Readers!

I’m going to do that thing where I compare 3 decklists to see if anything pops out. If you’re new to the series, I’ll explain later. If you’re old to the series, you’ll be happy to know that article you all try to make fun of me for is like 10/10 this week. There are no misses, only longer-term specs. Enjoy buylisting foil Edgewalker for $30 in a week.

EDHREC has some preliminary data from early birds making decks on Archidekt and Moxfield and not TappedOut. If you’re still using TappedOut, stop. Switch to Archidekt or Moxfield or Deckstats or Aetherhub. This data is early, but it does counter a pervasive (unsubstantiated) opinion among finance people who may or may not play EDH that “no one is excited about Omnath and it’s the Cleric card that’s exciting,” something I’ve seen more than once and I’m paraphrasing here. That might be the case later, but for right now, I don’t see much evidence that Omnath is unpopular. In fact,

It would appear that Omnath has some serious juice at the moment. He was anticipated and spoiled a little ahead of some of the rest but he’s being built 28 times as often as Taborax at the moment.

The thing is, it’s somewhat irrelevant whether Omnath is built more than Taborax or any other commander over the next few months. What IS relevant is whether the cards in Omnath go up as a result of how much it is built. cEDH players are somewhat interested in Omnath as they are in any commander that says “When [name] enters the battlefield, draw a card” because they can build Food Chain, which is one of three things they like to do. Looking into cEDH builds seems irrelevant because every card in those decks is already expensive and every deck in those colors is the same. If they have a 5 color Food Chain deck, they don’t get to play Demonic Tutor. If they had a 3 color Food Chain deck, now they get to play Enlightened Tutor. I’m not saying cEDH isn’t fun or valid, but I am saying everything financially relevant is already expensive and won’t go up on the basis of a new commander.

Great, you devoted a whole paragraph to what not to buy. Super great advice, Jason.

Hang on, nerds, I never said I wasn’t going to tell you what to buy, damn. The thing is, I think we’re forgetting something fairly major here, and that is that most of the Green commanders in this set are really samey. There’s a landfall one, a landfall one and a lands one. Will Taborax or Orah or Linvala even get played more than Omnath? Maybe. Will any one commander be built more than the total number of Omnath, Ashaya and Phylath decks? Not likely. That means anything in all 3 decks is bound to matter.

I outlined a process in a previous article a process where I use a list comparison tool to look at 3 lists of cards and spit out which cards are in 2 of the lists or all 3. I think Yasharn is dissimilar enough from the other 3 Green commanders to exclude it for now but boy, the other 3 don’t have a ton of daylight between them beyond differing color identities. I think the best specs will be in all 3 decks because that is bound to be very significant and we might find some cards that aren’t already expensive.

Ashaya looks like it has a bit more consensus on what to include, but if you’ll notice, the more colors, the more cards in the lists. That makes sense, if 84 people are building a 4 color deck, there’s no way there will be as much consensus as with 13 people building a 1-color deck. This will weight the Ashaya cards fairly heavily, but with more Omnath decks, we can sort of call it a wash. Remember, we’re not looking at how much each card is played, merely at which cards are in all 3 decks.

Avenger of Zendikar
Azusa
Beast Within
Crop Rotation
Crucible of Worlds
Cultivate
Eternal Witness
Exploration
Field of the Dead
Finale of Devastation
Gaea’s Cradle
Genesis Wave
Green Sun’s Zenith
Heroic Intervention
Kodama’s Reach
Krosan Grip
Lightning Greaves
Lost but Seeking
Lotus Cobra
Misty Rainforest
Myriad Landscape
Nature’s Claim
Nature’s Lore
Nissa
Oakhame Adversary
Overwhelming Stampede
Prismatic Vista
Rampaging Baloths
Ramunap Excavator
Regrowth
Return of the Wildspeaker
Sakura-Tribe Elder
Skyshroud Claim
Snow-Covered Forest
Sol Ring
Springbloom Druid
Sylvan Library
Tireless Tracker
Veil of Summer
Verdant Catacombs
Wayward Swordtooth
Who Shakes the World
Windswept Heath
Wooded Foothills
Worldly Tutor
Zendikar Resurgent
Zendikar’s Roil

Check your findings! This should go without saying, but when you’re doing analysis like this and ESPECIALLY when you’re doing analysis using tools that weren’t designed for Magic cards specifically, you’ll have some quirks. The list says “Nissa” is in all 3 decks, but if you go back to the pages for each commander, Ashaya uses Nissa, Worldwaker, Phylath uses Nissa, Voice of Zendikar and Nissa, Who Shakes the World and Omnath uses Nissa, Vital Force, Nissa, Who Shakes the World and Nissa, Steward of Elements. So much for a consensus! “Nissa” doesn’t belong on the list, although Nissa, Who Shakes the World is in 2 of the decks.

This card is very good and it’s going to be in a lot of good decks going forward, it’s not super likely to get reprinted per se and it keeps getting cheaper. If you’ve played with this walker, you know how absurd it is. I use it in 3 color Omnath and it does work. That emblem wins the game if you get it and tapping Forests for double is absurd. If there were more Ashaya decks, surely Nissa, Who Shakes the World would be in the mix. I like this when it finishes getting cheap, although close to $3 for a useful ‘walker has to be close to the floor if it’s not reprinted.

Card Kingdom wants almost $6 for this card and they’ll get it, trust me, which means that $3.75 on Channel Fireball, a site where their subscribers are given store credit every month and encouraged to use it, won’t last long. It doesn’t take much to clean out their inventory.

So even though this isn’t on all 3 lists, it’s only missing from the deck where it’s the best and I don’t expect it to not start showing up in a mono-Green deck. I like this under $4 a lot and I think it could hit $10 but it definitely hits $8.

This isn’t a good spec, now, I just want you to see how adept Lotus Cobra is at shaking off reprints. It’s never been reprinted in a set with a ton of good cards and Expedition box-topppers, though, but when this price craters, and believe me, it’s going to crater, there might be some money to be made. Cobra is good in a lot of EDH decks and if it’s like a buck, there’s no question there’s upside. It being reprinted at non-mythic rare is a blow, but if you’re not holding any copies, who cares how cheap it gets? Just buy in and you’ll probably be able to buylist them for like $5 in two years.

This card reminds me of another card that never got above $1 for this first year and I was buying copies at the LGS because they were 2 for $1 there and I had store credit. The card never broke $1 on any site and I just sat there waiting and waiting, wondering if I even understood mtg finance anymore. I came up with all sorts of reasons why the price was stagnant and when it finally hit $2, I sold a lot of them for a mere double-up, keeping fewer than $20 copies. Here’s a graph of that card.

Return of the Wildspeaker is doing the same thing Rishkar’s Expertise did and this time I know better than to doubt myself.

Rishkar’s Expertise has been out 3 times as long as Return of the Wildspeaker and is in two times as many decks. Does it logically follow that Return is therefore currently overachieving? No, but it’s worth thinking about in those terms. Can you see Return’s graph doing what Expertise’s graph did? Imagine Throne of Eldraine as a set once it rotates out of Standard. The value has to go somewhere and I think it’s super reasonable to picture a scenario where a version of Return of the Wildspeaker is $9 on Card Kingdom. What can we expect to buylist it for in that case?

Hot damn.

It’s hard for me to picture a scenario where Wayward Swordtooth isn’t in Commander Legends. If it’s not, this is a $20 card before there’s even a chance to reprint it. I don’t like paying $15 for a $20 card, so if you can snag those 4 Euro copies on Card Market, go for it.

$4 HAS to be the floor on this formerly $15 card. This can very easily hit $10.

This was all mono-Green stuff, obviously. Would you like some homework? Read over the list of common cards between Phylath and Omnath and post your favorite spec in the comments section here or in the MTG Price Discord.

Arcane Signet
Arid Mesa
Ashaya
Blasphemous Act
Blighted Woodland
Bloodstained Mire
Broken Bond
Budoka Gardener
Burgeoning
Chaos Warp
Command Tower
Constant Mists
Courser of Kruphix
Dryad of the Ilysian Grove
Escape to the Wilds
Evolving Wilds
Explosive Vegetation
Fabled Passage
Farseek
Fury of Akoum
Gamble
Garruk’s Uprising
Gruul Turf
Harrow
Heart of Keld
Horn of Greed
Khalni Heart Expedition
Life from the Loam
Locus of Rage
Migration Path
Mina and Denn
Moraug
Noxious Revival
Omnath
Oracle of Mul Daya
Radha
Rampant Growth
Rhythm of the Wild
Sakura-Tribe Scout
Scalding Tarn
Scapeshift
Seer’s Sundial
Snow-Covered Mountain
Soul of the Wild
Spitfire Lagac
Splendid Reclamation
Stomping Ground
Strip Mine
Swiftfoot Boots
Sylvan Awakening
Taiga
Temur Sabertooth
Terramorphic Expanse
Tunneling Geopede
Valakut
Valakut Exploration
Wildborn
Wrenn and Six
the Molten Pinnacle

That does it for me, everyone. Thanks so much for reading. Until next time!

So I heard you like to speculate. You’re all a bunch of speculators and you love to speculate on Magic cards. You love to play your little games where you speculate on card prices like a bunch of speculators. Well speculate about THIS.

This meaning the information that leaked this week that seems fairly credible, coupled with what Maro said this week. If I can think of anything that could go up as a result, I’ll talk about it here. If you’re not happy with that, go buy basically anything on the Reserved List because enough people are doing it that it will probably work out. Who am I to judge people for doing literally the laziest thing possible?

I’m going to talk about the leaks first and then finish with Maro’s stuff. The leaks are less certain but Maro’s stuff is more vague. I can sense you pulling away. What would you have me talk about this week? Just go with it.

If this is all true, it could be pretty spectacular.

Lotus Cobra being reprinted would be sort of meh, the price wasn’t super high on it but when it bottoms out, it’s a buy-in opportunity. However, if Lotus Cobra is in the set, and it’s looking like it could be since this source is fairly credible, it confirms landfall as a mechanic. Any landfall enabler currently in an Omnath deck is in play. I suspect the new Omnath will be one of the more exciting decks to build since it will likely be 4 colors. Landfall has always been good and now we get to play with cards like Admonition Angel and Ruin Ghost, both of which I like at their current price.

Looks like Card Kingdom got the memo but other sites like CFB seem to be lagging behind a bit.

There were more of these and they were cheaper the first time I wrote about these but you can buy the last few copies under a buck. I think this is quite good in landfall decks and it goes infinite with Retreat to Coralhelm.

When people were playing Knightfall in Modern a million (or 4) years ago, this was the belle of the ball. Now it’s fallen significantly, but a card that flirted with $10 can get above it’s current “not even $2” can’t it? It’s good in landfall decks and we’re likely to get some of those.

Shadowborn Apostle seems like a trap. If it’s reprinted the price tanks and anyone buying Demons to pair with them doesn’t really understand how the deck works. You can look at how the deck is being built right now if you want but I don’t think it suddenly becomes hot again. I could be wrong, so by all means poke around the Athreos, Shirei and Razaketh (my preview card!) lists on EDHREC if you want. If you’re quick, you could end up being able to sell out to people having these same thoughts we’re having now but 2 weeks from now when something is confirmed and not holding the bag even if you’re wrong. You don’t have to be right all the time if you’re quick enough.

The Legendary Demon in the set could be a build-around or it could just make decks like Kaalia and Razaketh better. You could make money on Thrumming Stone again. I’m not personally trifling with any of it but there are plays here if you want.

I have made the mistake of thinking people were going to build tribal clerics but if the demon benefits from people saccing Clerics, they could be in play again. Edgewalker, Starlit Sanctum, all of it.

It’s sort of hard to tell if Apostle is being reprinted or if he’s speculating that they would be good in the set because of the Demon. I am not saying buy them in case they’re not reprinted, because I don’t think he’s saying that. If you had a card like the one he described, and you assumed it was Black, how would you build the deck? What if he was White and Black? I am not sure how tasty any of those pickups are and we’ll likely have some time. A demon like this seems more like a Vannifar than a Teysa, but I hope I’m wrong. I think we can safely wait and see what the deck looks like, but if you want to have the cards to sell to people when that happens, there’s a lot of info about this demon.

I kind of love that the new Avenger of Zendikar thing is Legendary since it will give me something good to write about on Coolstuff Inc. Do you see how I always build crap like that? Cryptolith Rite and Goblin Bombardment and Craterhoof and Purphoros and like, if this description is accurate, I’ve already built the deck. It’s boring how built the deck is. Here is what you probably don’t have enough copies of and I would buy for this deck.

If this is indeed not in the set, it’s going to be in about half of the new decks built with Legendary creatures from the set. I think it’s probably in Commander Legends but I also think sometimes WotC doesn’t know what they’re doing. Training Grounds is like $40, do you think they read my tweets? I don’t think I would do a better job than they are, per se, but when something is obvious to me and all of you and they don’t do it, you have to wonder if it’s because they know way more than us or way less.

$2 on Coolstuff? No way that’s correct.

Finally this popped. I’ve been waiting forever with a box of these. They’re still too cheap.

Look at what goes in Red Omnath decks, while you’re at it. This new Avenger of Zendikar wannabe will be linear and obvious and that means everyone will build the same basic way with the same basic cards. We know what all of the cards that will go in the deck that already exist are because they’re in like a half dozen identical decks. Mina and Denn, Radha, Omnath, Omnath, to an extent, Omnath, etc. Those decks always have Cobra, Avenger, Oracle of Mul Daya, Exploration, Ramunap Excavator, Azusa (cheap as hell right now), Wayward Swordtooth, Tireless Tracker, etc. It’s boring but that kind of deck is fun and I have multiple decks with those exact cards. Why take one apart just to build a new one?

I don’t care about the angel at all, but considering I’ve written like 10,000 words about everything else, who cares?

Maro’s list is way more vague but I think we can still pick out some tidbits.

Let’s go point by point and see if any of it matters in the complete abstract to the extent that we can figure out what to buy.

A white creature that can make an opponent lose the game simply by attacking them no matter how much life they have

I don’t know the victory condition so it’s impossible to say. I think it probably has to do with life totals. Check out decks on EDHREC that play cards like Serra Ascendant and Felidar Sovereign, maybe? I’m guessing.

 A multicolor creature that lets you repeatedly reanimate permanents out of your opponent’s graveyard for no mana

I don’t know what this is, maybe like a reverse Muldrotha? I don’t know, it seems sweet but since I don’t know what you need to do to activate or trigger it, it’s hard to know what to buy. I bet it’s Sultai colors but that’s a guess. Seems awesome, frankly, can’t wait to build the deck. If you read my 75% column on Coolstuff, you know it’s exactly in my wheelhouse.

Three creatures with five creature types

This all but confirms allies. They nerfed Coat of Arms so it would no longer give each of these creatures +5/+5 for each other creature they shared 5 types with. 5 types means they’re probably short so they can fit on one line, so I’m guessing 2 of them are Kor and Ally, but that’s a guess. This sucks, I thought I’d have more hits.

An artifact granting +2/+2 to a subset of creatures that first appeared in Alpha

I assume this is a tribe but I can’t be sure. Alpha’s tribes were pretty boring. I don’t want to devote too much thought to this.

X being used for a variable it’s never been used for before

Neat.

a 6/6 artifact creature that costs 3 and a 7/5 artifact creature that can cost 3

Neat.

The return of four mana symbols that have each only ever been used on two cards before

I assume it’s the 2R on Flame Javelin and Reaper King but I’m guessing.

Lands that come with a choice you’ve never had before

Neat.

Targeted enchantment removal in black

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

A red/white creature with a line of rules text that starts with “Whenever” and ends with “draw a card”

I bet this sees play in EDH unless the condition is silly. Mangara is already making an impact.

A card with three different activated abilities that all copy something

Sweet. I don’t know what to buy but I assume this is Temur colors and Kalamax and Riku players already want this without knowing what it is or what it does. It could be a slightly better Mirrorpool after all.

“don’t lose unspent red mana”

This is the only rules snippet beside “Twice the number of equipment” that caught my eye. I hope it’s not an ability on the Omnath because Red is easily the worst color in the Temur Omnath deck and I generate as little Red as I can get away with. Still, this could make Braid of Fire go nuts.

This is all complete and total speculation, but if you can keep Red mana phase to phase like with Green Omnath, Braid of Fire goes right back t o $30 again. It flirted with $30 already which made all of the $10 copies at every LGS disappear. If it spikes again, it will be harder and faster. If you are feeling ballsy, buy a stack. If you think you will play this ever and don’t want to pay $30, buy 2 copies and when it goes to $30, sell your spare, play with your free copy and pocket $18 for your trouble. Sound good?

Finally, the leaker also said the Legendary crab is a 0/17 that gets +X/-X for each Island you control when you activate it. People are hoping it has Defender because that would be sick in Arcades, but it doesn’t sound like it has Defender, although some crabs do. However, here’s exhibit A in my argument against Defender.

Hedron Crab has 0 power and can still attack. I think instead of looking at Arcades, there’s another commander we should be looking at.

Tap a crab to mill someone for 17, which grows your Wight of Precinct 6 and your Consuming Abberation. It’s stupid and terrible to try and mill people, but doing it for 17 cards at a time in a deck that, if I were building it, runs Intruder Alarm, it seems like it would get there. I think the crab is probably a bad, meme card, but it turns out those sell. They made fake My Little Pony cards and they sold out in minutes.

This is a lot to think about, but I for one think the leaks are credible. I was hoping landfall would be back as a mechanic and I’m glad to see it is. The more we get revealed coming up in the next few weeks, the more we’ll be able to get a bit more granular on our picks but for now, plan for mechanics and decks built around the cards we (assume we) know. That does it for me. Until next time!

Readers!

INSIDER TRADING ALERT

The price of Thrasios went up recently, coinciding with dozens of other expensive cards played in Competitive EDH going up and for months, everyone thought the two events were related. Now, months later, we see that Thrasios was bought because there are new Partners in Commander Legends, something no one could have predicted. This is a clear case of Insider Trading, Conflict of Interest, and some other words I heard watching 10 minutes of MSNBC.

Since the nefarious actors who perpetuated this crime didn’t leave any copies for the rest of us, we’re forced to make do with the copies that… have gone down in price since the spike? That’s weird. This buyout was fairly sloppy and it wasn’t very thorough. That’s good news for us, actually, because it gives us a chance to look at what kind of cards we should be taking a look at given there are more chances for them to be relevant moving forward.

We don’t know what the new partners will be but I think we can at least evaluate the old ones in terms of how likely they are to pair well with something new. The ones that are already good and expensive won’t matter because they’ll be made into goodstuff decks regardless. Here are the current partners with the most upside, imo.

Effects that are good broadly are going to be good choices for future gains. Ikra was printed in Commander Anthology volume 2 so there are more copies of this than some of the partners that weren’t. Ikra is good with any new partner that lets you pay life to do things, grows creatures when you gain life, makes creatures bigger, etc. The price went up a bit but there are still lots of copies available even though people had all day Sunday and Monday to buy them. I think this is a fair low-risk spec and copies should be easy to track down.

This is the lowest-risk, highest-possible reward one and has the lowest buy-in price. If you’re looking for a bit more risk and a bit more potential reward, I have one.

I like to talk about second spikes a lot. What I mean when I say that is a situation where a card’s price goes up precipitously, equilibrates then goes up again. The first time a card spikes, a limited amount of available copies at retail sell out quickly. Dealers raise their buylist prices to get the card back in stock, people find mispriced copies at the LGS and people who had been sitting on them fish them out of boxes and binders to sell or trade into the hype. This concentrates the loose copies in the hands of dealers. When the card spikes again, no one has the option of the cheap LGS copies, or pulling it out of a box and they have to pay retail. The price goes up harder and higher that second time without loose copies in the wild to attenuate the blow. If Kydele is relevant in the new context of a bunch of new partner commanders, it has demonstrated it can go to $15 and can do again. I think Kydele is underrated as all heck and my first deck with partners was Kydele and Thrasios which was so good and consistent I took it apart. Kydele makes a lot of mana, it’s in the 2 best colors in EDH and something is bound to come along that draws lots of cards. If you can get these under $10, seems like you do it.

The ship has largely sailed here. If you can get these on Card Market, do it. If you find them under $10, do it. Reyhan was in Breed Lethality, which was in Commander Anthology 2, so there are a few more copies out there just like with Ikra Shadiqi, but this got a lot of attention given how good it is with Sengir, Dark Baron which is, and I can’t stress this enough, a garbage, terrible card that introduced a new thing you have to do in EDH where you have to remember what everyone’s life totals are at the beginning of every turn in case someone dies. Because there isn’t enough to keep track of already, right? I think the partners revealed later will be better than Baron Sengir and it’s likely one or more will be a better pairing for Reyhan.

Speaking of “The ship has sailed, get these on MKM” Bruse Tarl has been underrated for years. Bruse is in the Breya deck, which is about as difficult to find sealed for a reasonable price as the Atraxa deck (Breed Lethality). If you’re not sure which cards came in which deck, don’t worry, here’s a handy refresher. Attacking with creatures is stupid and hard in Commander and I think people may have forgotten that. This certainly wraps things up with infect or a huge creature, but that was a thing before and no one cared because this was $6 for a whole year.

The rest of the partners are either bad or they’re too good on their own for them not to already be identified. The price of Vial Smasher came away down after its fake-out spike a few months back, but Vial Smasher doesn’t pair with anything. It could, I don’t know what the unrevealed partners are. That said, I tried to come up with some text that would make Vial Smasher part of a winning duo and couldn’t. I would focus on underrated ones like Ikra, maybe a good but high-upside one like Kydele and try to swipe some Brusers from MKM. That said, there’s one more kind of card that matters.

It’s so funny to witness in real time as Card Kingdom gets something right away and competitive sites where competitive players buy competitive cards lag far behind. CFB isn’t selling out of Bastion Protector at $8 and CK can’t keep them in stock at $13. Exploit the insularity of EDH players’ buying habits for profit.

Thanks for reading, everyone! Join me next week for more ideas about this wacky format, and hopefully a few more preview cards. We could talk about the Green spellbook and how nuts it is. Or I could build my Omnath deck a month early. There’s no wrong answer! Until next time!

Readers!

“What could today’s title possibly mean? It’s usually stupid pun, or something you don’t explain until the last paragraph,” I’m pretending you’re thinking. Well today, I’m going to rank the box toppers. The ones that are better in EDH are the ones I’m going to say I like more. Accordingly, I am going to do a stupid clickbait thing where I start with the worst one first and make you read the whole article to see what the best one is. Awww boo. You drove me to this, you have no one to blame but yourselves. Not you, personally, the collective you. Society. You as an individual are a lovely person and I’m so glad you’re reading my article.

This is part art part science. EDHREC ranks the cards by the percentage of total decks they could be in and are, but it also lists the raw number of decks. I’m going to take both of those numbers into account and do some “I have spent a lot of time thinking about EDH” math and then I’m going to determine the order. If it sounds not entirely scientific, that’s because there is subjectivity to what people are going to buy in the future, imo, and experience matters so I’m leveraging mine. Feel free to create your own ranking and post it in the comments. What’s that? It’s a lot of work and you don’t want to do a bunch of work just to argue with me? That’s what I thought. I’d love it if you did, but I get it if you don’t.

Some Questions I Think You Might Ask

Q: How are you determining the rankings?

A: I’m going to rank them by raw number rather than percentage, check the synergy score with the top 3 decks the card is in to see if it’s a format staple or a pet card in a really popular deck that people might not build forever and stop moving the cards around when the order “looks right.” It sounds goofy but this doesn’t have to be perfect since the difference between #12 and #13 doesn’t matter as much as the difference between #25 and #4 and I can’t imagine looking at lots of factors would make me flip those or something.

Q: Why are you doing this?

A: I want people who don’t play a ton of EDH to know which cards matter to EDH. The boxtoppers weren’t necessarily 100% made with EDH in mind but that doesn’t mean they don’t affect the format and people might not realize how much certain Legacy staples see play in EDH despite it being billed as a casual, bulk rare format.

Q: Yeah, but why are you doing THIS?

A: I’m trying to win “Article of the Year ” at next year’s content creator awards.

Let’s rank some cards, shall we?

40. Goblin Guide

Gobby Boy is just straight trash in EDH. 411 decks are probably playing him because there is Goblin synergy. This is a fine card and the repeated printings bringing the cost of a playset to $20 makes this an accessible deck to build in Modern, but this is the worst box-topper in terms of EDH and that’s what we’re looking at, right?

39. Meddling Mage

I’m surprised this doesn’t get played more in EDH, honestly, but that doesn’t change the fact that it doesn’t, and this is the real stinker boxtopper to get for any format. Goblin Guide is going to go out as a 4-of and make players of other formats happy, but this seems to be for no one. Humans in Modern? I don’t know.

38. Fatal Push

There are certainly formats where this card shines and EDH is not among them. A lot of people just have these from Standard and they put them in the deck because they have it, but I can’t justify playing this in EDH. This is in so many decks for as narrow as it is.

37. Thoughtseize

Damaging yourself to get 1 card from 1 hand 1 time? This isn’t an EDH card, and that’s fine.

36. Batterskull

This just isn’t that impressive in EDH. As a creature it’s pretty average and as an equipment it’s even more average. I’d be excited to open this boxtopper as a financier but I’m not keeping it unless I build a Kemba deck or something dumb like that.

35. Sword of Body and Mind

Artifacts throw off any attempt to do a standard numerical ranking. Of course any artifact is going to be super low in terms of percentage of eligible decks and super high in terms of included decks – both numbers are skewed. However, this is in a low absolute number of decks compared to the other artifacts and it’s the worst sword. It’s where it belongs. This is a bad box topper considering no other format really plays this card and EDH doesn’t want it much.

34. Sword of War and Peace

Compared to Body and Mind, this is much better, but it’s still in a pretty low number of decks. At least Body and Mind makes your creatures unblockable to the best decks, this makes your creatures unblockable by the worst decks. This sees more play outside of EDH than Body and Mind, which is to its credit, but EDH doesn’t care much outside of equipment tribal. Life gain and loss scales poorly into EDH.

33. Sword of Light and Shadow

All of the swords are just a little too fair in EDH. That said, this feels like it’s low on the list but it was hard to justify putting it any higher given the quality and good inclusion metrics of the rest of the cards. They didn’t make any truly abyssmal cards into box toppers so there will be good cards low on the list. The swords with numbers on them don’t scale as well in EDH 3 life, 1 life, mill 20. This can’t hang with Fire and Ice or Feast and Famine.

32. Karn Liberated

Karn is in a lot of decks because it can go in a lot of decks. Maybe you flip this and sword, I don’t know. It’s pretty wishy-washy in the middle but you are just starting to scroll a little faster by this point anyway, who cares?

31. Sneak Attack

There are better ways to cheat things into play and keep them. This card was also priced out of people’s collections forever, so that affected its inclusion a bit, and now that it’s cheaper, people have sort of moved on. This isn’t Legacy where you hit them with Emrakul and they can’t recover.

30. Kaalia of the Vast

You sort of have to ignore the inclusion numbers on this one. Kaalia is the #36 commander built on EDHREC in the last 2 years and it was very expensive. This maybe should be even higher on the list, especially since this is only an EDH card.

29. Council’s Judgment

This is played a lot outside of EDH but it’s still quite good in EDH. This is a very political card and can get rid of the permanent of each person’s that is annoying everyone, but one player can double up on their vote to mostly negate it, making this interesting every time. It’s a cheap card and not a great choice for box topper, but it will be a good card forever.

28-26. Tron Lands

These were included to let Modern players have more upgrade options for the lands and while it’s much better to have 12 lands in a 60 card deck, people have found some success with 3 Tron lands in a 99 card deck. These are no worse than a Wastes when you don’t have Tron and then they get quite good, even in EDH, when you assemble Tron, meaning there is no real downside to them. There are a lot of colorless commanders, hence the high inclusion numbers.

25. Blightsteel Colossus

This was basically a card for whales before because it was always over $50 and most players couldn’t afford it. Cards for whales are nice choices of cards to upgrade and this should free up some of the cheaper, non-premium copies. Not every deck wants these, but the decks that do REALLY want them. 2% doesn’t seem like a lot, but that’s 2% of all of the decks in the database. 1 in every 50 decks runs Blightsteel. That’s a lot for a card that was commanding a $50 price tag and beyond.

24. Sword of Fire and Ice

This is the second-best sword. 2 damage is pretty meh, but protection from relevant colors and drawing a card is good. I personally think this is overrated and Light and Shadow is underrated, but Fire and Ice is very expensive and desirable and the art on the box topper is insane.

23. Jace the Mind Sculptor

I have literally never once in my life had one of these played against me in EDH, but apparently 1 in every 25 Blue decks is packing this card that used to be a straight Benjamin. This is the most powerful Planeswalker ever, but you have 3 other opponents in EDH. Still, this is in a lot of decks, so who am I to argue?

22. Stoneforge Mystic

This is in the same number of decks as Jace? I should check to see how much Squadron Hawk is getting played in EDH. I should check our code to see if we’re accidentally scraping MTG Top8. A 3rd joke.

21. Blood Moon

Don’t play this card in EDH. You can, a lot of people do. But don’t.

20. Dark Confidant

Baffling. I can’t believe this many people play this card in EDH. Phyrexian Arena exists. I really can’t justify a card like this where board sweepers are played every turn and your best cards cost 5 mana.

19. Noble Hierarch

Bant is very good in EDH most of the time and 1 in every 9 Bant decks packs this card. That’s good because no one is playing Modern in paper right now and this is below $20 right now. This card needs all the help it can get. Sure glad I bought a bunch of these for like $20 each and didn’t sell in time. I mean, I kind of am glad, actually. I love this card, and we’re getting White Omanth soon.

18. Wurmcoil Engine

This is a reason to play EDH and a reason not to play Dark Confidant all in one card. Is there anything it can’t do? Teysa Karlov decks love this, Daretti decks love this. Unspecified future decks are going to love this. This is a very, very EDH card.

17. Academy Ruins

Gonna be a lot of Blue cards from here on out. Blue is the best color in Magic and it’s tied for the best color in EDH. I just bought a bunch of these box toppers because they look great and I like getting my cards back after someone blows them up.

16. Sword of Feast and Famine

This is the best sword and the second-best equipment in the set. No one would have complained if instead of making Sword of Body and Mind, they had made a Sunforger box topper instead. But hey, what do I know? I make bad decisions all the time.

15. Mox Opal

It’s not super exciting but this card is just fine in EDH, especially since metalcraft and colored mana go hand-in-hand in that format more than most others. I like this being under $50 even though that’s temporary.

14. Atraxa, Praetor’s Voice

This is the #1 commander built in the last 2 years. It’s in 2357 decks where it’s not the commander, which is nuts in and of itself. This might have been higher because it’s only for EDH but every other card in the top 13 is too good to displace.

13. Avacyn, Angel of Hope

This is in 7% of white decks with other commanders. Avacyn is insanely good in EDH and the box topper looks… well it looks like something you’d see airbrushed on the side of a van, but lots of people are into that.

12. Phyrexian Metamorph

This is in a lot of decks and for a good reason. Non-EDH players will be thrilled to crack one of these but EDH players will be especially stoked. This is a great card and while the price on the non-box topperis low from reprintings, it’s still a solid card to look at long-term.

11. Doubling Season

I remember opening this in a pack and being mad that I got casual garbage instead of a Plague Boiler. This is casual garbage but it turns out that just means that if there is ever a format full of casual garbage, something has to be the kind of the casual garbage. This is the EDHiest card of all time and I am glad I never got rid of the copies I was upset to get back in 2005.

10. Crop Rotation

This is a 1 mana tutor that puts the card you wanted into play. This is a 1 mana tutor. And it gets you any land. And it puts it into play. A 1 mana tutor that finds Nykthos or Cabal Coffers. Oh, and this was trash for like the first 5 years it was a card. Crop Rotation isn’t even in the Top 5 box toppers in this set, that’s how bonkers the rest of the set is.

9. Exploration

The regular copies of this card should not be under $20. I see no reason not to buy as many of the box toppers as you can afford, honestly. We’re about to go back to Zendikar and you can get an Exploration for under $20. The box topper is about as insulated from reprint as you can ask of a card and it looks better than this version, which itself looks fine. I’m bullish as hell on this.

8. Force of Will

This may not seem like an EDH card but it turns out you tap out a lot more as a control player when you need to keep countermagic mana up on 3 or 4 turns that aren’t yours instead of just 1. This is in 1 out of every 10 decks that play Blue and that’s half of the decks in the database.

7. Expedition Map

It turns out ways to get Cabal Coffers for 1 mana are popular, who knew? Being colorless, this can go in decks that don’t have Green making it even more versatile than Crop Rotation, a card that is, and I have to restate this, so, so good in EDH. Map gets played in non-EDH non-Legacy formats, so it has that over Crop Rotation, also. Super glad to have this as a box topper. The art isn’t that much of an improvement, though.

6. Chrome Mox

It turns out cards that are good in general are good in EDH. This gets played a ton and with good reason. It gets play outside of EDH which is good, but since EDH is basically the only format played in paper right now, strong EDH demand should be a factor you weigh heavily when selecting a box topper to invest in, and Chrome Mox ticks all of your boxes.

5. Toxic Deluge

I think in one of my articles I said this was played in Modern because I was thinking of Dead of Winter. This does NOT, in fact, see play in Modern, but it does NOT see play in Legacy because nothing sees play in Legacy. EDH demand is what is keeping this box topper from going in the trash, but there is a LOT of that. Roughly 40% of the decks on EDHREC are Black and this goes in 1 in every 8 of those. That’s a lot.

4. Mana Crypt

If you shelled out for foil copies of this when it was first reprinted and you’re upset that it’s being reprinted often, remember that the non-foils keep going back to $100 and also, the box topper is the new hotness so don’t worry so much, Moby Dick. WotC is well aware of who you are and what you’re about.

3. Brainstorm

This is a card that gets more play than it probably should, but I guess Aminatou is a thing. I think this is overrated in EDH but it’s easy to jam in a deck, it’s under a buck for most versions, it gets reprinted in EDH sets sometimes and also, it is the ugliest box topper of all time. Seriously, what were they thinking?

This is so bad. It looks like a cutscene from a 90s PC game. This is what you see when you die to the last boss in Shandalar. This is what the guy who made that Dire Straits Money for Nothing video has been up to lately. This is… Ron Spencer? OK, I’m going to let this one slide.

2. Lighting Greaves

1 in every 4 decks built by a person has a copy of Greaves. They can keep printing to get the baseline version under $5 every couple of years, but giving the whales who aren’t excited about the Judge foil something to aspire to was a great idea.

The art even looks good. I’m all about this.

1. Cyclonic Rift

I bet a lot of you guessed this right and a lot of you guessed wrong. Rift is the best EDH card out of all of the box toppers and it’s not even remotely close. Other formats get 0 use from this card but that doesn’t matter because it’s so good in EDH that it blows every other card away. This is a pure EDH box topper and accordingly, it might be undervalued by a segment of the whale population, meaning it could have a steeper growth curve that cards people pick up for Modern. EDH is a behemoth and getting box toppers just for the format shows WotC knows it.

That’s all for me this week. I hope this informs your box topper shopping and if you want me to never do this format again, I understand. If that’s the case, leave me a comment below. Thanks for reading, everyone. Until next time!