I don’t think you should be buying anything from Dominaria United right now. There might be something in the set that’s going to grow based on multi-format usage, like Ledger Shredder or Unlicensed Hearse, but for the most part, prices are about to take a bath.
What I’d like to focus on is the cards in Streets of New Capenna that are currently underpriced compared to their usage in Modern, Pioneer, Standard, and especially Commander. We’ve had about five months since the set came out, and prices have stabilized nicely. Even if things dropped about 10% more before flattening out, I’d feel good about where I bought in.
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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.
Here we are, the day where the set is legal to buy and sell on the major sites, and it’s time to see if we can pull the diamonds from the rough. I have advocated repeatedly to not pre-order cards, and here I am, wondering if these are priced too low.
So let’s get to the cards, both the things I want to buy now and the things I’m going to be patient on. Prices right now can be a little wild, so if you spot copies that cost a little more or a little less, act accordingly.
Liliana of the Veil (DMU copies available from $40 to $73) – The big reprint of the set, it’s been a while since we’ve had a lot of copies around.
We’ve gotten some reprints, but there’s a big difference between being a Modern Masters 2017 mythic and a Dominaria United mythic. I’m not expecting her to fall too far, as she’s being rapidly adopted in Pioneer, but I think she’ll settle out near $30 for the cheapest versions. The premium versions from DMU are not really on my radar, as there’s Box Toppers and Pro Tour Promos to chase.
Long-term, I think Liliana is an excellent place to gain some value, though I won’t be buying any for a few months.
Sheoldred, the Apocalypse ($38 to $117) – Sheoldred is a card I expect to take over a lot of Commander tables. I wrote an article about good specs for her deck, but Neksuar is three colors, blah blah blah. Black decks will need an explicit reason not to run this gem of a card, which is also a combo enabler in many ways.
If it seems expensive right now for a Phyrexian foil, I’d agree with you, but I also want to keep in mind that Sheoldred’s most sought-after version is impressively hard to pull from Collector Boosters. As I pointed out last week, for every 100 Borderless foil Liliana of the Veil, there’s 50 Phyrexian Sheoldred and 50 Showcase.
The graphs for Vorinclex and Jin-Gitaxias and Urabrask are pretty similar, but no one’s got the early hype spikes that the green one did:
Vorinclex showed up every 296 Collector Boosters, Jin-Gitaxias was every 544 but is now under $100, and Urabrask is every 492. Sheoldred is every 346 boosters for a Phyrexian foil, and is a much stronger card being both cheaper to cast and with a nasty backhand of an effect. Commander players love drawing cards!
I’m expecting Sheoldred to follow in Vorinclex’s footprints: an early spike followed by a gradual decline. Buying now for your deck at about $117 is not too far off where the price will be in three months, and if it makes you happy, go for it.
Ajani, Sleeper Agent ($8 to $45) – Foil Phyrexian Ajani is twice as rare as the Sheoldred, checking in at once every 692 Collector Boosters and the rarest non-Hidetsugu card of the last couple years. (I’m not counting the Legends inserts.) However rare he is…his card isn’t terribly powerful. Tamiyo in Phyrexian is available for just about $20, several months later.
Planeswalkers who come down early and can get you ahead are good. Ajani on three (plus the 2 life) is still capable of ticking up and gaining card advantage, but not for control-themed decks. He’s good but not broken, and so I think his curve will follow Tamiyo’s, unless some other amazing combo comes along.
Leyline Binding ($10 to $21) – I’m terrified of making a prediction about this card. It seems too good to be true in Modern, where a Triome and a shockland make this a one-mana Oblivion Ring. However, Modern already has lots of great removal. In the last year, we’re seeing decks run some combination of Prismatic Ending and March of Otherworldly Light. If the domain decks are big, I’d be delighted to see cool stuff like Scion of Draco have its day, but we’ll see if that takes off. I think this will see play, but it’s not going to be Ledger Shredder. I think there’s enough demand to keep the price high, yet not too high. I don’t think it’ll hold a price of $15, nor go below $7.
The Defilers ($5 to $21) – All five are decent to good, but the blue one that fuels itself and the green one that grows your team are probably the strongest cards. Green especially has a lot more ‘green mana only’ costs, topping out at Primalcrux. I will want to have some of these long-term but for now, I’ll be content to let their prices drop.
Plaza of Heroes ($9 to $18) – It’s nice to have the last ability that saves a legendary creature, but right now, I don’t think this is a card anyone needs to go deep on. I know there’s a lot of chatter about legendary humans especially, but given the lands that already exist (Cavern of Souls, Unclaimed Territory, Secluded Courtyard) I don’t think that deck needs more. This should fall by at least half, if not more.
One other thing I want to note: The rare and mythic artifacts do not have a special version in this set. I strongly suspect we’re going to see some special version before too long, and therefore I don’t want to go deep on any of these until that shoe drops.
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.
It’s become a tradition, and one that tests my limits for going back and redoing things, but here we are, with a new set and a whole new list of things to figure out.
As always, I want to figure out what the rarest of rare things are, and just how rare they are, especially as a historical comparison. Plus, I need to do some calculations about Legends boosters!
Let’s get into it.
The headliners, of course, are the ‘Lost Legends’ that have been added to these packs. One thing they did for us is they said, straight out, that 3% of Collector Booster packs will have one card from a Legends pack. Now that card can be any rarity, so calm yourself down. You have a 3% chance to open a Zephyr Falcon!
For those who want it, here’s the list of cards. We can break this down a little further, and in fact we need to.
Number at this rarity in the original Legends set
How many are excluded, for one reason or another
Number possible for the Lost Legends
Rare
121
6
115
Uncommon
114
53
61
Common
75
5
70
We have the same distribution as always: 10 commons and 3 uncommons for every rare, so the pool for this slot is 1403. Therefore, your odds for getting a card at each rarity IF you hit a Lost Legend:
Common
Uncommon
Rare
1150/1403 = 82%
183/1403 = 13%
70/1403 = 5%
Remember that these are only in 3% of packs, so we have to multiply each by .03, and so there’s a Common in 2.46% of Collector Booster packs, Uncommon in 0.4% of packs, and a Legends Rare in 0.15% of those packs.
Want a specific card? Buckle up. You’ve got to multiply the above numbers by their number of options. So for example, if you want to hit a Willow Satyr, it’s (3/100) X (70/1403) X (1/70), and now we’re getting into negative exponents.
Rarity of the specific card
% of Collector Boosters that contain that card (approx.)
Packs needed to open one (approx.)
Rare
0.00002138
46,767
Uncommon
0.00006414
15,589
Common
0.0002138
4,677
We can estimate how many of each Legends card is about to enter circulation, too. If we’re using 100 boxes as an estimate for what got opened, that’s 54,000 cards. Divided by the pool, that’s a max of 38.4 copies of any particular rare, 115 of any uncommon, and 1150 of any common.
This number is almost certainly an overestimate, as some cards were just straight removed and new ones weren’t added back in, but it’s a good reference point to know that we’re not getting any appreciable supply of Legends cards added to the mix.
It’s almost as an afterthought that we have some sweet Dominaria United cards to look at and think about!
Frame/Treatment
# of uncommons
# of rares
# of mythics
Showcase (Stained Glass)
40
28
15
Phyrexian
–
–
2
Textured Foil
20
14
7
Borderless
–
6
5
Extended Art
–
41
5
Legends Retold
10
10
It’s a relief to work with some normal-ish numbers here. Let’s look at how these frames are distributed:
Let’s go over this, from the top down. (If you open the pack this way, it’ll be from the back to the front)
Slot #1: Textured Foil Stained Glass U/R/M
They added uncommons in this slot, and that makes for quite rarer cards. We know that the distribution is 10c:3u:1r:0.5m, or to make it easier, 20 commons:6 uncommons:2 rares:1 mythic. Therefore the pool of cards in this slot is 215.
Rarity
Percentage of packs that hold any card of that rarity
Chance for a particular card of that rarity
# of packs to hit a particular card
Uncommon
83.7%
2.8%
35.8
Rare
13%
0.93%
107.5
Mythic
3.3%
0.47%
215
Slot #2 and #3: Foil-Etched or Nonfoil Alternate Border R/M (Stained Glass, Phyrexian, Borderless, or Legends Retold)
This is crazy. Wizards has a history of changing what they collate into different slots in order to get to the percentages they desire, but I can’t remember a slot having such a wide variety of treatments, and in nonfoil, except for the set of Legends Retold which can be in etched foil but NOT traditional foil! They are trying to make me lose my mind.
Stained Glass
Phyrexian
Borderless
Legends Retold
Rare Nonfoil
28
–
6
10
Rare Etched Foil
–
–
–
10
Mythic Nonfoil
15
2
5
10
Mythic Etched Foil
–
–
–
10
The pool here is 150, and so:
Rarity
Percentage of packs that hold any card of that rarity
Chance for a particular card of that rarity
# of packs to hit a particular card
Rare
72%
1.3%
75
Mythic
28%
0.67%
150
Remember that there’s two of that particular slot, so there’s going to be a lot of nonfoil rares from that grouping that get opened. The foil-etched mythics will be 1 per 75 packs, which is pretty common as these things go.
Slot #5: Traditional Foil Alternate-Border R/M
Too many options here, let’s organize it with a table:
Stained Glass
Phyrexian
Borderless
Extended Art
Rare
28
–
6
41
Mythic
15
2*
5*
5
The asterisk here is for the Phyrexian cards: Sheoldred, the Apocalypse and Ajani, Sleeper Agent. Sheoldred has a showcase and a Phyrexian frame, cutting your odds in half. Remember that more versions of a card does not mean that there’s more copies of a card out there. So if there’s 100 Borderless Liliana of the Veil (only one special version), there’s 50 each of Showcase Sheoldred and Phyrexian Sheoldred. There would also be 25 each of each of the Ajani variants.
Textured foil is different, because that’s a special subset put in Collector Boosters only.
Because there’s four extra versions, the pool is 173, and as a result:
Rarity
Percentage of packs that hold any card of that rarity
Chance for a particular card of that rarity
# of packs to hit a particular card (except special versions of Sheoldred or Ajani)
Rare
86.7%
1.2%
86.5
Mythic
13.3%
0.58%
173
With all of that calculated, let’s look at some example cards and see how they stack up against each other for a Collector Booster:
Card with Rarity and Treatment
Number of Collector Boosters needed to open to get one (approx.)
Textured Foil Stained Glass Jodah, the Unifier (M)
215
Foil-Etched Sivitri, Dragon Master (M)
75
Borderless Foil Liliana of the Veil (M)
173
Phyrexian Foil Sheoldred, the Apocalypse (M)
346
Foil Compleated Ajani, Sleeper Agent (M)
692
One foil special Ajani, Sleeper Agent every 692 packs is among the rarest of drops we’ve had in Collector Boosters, except for two very special entrants: Hidetsugu and the Lost Legends. Let’s compare these numbers with a list of other big tickets.
Card/Set
Collector Boosters to open one (approx.)
Card/Set
Collector Boosters to open one (approx.)
Phyrexian Foil Vorinclex (KHM)
256
Foil Etched Food Chain (2X2)
280
Japanese- Language Alternate Art Time Warp Foil (STX:MA)
309
Textured Borderless Foil Emrakul, the Aeons Torn (2X2)
160
Foil Extended Art The Meathook Massacre (MID)
151
Green Soft Glow Hidetsugu (NEO)
444
Foil Fang Frame Sorin, the Mirthless by Ayami Kojima (VOW)
I hope that this breakdown helps you make decisions about what to buy. The biggest takeaway for me is that the special versions of Sheoldred, a clearly busted Commander card, will go for a pretty penny indeed. If Ajani takes off, those twice-as-hard-to-pull versions will hit the stratosphere. And whatever you do, don’t go cracking packs hoping to hit a lottery-ticket-level rare Legends card.
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.
Yes, our eyes are full of Dominaria United cards, but the August Superdrop is here and this is a much more appealing target. I’m not buying any DMU for a while, but I’m very likely to go wild on these drops.
Secret Lairs are mostly decent value, and occasionally great value. They are really rewarding patience and those who got the short-lived drops, and it’s worth it to look at these drops to see what’s appealing.
The rest of this content is only visible to ProTrader members.
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.
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