Readers!

We got dese dumb Transformah decks and I think they’ll do… not nothing? I expected more impact from the Street Fighter Secret Lairs and it seems like there are finally so many products that large numbers of people cannot be relied upon reasonably to engage with all of them. It’s great that not every product is for everyone, but how do we guess which products are for no one? People are going to buy these Transformers cards, sue, and some of them might even play EDH. However, I have no idea whether this will matter enough to sell singles. I’m going to do what I have always done hoping things just click or I figure out the next technique, but I feel a ton of instability in my life right now and it’s making me worry about everything I used to believe in.

I am going to act as though I think these Transformers cards will impact the game to enough of an extent that prices move, something that Street Fighter hasn’t really borne out yet. I’m hoping the Transformers stuff is important, but if it’s not, all I did was waste an article slot. You will have spent money. I am not telling you I don’t believe in my picks because I’m a bad at this, rather I am saying that I don’t have the normal confidence in the premise of this being a worthwhile exercise – I will identify picks the same way I always do. As always, there is risk – if this was easy money, everyone would do it and I would be a carpenter or something. Anyway, let’s do that thing we do.

We have a whopping 15 commanders in this product. It’s a lot of cards. I don’t know, I hate this, what do you want from me?

Let’s go in order of popularity until we stop wanting to, shall we?

High Synergy card piles are starting to look like the first 10 cards reprinted the next time they do a precon, something they do 11 times a year now. I don’t know, it’s really hard to be excited about these staples, especially when half of them were in a precon to begin with.

This is a real Timmy card and at $2 for a mythic and $4 for an EA mythic, I think we are basically at the floor. You can get these from TCG Player for basically buylist. I don’t know what the future holds, but a big, dumb, dorky creature like this that makes so much power is great, especially in a deck where you’ll creature 12 pre-combat effortlessly. Flame Rift gives you 12 mana in this deck, you’ll be farting out huge creatures in no time.

This is an absurd card, held in check by its high CMC in a deck where colorless mana is as abundant as water. I’m into this in the format in general. The biggest reason for some of these cards not doing better is people have never seen them before. I suspect Bronze Guardian hasn’t been seen much and any card that can go from $2 to $10 because it was on Game Knights is worth keeping an eye on, and you can keep a very close eye on them if they’re in a pile on your desk like all of my specs.

Why would this price go down before it goes up? This card is insane. Unfortunately, it’s one of only like 20 cards worth more than $3 from those precons, so…. whee. Does that make the buy-in higher than I’d like? A bit, but it won’t matter in a year.

I have told you and told you to get this card – I sure hope you listened! It’s half on TCG what they want on CK so, that’s something. I love this card and I don’t know why it’s hasn’t been reprinted, but I have basically made money on this card 3 times so it’s about time I lost all of it, I guess. This isn’t a buy because of Optimus Prime decks, but it’s not like those hurt.

The guy that turns into an 80s ghetto blaster is the third most popular, go figure.

So here is another troubling concept.

Curiosity Crafter was shown on Game Knights, to great effect I might add. It spiked accordingly, and hard. It fell way, way off – not settling midway between the spike and pre-spike price, but rather at barely twice it. Buying in at $1 trying to cash out at $2 is hard work, so you need to be ready to pull the trigger and list when they start to pop for $15. Are you that nimble? This is the best case scenario for a lot of specs. Seems stressful, right? This is how you make actual money on a $1 card, though.

I have made money on this card this year, but I’m not ruling out buying back the same copies from CK that I buylisted to them and trying again now that CK retail is below what I buylisted them for. I hope I see my same old copies and get to get paid for babysitting them again. Other cards that do this a lot are Teferi’s Puzzle Box, Anvil of Bogardan and Sunforger. Feels good to sell a company cards you just bought from it for more than you paid, it’s arbitrage without a third part. The dream.

This is the absolute floor for this card. It tanking because of a reprint rather than loss of adoption makes it basically impossible this ever sees $40 again, but what do you want for a seven dollar and forty cent buy-in?

That does it for me this week, nerds. Thanks for reading. Until next time!

Readers!

I hope I did a good job conveying that this week’s article has something to do with last week’s article, which you have of course read. If not, do read it because the tips in there will apply a ton still and some of the lessons in there are ones I’d prefer not to have to repeat. If you read last week’s article, perhaps you know that last week I discussed Urza and Mishra decks as potential sources for specs. I want to make sure you read last week’s article, because this week I am going to discuss Urza and Mishra decks are potential sources for specs and I want to make it clear that last week I was discussing Urza and Mishra cards that are different from the Urza and Mishra cards I’m discussing today and I’m just so, so tired. Over at EDHREC, somehow in our set review we remembered the main set, the EDH decks, but forgot the EDH-only cards in Set and Collector Boosters. Like, I get that it was my job to check that, and I shouldn’t be copping to it publicly but yeah, I didn’t remember to tell every single one of my writers they needed to check 5 different spoilers to make sure they reviewed every “White” card in the set, I guess I must be the one who’s doing it wrong. So yeah, I have amped up my griping about how many new products there are, but you can’t tell me this is healthy or sustainable.

EDHREC decided to make a change to the dropdown on the site.

Going to only 5 sets didn’t, and I am not making this up, give people a chance to see the set on the list of newest sets after the product was released. The schedule is a lot. I’m not talking about this because it makes me feel a tremendous amount of stress and anxiety about the future of the game that has been my entire career focus for a decade. That’s all true, but that’s not why I mention it. I mention it because I have to type something before I show you data so I can cut it off at the paywall until Thursday and I thought what better than to show off the new site dropdown and remind people that, yes, I did talk about Urza and Mishra last week, but it’s cool that I’m going to talk about Urza and Mishra this week because they’re completely different Urza and Mishra and I guess I wanted to let everyone know I thought that sentence could serve as a punchline if you’re properly primed. Are you good and ready to get some finance advice? I’m about to shut the curtain to first class if anyone wants to become a Pro Trader real quick so they don’t have to wait 48 hours for all of this hot finance info in a world where in 48 hours from now Warhamer 40K might get bumped off our “new sets” dropdown. Commander 2023 will be spoiled 48 hours from now, get with it.

OK, now that I’ve said both that all of my finance info from last week is still good and actionable and also that you can’t wait 48 hours for the tips in this article, it’s time to give you some data so you don’t send me dog shit in the mail because I made you read the last 2 paragraphs and your time is more valuable than mine is. I already knew that, I was just talking about how I don’t think I will have a job in a year.

You know who WILL have a job in a year? Whoever designed this Urza.

My thought process when I saw Sai, Master Thopterist and its price was “Man, would Sai be $5 if it hadn’t gotten reprinted? I should check that other guy…. what’s his name? You know, from Kaladesh? Padma something? You know what, I wouldn’t even know what to google, I’ll just look at the rest of the annnnnd there he is.”

I said “he” in the last paragraph but I actually have no idea what Padeem’s deal is, but it’s a good Magic card to have, I think. And yes, the answer to my Sai question is “maybe it would have hit $5 and maybe stayed there” based on Padeem’s graph.

These cards are nearly identical in how much they are played. If you look at Sai, you can either say “Well, I guess Padeem is an identical spec so instead of being sad Sai got a reprint, I have a spec to buy still” or say “So I could lose half my money overnight if this gets reprinted?” I think Padeem isn’t getting reprinted soon and I think it’s going to be a $5 card minimum when we get like 40 Artifact sets next year. Padeem only has to dodge reprints in the first half of the year for you to cash out until your spec was free and you doubled your investment and you can play Powerball with the rest of those Kadeems that won’t even be worthless but will apparently be $1.50.

The reprinting of Archmage in Jumpstart made the graph do this. It seems to me like the price reacted like it was predicated on scarcity-based demand, not demand-based scarcity like we like. But, like, if this hit $15 based on demand from basically just Breya for a while, a Jumpstart-worth of new copies can keep it from hitting $20 ever but I don’t know if you can’t triple up at a $2.50 buy-in on TCG Player right now. This could eat a reprint, though, because they love to forget about a card for like a decade, realize it’s expensive and then print it like 5 times. I hope that doesn’t happen here, this card sees some play.

I think these inclusion numbers are a little skewed and when Breya fever was at its pitch, these were played more than they are now, the tail-end of Emry and Urza, Grand Artificer decks being in the EDHREC database. I am pitching “all of EDHREC data ever” as a perk for people who subscribe to the EDHREC patreon and if that can happen, the value of the site for finance goes up even more. But I suspect that if you read my articles, you’re just listening to a butcher tell you about his special signature sausage spice blend and you literally couldn’t care less about how much star anise I use (just a leeeeeetle smidgen) and you want to just buy a sausage and get out of here. If you dabble in sausagenanigans (my Mom is a chef and that’s literally what it’s called I think), though, seeing cards trend in usage over time would be very valuable.

If I had a sweet tweet or excerpt from an article where I said to get this when it was a buck, I’d post it right here but I don’t have one. This is a $7 card masquerading as a nearly bulk rare because the set it was in was unhinged. This is much better than the other Sieges but people who don’t play a ton of EDH and some people who do play a ton of EDH don’t know this at a glance from the others. This is a buy imo.

I meant it, different Urza and Mishra. I feel like I’m trapped under an avalanche of cardboard.

I am so charmed by this card that I hadn’t read before just now because I literally just can’t keep up, that maybe I’m overvaluing how good it will be based on just this one deck, but I think that most Red-based Artifact decks make tokens and getting free value every turn seems really solid for a buck for a good-looking Extended Art card. I like this and I don’t want to say “I wish I had said to buy this at a buck and didn’t” because I’m saying it now, which means…I am probably wrong about this card… I don’t think I am, if you do, buy accordingly.

I forgot to tell you to buy the dip, but it seems like there was no dip to buy. This is a $10 card if it’s not reprinted.

I usually do 5 picks but then it will be uneven between Urza and Mishra and also this article was a lot of non-finance so I’ll give you a bonus pic but I’m not going to talk about it, I’m going to end the article here and just like post a pic of the graph of a card I like. Or do I dislike it? No lol, it would be messed up to do that. Here’s a spec based on Mishra I like. Probably.

Readers!

There are (slightly) more Brother’s War previews. More importantly, there is significantly more data for cards we already knew about, which is upon what I’d like to focus tonight. I’ll be honest, I’d love to be able to focus at all. I yelled myself hoarse for 8 hours watching Battlebots on Friday, got 8 hours sleep total the whole time I was there and ate sushi that was under a heat lamp in a 7/11. I’m not feeling my absolute best but if you think for a second our Pro Traders aren’t getting both barrels of the MTG Finance cannon this week just because I’m feeling a little like I was in the desert where drugs and alcohol are thank you gifts for losing money at craps and a Gatorade is $6.59 in the hotel, you’re sorely mistaken. Not as sore as the left side of my neck for some reason, but sore all the same. Let’s get this preamble paragraph wrapped up in a bow so I can dump a bunch of high quality picks on you then got to bed before midnight like a cartoon mouse who was turned into a stagecoach for the night or something. I don’t know. That movie came out before I was born I think. I’m not going to look that up because as we said, I’m not at my best. Remember Doc Ellis pitching a no-hitter on LSD? Well I’m not on LSD. This is going to be a many-hitter, and not just because the cards I pick are going to be hits, either. Also the reason you thought of first. Let’s do something data before I write a 2,000 word opening paragraph and go eat handfuls of shredded fiesta blend cheese and stare at the label on the apple cider.

An Old Dog Learns New Tricks

Just kidding, I just wanted a paragraph heading to break up the text. There is literally nothing new here despite a few more decks being added. I think the deck will be good, and popular, but it won’t be the most popular in a world where there is a card bearing the name “Urza.” Why am I giving you a whole paragraph on a card I don’t want to talk about again? I already told you, to break up the wall of text.

While this card isn’t giving us anything new, really, the old stuff is quite good and I think you should go back to last week where I talked about it. Don’t fear, there is plenty of gas in the other two commanders we have decks for.

Urza is Next

I’m bad at using the subheading tool, I literally have no idea what I should write there. Urza is next, but you could have figured that out using your peripheral vision. This isn’t going great, I can feel people looking at that red X in the corner. Don’t do that, I’ll give you specs, I promise. Just give me like 10 second to see if burping makes this stomach ache go away.

Yeah, it’s Urza. Yeah, it’s artifacty. This is going to make some old cards go up a lot and after it happens, everyone will be like “Well, yeah, artifact set, what did you THINK was going to happen?” but I don’t see any of those people actually saying now what they think is going to happen, so I will. I think Artifacts are going to be big business next year. Let’s look at Urza for guidance on which ones.

There is a very good case for a few of these, not the least of which is

Could this hit $10? I mean, maybe. It has a very robust play profile on EDHREC (34-35k decks – not too shabby) and it’s cheap and it’s half of its historic high. These are literally all of the things I want one or two of in a spec and this has all of them. Seems like a slam dunk, provided this isn’t reprinted. If it is, it may take some time but it will shrug the printing off. Cards with Improvise in Brother’s War would really surprise me, though- I’m betting against it happening.

This was $30 for an entire day – what if that day could be some time in November or December and this time you’re a seller at $30 and not a buyer at $15? It’s just a thought. I can’t guarantee this will go nuts, but if you bought everything I said about Whir of Invention, I don’t know why you’d start nitpicking when it came to a card with an identical case made for it. These spiked and went right back down which means dealers are stuck with these. When you buy before the spike, you’ll sneakily get a lot of copies. When you sell into the hype, the dealers you got these from for $3 will buy them from you and the cycle will feel complete. Why pick a side between Mishra and Urza when you can be the one selling weapons to both sides? Which would make you the CIA….

This will absolutely shrug off this recent printing as surely as I was right about this hitting $10. I was wrong, though – it went to $12 before it was reprinted, not $10. I feel more shame about that than you could possibly ever make me feel, so don’t even bother trying.

Mishra is doing artifacty stuff, too, you know.

Tell Me About That Artifacty Stuff

Woof, I will literally pay someone from the community to write headlines for me. That did not feel good at all.

Mishra is a deck I would build Goblin tribal, personally. You need a wide swath of expendable bodies and you want to be doing artifact stuff to tutor for Phyrexian Dragon Engine; this is a very goblin deck. Still, you don’t want to know how I’d build it, do you, or you’d read my article series every Thursday on Coolstuff Inc.com your source for cool stuff and hot other stuff. It’s free to read my articles over there. I’m not saying I don’t get enough readers over there. I actually have no idea, they won’t tell me. Could be a lot. Could be I should be telling those people to come here. Right, you want to know what people are playing.

I see a bit of a Goblin theme here. If Krenko is getting played, what about Krenko?

If the only thing you did in MTG Finance was ride the waves of $5 buy-ins and $10 cash-outs Krenko gets you, you would make a few bucks per copy per year, seems like. This still shrugs off printings, and since it rarely gets below $5, I like it at $5 and I’m not going to apologize for it.

If this spikes again, it will be to $12 and it will stay there, mostly. I think we missed the biggest opportunity to get these for $1 and sell them to a buylist for $2.25, but the buylist on these has never bee higher. $3 for these on CK with the buylist at $2.50 and a new excuse to play Goblins, plus the possibility of the non-EDH interaction that made it spike in 2021 re-occuring makes this a slam dunk imo.

Sets are all busted, now. Green is getting a card that turns Rampant Growth into a better Sylvan Scrying among other bonkers cards. Once people start to brew, next week’s article is going to be wall-to-wall gas, Until then, check out the Brother’s War stuff on EDHREC – there are more picks than the ones I wrote about. Until next time!

Readers!

Mark Rosewater loves to do a cryptic teaser blog post every time a new set comes out, which is often. Usually it’s all inconsequential but speculation is the art of using the past to delve clues about the future for information. Yes, I said art. You can be scientific about it if you want, and I think my typical series using lots of numbers from EDHREC does a good job of that and I’ve been very successful with my insights the past few years. Are you going to argue? You’re reading my writing, clearly something made you care about my opinions.

I like to post his entire post and see if we can ferret out any nuggets. Remember, we don’t have to nail it, we just have to think about what other people are thinking about. It’s a few days removed from the post but I bet there is still plenty of meat on the bone. Here’s the list, you lucky so and so’s. That apostrophe can’t be right, it looks like a grocer’s apostrophe but EB White insists. Shoulda said “lucky sumbitches.”

• over ten legendary Human Artificers

• another card with “end the turn”

• a command with X in its mana cost

• a spell that mimics an element of the effect of a creature that was originally printed with the picture of a World Champion on it

• a Teferi with a new way to gain loyalty counters

• equipment with “Equip Soldier”

• a new Onulet

• protection from everything returns

• a white creature that taps to let you and an opponent draw a card

• one colored artifact

Next, here are some rules text that will be showing up on cards:

• “create a tapped Powerstone token for each other creature you control.”

• “Put a +1/+1 counter on target Assembly-Worker you control.”

• “Whenever one or more creatures with mana value 3 or less enter the battlefield under your control,”

• “Permanents you control have ‘Ward – Sacrifice a permanent.’”

• “Whenever you cast an artifact spell with mana value 6 or greater,”

• “For each card type among noncreature spells you’ve cast this turn,”

• “Create a tapped 3/3 colorless Zombie artifact creature token.”

• “Look at the cards in each pile, then turn a pile of your choice face up.”

• “gains your choice of flying, vigilance, deathtouch, or haste.”

• “Whenever you cast a Beast or Bird creature spell,”

Finally, here are some creature type lines in the set:

• Artifact Creature – Ape

• Creature – Mole Horror

• Artifact Creature – Phyrexian Wurm

• Creature – Phyrexian Human Assassin

• Creature – Minotaur Barbarian

• Creature – Elf Druid Soldier

• Creature – Human Artificer Scout

• Legendary Creature – Human Wizard Advisor

• Legendary Creature – Elf Druid Scout

• Legendary Creature – Human Artificer Advisor

So this is a lot of stuff, and we can immediately ignore some of it. In fact, I’m only going to respond to the stuff I think is actionable.

• another card with “end the turn”

This feels like an Obkea-esque card, and it’s distinctly possible we could see an Obeka-style commander soon. If it’s another Time Stop, that could be OK, too, but those cards are considerably worse in EDH than in 2 player Magic where it’s a combination Counterspell and Time Walk. Just in case, the price of cards like Final Fortune (though Blue-adjacent cards are better than Red ones) or Sundial of the Infinite (which goes in Blue decks).

This is safe as milk imo. The spike in late 2020 is from Obeka and while it went down a bit, it didn’t stay down. One printing, flirted with $8 recent, I’m super duper OK paying $5 or $6 for this future 10 spot. It will go up bit by bit if this new “End the turn” card doesn’t enable new shenanigans and it will increase precipitously if it does. I like a win-win more.

Both cards got a second wind in 2022 that they’re in the midst of shrugging off so the copies won’t be in the hands of dealers. A run of any size on a rare card like this will be amplified 100 fold, but there might be safer places to park your money.

• equipment with “Equip Soldier”

Some people’s brains shut off when they saw this. I really think there is not much here, but anything could happen when people think there is going to be some sick tribal soldier. Still, “equip soldier” likely means there will be quite a few soldiers in this set, and with 50 or so Legendary creatures likely, there’s bound to be a new soldier deck.

Rather than try and figure out what is going on here, I thought about why they might say “equip soldier” and it occurred to me that it was likely due to there being 2 equip costs – 1 for soldiers and 1 for non-soldiers. Rather than focusing on which Soldiers I want to equip, I thought about trying to find easy ways to equip equipment in a non-Soldier deck.

Sigarda’s Aid doesn’t need any help from a new weird equipment that’s hard to equip, it’s doing fine on its own. However, it’s down from a historical high of $14 and basically just waiting for paper Modern. Hammertime is a relatively cheap deck to build and it can lucksack you to some really easy wins, making it perfect in the hands of a complete lunatic. You know the wild card you invite because it’s cheaper to split gas and hotel 4 ways and they have an unhinged Day 1 at a GP and then 0-5 day 2? Soon we’ll have tournaments for that guy to go nuts at again. Sigarda’s Aid seems safe but reprints can always dash our hopes if we’re not careful.

• “create a tapped Powerstone token for each other creature you control.”

This card is both the reason we know what a Powerstone token does and the card most likely to benefit from that being a real thing in Brother’s War. This is a $4 mythic Karn Planeswalker that could get real relevant, or even medium relevant. Did I mention it’s a $4 mythic Planeswalker? Now, that’s not unique – there are a depressing number of Mythic Planesalkers under $5. But the point is, that if you buy in at $5 and nothing happens, you’ll lose out on some opportunities with the money tied up, but if you’re inclined to gamble, this is like buying a $4 lottery ticket that will sell for $5 in 2 years. Sign me up for risks like that. Yes, there is a cost to having money tied up, but it’s a lower cost than lighting a Benjamin on fire because you specced on something way riskier.

• “Permanents you control have ‘Ward – Sacrifice a permanent.’”

Privileged Position this ain’t, but historically, cards that make it hard to target your permanents sleep for a bit until they’re discovered by Commander. Will that lull happen this time? Doubtful with Commander being the most popular format, but you never know.

This little bulk rare that could exceeded $20 both before an after a reprinting in a guild deck (remember those?) and I think while them having to pay dearly to kill something isn’t the same as stopping them entirely, it’s likely that this new spell is a great deal cheaper and therefore comes down before they can deal with it and when they do have some expendable perms later, your Greater Auramancy or Privileged Position can shield the new card that gives everything Ward. Is that boring? Eh, maybe, but not as boring as playing Farewell in your deck.

• “Whenever you cast an artifact spell with mana value 6 or greater,”

I won’t go down the entire hit parade for you, but I did the favor of linking my scryfall search so you don’t have to. I also have a favorite.

Foil Thopter Assembly fits the bill for me. It’s unlikely to be reprinted in foil ever again, the promo is ugly, it bounces itself letting you replay it for a ton of value and whatever happens with that trigger when you play it or replay it and it’s about a buck below its historic high, which will get higher if this new card breaks it. Pairing this with Time Sieve may be 2012 tech but people will remember if you do it to their faces and are left with a cloud of Thopters to vex them to boot.

I don’t know if any of this will pan out, but it’s fun to speculate and I think I did a better job of backing up my assertions than most people who try to do this. Next week we’ll be looking at more numbers, so let’s just enjoy this week and I’ll see you in Vegas, unless you’re at the event in which case you won’t see me because I’m going to be at a taping of Battlebots and multiple casinos. Check my twitter for me to live-tweet my location even though it’s a really bad idea. Until next time!