Hello, Readers.

With Ultimate Masters mostly spoiled, people are waiting patiently to see on which cards they’re about to get their pants pulled down (R.I.P. Foil Thespians’ Stage) and which cards could see a surge in price as a result of not being printed. People tend to wait until the set is fully spoiled to make their buys on stuff that’s not in the set but the thing is, we don’t HAVE to wait on everything.

In Which I Introduce a Concept that is Not New

Magic cards are numbered.

Fascinating

Don’t interrupt me. Anyway, Magic cards are numbered. The bottom of the card has two numbers, one is the total cards in the set and the other is the number that card is in the order. Ultimate Masters has 254 cards, the first of which is All is Dust and the 254th of which is Urborg, Tomb Of Yawgmoth. How do we know this? Well, we’ve seen pictures of both of those cards and the number on All is Dust is 1/254 and the number on Urborg is 254/254/. This isn’t a new concept to most of you.

Another thing we know is that the cards are ordered alphabetically, subsected into colors which go Colorless, WUBRG, Gold, Lands. Fauna Shaman is before Snapcaster Mage alphabetically but its number in the set will be higher than Snapcaster Mage’s because Green comes after Blue. Don’t believe me? We can test this – Fauna Shaman is 164 and Snapcaster Mage is 71. Bam. Science.

What can this information tell us? Well, it can’t tell us what’s in the set as often as it can tell us what isn’t in the set, but the good news there is what isn’t in the set is more valuable to know right now than what is. If you get something in the set confirmed, you learn that you should have sold already because the price will tank. But if you learn something that’s ruled out, you can buy before the price goes up. Let’s see if we can figure out some sweet EDH staples that are ruled out.

First up, I pulled up the list of the Top 100 EDH cards in terms of deck inclusion for each color. Not all of them are money because, not surprisingly, a lot of them aren’t rare. However, there are some expensive ones that could go up if they’re not reprinted. I started with colorless/artifacts first. In the set, Eldrazi are up first in the colorless section and artifacts are later so we’re looking at two different spots on the number crunch.

Unfortunately, at the time I wrote this, we didn’t know many artifacts. Card #2 in the set can only be 7 different cards between All is Dust and Eldrazi Conscription and none of them really matter. In the artifacts section, though, we don’t know much.

Colorless/Artifacts

225 Fire//Ice

226 Probably Unknown Artifact

227 Engineered Explosives

228 Unknown Artifact

229 Mana Vault

230 Unknown Artifact

231 Unknown Artifact

232 Phyrexian Altar

233 Platinum Emperion

234 Unknown Artifact

There isn’t much we can come up with, here. I can’t rule out Paradox Engine, Urza’s Incubator, Mox Opal, Hangarback Walker, Sword of anything, Gauntlets of Power, Caged Sun, Darksteel Forge… I feel like this section is a waste of time. Let’s move on to another color.

White

8-10 Unknown White Cards

11 Containment Priest

12-13 Unknown White Cards

14 Daybreak Coronet

15-18 Unknown White Cards

19 Heliod’s Pilgrim

20-24 Unknown White Cards

25 Martyr of Sands

26-29 Unknown White Card

30 Resurrection

31 Reveillark

32-33 Unknown White Card

34 Runed Halo

35 Sigil of the New Dawn

36-37 Unknown White Cards

38 Sublime Archangel

39 Unknown White Card

40 Tethmos High Priest

41 Wall of Reverence

42-45 Unknown White and/or Blue Cards

White has a few big gaps but there are a few cards we can rule out.

Thalia, both Guardian of Thraben and Heretic Cathar can’t be between 40 and 41.

That’s basically it for now. We can’t rule out anything we’d like to – Teferi’s Protection, Worship, Act of Authority, Council’s Judment, any Elspeth, you name it, basically.

Blue

42-45 Unknown White /Blue Cards

46 Back to Basics (!)

47 Circular Logic

48-50 Unknown Blue Cards

51 Disrupting Shoal

52-54 Unknown Blue Cards

55 Foil

56 Unknown Blue Card

57 Frantic Search

58 Glen Elendra Archmage

59-60 Unknown Blue Cards

61 Laboratory Maniac

62 Living Lore

63 Magus of the Bazaar

64-67 Unknown Blue Cards

68 Rune Snag

69-70 Unknown Blue Cards

71 Snapcaster Mage

72-75 Unknown Blue Cards

76 Talrand

77 Temporal Manipulation

78 Unknown Blue Card

79 Treasure Cruise

80 Unknown Blue Card

81 Visions of Beyond

82-84 Unknown Blue/Black Cards

Leyline of Anticipation can’t be between Laboratory Maniac and Magus of the Bazaar, and given the tendency for the set to include cycles, I think that could rule out Leyline of the Void and Leyline of Sanctity, but I’m not betting money on it.

Tamiyo, Moon Sage can’t be between Talrand and Temporal Manipulation.

Bribery can’t be between Back to Basics and Circular Logic.

Time Warp isn’t ruled out per se, but with Temporal Manipulation in the set, it’s unlikely card 78 is Time Warp. I feel the same way about Time Stretch, which needs a reprint badly.

Teferi, Temporal Archmage can’t be between Talrand and Temporal Manipulation.

Baral, Chief of Compliance can’t be between Back to Basics and Circular Logic.

There are a lot of cards we can’t rule out, but there is a lot of value in the ones we can. Blue was a treasure trove of crunched-out cards.

Black

82-84 Unknown Blue/Black Cards

85 Bitterblossom

86-88 Unknown Black Cards

89 Chainer’s Edict

90-92 Unknown Black Cards

93 Demonic Tutor

94 Entomb

95-98 Unknown Black Cards

99 Goryo’s Vengeance

100-101 Unknown Black Cards

102 Gurmag Angler

103 Unknown Black Card

104 Liliana of the Veil

105 Unknown Black Card

106 Mikaeus, the Unhallowed

107-109 Unknown Black Cards

110  Reanimate

111 Unknown Black Card

112 Shirei, Shizo’s Caretaker

113 Unknown Black Card

114 Slum Reaper

115 Unknown Black Card

116 Spoils of the Vault

117 Tasigur, the Golden Fang

118-123 Unknown Black/Red Cards

Liliana of the Veil all but rules out Liliana, Heretical Healer, which is creeping up in value.

Drana, Liberator of Malkir can’t be between Demonic Tutor and Entomb,

We can’t crunch much out of Black, but that’s fine since Black historically doesn’t have expensive EDH cards.

Red

118-123 Unknown Black/Red Cards

124 Balefire Dragon

125-127 Unknown Red Cards

128 Faithless Looting

129 Fiery Temper

130 Firewing Phoenix

131 Unknown Red Card

132 Gamble

133-135 Unknown Red Cards

136 Lava Spike

137 Unknown Red Card

138 Magmaw

139-143 Unknown Red Cards

144 Reckless Wurm

145 Unknown Red Card

146 Seismic Assault

147-149 Unknown Red Cards

150 Squee, Goblin Nabob

151 Unknown Red Card

152 Through the Breach

153 Unknown Red Card

154 Vexing Devil

155-156 Unknown Red/Green Cards

Fiery Confluence can’t be between Faithless Looting and Fiery Temper.

There isn’t much else, here. We can’t rule out anything we want to – Repercussion, Price of Glory, Mana Echoes, Wrath of Goad, Insurrection, Purphoros – the list is long. The important thing is Fiery Confluence is safe for a bit, goes in Legacy where it’s bought 4 copies at a time and is in that Kalemne deck with a bunch of other $20 cards.

Green

155-156 Unknown Red/Green Cards

157 Become Immense

158-162 Unknown Green Card

163 Eternal Witness

164 Fauna Shaman

165 Fecundity

166 Unknown Green Card

167 Golgari Grave-Troll

168 Unknown Green Card

169 Hero of Leina Tower

170-171 Unknown Green Cards

172 Life From The Loam

173 Miming Slime

174 Noble Hierarch

175 Nourishing Shoal

176 Pattern of Rebirth

177-183 Unknown Green Cards

184 Spider Umbra

185-186 Unknown Green Cards

187 Tarmogoyf

188 Travel Preparations

189 Vengevine

190-193 Unknown Green Cards

194 Wild Mongrel

195 Woodfall Primus

196-198 Unknown Green/Gold Cards

Mana Reflection can’t be between Life from the Loam and Miming Slime. That’s a pretty significant one. I would say that all but rules out Wound Reflection, also. It doesn’t exactly rule it out, but with the tendency toward cycles, I am betting my own personal money on it. I think Mana Reflection not being in the set is a gigantic punt and I also think they would have to know that so I could see a creative way to print Reflection in the next 12 months, so get in and get out. They seem too powerful for an EDH precon deck (Mana and Wound do, not so much the other 3 which are dirt cheap, anyway) so who knows what they’ll do? They surprised and delighted me with the Ixalan board game, the Guild Kits and other ways to reprint cards that need it.

Exploration can’t be between Eternal Witness and Fauna Shaman, and that’s very significant as well. Exploration seems to be trading printings off with Burgeoning, but Exploration seems like it’s too good for a set like Conspiracy/Battlebond (but so did Doubling Season) so we’ll see whether we have more than 6 months of growth on that.

Tooth and Nail can’t be between Tarmogoyf and Travel Preparations. Tempt With Discovery is in that same slot. Triumph of the Hordes is in the same 3 card block and is ruled out as well. Guess what else? Tireless Tracker. Guess what else? Titania, Protector of Argoth. Traverse the Outlands. Three Visits.

Mirri’s Guile can’t be between Miming Slime and Noble Hierarch and neither can’t Nature’s Will.

Gold

199 Gaddock Teeg

200-201 Unknown Gold Cards

202 Leovold

203 Lord of Extinction

204 Maelstrom Pulse

205 Unknown Gold Card

206 Sigarda, Host of Herons

207 Sovereigns of Lost Alara

208-212 Unknown Gold Cards

213 Dimir Guildmage

214 Unknown Gold Card

215 Fulminator Mage

216 Kitchen Finks

217-222 Unknown Gold Cards

223 Slippery Bogle

224 Unknown Gold Card

225 Fire//Ice

There isn’t much crunched out here, unfortunately.

Maelstrom Nexus can’t be between Lord of Extinction and Maelstrom Pulse, same with Maelstrom Archangel. I’m not excited.

236 Ancient Tomb

237 Cavern of Souls

238 Celestial Colonnade

239 Creeping Tar Pit

240 Unknown Land Card

241 Dark Depths

242 Unknown Land Card

243 Flagstone of Trokair

244 Karakas

245 Lavaclaw Reaches

246-247 Unknown Land Cards

248 Phyrexian Tower

249 Raging Ravine

250 Unknown Land Card

251 Stirring Wildwood

252-253 Unknown Land Cards

254 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth.

A few unexciting cards like Kor Haven are ruled out but for the most part, the value here is in the large number of $10+ blue and green EDH staples that are crunched out. If you’re looking to buy cards bound to go up now that they dodged the reprinter’s metaphorical axe, those are your best bets. I really like Mana Reflection, Wound Reflection, Bribery and Exploration.

That does it for me. We’ll have a full spoiler next week and we can dig down some more. Until then!

Readers,

I like being involved in EDH finance and usually it’s a fast-paced world that’s constantly evolving but we have just been doing a lot of nothing on the basis of Guilds of Ravnica. There’s nothing doing. The most-built commander is still Niv-Mizzet which would be cool if the deck didn’t already exist in its entirety. Niv-Mizzet isn’t new, Etrata isn’t good and Izoni isn’t exciting. The guild decks nerfed a lot of specs and I wrote three articles’ worth of content about those stupid box-toppers last week. This week I want to think about the next Ravnica set, its 5 guilds and a few cards that are likely to get some play based on which guild mechanics I expect will see a bump. I’m sure most of the commanders are going to suck and a lot of the guild kits will have obvious synergistic cards, but I think if we go foil and obscure, or target cards outside of Ravnica sets which won’t be in those decks, we can be safe. Here’s what I came up with on the basis of writing a very similar article from a builder’s standpoint that will go live on Coolstuff Inc. later this week.

Azorius

I don’t think Forecast is all that likely to be re-used and I think they’ll either do a new mechanic that’s synergistic with Detain or they’ll just re-use Detain, which I’m fine with. Detain is rough against a whole board, but I think bouncing Lavinia has worked in the past and likely will again. I think those flash shenanigans are the best thing we can be doing in those colors and if we’re not building around a new commander, I bet we get some new spells that make that sort of thing profitable, I’m betting there’s a Ghostway in the Guild Kit and I’m betting there is money to be made.

This nicely shrugged off the reprint, one it’s not likely to get again soon. There area lot of these, but 17,105 is a big number, too. There is no real substitute for this card, only cards that do this absurd thing almost as well. This does dumb stuff with creatures like Lavinia and with most Detain abilities being ETB, I think this is a safe bet whether we get anything Detain-esque or not. This was never not a good bet to go up.

This didn’t dip as much at rotation as many would have liked and it’s already starting to go nuts. This was gettable for much cheaper and I feel like I warned us but I didn’t buy as many as I should have, either, so we’re all just going to have to buy a little closer to the $10 I bet this hits soon and chalk it up to being distracted by stuff that doesn’t matter like Ultimate Masters and Arena and every other format.

In the event that I’m right about everything and we not only get good detain or other ETB stuff and Ghostway in the Guild Kit, don’t forget about this card.

Gruul

Gruul’s keyword abilities all tended to relate to making sure you deal them damage and I don’t necessarily expect a good commander to result if we end up getting one of those keywords back or getting one related to them. I’d rather pitch lands at them for more damage than pitch creatures to their Bloodrush ability. I think Gruul is a lands-matter tribe primarily and even if we don’t get a new commander for that, I bet we get cards that enable those strategies and those alone may be an impetus to go back and build something like Angry Omnath or Mina And Denn.

I think this is getting a bit underplayed right now and I think once people realize how good this is, we’ll see it crest a few bucks at least. It’s in the “worst” deck and while most of the copies busted aren’t going in a deck, there aren’t many copies being busted since players aren’t excited and the deck isn’t worth anything. This has a lot of room to grow and I think it’s a great card that will pair well with future Gruul offerings.

I’ve been on this for a while and I don’t feel any less positive about it now than I did then. This is sick in EDH, has cross-format appeal, is at its price floor and likely gets a second look if the new Gruul commanders are any good, and that could be doubly-so if Simic happens to interact with it somehow.

You aren’t likely to see this reprinted and while you’re not going to have any Deserts when this resolves, you’re also not going to see a card that gets two lands of any type and puts them into play anytime soon. This is pretty nuts and its demand will soon catch up with its supply. It may take a minute like it did with Realms Uncharted, but it will happen.

Orzhov

I doubt Haunt is coming back and since Extort was so miserable in Limited, I don’t think we’re getting that precisely, either. I think if we do get a new keyword ability, it’s bound to be related to lifegain or life drain and since Ozhov was great at that already, cards that are devoted to that will have some upside.

At around 12k decks, this card doesn’t mess around. It’s got utility in spellslinger decks as well as lifegain decks and blasting people for 50 appeals to casual players as well as competitive ones. This card has something for everyone and I don’t know how reprintable it is. I was all over these when my LGS blew out bulk rares as buy one get one free dropping the price to 50 cents and I feel pretty good now that they have quintupled. There is a lot of room to go up, still.

Foil Kambal is harder to reprint, gets played in formats like Legacy and Modern where foils have upside as well as the lunatics who foil their EDH decks. All in all, this seems like a no-brainer.

Between Orzhov and Azorious, someone is going to want a 3 mana Jokulhaups.

Rakdos

Rakdos is terrible and I think the Rakdos stuff that has upside will have nothing to do with the Keyword ability, which may be Hellbent but will likely be new and not great in Commander. I had a lot of success in Limited with Rakdos but times around since you curved out and had a lot of finishers that were nasty with Hellbent but I don’t know if EDH cares this time around.

This is half predicated on Grenzo and half just another excuse to talk about a card that should both be played and cost more.

I think a lot of people thought this high price was predicated on scarcity, but the amount of decks running it bely that narrative. Besides, it’s not like Battlebond isn’t pretty scarce in its own right. Battlebond continues to be a slam dunk.

If you buy one card from this block, buy Torment of Hailfire. If you buy two, but Tormet of Hailfire and Neheb. Trust me.

Simic

Simic is likely to have a dumb, +1/+1 counter theme and some support for it but it will mostly just be a goodstuff commander, if there even is a good commander in the set. Simic is my favorite color combination but it’s a bit boring and most of what it will likely do in this set is accidentally give Atraxa decks a good card.

This may not be as hard to reprint as I’m making it out to be, but I’m not banking on this ever getting cheaper. In a Simic deck, this is really solid but good luck wresting a copy away from an Atraxa player.

In my experience, this puts the person who resolves it roughly as far ahead as casting Sylvan Primordial did, but there you have it. This is not bannably good per se but I feel like it can be just as much a blowout. If those cryptocurrency geniuses went as hard after obvious specs like this as they do garbage Reserved List cards, this would be $15 already with no reprint in sight. As it stands, I can’t believe this isn’t $10.

This shrugged off the reprint, it looks like, and since it’s getting played in a popular Modern deck which eats four copies at a time, being a recent rare isn’t going to hold this back. I think whichever Simic commanders are printed in the next set will interact with this a ton and it’s not eligible for the Guild Kit which means this is about to ride a wave of upside to value town. Enjoy!

That does it for me this week. These 15 specs are very very speculative given how little we know about the next set, but a lot of these are due a price increase regardless of what the new commanders do. I’ll have more when I know more. Until then, thanks for reading. Until next time!