Innistrad: Crimson Vow is finally in preview season, and it’s full of amazing cards! Some of them are tribal goodness, some of them are going to be great in Standard, and others are Commander gold. 

I don’t think I’m preordering any of these cards, but I am keeping a close eye on them. I want to wait until probably February or later for picking up significant quantities, depending on if they start to creep upward again. It’s also possible that demand is just enough to keep these cards from getting too cheap. I’m willing to run that risk.

Let’s get to it!

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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.

All right, everyone, let’s get into the distributions of different Innistrad: Crimson Vow cards. 

Normally, I can’t write this piece after the first day of previews, but they decided to throw me a bone and tell me enough specifics to let me make some pretty good guesses.

So let’s get to the numbers!

We’ve got five ways that a card can be different this time: Extended Art, Eternal Night, Fang Frame, Dracula Series, and Borderless. EA is really for the cards that don’t get one of the other treatments, so let’s take a moment and review what’s getting what, so far.

For each of those treatments, I can’t yet give you exact numbers on most of the cards. For a select few cards, we’ve been told how many versions of a card exist, and that leads to knowing some specifics for the Collector Booster drop rate.

Normally I wouldn’t be too interested in this level of spoiler, but in case you didn’t know, Ayami Kojima is a really big get, as one of the primary artists behind the Castlevania series. I will leave it to your own experiences to determine which is a stronger influence and a more popular crossover, but be aware that there will be a whole other market for this card, just as there was for the Liliana, Dreadhorde General.

We’ve got some numbers, though, and we can compare what the drop rate will be for the Kojima Sorin to the drop rate for other special versions, like the Phyrexian Vorinclex. 

What I can tell you at this point is that in Draft Booster, you’ve got a 1/148 chance of getting a particular mythic rare, and then a 1/74 chance of pulling a particular rare. It gets worse, statistically, from there. 

For Draft Boosters, we know the drop rate goes down. From the Collecting Crimson Vow article: “For each of the Booster Fun (showcase and borderless) cards that shows up in only one version, one out of every three times you open a given card, it will be the Booster Fun version of the card. For cards, such as Sorin the Mirthless, that show up in more than one Booster Fun treatment, the one-in-three Booster Fun version finds are split evenly between borderless and showcase fang frames.”

So you’ll pull a non-foil Kojima Sorin the Mirthless in approximately every 1,332 packs. You’ll have a 1/444 chance of getting a special-frame Sorin, and since the three versions are equally spread, that’s where the 1,332 comes from. The foils in a Draft Booster are tricky to calculate, because only 1:45 cards in Draft Boosters are foils.

For the Collector Boosters, your odds are going to be better, but I can’t say precisely how much better. I need more specific information on how many of each rarity are present for each special frame, but I feel pretty confident saying that it won’t be as rare as the Phyrexian Foil Vorinclex, back in Kaldheim. When that was released, we were told that all the copies of both versions (Showcase and Phyrexian) would add up to the same number of copies as things that didn’t have two such versions.

I’m anticipating that the Kojima version of Sorin in foil is going to show up in the 1/150 range.

That means it’ll take roughly 12 boxes of Collector Boosters to snag the one Kojima foil. To get that estimate, we know there’s 40 extended-art rares and 12 extended-art mythics, so that leaves 24 rares for the Fang/Night/Dracula frames and 8 mythics for the same. Some of those will be repeats, but the precise numbers will need to wait.

I would NOT compare the Kojima numbers to the Amano Lilianas, because the distribution is MUCH different. Kojima’s card is possible in Collector Boosters of any language, and Amano’s was only in Japanese-language War of the Spark boosters. What I would expect, though, is a price curve that looks a lot like the Phyrexian Vorinclex:

The demand will spike HARD early on, and then trickle off as assorted collectors get their hands on the card. The number of copies available will not make for the same demand curve as the Amano Liliana. 

One other thing to keep in mind: Sorin the Mirthless in other versions probably won’t be a super-pricey card. It’s taken a long time for Liliana, Dreadhorde General to climb, even as some of the other cards from that set have had their own financial jumps.

I hope that this helps you figure out what to do about this special artist crossover, and how to make some informed decisions when preordering or considering picking up this card for your collection.

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.

With the announcement of the Extra Life 2021 Secret Lair this week, and we now know it contains two Craterhoof Behemoth, two Metalwork Colossus, and two Mulldrifters. Secret Lairs have become a part of the MTG Finance landscape, but with Craterhoof being near its highest price ever, I want to look at what happened to the prices of cards after they get a reprint like this.

We’ve got a lot of examples to get through, so buckle up!

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.

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.

With the World Championship in the books, we see a jump in a couple of the weekend’s best performers: Alarund’s Epiphany and Ranger Class. No matter what is happening at your local store, Standard cards are starting to get back on the move and back on the map. I’ve been extremely hesitant to get in deep on Standard because of the lack of paper play, but here we are, with prices jumping.

As a result, it’s time to evaluate Standard cards! Let’s see what we can do with what we have, especially as rotation just happened a month ago, and we’ve got a new set coming out in a month. For some Standard cards, it’s time to sell into the hype or before rotation sinks their value. For others, it’s time to think about when I want to buy in on some current Standard cards. A third category I’m thinking about is things I want to buy in anticipation of them getting big in Standard at some point.

I’ve written before that the paradigm is to be out of a card by Valentine’s Day, six-seven months before it rotates. That’s the way to be sure you maximize profit and minimize the risk of your card losing value as rotation approaches. So what cards are we getting rid of?

Goldspan Dragon ($40) – The graph says a whole lot:

Goldspan is top-notch right now, and rightfully so. It’s a mythic, getting played as a 3- and 4-of in top-tier decks, and it’s even in 9,000 Commander decks online. The Standard demand is what’s caused the recent jump, and now is the time to sell. It’s possible that this card ticks up a little, but locking in profits right now is the strategy that will serve you best. Let someone else take the risk and hope for $50, when you can solidify the gains you’ve already gotten.

Alrund’s Epiphany ($15) – Again, let’s see what the data says:

Oh look, it’s a card that’s doubled in price recently, and is even getting talk of a banning. Extra turns cards will always have a place in Commander, but the ones that exile themselves are just not as popular. Time Warp is in 12,000 decks, but Epiphany is in less than 4,000 of them. This is a card I just don’t want to have around as rotation nears, and if you bought anywhere under $10, I’d seriously consider selling while it’s at its peak. Again, there’s a chance that your cards will climb a little higher before rotation starts to sink them, so you have to weigh your greed against your guaranteed profits.

Esika’s Chariot ($5) – The great news here is that if you bought this anytime before October, you’re likely sitting pretty:

This is just a regular rare, not a mythic, so you’re looking at substantially more copies and a much much lower demand from Commander players. This isn’t going to hit $7.50 before it starts trending downwards, so I strongly suggest you take what profit you can from these cards and move on to better targets.

Prismari Command ($7.50) – There’s a case to be made that you’ve missed the top of the market on this card, but not by a lot:

Even if you’re not selling at $10, the card has likely doubled from when you bought in and that’s a lovely place to be stepping out from. The main reason why I want to be selling here is that the drivers of demand here are Standard and Historic, one of which is an online-only format! I’m looking to unload all the copies I have of this before another deck comes along and this trickles back down to $2 or $3.

Ranger Class ($13) – One more graph:

Oh yeah, that’s a curve that screams for a sell-off. Remember, too, that AFR cards have the shortest lifespan in Standard, at just over a year. There would have to be an amazing confluence of factors to make this go back up to $20, and there’s no guarantee that this stays as high as it is. Commander demand has sucked up some number of copies, as that last ability is GAS in 100-card formats, but let’s look at another four-of in the Mono-Green lists, Old-Growth Troll:

I’m not saying that OGT is a better card than Ranger Class, I’m saying that the floor for Ranger Class is a lot lower than you think it could be, and it’s time to sell off.

One set of cards that I’m going to be keeping my eye on are the MDFCs from Zendikar Rising. I’m keenly aware that they would be an excellent candidate for their own Secret Lair, and that’s making me wait on purchasing them for a while. Plus, I’m really hoping that they creep downwards in price as rotation approaches. Emeria’s Call is in the least decks, at just under 7k, but Sea Gate Restoration is in nearly double that many. Most importantly, though, is that these are pretty much freerolls in Commander. Take a current land, slot in the MDFC, and have your choice of a land early or a powerful spell later. 

Finally, I’ve been thinking about Midnight Hunt in Standard. There’s two years until this set rotates, and that means there’s a long long time for these cards to pick up. We don’t have a lot of tournament data yet, but there’s already a couple of cards I want to get bricks of around Christmastime:

Intrepid Adversary – A mythic, a four-of in the White Weenie decks, a card that is okay at two mana, very good at four mana, and HOLY CRAP at six mana, this is a card I’m hoping to get in the $5 range.

Moonveil Regent – Already under $5, this is in a sweet spot at four mana. Because it can be the top end for an aggressive deck, or the card that enables maximum churn, it’s got a lot of potential. Hopefully this approaches $2 in the next couple of months.

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.