It’s the New Year, people! Time for reflecting on how the year went, what worked and what didn’t work. For me, in this space, that means it’s time for a dose of honesty, for soothing my ego and for teaching me humility.

I’ve written about how I want to change how I choose my specs, for reasons that will be reinforced today. I want to buy cards with a reason beyond ‘It’s a staple that got cheap.’ I want to anticipate moves, commanders, new decks. So let’s dive into cards I said were worth some of your money, and what I was right about, and what I was wrong about.

On MTG Fast Finance, we do a review of our picks, and I do that here as well. Today, we’re looking just at cards I called out in the first half of this year, as the more recent things haven’t had time to shine up yet. 

On February 10, I said you should sell the hell out of Mercurial Spelldancer, as it was going for $11 early based on some great Legacy interactions.

It doesn’t take a galaxy brain to sell cards early, but holding too long is an extremely common error in this realm. When the price is hot, get out. This is also an excellent demonstration of how most rares go, even new ones. If it’s not picked up by multiple formats quickly, then it’s headed to the bulk bin.

A week later, I looked at the Pro Tour that was coming up and told you to be ready on Indomitable Creatvitiy, at the time $15 or so for the nonfoils. Within a month, thanks to the PT, it had doubled to $30. I told you to sell into the coming hype, and I hope you did, because you needed to be out before the end of summer:

Currently $6, and still no reprints! It’s a great graph that shows yet again why you need to sell right away and not get too greedy. If you bought at $15, and it hits $30, you should be listing the card because metagames shift or reprints come along. It was a small-set mythic, and I understand why you’d want to hold out, but this is why we say to sell into hype: when the hype goes away, so does the value.

I also would not be in a rush to stock up on these. The combo has fallen out of favor in the current meta, and I’d be fine seeing the deck do well and buying up some $10 copies at that point. 

When we found out that The Ur-Dragon would be in Commander Masters, there were a couple of cards I called out on 2/26. I’ve been right that with new copies of His Eminence running around, there would be a lot more people building the deck and EDHREC bears that out, with The Ur-Dragon being a top 5 Commander for most weeks since its new printing.

In that same article, I said to buy Hellkite Courser at $40 in FEA and it is still $40. I think this is an attention problem, because there’s no Commander that the Courser fits better. I feel like a Secret Lair printing is due for this card, but we’ll see. 

In that same article, I pointed out Urza’s Incubator (Borderless foil) got as low as $15 nonfoil/$20 foil and is now trending upwards. If you bought at those lows, I would start to sell the copies you picked up, as we are now up to $30 for nonfoil and $40 for the foils. This is a premium card in typal decks and more copies are inevitably coming down the pipeline.Take your profits and get out.

On March 3rd, I told you to be aware of All Will Be One. I said it would fall a little further from its then price of $11 on 3/3, and it did, down to the $7 range before spiking hard in May. I hope you sold into that spike, when it hit $20, because now it’s available for around $11 again, but creeping upwards.

A week later, I wrote about Oil-Slick foils and had one of my biggest misses: Ichormoon Gauntlet was $35 and is currently just under $20. Ouch. Most of the others have gone down or stayed flat, but Solphim has gone up $10.

A case study followed after that on March 17, when I gave a series of picks about Tom Bombadil, who I felt was going to set some Sagas and Saga accessories into the stratosphere. Here’s the summary: 

Kiora bests the Sea God picked at $3 or $6 in foil, hit $17/$22 in July

Historian’s Boon was available for fifty cents in nonfoil EA, got up to $3 in July

Hex Parasite was called at $4 regular and $15 foil, went up to $9/$22 but didn’t get the predicted double up on the foil.

Resourceful Defense went $3 to $6, handy double up.

However, I was wrong about Hall of Heliod’s Generosity. It was $12 then, and with Tom’s release it perked up a little but is now $6. It’s still an extremely busted card for Tom, and I’m surprised the inclusion rate isn’t a lot higher.

After the first wave of March of the Machine previews, I made some predictions: 

I said wait on Faerie Mastermind when it was at $8, got down to $4, now $9.

I told you to buy Tribute of the World Tree at $3, it’s also now $9.

However, I must confront two very incorrect calls as well: Invasion of Ikoria, I said it would be $1 and it never went under $5. I also missed badly on Etali, Primal Conqueror, I didn’t see his Commander popularity or the combo/reanimator decks coming at all. Big ouchies.

With Aftermath, I looked at the Halo foils on 5/19, and my mistakes are best summarized as being too early:

Sarkhan Soul Aflame did indeed go under $50, can now be had for $25. Mega-oopsies.

Ob Nixilis at least went up by $10, but Training Grounds went down to $8 from $24.

Coppercoat Vanguard is indeed seeing some play, but every version is cheaper now than it was then. I just needed to be more patient.

Finally, on 5/26 I peeked back at Dominaria United. Sheoldred, the Apocalypse hasn’t caught a reprint or a ban yet, so all versions keep climbing and they aren’t going to stop until the reprint or the ban happens. It’s in lots of formats, though rotation in late 2025 might affect the price a little, that’s 18 months away!

I’m surprised that Leyline Binding has gone down in price, though it’s all over the place. If Up the Beanstalk had not been banned, perhaps it would have had a chance but the graph says that’s unlikely.

I hope this look back helped you as much as it did me. We’ve got to be honest and empirical, looking for trends and rules, so stay tuned for the next one of these!

Cliff (@WordOfCommander) has been writing for MTGPrice since 2013, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the official substitute teacher of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at a GP and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.

Welcome back to another installment of Mana Math, where I take the numbers we’re given about a set and turn that into easy-to-understand information about how hard it will be to open the card you really want.

Ravnica Remastered has some awesome cards, including a whopping 64 cards that are serialized to 500 copies, and some retro frame shocks, plus outstanding anime art! Let’s get to the cards, and the odds, and all the numbers you want.

We’re told right out of the gate that you have a 1% chance of opening a serialized retro frame card. With 64 options, that’s 32,000 unique cards. If that’s 1% of the total Collector Boosters out there, then we know there’s approximately 3.2 million Collector Booster packs, or 266,667 Collector Booster boxes.

Keep that number in mind, because you can plug that in with the other numbers I’m going to give you, and we’ll know exactly how many copies of a card were printed.

A caveat: Our vendor partners and distributor sources have mentioned that orders for Ravnica Remastered are low. This represents both the potential for things to be more expensive, as less is ordered and opened, or for a glut of underpriced product to show up later in the year. There’s also the chance that Wizards destroys the leftover packs, as we saw with Modern Horizons 2 back in February:

One thing Wizards didn’t give us directly was a list of serialized cards. Serialized cards are all in the Retro frame this time around, and the ones that are specific to the Collector Booster are not counted. Here’s the list:

Serialized Rares

Serialized Mythic Rares

Blazing Archon Blind Obedience Ghostway Copy Enchantment Spark Double Tidespout Tyrant Crypt Ghast Infernal Tutor Massacre Girl Arclight Phoenix Hellkite Tyrant Krenko, Mob Boss Legion Warboss Mizzix’s Mastery Birds of Paradise Chord of Calling Golgari Grave-Troll Life from the Loam Borborygmos Enraged Cindervines Deathrite Shaman Dreadbore Lavinia, Azorius Renegade Lazav, the Multifarious Mindleech Mass Niv-Mizzet, Parun Prime Speaker Zegana Rakdos, Lord of Riots Savra, Queen of the Golgari Sphinx’s Revelation Stitch in Time Tajic, Legion’s Edge Teysa, Orzhov Scion Tolsimir Wolfblood Voidslime Bottled Cloister Chromatic Lantern Illusionist’s Bracers Pariah’s Shield Seal of the Guildpact Sword of the Paruns Blood Crypt Breeding Pool Godless Shrine Hallowed Fountain Overgrown Tomb Sacred Foundry Steam Vents Stomping Ground Temple Garden Watery Grave

Divine Visitation Bruvac the Grandiloquent Cyclonic Rift Dark Confidant Lord of the Void Ilharg, the Raze-Boar Utvara Hellkite Guardian Project Protean Hulk Aurelia, Exemplar of Justice Karlov of the Ghost Council Master of Cruelties Cloudstone Curio

I don’t know why they didn’t want to give us this list directly, but here you go.

Additionally, there’s a subset of cards that is available in retro frame but only in the Collector Booster, because they are not fun in Limited or are part of strategies that aren’t supported in the Draft Booster experience. Some of them I can totally understand, others are a bit more of a surprise.

These are NOT available in serialized versions. Sorry to disappoint the Thespian’s Stage and Maze’s End players.

Common	Uncommon	Rare	Mythic Rare
Shambling Shell	Sphere of Safety Aetherize Narcomoeba  Turnabout Creeping Chill  Darkblast  Shattering Spree Perilous Forays Wilderness Reclamation Magewright’s Stone	Rest in Peace Gigantoplasm Pack Rat Supreme Verdict Pithing Needle Karn’s Bastion Thespian’s Stage	Enter the Infinite Niv-Mizzet Reborn Maze’s End

In some sets, all the sweet versions can be distributed across multiple slots of the Collector Booster, but that’s not going to be the case with RVR. 

There are good cards in those other slots, but RVR Collector Boosters are going to be a very swingy experience and that last slot is going to make or break the pack. All the foils are there, and while some of the nonfoils should keep a price of a few bucks, my expectations are pretty low. 

We get a breakdown of that last slot:

Let’s get into what we can get here, and just how rare each of those is. 

Type/Rarity (# of options)	Percent chance for any card of that category	Percent chance for a specific card of that category	# of CBs to open one specific card from that category
Traditional Foil Retro Frame Rare (51)	55.2%	1.09%	92.39
Traditional Foil Retro Frame Mythic Rare (13)	5.3%	0.4%	245.3
Traditional Foil Retro Frame CB Exclusive Rare (7)	10.6%	1.5%	66.04
Traditional Foil Retro Frame CB Exclusive Mythic Rare (3)	2.1%	0.7%	142.9
Traditional Foil Borderless Anime Rare (17)	13.4%	0.79%	126.8
Traditional Foil Borderless Anime Planeswalker Mythic Rare (3)	2.1%	0.7%	142.9
Traditional Foil Borderless Anime Mythic Rare (11)	4%	0.36%	275
Traditional Foil Borderless Shock Land Rare (10)	7%	0.7%	142.9
Serialized Double Rainbow Foil Retro Frame (64)	1%	0.016	6400

This slot is going to have some wild variance, but remember that 65.8% of packs, or just about two out of three, will have a foil Retro Rare, not even a foil anime version of a card. If you add those rares in, you’re looking at nearly 4-in-5 packs (79.2%) and adding in shocks gets you to 86%. 

Mythics and serialized cards are present in this last slot for just 14.5% of packs, or just a little more often than one in 8 packs. The average CB box, with twelve packs, will have approximately 1.7 mythics. It’s not like mythics are the only things worth money, but Cyclonic Rift is one of the big upshifts to mythic, and having more of those would have helped the EV of these boxes.

The second-to-last slot, with nonfoil borderless anime cards or the shockland, is the best bet because of what it has, but at the same time, because there’s less options there’s going to be that many more of the cards. Let’s look at the specifics: 

Type/Rarity (# of options)	Percent chance for any card of that category	Percent chance for a specific card of that category	# of CBs to open one specific card from that category
Non-foil borderless anime rare (32)	52%	1.625%	61.53
Non-foil borderless anime planeswalker mythic rares (2)	5.5%	2.75%	36.36
Non-foil borderless anime mythic rares (11)	15%	1.36%	73.3
Borderless shock land rares (10)	27.5%	2.75%	36.36

Now, let’s use that 3.2 million figure and say how many copies of a card will be printed, approximately. I find this useful when thinking of what the prices should be:

Card	Approx # of copies total	Card	Approx # of copies total
Retro Foil Steam Vents	22,393	Nonfoil borderless Steam Vents	88,000
Borderless Foil Anime Utvara Hellkite	11,636	Nonfoil borderless anime Utvara Hellkite	43,656
Borderless Foil Anime Chromatic Lantern	25,236	Nonfoil borderless anime Chromatic Lantern	52,007

I yearn for the days when there was a clear and consistent ratio, but sadly, those days are gone. For some cards, the foils are 4x as rare as the nonfoils, and for others, it’s only 2x.

Finally, let’s get into some specific cards, and their drop rates.

Card/treatment	Approx. number of CBs needed to find one copy (approx.)
Retro Foil Tidespout Tyrant	92.39
Retro Foil Bruvac the Grandiloquent	245.3
Borderless Anime Foil Crypt Ghast	126.8
Retro Foil Watery Grave	142.9
Borderless Anime Foil Cyclonic Rift	275
Serialized Double Rainbow Retro Frame Steam Vents	6400

Again, I hope you use these numbers to inform your buying plans. The highs on this set are going to be amazing, but there’s going to be a lot of Collector Boosters opened that contain chaff that wasn’t worth the pack. Opening packs is always a swingy experience, but that experience is going to be even more of a rollercoaster this time around. 

As always, if you have questions about my methods or results, please feel free to reach out on Twitter/X or in the ProTrader Discord. 

Cliff (@WordOfCommander) has been writing for MTGPrice since 2013, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the official substitute teacher of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at a GP and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.

One of the products that’s being released on February 23, 2024, and slightly previewed, is the Ravnica: Clue edition, which is more than a reskin of the original board game. There’s components of that game, but it plays more like Magic, apparently. What we care about most is the mechanically unique cards coming with it, specifically this guy: 

A Soldier who gives all the offensive abilities AND can activate to give the Hellrider pings? And that can activate more than once? There’s a great deck to be built here, and more importantly, money to be made by getting in early on Soldier specs.

We often get a Commander deck with a lot of good reprints, but that doesn’t appear to be the case here. The ‘Explorers of the Deep’ deck came with an amazing number of good reprints, lords, and utility creatures that made it hard to profit off of the new decks being built. Since this release is confined to a board game, that doesn’t seem like it’ll be an issue but I wouldn’t be shocked if they did a Secret Lair Commander deck for each of the Clue legends.

Soldier decks haven’t had good options like the Commander. We have a lot of creatures that are legends who make Soldier tokens, but they don’t tell you to do the thing like Mustard does. There’s also more than a hundred legendary Soldiers, but none of them are focused on the creature type in the same way that Mustard is. The closest we have is Myrel, Shield of Argive, who is a Soldier that makes Soldiers and keeps you safe during your turn. 

Myrel will be an excellent addition to the Mustard deck. I would expect versions of her to rise nicely, especially as you can currently get copies for $12, maybe even closer to $10.

I also think there will be a lot of other Human Soldiers who get a bump here, and let’s start there: 

Catapult Master (cheapest version is currently $1, most expensive is $18) plus Catapult Squad (25¢ to $6) – These two Onslaught Soldiers have not gotten the reprint love one might expect, and the foils are poised to grow due to a tiny supply, even if the Squad is an uncommon. There are several ways to give all Soldiers vigilance, which makes both of these cards especially vicious. The Squad allows them all to attack, and at the first block, tap a bunch of tokens to blast that blocker into next week.

The nonfoils should see a modest bump, but my target would be the LP foils on TCGPlayer available in the $2 range. Those should give a very nice profit indeed.

Daru Warchief ($2 to $22) – There are more than a few Soldier lords, but giving the discount as well as the bump in power and toughness makes this a must-have. Again, foils are in very short supply because it’s been so long since they were printed, and all versions should rise up nicely.

Preeminent Captain ($1 to $15) – It’s a cheater of a card, especially because some of the truly busted Soldiers are hard on the mana, but here you go, dropping them into play, permanently, for the low cost of an early attack. In a Commander game, there’s usually some openings and then you’re way ahead. My target here are the M15 foils for 30% the price of MOR foils, because those prices should jump quite strongly.

Ballyrush Banneret (15¢ to $5) – We know mana rocks are good, but this will be a card whose foils jump hard once folks start building the decks. Please keep in mind the reduction happens just once, that Kithkin Soldiers won’t be reduced by two mana. This is a great way to get ahead, and start double-spelling very quickly.

Captain of the Watch (50¢ to $7.50) – This is another card with multiple foil versions, and one of them is a little cheaper so I’d go with the M13 copies instead of M10. Either way, this hasn’t had a foil in 11 years, which means that a new Commander wants all the attention. Easily one of the best things to cheat into play with the Preeminent Captain.

Field Marshal ($5 to $14) – A card that’s seen some ups and downs over the years, it’s a lord that gives a very powerful ability. At lowest power, it’s very difficult for you to attack in until you’ve cleared their Marshal away. The best pick here is the Secret Lair borderless versions around $6 for both foil and nonfoil. I generally like buying foils more, but the lower volume of nonfoils out there can make for very high gains.

Valiant Veteran (25¢ to $1.50) –  There is a whole lot of DMU out there, but this is a very good card for Soldier decks and with some foils being under a buck, you might get a great buylist opportunity here. Given the amount currently available, I’ll expect to see this rise some, but not very much.

Adeline, Resplendent Cathar ($6 to $30) – Adeline has proven to be a very good card and capable of doing very swingy things, especially when you’re attacking all three of your opponents at once. We know she’s good, powerful, and in this deck, highly synergistic. I’d imagine the regular copies will have a better return than the Double Feature foils.

Finale of Glory ($1 to $5) – Amazingly, none of the Finale cycle is in Ravnica Remastered, and while there’s a couple of good options for X spells making Soldier tokens, this is my favorite. Go ahead and grab a Decree of Justice or two as well, but the Finale foils at $5 or so are an excellent opportunity to gain in value once people start buying for this deck. This might get reprinted in MH3, so be aware.

Horn of Gondor ($1 to $35) – The original Foil Extended Art versions from the Sample Collector Booster are the expensive outliers here, but you can get EA Surge foils extremely cheap right now and they might be the best bet from all available versions. This is a truly ridiculous effect, that scale up very quickly and synergizes with basically everything in the deck. 

Militia’s Pride ($2 to $9) – Yes, you’re reading the card right: every nontoken Soldier that attacks, it’s one white mana to make a token who’s doing the same thing. It’s put into play tapped and attacking, so you can’t get the Commander Mustard extra ping out of the attack, but this is an easy way to crank your Soldier count quickly. I’d be stocking up on the nonfoils here because of the percentages. I think the nonfoils are more likely to go up 300% ($2.50 to $7.50) than the foils ($9 to $27). If the card had any sort of reprint, I would feel differently, but here we are, nothing new since 2007.

Mobilization ($1 to $14) – This is a bit trickier, because there’s Onslaught, Tenth, and a Commander 2014 printing putting a lot of copies out there in nonfoil. Tenth foils are a good median price, but personally, I can’t resist old border foils from Onslaught. 

Thousand Moons Smithy ($1 to $2) – You might not have noticed, but this makes beefy Golem Soldier tokens, and you’ll have the spare creatures to make this flip into the land. I don’t think it’ll go up too much, being brand-new and very available, but it should be in just about every Soldier deck.

And They Shall Know No Fear ($10 to $17) – Finally, one of the best typal protection spells around. Two mana to be good with any deck that focuses on one creature type, and we’ve seen Surge foils from this set go to some crazy prices indeed. I think I’d go for the surge foils here, hoping for the big score to $40 or $50.

Cliff (@WordOfCommander) has been writing for MTGPrice since 2013, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the official substitute teacher of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at a GP and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.

We are slowly finding out about the contents of Ravnica: Clue Edition (Or Cluedo, if you’re international) and it turns out that this product is not just a reskin of the original board game, but more like a special auxiliary set for Magic. It’ll function a lot like Jumpstart, with premade boosters ready to be shuffled together, and a common pool of Evidence to be used in the game as well.

Jumpstart is a product that’s being phased out, thankfully, because while the concept is neat it contains mechanically new cards and sought-after reprints. Sounds like a great mix, but because it sells in such low quantities, the Jumpstart-only cards occasionally get expensive.

The biggest problem is, we’re getting these mechanically unique cards in a box that’s preselling for $70 on Amazon. We’ve seen examples

of this before, and now Wizards is out there all over again, making the same mistake twice.

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Cliff (@WordOfCommander) has been writing for MTGPrice since 2013, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the official substitute teacher of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at a GP and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.