Category Archives: Casual Fridays

Judith Speaks, and the world trembles

One of the things I try to keep an eye on is when we get cards that do something new. We’re getting a whole lot of Clue goodness and investigation, but one of the rares in Murders at Karlov Manor does something we really haven’t seen before:

This is Judith’s second card, the first being the Scourge Diva, definitely not someone to mess with. This time, she costs more mana but brings a truly gamebreaking set of abilities. Giving any instant or sorcery both deathtouch and lifelink is busted right in half, and whenever we get a new legendary creature like this, I think, “Would I build this deck? Would it be fun?”

My answer: Heck yes.

So today I want to go through a first pass of things that might take off if Judith gets her 15 minutes of fame. We’re going to have to be quick here: the set drops February 8, and the first decks should be getting built not long after. If she gets popular, it won’t last very long, and I’ll want to move these out quickly. I’m imaging that this will be a fad, not a long-term crazy popular Commander.

Let’s talk cards!

For each card, I’ve listed the current lowest price and the current highest price. 

First of all, there are around a dozen spells that cost from one to four mana that will deal one damage to each creature you don’t control, and I would start with every single one of those. Some are rares, like Impending Flux and might really take off. Most are commons and cheap, and it’s hard to predict which common foils could jump in price. I’m expecting small movements there, nothing huge, but I think we’ll see a lot of common foils go from ten cents to a dollar.

Disaster Radius (Bulk to 75¢) is another card with uneven applications. It’s tougher to use, given the mana cost and the creature requirement, but I’ve no doubt of its potential. Plus, it’s a single printing foil released in 2010. 

Volcanic Vision (Bulk to $2.50) – There’s not a lof of ‘get the instant or sorcery back’ in mono-red, but we get that regrowth effect on top of damaging everyone else’s stuff! Again, only one foil for the perfect card means there’s value to be gained.

Searing Touch (50¢) and Fanning the Flames (50¢) – These two are the star of the show. Buyback is exactly what Judith wants anyway, being able to recast spells over and over again. Slaughter and Evincar’s Justice, plus Lab Rats, should all bump a little but these two that deal damage are going to be tremendously flexible, dealing lifelink/deathtouch damage or giving you a 2/2 to go with the damage. 

Blasphemous Act ($2 to $22) and Chain Reaction (50¢ to $10) – Both of these will end up killing Judith because they damage all creatures, but since the spells gain lifelink, it’s reasonable to think that you’re going to gain a boatload of life as a result. Sometimes you need a grand finale, baby!

Chain Reaction has been printed a bunch of times, but its only foil is from Worldwake, a small set in 2011. The supply is miniscule and I won’t be shocked to see $20 or $25 for the foils. Blasphemous Act is a card with a boatload of printings, and the Secret Lair version is just awesome in the horror movie-esque frame. 

If you want to play more ‘damage all creature’ spells, you’ll need a little protection for Judith:

Mithril Coat ($9 to $60) – The fancy versions of this are under a lot of pressure, because the Coat is so so good at protecting any Commander who needs to stay in play. That’s most decks, so get your personal copies now.

Darksteel Plate ($7 to $14) and Hammer of Nazhan ($8 to $10) – Plate has seen a few printings, but these are close to the same card, and considering how much mana you need for Judith and how the deck needs her to be in play, a little insurance goes a long way.

Once you’ve gained a bunch of life, now what?

Well of Lost Dreams (50¢ to $120) – This is a great way to pay off the big lifegain into some extra cards, and we might even see some serialized cards get bought.

Aetherflux Reservoir ($10 to $300) – What to do when you’re at 94 life? FIRE THE SPACE LASER!!

Solphim, Mayhem Dominus ($10 to $32) – A lot of your spells will deal one damage, and while it doesn’t matter much if that’s got deathtouch, it’s also got lifelink. So you really want to gain that extra life and deal that extra damage to players. We’ve got a few ways to do that, and Solphim can get indestructible pretty easily here. Oil-Slick versions would be my first stop.

Torbran, Thane of Red Fell ($2 to $17) – If damage is good, more damage is better. We ought to see bumps in Fiery Emancipation and City on Fire as well.

Toralf, God of Fury ($3 to $6) – This will be terribly fun with spells that deal more than one damage.

Brash Taunter ($3 to $6) – I will enjoy ending a game with this card. Only one fancy foil version to target!

Stuffy Doll ($1 to $11) – The only problem here is, there’s more than one foil and so it’ll be hard to know which to target.

Fire Servant (50¢ to $8) – An uncommon from 14 years ago, there’s a deeper stock on the Premium Deck Series but those foils are kinda slick and ugly. I’m surprised that there’s never been additional copies printed.

Neheb, the Eternal ($7 to $32) – If you’ve dealt a lot of damage in the first main, would you like a boatload of mana in the second main?

Blood for the Blood God! ($3 to $8) – Surge foils from 40K are getting targeted intermittently, but really, there’s no card more perfect for this deck. Lots of things have to die, but you’re built to do that. Then this will dome your opponents and refill your hand.

I’m already at my word count, and over by a fair margin, so here’s a group of cards that reward you for making sure there’s no other creatures in play, or for doing lots of killing. I don’t think these are must-includes, but they are high on the list of cards I’d put into the first draft of the deck. We’ll see what EDHREC says in a few weeks.

Painful Quandary ($1 to $10)

Mogis, God of Slaughter ($7 to $18) – SL copies are likely the winner here

Kaervek the Merciless (bulk to $2.50) – foil-etched are your best bet

Tergrid, God of Fright ($7 to $14)

Kroxa, Titan of Death’s Hunger ($2 to $140)

Massacre Wurm ($2 to $14)

Crimson Honor Guard (under 25¢) – no foils available

If you build a Judith deck, reach out to me on Twitter or in the ProTrader Discord, let me know how it plays!

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.

Really Reconsidering Ravnica Remastered Reprints

Sometimes, you just can’t help a title. Alliteration is just so much fun!

Ravnica Remastered is official today, and while the preordering has been fun, it’s also emblematic of the clobbering that prices are about to take. This is a reprint set, so everything exists already and the goal/expectation is that regular copies are going to end up notably cheaper than they were.

This reprint set is made up of lots of special versions too! Borderless, Anime, Retro-Frame, and even Serialized versions will be available too! In previous reprint sets like this, there tends to be a spread of prices for the different versions, with the more basic ones getting to a low price indeed.

The good news is, we can get those basic copies super cheap once these cards hit their lows. So today, I want to look at my favorite targets to drop low before reaching new highs in a few months. I don’t think the rebound will be faster than six months, and I also wouldn’t be shocked when it takes a couple of years.

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expensive cards ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.

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.

The Schedule for 2024, for speculation and avoidance

Welcome to a new year, and with Ravnica Remastered arriving in a week, Murders at Karlov Manor on February 8, then Universes Beyond: Fallout exactly one month after that on March 8! Yes, the timeline is jam-packed full of releases, but there is helpful information in each release that’s coming up this year.

We can do a lot, even with limited information, and one example is Doubling Season. With Ravnica Remastered on the horizon, I stayed the heck away from Doubling Season and other Ravnica-themed cards. Doubling Season ended up being printed twice in a row in other bonus sheets, but it worked anyway.

So with that in mind, let’s go through the calendar, and see what we should do or not do coming into the coming year.

The rest of this content is only visible to ProTrader members.

To learn how ProTrader can benefit YOU, click here to watch our short video.

expensive cards ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.

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.

Six Months of Predictions, for Auld Lang Syne

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.