Commander 2016 commanders are selling out like they’re made out of heroin and taste like Nutella. With the set being officially declared out of print and big box retailers no longer restocking shelves with C16 product (or if they do, replacing it with something that’s not quite as good, though some people think it is better), people are finally taking a look at TCG Player stock of the commanders and realizing how easy it is to buy them out. The rest of the Magic community, unaware that a card being sold out on TCG Player doesn’t mean the price automatically has to go up 200%, buys out the rest of the internet because “OMG Breya is $60 on TCGPlayer but I found 10 copies on Card Kingdom for $5! I’m rich!”

Magic Finance is weird sometimes. However, while it’s too late to get in on Tymna, Breya and Thraisos, all of which popped this week, there’s still time to get ahead of the other cards that are good buys for the same reasons that people think the other cards were good buys. C16 is going to be harder to get, partner commanders are likely to be unique and therefore if you want the partner commanders, now is the time to buy and it will be a long, long time before we get more 4-color commanders. There are cards that haven’t popped yet and I think there are some opportunities to make some money. Let’s explore.

Ash Barrens

I’m not convinced the window is closed on this. It’s pretty solidly a few bucks on a lot of sites, up from about 50 cents, but there are a lot of copies available for around a buck. I think EDH demand coupled with a modicum of Pauper demand (which is a real thing, but not really enough to move a card on its own, though I think it’s a non-zero factor for cards relevant in other formats) could see this hit $3 and a reprinting might not move the price down as much as you might expect. Myriad Landscape maintained $3 after a reprinting, though that’s uncommon and therefore in fewer of the decks than Ash Barrens. Barrens triggers cycling and discard stuff which is relevant with Amonkhet cards so it’s getting even more scrutiny as people try to figure out if it’s worth it to play stuff like Archfiend of Ifnir in EDH (I think it is because of cards like Windfall, personally). This has room to grow and the Magic Community is split between people who bought this under $2 hoping it hits $5 and people who think this is bulk and will sell it to you as such.

Lurking Predators

Down from $7, this card took a real hit. The question is what will happen to the cards in Stalwart Unity once MSRP is no longer enforcing the price of the total deck. Stalwart Unity has the most value in cards that were not new in Commander 2016 so while the demand for the cards in the Atraxa deck are in a tug of war between the competing forces of the fact that a $20 Atraxa is in the deck and that the sealed decks sell for like $70 or more on eBay, things are more cut-and-dried for the cards in Stalwart Unity. That deck was the worst-selling deck which means there will be loose copies of the deck on shelves (or on sale to make room for new inventory, which is a great opportunity) but once even that supply is gone, MSRP no longer determines the prices of the cards in the deck. Demand takes over and demand is weird for the deck. It has a lot of durdly cards in it, but those durdly cards are casual favorites. If Prismatic Geoscope doesn’t go anywhere, this deck has the worst Commander 2016 cards of all of the decks, also. Kraum , Ludevic and Sidar Kondo are all pretty bad. Benefactor’s Draught could get there, conceivably, as could Seeds of Renewal, but more likely is that the Commander 2016 cards in the deck all sort of peter out. Should that happen, there is nothing new to soak up value meaning the old cards have to do a lot of the heavy lifting. Will the value spread equally or will it be weighted somehow? I think that’s more likely and while we can’t know exactly, we can sort of eyeball how the value will be weighted (this won’t be 100% accurate because the number of copies matters, also). Using this metric, Lurking Predators isn’t the strongest pick in the deck, however. Lurking Predators has some upside for sure, and under $2, this is a no-brainer given how good it is and how $7 it used to be. I bought in at $1 like I said I would when this card was first spoiled, but I don’t think this is going to see $1 again.

Tempt With Discovery

Everything I said about Lurking Predators is true of this card, except in checking out which cards were played the most per EDHREC, this is played twice as much as Lurking Predators. This isn’t as “splashy” and obvious but this is a bit of a secret staple of the format, impacting a ton of decks. It’s gotten cheap due to the reprinting and another one is plausible but for now, this seems like a low-risk spec and likely grows as much as if not more than Lurking Predators. There were way more copies of a C13 card than an M10 card but this is played twice as much so those factors might cancel each other out meaning if one of these hits, they both should. But you know what’s in twice as many decks as Tempt with Discovery and four times as many decks as Lurking Predators?

Propaganda

This gets printed every couple of years in a Commander deck and it still maintains a decent price. I think this could eat up some of the growth the cards in the deck experience. This is played in so many decks that it’s bound to recover better than cards with fewer copies and that’s why I’m lumping it in with a bunch of other $2 cards that used to be $7 and will probably be $5 from the same deck. That’s all predicated on none of the Commander 2016 cards in that deck really growing but that seems like a fair assessment. Obviously, Kynaios and Tiro are the exception since that’s a very popular deck lately, but the rest of the cards look sort of lethargic.

Bruse Tarl, Boorish Herder

This guy hasn’t popped, yet and it kind of makes sense. Boros is pretty bad in EDH and what Bruse does, there are angels who do it. Still, Bruse can partner and that’s the best thing about him. Partner commanders are unique and this makes him have more upside than other boring Boros commanders because at least you can have access to other colors. If you can get in under $2, I think the reprint risk is low enough that this is a nice medium-to-long-term gainer and it’s worth picking these up since other people don’t seem to be paying attention to him. Right now, EDHREC has this in as many decks as Tymna, a card that is disappearing everywhere.

Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix

Kydele makes infinite mana and can be partnered which can put you into up to two other colors, or 0 if you want to partner Kydele with Thraisos and win every game. If you can get a creature that creates colorless mana and can go infinite with as little as an Umbral Mantle and a Brainstorm, look no further. This is even a useful inclusion in the 99 of decks like Kruphix (should be mandatory, really) and while some of the sexier targets are being gobbled up, this is in more decks than Tymna and should be looked at accordingly.

Looking at the cards in the Kynaios and Tiro deck made me think about targeting other decks where the balance of the value wouldn’t be soaked up by new cards and would therefore likely lead to older cards to regain some of their value (barring a subsequent reprinting, if you want to see what repeated reprintings does to promising specs, look no farther than Mycoloth or Windborn Muse) so I took a look at Open Hostility, also (the Saskia deck).

Of the new stuff in Open Hostility, Stonehoof Chieftain and Tymna and one other card look promising but the rest of the new cards don’t look that good. That said, the old cards don’t look that good, either. Without MSRP to enforce some modicum of a price, the market is going to do whatever it will with these prices and I think some of the cards will rebound absent anything holding them back. Buying this deck is a losing proposition but clearly people were doing it and the singles are out there. But what has upside?

Conqueror’s Flail 

Even at its current $4ish, I think this has legs. It’s not quite Blade of Selves but it’s still very useful and as long as players are going to be aggressive with their creatures, this has a home. Equipment is a bit of a tough sell unless you are building around it, though, and most of the time the only equipment that makes a deck is Lightning Greaves and/or Swiftfoot Boots. Still, this shuts down annoying spells from other decks and can give a creature a significant boost in its power for a small mana investment and that’s got to appeal to people. I think with the narrowing spread on this card, we’re in good shape.

Is that enough value for you? It should be. There are some cards that haven’t popped yet but likely will in the coming months. A lot of these cards are good investments if their reprint risk is low and there are some factors I want to talk about that we should look at. If we want two years of growth, which should be enough to get in, profit and get out, we need to avoid stuff that will be in Commander 2017. What do we know about that stuff?

• 4 Decks instead of 5. With 56 new cards promised, we’ll see fewer reprints than normal since there will be more new cards per deck.
• The decks will be tribal. Stuff like Urza’s Incubator seems bad. Stuff that’s a-tribal seems safer. Still, being tribal indicates risk while not being strictly tribal doesn’t indicate a lack of risk. Use cards’ tribal affiliation as a means of disqualifying them as a spec but not as a means of qualifying them.
• How many colors are these tribal decks likely to be? And in what combinations? If you don’t think there will be a Hydra deck, maybe Managorger is a good pickup. Maybe lay off of Mirror Entity.

That’s it for me this week. Next week there will be another topic, probably some Commander 2017 speculation. If you want me to address a certain topic, hit me up in the comments. Until next time!

Last week I was going to write about all of the cards that Hapatra was going to make spike in price. It was going to be a pretty sweet article, to be sure. A few cards like Crumbling Ashes had already started to creep up so pointing out the rest of them was going to be pretty valuable.

However, a wrench was thrown in the works and Protean Hulk was unbanned in EDH. Since I figured that was an “all hands on deck” situation, I wrote about the stuff that was going to go up as a result. I figured Hulk stuff was going to go up immediately as people panic bought as a result of a major event whereas Hapatra cards were going to slink by in the background a little bit, or so I thought.

The truth is, Hapatra is the most popular Amonkhet commander on EDHREC (though not the most popular overall. You think a little thing like an exciting new commander is going to make the internet stop farting out 110 new Atraxa lists a week?) and cards are taking off. A lot of ships have sailed and I realize that referring to specs as “ships” is mixing boat metaphors a little bit. I guess the rising tide raised them and now they’re capable of sailing? Look, the point is, you’re too late on some cards and on others you’re not.

What Are We Too Late To Buy?

Crumbling Ashes

Basically as soon as we found out we were getting -1/-1 counter stuff in Amonkhet, this card disappeared. It’s in the $7 range right now and it could come down, although there’s not a ton of pressure on it to do so. There aren’t that many copies, what with a Shadowmoor Uncommon being about as scarce as an Amonkhet rare and with a non-trivial amount of casual and EDH demand for this card before this point. There aren’t copies being ferreted out in collections and store inventories fast enough to control the price so it’s basically a $7 card from now on, barring a reprint.

Blowfly Infestation

This is in the $4 range everywhere it isn’t sold out, except for Card Kingdom which has 1 solitary $0.99 copy which throws off our metrics something fierce. Someone do me a favor and go buy it? It’s Near Mint.

This is another card that rewards you for killing their stuff and it’s a nice tandem with Crumbling Ashes. This is a card I would have warned you about last week and there was probably more than a solitary $1 copy then, to boot. C’est la vie. While it’s important to note the cards that spiked already, let’s not despair – there’s money to be made, still.

Few more.

Quillspike

This gets played in and outside of Hapatra decks, both. When people started messing with -1/-1 counters stuff again, including in Modern, people remembered this combo existed and the low supply coupled with the renewed interest gave some upside to this as well as the other piece of the combo, which also spiked for another reason. There’s ample evidence to suggest the printing of Vizier of Remedies spiked Devoted Druid first and brought Quillspike right along with it.

Devoted Druid

This is going to make infinite mana in a lot of decks (although not Hapatra, though it does make an infinitely-large Quillspike, still) and not all of them EDH so it’s natural stuff that seemed to have cross-format applicability would spike first.

While it’s not 100% fair to say that it’s too late to buy any of these cards, I think there are better targets, so why buy on the off chance that there is some blood to be wrung from these stones (there I go again, mixing my metaphors. I’m like the Krombopulous Michael of mixing my metaphors. Oh, you think that’s a funny reference? Well, I made Krombopulous Micheal up. Try thinking for yourselves for a change.) when we can just buy cards that are sexier targets and aren’t all bought up yet?

What Are We Not Too Late To Buy?

You should know by now what I did. My first step was to go to this page and just look at cards. There are some very sexy targets still out there. That’s the second time in 2 paragraphs I’ve referred to spec targets as sexy. I think that’s because we only spec because it’s sexier than the way I make 90% of the money I make at MTG Finance – grinding. You don’t want to read an article about grinding, you want to check the mail with a tent in your pants. I get it. Let’s move on.

Dusk Urchins

Say! Do you wish your Black Sun’s Zenith was also a Blue Sun’s Zenith? Well now you can!

This card is pretty good. Its stats are wonky for EDH but the fact that it can draw you some cards seems pretty good to me and you’re already going to be playing with -1/-1 counters. You can draw more than 3 cards with this and that’s what makes it so good. I think this goes up along with the popularity of Hapatra decks, which some people insist are not good EDH decks, as if that matters even a little bit. Oh snap, false alarm. The Gitrog Monster decks don’t Tooth and Nail everyone on Turn 4. I guess I better give back all of the money I made on Squandered Resources. On second thought, I better not, because I used it to buy a flight and hotel for GP Vegas. Maybe I’ll just stick with paying attention to trends irrespective of whether I agree with them.

Speaking of Black Sun’s Zenith

Despite being sort of a durdly deck full of weird, midrange black creatures and expensive spells and therefore not selling as well as the sexier Red (Mom’s Daretti), White (Kor Set) and Green (Like, every card in there is a $5 elf) Commander 2014 decks, stuff from the black deck is finally starting to move and this card is no exception. It’s basically above its floor now and showing signs of even more life. How bow dah. Put these in a deck where you want things to have -1/-1 counters on them and watch how many creatures it does that thing to.

Necroskitter

This and the next card I want to mention are both at their floor following a reprinting in Modern Masters and that’s good. If you buy in at the floor, your risk is pretty low since they’re unlikely to go down as a result of increased interest. This was between $5 and $8 before the reprinting which was also before the printing of Hapatra. Will this be $8 again? No. But you didn’t buy them at $1 when they were $8 either, so you’ll probably profit the same amount as if you bought them at $3 or $4 before because you read the casual tea leaves better than I did in those days. Necroskitter was always a card I got sold to me as a bulk rare and remembered to pull because it buylisted for $2. Those were the days.

Midnight Banshee

Another card in the same boat (Look, I’m not going to change the way I talk at this point, so get used to it) as Necroskitter is a card that was $4 or $5, probably because of Skeleton Ship and casual and crap like that. This got a reprint, it’s at its floor, it’s starting to move, you know what to do.

Cauldron of Souls

We talked about this card recently and I think it’s worth repeating. This is a little above its floor and I think it’s as cheap as it’s going to get. Commander 2016 versions are gettable around $2 and that seems good to me. You know how I talk about the U-shaped graph of a card that gets a reprint then recovers nicely? We like to see reverse-J-shaped graphs because we know we’re buying in at the floor if you expect the card to recover. We expect this card to recover.

Flourishing Defenses

This is basically a Blowfly Infestation with a lower power level and less cross-format applicability but a high degree of synergy. This also has a way lower buy-in price and you’re basically at the floor on a stagnant card with the same low supply as Blowfly Infestation and Crumbling Ashes, cards from the same set. This isn’t as good but it’s good and it’s going to be how you win a lot of games. Imagine this with Skullclamp. Hubba hubba! That’s a spicy card drawing meatball. Throw in Attrition and Perilous Forays and you got a stew, baby! Beastmaster Ascension, Cryptolith Rite, this even pairs nicely with Nest of Scarabs. This is going to be played in a lot of Hapatra decks, and I’d spec on something old before I took a chance on much newer rares. We’ve established what can happen to this card on the basis of watching Crumblisg Ashes. It’s less healthy than that card but it’s not a complete slouch. At least pick these out of bulk.

That does it for me this week. Did we miss out on too much by not publishing this last week? I don’t think so. I think while there are cards we missed out on, there are still plenty of opportunities. Besides, half the cards we missed out on began spiking before last week. If you find this article series instructive, and this is going to sound like shameless self promotion, my Gathering Magic article series isn’t a bad place to also check. I don’t discuss finance per se there, but I do talk about cards I like in EDH decks and I discussed Hapatra there two weeks ago. I mentioned quite a few cards from the Hapatra EDHREC page and if I’m building with them and others are building with them, someone is going to buy them – that’s how this works. Thanks for reading and let’s meet back here next week to discuss a few more slow gainers that we have some time to scoop up. Until next time!

#&$@ Leovold. I don’t care, don’t let the door hit you in your three toughness. Buff-ass bureaucrat, sitting behind a desk shaking hands with his 3 toughness. Like he needed to be a 3/3 for 3, like his stats matter. Like he would be unplayable in Legacy if all he said was “Your opponents can’t cast Brainstorm or win with basically any combo deck.” Like people would say “I don’t know, a 1/1 for 3 is a bad rate for my EDH general when all his text box says is ‘If you resolve Teferi’s Puzzle Box, no one but you gets to play Magic.'” Eat a bag of elf $^%&, Leovold.

That said, I made a lot of money off of cards that Leovold made expensive and while I don’t think any of those cards will tank too much because of price memory and the post hoc justification about how they’re all played in Nekusar,  Nekusar himself actually is trending up in price because Legacy and Vintage are making up the bulk of his demand and with the elimination of Sensei’s Top, people are going to lean on him harder than they did before. Leovold, you made a lot of people a lot of money and for that we thank you. If your demand continues to increase, maybe my LGS will clear out a few more of the boxes of Conspiracy they accidentally overordered and can’t get rid of.

Out with Leovold and in with a card that may or may not have belonged in card jail – Protean Hulk. For those of you who don’t know what Protean Hulk does, he basically enables combos that are so convoluted that my favorite story about Protean Hulk is from 2005.

People were playing a Flash-Hulk deck in what I have to imagine was either Extended or Legacy at a GP. Day one, everyone was scooping to a resolved Flashed Hulk because the Hulk player would get a bunch of cards and say “I win the game with my combo” and the other player would say “Darn, you won the game with your combo. I hope you don’t win the game with your combo next game.” Day two was veritably lousy with copies of the deck because it got so many free wins. On day two, people started to say “Please demonstrate the combo for me” and then the Flash Hulk player would start to say “Well, I go get these creatures and then I combo” and if you asked “How does the combo work?” or said “I use Mogg Fanatic to kill a creature in response” some players would demonstrate the combo properly but others would burst into flames and you would get the free win instead of them.

Protean Hulk sure does enable a lot of combos. But which ones? And how? I’m going to be honest, I don’t really know as much about a card that’s been banned in EDH as long as I’ve played EDH, but I have been playing Magic in some capacity since 1996 so it’s not like I can’t figure it out. You want to make some money? Well, all of the copies of Protean Hulk are gone, so we better look at combo pieces instead. Those are largely untouched. Let’s make some money, shall we?

Flash

Maybe this first one is a little bit obvious, but with the bulk of the EDH decks excited about Karador builds and the like, Blue stuff gets lost in the shuffle. This is already disappearing a little bit but there are still cheap, loose copies floating around. I have a bunch in the dollar box at my LGS I need to swoop in and scoop up unless someone beats me to it. I think this has upside and with its two printings coming from extremely low-volume sets, supply is not going to keep up with demand for long.

Body Double

Do I sort these by color, or…

Either way, Body Double is a card that plays a big part in a lot of Hulk combos. It was used in some of the classic Hulk combo decks and it’s being touted as a combo piece now. It’s blue, like Flash, so it likely ends up playing a part in a combo deck. I doubt you can do any combos in just Simic, but The Mimeoplasm has the infrastructure to just start jamming Hulk combo without much retooling and Tasigur and Sidisi and other decks will get there, also. Body Double got a duel deck reprinting, which hurts, but so did Coalition Relic. This is a low-risk, low-to-medium-reward spec, IMO.

Grand Architect

Hulk can get you the Pili-Pala, Architect combo, which can give you all of the manas. With infinite mana, you can do a lot of dirty things in Simic, Temur and Sultai or Bant. Win with Helix Pinnacle, deck yourself with Thraisos, deck everyone with Prosperity, etc. This also got a little heat when Breya came out and with that cooling off, this could be a second spike scenario and you all know how we feel about those. We’re in favor of them, that’s how.

Saffi Eriksdotter

Not sure who “Erik” is but his dotter is a beast of a Magic card. Already spiking hard recently. this card is not going down anytime soon, unless it’s considered “Iconic” enough to be included in “Iconic Masters” which may turn out to be a set where they fart out a ton of cards that badly need EDH reprints, something I welcome. You know how many $6 Phyrexian Altars I’ll sell? Because I currently sell 0 because they’re too expensive. Anyway, Saffi gets played in Hulk combos a lot because she interacts with Karmic Guide, another card I have been predicting is due for a price increase for a minute. I hope you stocked up.

Boonweaver Giant

Foils of this combo piece are under $0.50. I think of this fact every time people try to convince me that competitive EDH is a major driving force behind prices. This card has upside and the foils are safer from reprinting than the non-foils, but this is an important combo piece played in a lot of “competitive” EDH decks and the foil is worth less than guac at Chipotle. I think this will get some extra attention and there aren’t a ton of copies available so renewed interest could trigger a price avalanche, so buy in before that, I guess. What do I know? I predicted competitive players would buy Dramatic Reversal enough to make that foil price go above $1 and they printed Paradox Engine 2 months later.

Phyrexian Delver

This card is part of basically every combo I see, barring the ones that don’t use black. It’s not quite Karmic Guide but it does a pretty good impression and while your life total can sometimes matter, depending on how long the game goes, you shouldn’t need to use Delver to get Hulk back more than two times no matter what the rest of the combo looks like. If you have to go Whiteless, this card is part of the combo nearly every time. I think there is very little risk here and despite the Commander deck printing, there is upside enough to move the price. You know what’s even safer than the non-foils of a card they’ve demonstrated their willingness to print?

If you can find foils, they’re probably headed to $40 and beyond soon. This used to be a pretty reasonable card until, I guess, everyone started thinking about how good it was in a lot of combos and I credit Commander 2015 for reminding people the card existed. Hulk hype is driving this up a bit more, I think (I’m writing this under 24 hours after the announcement and the price has been on the move for a minute so it’s not just Hulk doing it) and this was a junk foil until pretty recently so there may be just rando copies in binders.

Feldon of the Third Path

It’s been a while since I revisited this card which is a shame, because it started to move while no one was looking. The spread is pretty low on this for a card that’s inching above its historic high. I think this card is taking off, and how well it pairs with Hulk combos has something to do with it. If you have a sac outlet, especially Ashnod’s Altar, you can KO them with Hulk, Lightning Mauler, Kiki-Jiki and Zealous Conscripts. Kiki-Conscripts was a known combo already, but Feldon helps you find both pieces from your deck by making another Hulk to get the job done. This is a complicated combo that takes a lot of mana, requiring you to use cards like Priest of Urabrask and Skirk Prospector, but we’re trying to KO people and if all those cards need to do is be somewhere in your deck, you’re OK with running a lot of components as long as you can find all of them with Hulk.

Feldon is already on a good path (heh) so whether or not Hulkamania moves his price at all, it’s already a good card to be about. Buying at the floor was better, but buying right before it crosses the threshold of its historic high with a very low spread seems also fine. Breya is a deck that loves this and with WotC being fully aware that people want a UR artifact commander, we could get one any day now and then a card like this has real upside.

Karmic Guide 

This was in Commander 2013 and I predicted it could climb in price. I was totally right. Then came Eternal Masters. I think this could climb again and maybe even flirt with $5, but Iconic Masters is coming soon.

I think Karmic Guide is not where you want to be. That said, it’s part of every single combo with Protean Hulk in decks that run White, so maybe you want to at least have them on hand.

I think Hulkamania will be pretty rad at first but as time goes by, it will taper off (much like the real Hulkamania) and Hulk decks will be just another deck. Hulk really isn’t getting us combos that are that much worse than Tooth and Nail was getting us, especially if you are not playing Hulk for 2 mana with flash. There are counterspells, removal spells, graveyard hate spells and the RC can always just re-ban Hulk if this experiment doesn’t work out. Sure, twitter and Reddit will pule and whine about how Sheldon and co. don’t know what they’re doing, but they say that literally every ban announcement anyway so those complaints are like the buzzing of insects at this point.

That does it for me. I have been doing a lot of reading about Hulk combos but if there is something I missed, throw it in a comment and we’ll talk about whether the buy-in makes sense. People bought all of the Hulks but there are plenty of targets left. Buy before everyone else and your orders won’t get cancelled. Until next week!