Hey nerds,

You don’t have to care about EDH to find this column edifying and I get that. You might be less excited about the stupid card that was accidentally spoiled but not yet revealed than I am, but maybe cram your lack of excitement and focus on how much money you’re about to make.

If you don’t know anything about EDH, you might think Boros is great. Boros has been good a few times in Standard after all. A combination of weenies and burn is always poised to overrun opponents before they even get set up and big, flashy angels with swords made out of fire seem to tear it up constantly. You probably think Boros is exciting and fun in EDH.

Boros in EDH consists of 25 commanders that deal with attacking with creatures and Brion Stoutarm. You like putting equipment on creatures and attacking? Goody. You’ll love it when your opponent combos off on turn 6 and kills you because you have no way to interact with anything.  Boros can be fun and it can get powerful and I’m not going to sit here and pretend that Assemble the Legion isn’t one of my favorite cards ever printed. But for the most part, if you don’t want to put a bunch of goblins in the red zone, Boros is a bore. That’s about to change and I think that’s more significant than Golgari or Simic getting yet another busted general. This new card is good enough that people are going to build it on principle but also, anyone who is sick of their Boros decks being boring will be on board. Anyone who has a deck of every color combination will want to build this and abandon their stupid Jor Kadeen nonsense. So there is not only future demand, but pent-up demand for a general like this and I think that’s significant. The other thing that’s significant is that since there has never really been a Boros general like this, while Boros staples have some upside because, of course they do, a bunch of brand new cards are about to get a bump and that means they go from bulk to not bulk and that’s the best way to be.

What’s The Card?

I wish I could show you. The best we have is a mock-up from Mythic Spoiler, which is better than nothing, but only barely.

If this doesn’t excite you, you must not play EDH. This card is stupid and it’s about to make a bunch of stupid cards stupider. It has a big enough butt to survive an Hour of Devastation, for starters. The amount of life you’re going to gain from spells like Blasphemous Act (should your spellcows survive) is going to make it pretty easy to dome people with Aetherflux Reservoir or just win the game with Felidar Sovereigns.

People are starting to brew with spellcows already and those people have large readerships who are going to get as hype as I am about spellcows and go buy their own decks. But they’ll wait until Dominaria is actually released to buy the rest of the deck because they are not doing it correctly. Let’s do it correctly and get ahead of the ensuing buying frenzies so we can be sellers when everyone else is a buyer.

What Are We Buying?

Good question. Looking at what people are brewing with and which cards I think are inclined to be good in the deck, I have a few picks I think are good buys.

Sunforger (foil)

From the dizzying highs of Tiny Leaders hype (remember that adorable time in Magic’s History?) to the crushing depths of two reprints within 2 months, Sunforger has been through a lot. Probably a bulk rare forever or at least for a long time due to how many copies are recent, available and unclaimed, I think there is still money to be made on the Modern Masters foils. They’re only a couple of bucks but there were fewer foil printings than non-foil printings and I think the lower supply is more susceptible to increased demand. Sunforger fetches a ton of good cards in this deck and being able to suit up something with lifelink to swing at them and then Lightning Helix them right after or other crap like that is what is going to make this deck fun to play. Sunforger packages are common in Boros and I don’t forsee another reprint for a good long while. Foils are flat and when the demand profile changes, that will change.

Aetherflux Reservoir

A feature of foil cards that isn’t discussed all that often is that a high foil multiplier usually only works in one direction. A low one doesn’t but a high one tends to. A high foil multiplier gets higher as the non-foil price dips at rotation and the foil doesn’t. This is usually because a high foil multiplier while a card is still legal in standard indicates that the card is played primarily in a format that isn’t standard which means that people aren’t dumping their valuable foils at rotation because they’re in decks. You don’t have to worry about what’s going to happen at rotation and you can pretty comfortably buy foil copies this close to rotation. If it does dip at rotation by a lot, just buy the same amount again and mitigate how much you lost. All of the copies will go back up and your average price paid will be lower which makes your gains even better. This is an EDH staple and as boring as it is sometimes, don’t expect EDH decks that are capable of gaining a lot of life to go away anytime soon. I like foils of this. At rotation, non-foils will probably be bulk rares and I think it might be fun to pick up one or two hundred at bulk and sit on them to see if they hit $3 before they get reprinted.

Brightflame

What’s the ceiling on a Ravnica rare with no reprints? $100? This won’t be $100, but I think it can go up quite a bit based on the difference between its current demand profile (362 decks on EDHREC) and its future demand profile (more than that, I bet) due to how quickly the very few copies listed online will sell out. Can one commander supply enough demand to make a bulk rare go nuts unless it’s Atraxa-tier good? Maybe, maybe not. But we saw what The Gitrog Monster did to Squandered Resources and I think hitting $10 and settling at $5 is the dream but isn’t THAT unreasonable even given the difference between the amount of Mirage block and Ravnica block out there. This should stop being bulk given how good it is in this deck.

Balefire Liege

Balefire Liege won’t trigger your commander but it will trigger separately and get you some more reach, making it worth it to play with Lightning Helix in EDH, finally. This also triggers when you play creatures and enchantments so you’re going to be dangerous when any of your spells resolve. Wizards has shown a willingness to print these Lieges into the ground to get them into the hands of EDH players but for some reason, this one stopped being popular enough for them to bother and it hasn’t been reprinted since literally Planechase. That was a long time ago, so I think these are poised to go up based on any new demand, quite a bit should be coming from this deck which, I’m banking on getting built a lot.

Serra Ascendant

I think this is just about at its floor. It’s a good card, some players want four copies of this rather than 1 and it’s cheating in EDH. I think, like some of the other cards I mentioned being at their floor in Iconic Masters, now is the time to buy these regardless. Are these good in the spellcow deck? Certainly. But on top of that, they’re good, not likely to be reprinted soon and they have cross-format appeal. All of those factors added up and you have a card that’s going to go up no matter what happens. I even like the new art better, which is rare.

Reiterate

Mizzix hype spiked this card hard a few years back and the result of that is a price that’s stable for now but which can be easily upset by renewed demand. A second spike is going to spike harder and faster and stabilize higher. I don’t see a reprint coming soon so this is a pretty safe pick. I was going to do 5 this article instead of 6, but you figure out something I could have cut. This is all solid.

I like these picks a lot and I plan to keep googling “Firesong and Sunspeaker EDH” to see what other people are brewing. A lot of it’s garbage but the thing about garbage is you can still make a really tall stack of it. If enough people buy a bad, or obvious card, congratulations, the price went up and you made money. Probably the best aspect of Firesong and Sunspeaker and one I haven’t mentioned yet isn’t how exciting it is that Boros is finally getting a general that doesn’t suck, it’s that this deck, for as exciting as it looks, is probably going to be pretty linear. It’s really obvious how to build it and when that happens, you have a lot of people who want to build the deck vying for the same obvious cards, which is great for us. Get the obvious cards early, watch what people are brewing and note innovation and get ahead of that and remember that people being excited about something that doesn’t interest you can still be a money-making opportunity for you. That does it for me. Until next time!

Nerds,

Look, had I known what the full spoiler was going to look like, I would have written this article last week. I spent all week – Brainstorm Brewery, here, Gathering Magic, talking about how people might be inclined to play more Animar decks if they could get a cheap Imperial Recruiter in Masters 25. It’s not necessary in Animar but since it’s very good, you could see an uptick. It was a correlation without necessarily causation argument which isn’t the strongest but we’re just making associations here, right? More often than not, those correlations lead us to money. This week is no different, except my correlation argument went and strengthened itself.

So this is a thing. I guess I could have predicted this if I had really thought about it, and maybe I kind of did but now we have confirmation that Animar itself is getting a reprint, we don’t have to guess how many Animar decks are going to get built on the strength of an Imperial Recruiter reprint. We can guess how many Animar decks are going to get built on the strength of an Animar reprint and that number is much, much larger. Animar was pretty expensive before and it had some expensive cards from the deck get reprinted. What’s bound to go up as Animar decks get played more? How do we get ahead of the coming wave and make sure we have enough boats to… benefit from the wave…

I’m getting sick of the boats metaphor. I never hear anyone reference it but me and I was honestly just keeping it going to see how long I could do it.

Let’s get on with talking about money and not about boats, shall we?

Money, Soul of Everything Around Me

Animar is a pretty specific deck which can be good and bad. It’s sort of bad in that it’s sort of boring and predictable to play but it’s good for us in that it’s boring and predictable to build. I think people are going to take advantage of the price of Animar plummeting, personally and I see it getting built, especially now that people can get Animar in foil.

For reference, there are 775 Captain Sisay decks currently registered on EDHREC and 2,700 or so Oloro decks, so that puts Animar in roughly the 60th percentile for deck adoption based on current numbers. Again, the absolute numbers matter less than the proportions so try and not look at a number like 1,714 and say “that’s too low to bother with” if you don’t have a reference based on popular commanders. Without a compelling reason to build Oloro coming soon and a bunch of cheaper copies (Cheaper than even the $15 Card Kingdom wants for a preorder) coming and with foils available for the first time, I think Animar is going to approach Oloro’s numbers. That is good news for Animar staples. Staples such as…

Cloudstone Curio

This is basically an EDH staple at this point, you’d think, but if you check the synergy score with Animar, it’s almost 40% meaning there is a high degree of correlation. Cloudstone’s fate is less tied to the fate of the format as a whole than a card like Sol Ring but if we’re predicting Animar is going to get played more, cards that are shoo-ins for decks like that are good cards to discuss. I don’t know if I like the invention at around $45 since the art is sort of meh. However, Curio is a combo enabler in a lot of formats and has been a solid card for many years. I don’t know if it’s reprintable but with core sets coming up, there is real risk. I think if this had a run on it and went from $10 to $20 you get in and out. Curio is just too good in Animar decks and it basically makes any two creatures get Animar huge enough that you can Eldrazi them to death. This is a must-play for idealized versions of the deck making it a must-buy for us. Also, stock online is low making any amount of buying activity immediately noticeable and very impactful.

Birthing Pod

Being banned in Modern is pretty good for mitigating its reprint risk, I’d say. With it being hard to reprint and with people already having dug through online and rooted out all of the event decks it’s in, I think the copies we have are the copies we have which means future demand is all upside. This is good enough in the deck that I think this has upside based on increases in Animar decks being built and with supply not going anywhere, new demand is all the price should need. Don’t expect demand to be back-filled by copies coming out of the woodwork, either. You’re getting these from dealers.

Promo Rattleclaw Mystic

I don’t think the demand from Animar will be great enough to drive regular Rattleclaw up and I think the set foil isn’t splashy enough but  I do think people will target the promo foil and I think we could see an opportunity to make some money. Unfortunately, the card is a bit narrow and basically goes only in Animar decks right now, but if they’re being built, I could see the upside bringing this card for a bit of a ride even if the other printings aren’t touched. This may be wishful thinking but Morph creatures are great in Animar, they’ll probably be good in something else in the next few years and Rattleclaw is one of the best Morph creatures we have. I don’t have the kind of confidence in this I do in Curio just because there are 3 choices under $3 for this one and the foils of Curio are ridiculous and these are a very recent card but I do think people will want these and you should make some money. I mean, before fees, you’ll definitely make money. Before fees.

Foil Ancestral Statue

This is a pretty textbook case of an “Animar only” card but the foil is doing some pretty encouraging things in a world where Animar was like $50. This is a goofy pick and it goes against a lot of the things we normally say when we play it safe, but the graph seems to show some signs of life. I don’t hate this.

Ulamog the Ceaseless Hunger

This is probably the finisher in the Animar deck with the most upside. It’s starting to tick up a bit and while that means we could have gotten it for a buck or two cheaper, realistically, it represents the start of a climb that wasn’t even predicated on the reprinting of Animar. With Animar on the upswing, Eldrazi like this one will be along for the ride and I think this is the one I’m most excited about. You can check the price graphs of the others (cross reference with the list of Eldrazi played in Animar that you can find on EDHREC) and feel free to list any you like in the comments of this article, but I’m fairly certain this is the juiciest.

I am absolutely building Animar once prices tank and I welcome you all to join me. You add some artifact shenanigans, some enchantments like Sunbird’s Invocation and Zendikar Resurgent and you Eldrazi them to death or morph a bunch. It’s going to be pretty rad. Again, let me know if you think any Eldrazi are sexier than Battle for Ulamog or leave other questions and concerns. I read your comments, so leave them. Until next time!