Readers!
Typically I don’t like to talk about cards that are in the middle of spiking because that is very stressful. I think a lot of people who pass themselves off as finance minds call stuff while it’s spiking and get a lot of credit because, wow, they nailed that “prediction” and I want in one some of that sweet action. You mean to tell me I can make a prediction that’s not going to be wrong and be heralded as a genius? Yes, I’m all about that. Also, you may be able to snag a cheap copy and avoid overpaying later. Check downstream – TCG Player and Channel are bought out first, but other stores are still HODLing. Check page 3 of your google search results. TCG Player says Wayfarer’s Bauble is $4 but Card Kingdom’s 20+ copies (the max they list is 20, they have more) in all of its 5 printings for $0.99 says otherwise. Let’s do the panic thing and talk about the slow movers next week. This will be a short one but it will be dense with value. Now is the part where non-Pro Traders get cut off and I’m sorry about that. Pro Trader is like $60 a year and I’m about to make people way more than that.

Morophon is doing thangs and that’s good. He’s the variable commander people have been waiting for and he’s already caused some cards to pop, which I’ll mention in case your LGS has copies, and more cards are about to pop. Basically anything that says “choose a tribe” is going to go off, even if Morophon isn’t good (he probably isn’t).

Fist is sold out everywhere for like $15. Despite just getting a reprint in the Dragon deck, it’s getting paired with Morophon. Fist makes your spells cost WUBRG and Morophon makes them cost WUBRG less if they’re of the chosen tribe. Do you dump a bunch of Eldrazi? Slivers? Humans? Is this combo good? Maybe. It’s popular, though, and Fist is sold OUT. If you have these, sell into hype. If your LGS has these for $3, buy them for $3.

Ditto on Jodah. CK has $0.50 non-foils, but foils are to the moon, probably forever. I don’t know if this combo is good but it’s happening. The thing about Morophon is that decks that already have a good commander like Dragons and Slivers won’t want him in the 99 and decks that don’t have a good commander will have fewer creatures than they think. Getting free creatures is cool but I think this is mostly hype. Feather maintained its hype for a few weeks, we’ll see how Morophon does.

Same deal here. You can check the Reaper King page on EDHREC to see if stuff like Scarecrone is where you want to park money, but Morophon makes you able to blow up a ton of stuff for every changeling you play for free. Is that good? Maybe. But everything is good in EDH.

Stuff that hasn’t popped yet is more interesting.

This was touted when first printed but never really went anywhere. I think it could have upside if you have to play creatures like Beast Whisperer in the deck to get a combo off. This is a low-risk bulk rare and since a bunch of tribal decks that never had a commander before are about to be 5 color decks if they want to be, go nuts.

Ditto for this guy. Gettable for like $4 most places, this is going to get slammed in a lot of decks with no lords and with no reprint in site, this second spike is bound to be heavy.

This is expensive but it’s also down from its historical high. If you’re playing creatures for free, you need to replace them in your hand. This is a no-brainer.

I left in the vendor bar to show that sites that had this cheap are selling out already.

Honestly, all of Commander 2017 is in play if you ask me.

That’s Morophon. Let’s talk about the other card.

Urza is pretty nuts. A mana generator AND a mana sink? I must be dreaming. Why they would make a commander that perfectly lines up with Paradox Engine like this, I’ll never understand, but let’s look at Engine.

Neat. Remember when I said to buy these for $5 if they didn’t get banned 6 months after it was printed? Well, I bought like 3 total, so even I don’t listen to me. This was already expensive before they printed a Tolarian Academy on a body that can play all of your spells for 5 colorless, so RIP this card’s price. Can they print this again to lower the price? It will be hard, I don’t see how. Try to find these on obscure sites and at the LGS. This was a $40 foil like 2 weeks ago. RIP.

This is recovering from a reprint, very good in the deck and still in play. Go get you some.

Hi. I tap for mana, now.

Hi. I tap for mana, now, and you only need 4.

Hi, I make Moxen, now. I’m also a $5 foil.

I think the Urza deck will make a lot of utility artifacts go up more slowly, but this article was meant to go out quickly while there is still time to buy some of this, so, go buy stuff. Later.

Readers,

Ugh.

Like, you’re welcome. Sincerely. That’s a phrase I find myself saying a lot lately, unprompted. My daughter has excellent manners 50% of the time and 0 manners 50% of the time which averages out to having OK manners all of the time and on a good day, her manners with strangers are good and with me are suspect which makes me look like a good parent to strangers. You don’t know I did the equivalent of getting you your paints from a shelf you can’t reach, rinsing your brushes and tearing a page out of your Peppa Pig painting book because you can’t quite handle perforation, but I promise I’m doing all that for you and more. I mean, I feel like new formats are a pain and I hate to learn new things and I did that for you. Is Oathbreakers Brawl or is it Tiny Leaders? It’s hard to tell how many months it will last before it disappears under the weight of the collective apathy of an entire community. It’s also possible Oathbreaker catches on and is around forever. Anything is possible. 2016 taught me that.

I know what a portion of you are asking –

1. What is Oathbreaker?
2. Should I care?

The answer to number 2 is a soft “Yes” and the answer to number 1 is a bit more complicated. Let’s launch into that. To do that, I’ll need to read a 300 word wiki article. Time to roll up my sleeves.

Oathbreaker is a 60 card, singleton format with 2 commanders – a Planeswalker and a “signature spell” that both start out in the Command Zone. The spell must be an Instant or Sorcery. Your deck is bound by typical color identity rules like in EDH so new Teferi can only have Blue and White cards. You can’t cast your signature spell unless your “Oathbreaker” is in play and you have to pay the commander tax every time you cast either one, so the spell keeps getting more and more costly. It’s unsanctioned and I’ve never witnessed a game of it being played. Why should we care?

As near as I can figure, Oathbreaker did this because Terferi is disgusting in that format. I don’t know which delightful Canadian with a name like Whackity Smackelberry is responsible for this format or who keeps the banlist updated but for now, Teferi is teferrorizing people. I don’t know much but I know if it can make a card like this double, maybe other ‘walkers have some upside and maybe some signature spells do, too. Certainly Chain Veil combo is easier in a deck that starts the game with 51 cards in it when you’re a Blue deck whose signature spell could very well be Fabricate.

Is there anything else we can look at for potential?

Jace + Tunnel Vision

This would be kind of funny and kind of brutal. Since the games are multiplayer, you need to do this trick more than once, probably, but it’s still pretty brutal and you can cough up the mana to recast Tunnel Vision for.. 8 mana? Jesus, OK. Still, Blue is good and Tunnel Vision… already went up? How did no one notice this?

The timing is too coincidental not to be related to Oathbreaker.

I think there is room for Tunnel Vision to go up, though. It’s the same rarity as Doubling Season and has fewer printings. Just ‘saying. It’s an $8 foil, also. I think that’s easy money on easy mode. I think this is a $30 foil waiting to happen.

Narset + Windfall

New Narset is gnarly and nasty and this seems like a great way to slam Day’s Undoing, Windfall, Teferi’s Puzzle Box and other goodies in a deck where you draw your win conditions and they go down from a 3 mana Identity Crisis harder than Tim Drake’s Dad.

Despite hella printings, this is the only foil version of this card. Is Oathbreaker going to be a thing (I would say no, but look at Tunnel Vision) and if it is, will people who bought Windfall foils get a windfall of their own? Is there a chance they go up for some other reason? Is there a chance Windfall is in Modern Horizons? (nope). I think there is money to be made here, poisonally. But I like my blue foil cards ever since I said $1 was too cheap for Dramatic Reversal.

This has nothing to do with Oathbreaker, but checking in on Dramatic Reversal makes me want to check in on another card I feel just as strongly about – Arcane Denial. The art sucks but it’s in a lot of EDH decks and there is one foil printing. Denial is still under $4, up from the $1- $2 where I called it, but with potential to get to… $11 apparently. Just get that free money. There are enough copies for all of you Pro Traders with enough left over for me to actually buy some since I only bought like 4 Dramatic Reversal because I get squeamish about buying specs I write about. I give you the good stuff and leave myself with… well, collections which have a guaranteed return and are much more stable than specs. Still, though. Coulda dectupled up. You’re welcome. Lol, that’s a callback to earlier but it sounds pretty aggressive. I’m leaving it.

There is an entire Oathbreaker subreddit but it’s really tough to figure out what is durdly and what is concensus good. The subreddit is extremely hard to parse, there are no even results anywhere and EDHREC isn’t compiling Oathbreaker stuff (I’m not sure we should, BrawlREC was a lot of work, no one went to it and now Brawl seems dead). If anything else around this format pops up, I’ll let you all know, but for now, it seems like Blue tryhard cards are the best bets and most of them were already good. A few signature spells I have seen that aren’t good in EDH were

Argent Mutation with Dace Fayden.

Sorin’s Vengeance with Sorin Markov, and

Inspiring Call with Jiang Yanggu. Will any of this pan out? I don’t know. I feel good about all of that blue stuff I said earlier, and I’ll give Pro Traders a crack at Tunnel Vision before I think about if I should buy some. I probably won’t but only because it would look bad if I did. Until next time!