there is opportunity here.

Army of the Damned

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The only question here is whether dumb-dumb speculation about Innistrad returning is the only reason this recovered from the Commander 2013 reprinting. I don’t think so given the shape of the graph. This may be able to shake off this printing, too. Worst case scenario, you have a card that won’t stay in a binder long.

Beacon of Unrest

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None of these fluctuations are due to reprints, this is all the card just being a card. I think this probably normalizes a buck lower than it is now at minimum. I know this appears like it’s shrugged off reprints before, but I think if this were just a fifth dawn card, it would be $15 by now but the reality is that there are a lot of copies out there and this doesn’t help.

Breath of Fury

There are like a dozen Relentless Assault effects that spiked because of Narset so they reprint the only one that is a bulk rare.

Kalonian Hydra

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I was asked to address this in the comments section. I initially obviously looked at this card because it is a hydra and it doubles stuff and what’s more EDH than that? However, I think the growth on this card has been kind of anemic. True it has doubled since it rotated out of standard and that is pretty substantial, I also think that we’re going to get a ton of copies dumped on us. I’m sure this card will recover, but I think it’s going to go to $3 or $4 from its current $12 and it will never be $12 again. So where will it end up? I could see this being $6-$8 in a year or two, so if that’s acceptable, I guess you could buy in, but I mostly think there are better finance targets. I’ll admit I should have mentioned this card before, but I was pretty dismissive once I saw the slope of its graph and for whatever reason I didn’t think this needed to be mentioned. That said, at the end of this article I sort of conclude “Everything else I mentioned probably won’t recover” which isn’t true of this card at all. There is decent reprint risk in commander 2017 or 2018 but if this isn’t reprinted it could be decent. Get these for trade, not cash is my suggestion.

Lurking Predators

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M10 cards are pretty old. If they were kids, they would have started first grade last month. When I see an M10 card go from $2 to $5 over the course of 6 years, no matter how good it is, I am not enthusiastic about it growing at that rate again with a bunch of new copies being dumped. It will probably be half that growth rate, or 3/4 of it. If you’re happy paying $2 for Lurking Predators and waiting until 2024 for it to be $5, go for it, but I think the rate is too slow for me. I’m glad this will be cheap so it can go in more decks but I’m not excited to buy in.

Oath of Druids

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People are really surprised by this, mostly because a lot of people thought this was banned in EDH, on the Reserved List, or both. It’s neither. Also, it’s not played enough in EDH for its price to be sheltered at all and it’s about to be a $2 card forever because basically Vintage plays this. Also, Oath of Ghouls is on the Reserved List and this isn’t. K.

Scavenging Ooze

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This is nothing if not an indication that they will print this card as many times as necessary. I like the idea of these being $2 for a minute, but I don’t know if this can recover as vigorously as in the past. I think this would have to get lower than it’s likely to for me to want to buy in.

Chromatic Lantern

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This is only in one deck. which attenuates the impact of the reprint somewhat. I think if this gets down to like $3, you buy in. This will go back up, and with a 4 or 5 color deck being unlikely next year, it should be relatively safe from reprint for a while and should recover a lot of value. Also, the omission of Coalition Relic gives that card some real upside.

Venser’s Journal

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This needed it. I used to buy these for like $0.50 from competitive players who just wanted bulk out of their binders and I’m excited to have a second crack at making money off of these. These might never be $6 again, but they’ll normalize above where they’re about to go.

Homeward Path

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I was surprised how little this dipped and how fast it recovered last time it was reprinted. I don’t think it getting reprinted every two years can lead to a situation where it can sustainably recover. I think this may be done.

I think the rest of the reprints in the set are going to be obvious. The prices will go down because there is more supply and the cards that were artifically being propped up like Ghostly Prison will tank more and won’t recover. I will re-evaluate these cards in the months to come but for the most part, everything I didn’t think was obvious to everyone is in here. Is there a card you’d like me to discuss? Leave it in the comments section and I can update the article. Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend.

Brainstorm Brewery #211 – Act Surprised When It’s My Pick

 

Brainstorm Brewery #211 – Act Surprised When It’s My Pick

We have a real problem. Our RSS feeds haven’t updated correctly and some people haven’t heard an episode since 203. Some people think we’re not a podcast. We ARE a podcast. We ARE. We record on the computer box and give it to you for free. Do us a favor – you’re able to access the cast because you’re reading this so obviously you have it. Share this cast with a friend. Tell people it’s still going. Help us reclaim the 20% or so of our listener base we lost to technical errors. Be our pals. We’ll be your pals back. Thanks, everyone.

  • Douglas Johnson is our guest (@Rose0fthorns)
  • Breaking Bulk is super early. Again. We barely have to change these notes.
  • COMMANDER 2016 STUFF
  • Don’t be a $&%
  • Standard rotation
  • Pick of the Week
  • Support our Patreon! DO IT. You know this cast makes you more than $1 a week
  • Need to contact us? Hit up BrainstormBrew@gmail.com

Contact Us!

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Douglas Johnson is and will forever be merely a guest

Commander 2016 Spoiler Coverage

Commander 2016 is being spoiled and this is going to be a very tough one to assess.

For reference, here is everything from Commander 2015 that ended up being worth more than $3 a year later. This can help us at least see which classes of cards are bound to go up, but this set is way trickier and I’ll get to why in a minute.

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The value is fairly well spread out over all of the decks to such an extent that the most valuable card in the set is only $9. There was no obvious deck to buy, really. I mean, Meren’s deck had a lot of good cards but the value didn’t end up concentrated in that deck so while Meren is easily the most popular commander to play with, the value is spread out nicely, with the Mizzix deck getting Mystic Confluence, the Kalemne deck getting Blade of Selves and Urza’s Incubator, the Ezuri deck getting Command Beacon and the Daxos deck getting Black Market and Karlov. Perfect; just how we want it.

Once we start spoiling cards you will see how weak the commanders are but how in combination with the others we can build good decks. Good decks means even weak commanders can see Meren’s $6 price tag, but with 45 combinations to choose from, it will take a while before the best combinations are discovered. Hopefully the value ends up other places. Let’s look at cards, shall we?

10/28/16 Spoilers

Treacherous Terrain

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I predict in a year or two, this will be worth more than some of the rares in the set. You’re going to dome everyone for like 10 with this a lot of the time.

I waited a few hours for SCG to update their prices and they still haven’t, so I guess we’re stuck with eBay. eBay’s not a bad metric to look at, anyway. Not that it matters, but eBay wants $2 for a playset of these. Don’t pay that.

Curtains’ Call

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This is pretty good. If you’re playing this for 4 mana, it’s a beating. It doesn’t exile itself, either, meaning you can loop this and really pull pants down. But what do I know? I advocate playing Hex in EDH. This, unlike Hex, won’t get stranded in your hand for lack of targets and you’re never paying its full mana cost. I like this card a lot. This can target any targetable creature, also, unlike spells like Go For The Throat which I see played a lot in EDH. 2 mana kill spells are less good in a format where you have 40 life and everyone spends the first few turns playing ramp spells and tutors. This is like $1 and I think that may wind up being too cheap in a year, but again, that all depends on the makeup of the deck it’s in.

Duelist’s Heritage

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This seems strong. It’s a better Battle Mastery because you don’t get blown out by removal, you can play it whenever and pick the target later, and this is good in decks other than just Voltron decks. Is this going to be worth more than the $2 this is on eBay right now? That’s hard to predict. I like this card but I think it may be a bit narrow. The bar for being worth $3 or more is pretty high on these sets as evidenced by our C15 data.

Benefactor’s Draught

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Will Benefactor’s Draught ever be Money Draught? Green has plenty of cards that draw you a ton of cards and this feels clunkier than they are. You’re relying on being ahead enough to force them to do a lot of blocking or on your opponents to attack the bejesus out of each other. Thing is, at least one of those things is bound to happen. Even if you only attack with two creatures and they get blocked, you played a Green Ancestral. Anything that can draw you this many cards is suspicious, untapping all of your creatures and drawing a card even in non-combat scenarios makes this even more suspicious. This is pre-selling for $1 and I am the kind of lunatic who would buy some at that price. This is a card with potential, something you can’t say about better cards in the set that are obviously better and are therefore pre-selling for higher.

Entrapment Maneuver

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This is a pretty bad Neck Snap. White doesn’t always get the best removal, except when it does, I guess. I mean, it doesn’t always get the best removal but they can’t take Path to Exile away from us. We don’t, however, have to play non-targeted removal that is pretty terrible if they have creatures of varying size. You get some dorks out of it and can leverage this into killing 2 attacks, but you can also trade a 1/1 token of theirs for one of your own with this, also. It’s too inconsistent and is likely a bulk rare.

10/27/16 Spoilers

Manifold Insights

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I don’t trust cards like this. Sure, you’re going to draw a lot of cards, but never what you want to draw. I suspect that even the worst x cards in your top ten may be better than we’re anticipating on paper, especially if your deck is land-rich. I don’t know if this will ever be worth more than $1.

Sidenote: When I checked this price, I noticed Deepglow Skate is $3 today. I liked it at $2 yesterday and I don’t like it that much less at $3 today because that at least indicates some people are off the fence. Are you off the fence, now?

Goblin Spymaster

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I like this card, a lot. That said, this is probably priced correctly at $1. Take a second look at the list of cards in Commander 2015 that are over $3. If you buy in at $1, you want it to hit at least 3, and this card is outclassed by everything that’s $3 in C15. That said, it’s a low-risk buy-in. Just know there are only a few opportunities per set and this is not among them.

Boompile

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Do EDH players want cards like this? I kind of hate this card. I think some decks that want to watch the world burn, need a reset and can’t afford Oblivion Stone and antisocial people will want this. $2 may be too high.

Thrasios, Triton Hero

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Legendary Creature – Merfolk
4: Scry 1, then reveal the top card of your library. If it’s a land card, put it onto the battlefield tapped. Otherwise, draw a card.

Partner

I saw people online calling this a bad, expensive Coiling Oracle, which is profoundly missing two points. The first is that if Coiling Oracle could be your general, that would be pretty amazing. The second is that repeatable abilities are very good. Throw in Scry on top and this is going to come down early and help the strategy of whichever commander this is paired with execute its strategy. SCG doesn’t have a price up, but I imagine it’s a buck or two. I’m not a buyer at that price, but this is a better card than people think.

Armory Automaton

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Artifact Creature – Construct
Whenever Armory Automaton enters the battlefield or attacks, attach to it any number of target equipments. (Control of Equipment doesn’t change.)

This is pretty saucy. You’re going to deprive a lot of people of a lot of equipment. Lightning Greaves are stripped off, suddenly leaving commanders with their pants down. They still get their triggers but if they have a lot of swords, just don’t attack with the automaton. People are chattering about this in Legacy to break open some of the equipment mirrors. That’s not the craziest thing I have ever heard, actually. Not that anyone has an opportunity to play Legacy these days. This is currently a $3 playset on eBay and I’m not personally buying in, but that’s a good price if you like this.

Seeds of Renewal

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If you’re playing with the right number of players, this is better than Restock, which isn’t saying much because no one plays Restock. This is likely a bulk rare.

Divergent Transformations

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Remember when Blue was the Polymorph color? Technically this is also the riskiest removal spell in the history of Magic, also, so it’s got some flexibility to it. I think this is a bulk rare, also, but I think it may play out more interesting than I initially think. Still not a good buy at $1 IMO.

Runehorn Hellkite

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So Nekusar gets another wheel, this time a wheel that you can discard and still use? Good grief. The rich keep getting richer, don’t they? At least this can’t go in Leovold decks, too. I don’t know if this is worth $3, but being able to be whammed in Nekusar and its dragon status make that a pretty safe bet of where it will end up.

Yidris, Maelstrom Wielder

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At least they gave him trample, I guess. Otherwise this card would make the least sense of all of the 4-color cards, and that group includes a creature with a passive ability for proliferate decks stapled to a 4/4 angel with 10 combat abilities. This seems goofy – having to deal them damage to be able to use his ability. Why make a worse Maelstrom Wanderer that’s arguably harder to cast? I don’t know, I am pretty disappointed, but this likely turns out an OK commander and with the addition of black, you’ll be cascading into better removal. At $6, SCG is pretty confident this will be the most popular card so far. I don’t see much money to be made at this price, especially with how much more popular Atraxa seems to be. Let’s hope I am not letting how stupid the design of this card is blind me to the power level.

Magus of the Will

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Would you believe Yawgmoth’s Will is legal in EDH? Now we have a clunkier version of it. This will probably see less play than Yawgmoth’s Will, a card played a fair amount in a fair number of decks, surprisingly. $10? I don’t know, man. It’s a $30 card’s effect stapled to a creature, but if that were a fair way to assess a card, Magus of the Tabernacle would be $300. I just don’t know if you will ever be happy you paid $10 for this.

Ikra Shidiqi, the Usurper

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I hate this card. I might play it in a Doran deck or something, but I don’t want this as my commander no matter what it’s partnered with. I’m sure I’m being unfair to this card, but it’s clunky, dealing combat damage is harder than R&D seems to think, and I think this card is pretty disappointing. I’m certainly not a fan of paying $4. Disagree in the comments if you want, but be sure and tell me how many copies you’re buying at $4.

Curse of Vengeance

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This is probably in the Atraxa deck, which hurts its upside. Even if this effect does surprise a lot of people, being in that deck likely puts a lower-than-normal cap on its price. I think this card is cool, but depending on someone else losing could lead to the table not finishing them off just so you don’t draw a ton of cards. This is an interesting design and that doesn’t always mean good.

10/26/16 Spoilers

Conquerer’s Flail

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So this is pretty good, huh? Granting a scaling bonus of up to +5/+5 for 2 to cast and 2 to equip is solid, but not great by EDH standards. However, its second clause of turning the equipped creature into a walking City of Solitude is the money-maker. SCG hasn’t really listed anything for presale over $4 and this is no exception, but I think this may be pretty highly sought. Lots of decks want this effect, though I’m not sure how many can make room. If this were $1 like Blade of Selves were, I might be inclined to buy, but $4 may be just about right so I’m reluctant to invest. $4 is a pretty inconvenient price point because if it’s too low, there isn’t much money to be made even if you recognize that. That’s OK – this should trade well and it could have even more ubiquity than I am anticipating, so watch this card closely.

Stonehoof Chieftain

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This looks like a bulk rare to me.

Deepglow Skate

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This card is a mistake. That said, it is probably narrow enough that its power level won’t become a problem and the fact that it needs other cards to make it truly broken should make it just a solid EDH card rather than a real issue. This is pre-selling for $2 and that seems low to me, actually. I don’t hate this as a spec at $2. This is ridiculous with Planeswalkers, hydras, Goblin Bomb, Darksteel Reactor – this card is stupid. You can flicker this with Deadeye Navigator and double all of the counters on all of your perms. WHAT? $2 can’t be correct.

Akiri, Rope Thrower

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Legendary Creature – Kor Soldier Ally
First strike, vigilance

Akiri, Rope Thrower has +1/+0 for each artifact you control.

Partner

This is weird. I guess some sort of Kor equipment deck would work for this and this gives you access to red the way the Nahiri Planeswalker doesn’t, but if you want this over Jor Kadeen as your commander in that deck, it’s probably because you’re playing Tiny Leaders and why are you doing that? Stop doing that. SCG doesn’t have a price for this, but I bet it’s $1.

Ludevic, Necro-Alchemist

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This card is really dumb with pingers, but pingers are usually pretty bad in EDH unless you throw a deathtouch equipment on them (at which point Goblin Sharpshooter becomes Goblin Mass Shooter). Honestly, there are dozens of ways to make them take damage every turn and if you’re keeping your hand full doing it, you’re going to have a good time. This doesn’t even NEED partner, but pairing this with black cards will be fun. Honestly, this pairs well with anything. UR players didn’t get their artifact commander, but this is so good they shouldn’t complain (but will). $2 is the price SCG wants, and I’m starting to wonder where they think the value will come from. If every new card is $2, the decks will be way above MSRP so they’re trying to hedge a bit. I don’t think this will be $8 in the future, either, so it’s hard to know what to do on this. Basically there is one card, maybe two every set worth preordering and I think it’s Deepglow Skate this time. Still, this card is very good.

Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis

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If I’m not mistaken, these are the first gay Magic characters. They were depicted in Guardians of Meletis and now they’re getting their own card, which is bound to make nice people happy and terrible people unhappy, so that’s good all around. It really doesn’t hurt that the card is actually pretty decent. Guardians of Meletis’ flavor text also described these two as “peaceful” so it’s no surprise that their ability is not very aggressive. Drawing extra cards, dumping extra lands and making your opponents like you fits that nicely. This card is fine and I think it might be pretty fun to build around. I imagine this ends up in the $4-$5 range eventually, so paying the $3 SCG wants is risky. This could end up $8. Do you think it will? $3 isn’t the worst entry point, then. I’m pretty skeptical, though.

Ravos, Soultender

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Another commander that is probably good enough to play even if he didn’t have partner. This card is pretty damn good, and being able to pair this with other colors is even better. Green for Doubling Season for our weenies and counters on said weenies? There are a lot of possibilities. I like this card a lot and SCG does, too because they’re preselling it for $4. I don’t know if this hits $8 ever but I do know it’s spicy. I just wish I knew which cards were in which decks so I could start to get a feel for how the value is spread out and which decks have more room to grow than others.

Ishai, Ojutai Dragonspeaker

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Hey, look! It’s my card! I was fortunate (good at my job) enough to preview this card for Gathering Magic and I hate having to review cards I preview. I used to see so many people super hyped about their preview card that they lost touch with reality. My desire to avoid that led to us on Brainstorm Brewery hedging a little and refusing to say that we actually thought Fevered Visions was Standard playable. I’m going to try and be objective and say that I think this will grow very quickly and if you can keep it alive, it will KO people quickly. Anyone who has ever grown a Taurean Mauler to 21/21 knows that. Is this great? Nah. But I like it, and if you have another commander, this is a fine card to give you access to Azorius stuff. SCG wants $2 and this might end up a $2 card so I’m not buying in. I was happy to preview this and I am OK with it if no one preorders it.

Faerie Artisans

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I can’t wait to pair this card with enchantments that double my tokens. Getting a copy of their triggers is pretty cool and getting two copies is even better. Having a sac outlet for the tokens before they can be killed is great, too. This is actually a really strong card. No price for this, yet, but I imagine this will be a buck or two. I think this could end up worth more than that. This is a very cool card. That said, Mycoloth is better and c15 reprints made that like $2.75. It’s hard to know what to make of this, but I like it.

10/25/16 Spoilers

Saskia the Unyielding

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Well, this is a thing, I guess. Punishing someone at the table, possibly someone you can’t attack profitably through a pillowfort or doubling damage on someone you can easily swang at is pretty powerful. The logic here, I guess, is that 4 colors is tough to pull off so you should be rewarded with a brutal commander if you go that route and rewarded more if you do the BALLSIEST THING EVER and don’t play any blue in an EDH deck. AT $4 I don’t know if this has any upside. All of the 4-color commanders seem very strong so far and since the blueless deck isn’t likely to have no other value in it, it’s difficult to imagine a world where this hits $10 because nothing else in the deck is worth a damn. I don’t see profit or danger in pre-ordering this, but, buying singles to play with seems silly when the decks are worth MSRP and you can trade off what you don’t want.

Breya, Etherium Shaper

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The non-green commander is pretty spicy, although I’m not all that excited to play a token engine in a deck with no access to Doubling Season and Parallel Lives. This is the same $4 as the other commanders and I don’t think that’s out of order. I’m a little unsure of how this one will play without the token abuse green gives us and I imagine people are going to be disappointed at how fair this card is.

Tymna the Weaver

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This is very, very good. It’s a shoo-in for decks like Oloro and Ayli and Karlov, all of which happen to be insanely popular EDH generals right now. I think this might actually end up being a bargain at $2, depending on what else is in the deck along with it. This is very powerful, especially if you pair Tymna with a commander that is focused on dealing them damage. This is the first card that strikes me as being potentially underpriced.

Tana, the Bloodsower

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This CAN be paired with Doubling Season and Parallel Lives and Primal Vigor and that’s good. This is in colors that are known for boosting the power and toughness of attackers, which is also good. This is a very Gruul card and that’s just fine. At $2 for a mythic (although there is one copy of every new mythic for every copy of a new common, so the rarity is more of an indication of power level than an indication of its relative scarcity like in booster pack sets) this seems like a card people aren’t thrilled with right now and unless this is as popular as something like Meren as a commander or can go in as many decks as Tymna, I don’t know if $2 is incorrect. This can push some other cards up, though.

Reyhan, Last of the Abzan

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There are plenty of Golgari cards that pair very, very nicely with this card and if you throw this in a deck with Sidar Kondo or something, you could have a pretty decent deck going. Golgari is getting all of the best cards lately and with this pre-selling for $3, more than some mythics, there is a bit of confidence in this card. It’s really tough to know how each of the billion partner creatures will pan out, but with a likely ceiling on them around $6, I don’t see money to be made buying at $3.

Vial Smasher the Fierce

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I clearly have a blindspot when it comes to Rakdos. The only Rakdos deck I have is Olivia Voldaren and it’s nothing like the rest of them. When I see a card like Pia Nalaar spoiled and think “Wow, this is underwhelming” and see Grenzo and Alesha players lose their collective $#%^ I start to wonder if I shouldn’t give more Rakdos cards the benefit of the doubt. This seems durdly to me, but apparently a durdly Kaervek has a lot of people excited. At $4, this could gain a buck or two but the post office will see most of those gains if you try to flip.

Coastal Breach

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This was probably a mistake. Making a Wrath easier to cast is a good idea, making an annoying boardwipe easier to cast is not. At least it’s a Sorcery, I guess. This will make the game take longer, and that’s really annoying. That said, this likely doesn’t end up the exact same price as the Wrath, but I don’t know which card is going which way.

Assault Cinder Horn

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Haste

At the beginning of the end step of each player, if no creature attacked this turn, put a fury counter on “Assault Cinder Horn.” Then “Assault Cinder Horn” deals damage to that player equal the number of fury counters on it.

Attack people, people. This is an aggressive card, but that doesn’t make this more than $1, I don’t think.

Primeval Protector

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We talked about this card at length on Brainstorm Brewery this week. Pay attention to cards casuals like. This probably hits bulk, but this is a card that will always trade out very well, especially to the “I’ll trade a rare for a rare” crowd. Don’t buy this now, but don’t be surprised when this is a couple of bucks in a year or two or you get a lot of requests for it.

Crystalline Crawler

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Converge – Crystalline Crawler enters the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter on it for each color of mana spent to cast it.

Remove a +1/+1 counter from Crystalline Crawler: Add one mana of any color to your mana pool.

T: Put a +1/+1 counter on Crystalline Crawler.

This seems like Mindless Automaton, Etched Oracle and Chronomaton all contributed genetic material to a bulk rare.

Selfless Squire

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This is a pretty good card but I feel like white has a lot of effects like this. Still, this may be the best fog creature we’ve seen and with +1/+1 counters mattering to some of the commanders, this could be a solid card. I don’t know if I want to pay more than $1, though, especially with all of the value I am seeing so far in terms of reprints.

Cruel Entertainment

cruelentertainment

This is a great way to piss two people off and have them come to a “You use my turn to attack the guy who played this with my creatures and I’ll use your turn to attack the guy who played this with your creatures” truce. I don’t think this does what you want it to do, which is too bad because this card is HILARIOUS. Choose the player doing the best and the player doing the worst and hope they don’t beat you too badly. There are plenty of effects like this that are still around $1, so I don’t see profit to be made here, but this is pretty great EDH design.

10/24/16 Spoilers

Arraxa, Praetor’s Voice

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If we end up with a nice value distribution like last time, the ceiling for this card is $6. Star City is pre-selling this for $5. We’re going to make money if SCG makes a huge mistake like they did with Blade of Selves and Command Beacon. We won’t make money when they nail it like they did with Mystic Confluence. This card is stupid good, but I have to imagine the 4 other 4-color commanders are equally amazing. This power level could relegate the two-color commanders to a lower pricing tier, but it isn’t always the “flashy” one worth money – look at how Karlov is the all-star in Daxos’ deck. With this set giving us new decks instead of the usual 10, we’re going to see a lot of brewing and the hardcore people having to buy the same deck more than once. Still, I think it’s safe to say there isn’t a ton of money to be made on Arraxa even with how different this set promises to be. Arraxa sure makes other cards go up, and we’ll talk about that in the coming weeks.

Silas Renn, Seeker Adept

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This is fun but not ridiculous. His financial impact will be on other cards but the $2 SCG wants for him is just about right. Hopefully there is a commander to pair him with that gives him some sort of evasion. I like him in Esper with Daxos the Meletis and Thada Adel. This is unlikely to be a $6-$9 card in my opinion despite me liking it.

Kraum, Ludevic’s Opus

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This is better than it looks because it does two things. First, it helps Izzet decks keep their hand full, something they struggle with even with the high number of cantrips they play. Second, it allows you to access other colors by partnering Kraum with another commander to give you access to black. Suddenly an Izzet deck can play Ill-Gotten Gains, Yawgmoth’s Will, etc. Does that mean this should be more than a buck? Probably not, especially since the deck it’s in is likely to have a ton of gas.

Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa

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EDH Players: We’d like a UR creature that interacts with artifacts, please.
WOTC: We hear you loud and clear *prints a creature with flanking instead*

This card is going for $2 and I am not prepared to say how wrong or right that is. It’s possible an unspoiled commander partners ridiculously well with this. Generally, kithkinshroud isn’t the way to go wide with tokens or whatever since you usually want Cathar’s Crusade and anthems and stuff to go wide. This makes it easier for Silas Renn to hit them, though. Who knows? I think $2 is probably fine, but that means don’t buy this for finance reasons. If you want this to play with, probably buy the precon and get a dozen new cards. So, it’s hard to see a scenario where you pay cash for this.

Bruse Tarl, Boorish Herder

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He looks like Braum from League of Legends because, like Braum, he’s boring to play, doesn’t do his job better than everyone else in the same niche and literally no one asked for him. Maybe they’ll make Boros interesting some day, but that day is not today. $2 seems like it’s not a mistake.

Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix

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Printing this card was a mistake. I can’t say whether I want to pay $4 cash for these without knowing what else is in the deck because I don’t know whether this can double to $8-$9, but I do know that this card is messed up and they shouldn’t have printed it. None of the other commanders with partner are this good, so far.

Prismatic Geoscope

prismaticgeoscope

How much money would you pay for a Gilded Lotus that sometimes taps for 0 mana and can tap for up to 5? I think the answer is more than $3 long-term, but I also think this can get cheaper before it gets more expensive, provided the deck it’s in isn’t relying on it to be like $6 in the short term for the deck to be worth MSRP. I don’t know if this is in one deck or five, so until we know more, this is a “wait and see” card. I am calling this a hold and the only scenario where that changes is if it’s only in one deck and that deck is garbage. I don’t know that this is the case. If this is in every deck, you’ll lose a lot of money if you preordered today. Hold.

Sublime Exhalation

sublimeexhalation

If this card is ever better than Day of Judgment it’s not going to make up for the fact that you’re playing in an annoying game with way too many players. This does get around cards that counter spells with a convereted mana cost of a certain amount, I guess. Still, I’m not excited and neither is SCG who is pre-selling this for $1. That’s cheaper than Day of Judgment and this is functionally a Day if you have 3 opponents, but I’d rather play 5 and Fumigate or pay 8 and Decree of Pain.

The Difference a Year Makes

I saw a Commander 2016 card.

I mean, I was allowed to; my series on Gathering Magic gives me the opportunity to spoil EDH-relevant cards every once in a while and since writers like some lead time, we get to see the cards pretty early. That’s not always a good thing – we know information we can’t (ethically) talk about. It sucks. The card I saw may or may not have some financial relevance, and it may or may not easily inform a series of pretty prescient finance articles. The thing is, I don’t want this to be the last time I see a preview card (when you spoil a card, it’s a “preview” and when someone else previews a card, it’s a “spoiler”) so that means I have to write an article that is not only not inspired by seeing the card (difficult) I have to write an article that doesn’t even look influenced by that card in hindsight (difficulter).

In order to avoid giving the indication that I leveraged my knowledge of the future to somehow write a better article that anyone can read for free but no one does I decided to go back to some of the cards we thought might go up based on Commander 2015 and see how they’re doing a year later. That can help us out quite a bit moving forward. Looking at cards we expected to interact with the cards in the decks and seeing which of them went up as well as seeing how the reprints recovered should give us a lot of info. This will be a two-parter which is perfect because the next article will be published the day before we’re allowed to talk about spoilers so I have to come up with two weeks’ worth of stuff to talk about before we can delve into getting every C16 card spoiled within a 48 hour period because instead of spacing stuff out, they decided to “let [us] enjoy Kaladesh” whatever the $#% that means.

So let’s take a look at the stuff from last year. Maybe I changed my mind on some of it. Maybe I nailed a few cards that ended up getting reprinted (I totally did, actually) and it might be good to see if they’re a good pickup right now. Let’s see what a difference a year makes.

This image came up when I googled "sick callback"
This image came up when I googled “sick callback”

Last Year’s Picks

White/Black

We were trying to guess two things – the $20ish card that would be in the decks to help them sell and a few good reprint candidates that would tank and go back up if they were reprinted. They seem to have figured things out and rather than have a big $20ish card in these decks they have a lot of $8ish cards, which is amazing. Commander 2016 promises the same sort of concept. Reading through this article again, a few things pop out at me.

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There aren’t too many cards I’m more confident about than this one. I won’t belabor the point I made two articles ago about how well this lines up with what happened with Crypt Ghast, the point is made and a lot of people seem to agree. Some reprints, rather than ruining the card forever, give people an opportunity to get the card for very cheap for about a year and then make money as it goes back up to where it was. When we see which cards are reprinted in Commander 2016, how do we identify which cards are the next Black Market?

  1. Price point. Black market was sitting at right around $15 before it was reprinted. The reprint gutted that price and made everyone who was holding them feel pretty bad. It also normalized to $3 for the new versions and $5 for the old versions so quickly that it didn’t really monkey with the MSRP of the deck. WotC noticed this and will probably feel better about cards in this range, knowing they won’t likely do what Wurmcoil did.
  2. Slope. The trajectory of Black Market was pretty promising. It gained 100% value in the 1-year period between January 2014 and January 2015, gaining the bulk of that in about 9 months. Cards like that are spiking for a reason – lots of new adoption. Even EDH has enough juice to make cards with that sort of a meteoric rise regain their value after a reprint.
  3. Age. You’re not likely to see a reprint of the new Ulamog rebound within a year. Mercadian Masques rares? Now we’re talking.

We’ll see in a year if we were right, but I expect Black Market and a few other cards like High Market to recover as nicely. Basically the Markets.

Phyrexian Altar was $15 when I printed that article, calling it a good candidate for a reprinting. It dodged this reprinting. Phyrexian Altar was a card I picked out due to its price and how good it would be if we got a lot of graveyardy stuff in Commander 2015. We did and even though it would have gone gangbusters in the deck with Meren, we didn’t see another printing. What happened to that $15 pricetag in the last year?

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Well, it gained about $10 and is on its way up some more. Once it dodged that reprinting, I swooped in and grabbed a few copies. Everything I said about it being a good fit for the set was true. It would have been a very good reprint and WotC honestly punted pretty badly by not including it. The card is just about out of peoples’ price range at this point, but the card is too good in Meren.

Now, they worked on this set a year ago when the card was $15 and there is a non-zero chance that this gets a Commander 2016 reprint. If it doesn’t, expect more growth, though not like we saw from a year ago until now. Instead of gambling on how much we can make if Altar dodges another reprint it desperately needs, we can look at cards that look like Altar used to. When we have decklists or I can talk about cards from Commander 2016, we’ll work on identifying cards that are about to shoot up based on dodging a reprint they needed, but off the top of my head, if we don’t see Chromatic Lantern and/or Coalition Relic, we’ll want to look at those and I don’t think the Masterpiece Lantern can do anything to attenuate the growth of Lantern I expect to see. These cards are obvious in hindsight like Altar is, but considering we managed to call Altar months early, we were in a position to make some money, some of us did, and we’ll all be ready this next time. Anything in the $10-$15 range that is a glaring omission from Commander 2016 and pairs well with a popular new commander is a great candidate for growing like Altar did. Even the recency of Relic and Lantern can’t hold back the tide of demand.

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Even cards that didn’t seem like big, dumb, obvious inclusions in any deck that came out of the last 12 months experienced some solid growth. Knell quietly went from $7 to $9 despite no real sea-change in its adoption. It’s just a solid EDH card from a set over a decade ago and from what I can tell, this grew on the basis of the health of the format rather than anything about it that changed. It got a year older, didn’t become obsolete (and it’s hard for EDH cards to become obsolete – Grave Pact wasn’t made obsolete by Dictate of Erebos – people just play both) and just rode the wave of a healthy format. Cards from around the same time period will probably just creep up if they’re not reprinted. What will Privileged Position look like in a year? Coldsnap cards used in EDH likely go up whether they get more use or not. More on that later.

Green/Black

We didn’t know this at the time, but the Green/Black deck ended up being the best seller, though it wasn’t as profound as in years past when there was literal 0 reason for financiers to buy decks that weren’t Nekusar, Daretti and Nahiri. Now the decks are selling pretty evenly because they’re all pretty good and the value is spread out nicely. Basically all of the decks had a new card that was $8-$10 which is much better than having four decks with 0 $10 new cards in them and one deck with a $50 card and, what the hell, the best commander and, what the hell, a Legacy staple. WotC put all of its $%&^ in a backpack so that it’s all together and they used this new policy on Commander 2015. I can only hope their $%^& wasn’t scattered to the four winds when they made Commander 2016.

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We predicted that Life from the Loam was a good card, and that’s about it. It didn’t end up interacting with anything from Meren’s deck but it ended up not mattering because The Gitrog Monster came out of nowhere. Can this teach us anything? I guess that when cards are low after a reprinting but they are applicable in multiple formats, it’s a good idea to always buy when they crater. You never know if it will be a Modern deck, SCG deciding to run Legacy events again or a reprinting of a new general in a booster pack set but odds are good something will make it go up. Life from the Loam was a solid reprint choice at around $8 but it was also a solid pickup at that price given how many times it’s been over $10 in its life. This is one of those U-shaped graphs that makes you look at every reverse-J-shaped graph with suspicion.

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Regular-J-shaped graphs can tell us a lot, too. There was no reason for Leyline of the Void to go down, so it never did. It continued to be dumb, got farther away from its reprint date and in general, when it didn’t get reprinted in the last year, was a great candidate for this kind of continued growth. Did anyone buy in a year ago when this had the same slope and cost half as much? Anything we identify this year as interacting with the stuff in Commander 2016 that has a graph this shape is just a good candidate. This card outperformed my 401K and it was easy to identify a year ago. When we’re handed gifts like this, we should appreciate them.

We’ll take a look at the other three decks next week. I’m bursting to tell people about what little I know about Commander 2016, but by the time I can, you’ll know as much as I do. Until then, we can look at the predictions we made in 2015 and how they panned out. So far we have identified quite a few trends that we can apply to a new set of cards to predict their growth. Sometimes it really is that easy, especially if it’s a card like Debtors’ Knell that just went up because why not? Next week we’ll tackle the rest of last year’s predictions and see if we can identify anything else that can help us figure out what to pick up in the wake of Commander 2016. I’d offer to summarize them but I like making you nerds have to read. Until next week!