Not all of these are going to be gems but there is a lot going on with this set and coinciding with the release of this set which stomps on some potential Modern Horizons drafting. I got like 4 articles’ worth of ideas and rather than make you wait for them, I’m going to get everything pertinent to the prerelease out there before the prerelease. With that said, no more preamble, let’s get this show on the road. Also, I lied – I have 10 thoughts and 10 cards I’m thinking about.

1. The Most Built Deck This Week is Nuts

What in the world? Of course I get that Modern Horizons gave us new ninjas, rather a lot of them and people re-submitting their decklist will trigger the algorithm so it’s impossible to know who made new decks and who updated old ones, but Yuriko beat out Yawgmoth and Urza which is fairly nutty. I imagine a lot of the Edgar decks are updates based on a few, sexy new vampires in Core 2020 and cards like Wren and Six pushed up the Windgrace totals. Still, Yuriko winning the day is nice.

2. Other Surprises Abound

Kykar coming in at number 10 is pretty solid considering no one has their cards yet and the competitive players who are more stoked about Kykar tend not to post their decks where EDHREC can scrape them. That means Casual players are excited, too.

Sisay being built almost as much as Windgrace, a deck that got new cards and is the only fun Jund deck to play in EDH (I say that as a Prossh player) surprised me. Take a look at Sisay’s page – there isn’t much to spec on in there – it’s mostly clunky Dominaria cards and stuff that was already expensive. If you find some gems in there, let me know, but I didn’t find anything I cared about.

3. Muldrotha?

With Yarok on the horizon, it’s surprising to see Muldrotha still hanging on in there, but maybe this will help.

It seems that in addition to Yarok coming out and making stuff happen, people who are dead-set on playing Muldrotha plan to use Yarok in their decks, and Ashiok is about to join the party. 2 new lands that draw cards when you sac them also joined the party, so while I think Yarok is the new hotness and will get built a ton in the next few weeks, Muldrotha players are benefiting a bunch, too, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those new database entries are brand new decks. After all, Muldrotha gives dumb card advantage and you can play stuff like Mystic Remora and other cards with cumulative upkeeps.

4. Speaking of Which…

The best time to buy these was 2017, but if you didn’t buy an entire store’s inventory in 2017 like I did, you might not have a hundred of these (all LP) laying around. Muldrotha made this pop but I think with the recent changes to Pauper, they’re not done ascending.

Pauper paper people can play paper pauper for pay. The format has officially become sanctioned and they are unifying the legality, meaning cards that are common either on MODO or paper are legal. This only works one way – nothing is legal in paper that isn’t legal on MODO, but there were some cards that were common in paper but not common on MODO and therefore couldn’t be played. Among them were Sinkhole, Hymn to Tourach and Remora. Sinkhole and Hymn were banned outright along with the announcement of the format being sanctioned, but Remora and, I think, Merchant Scroll have some upside. Remora isn’t that reprintable imo and it could ascend to $5, considering how expensive Rhystic Study is from a much later set and with no pauper appeal.

5. Speaking of Which Part 2

Second spikes are harder and with this price recovering rapidly, you may want to lock down foils before they hit $100, which is achievable. There’s a possibility Scroll gets banned out from under you, but I think with how playable it is in Vintage, having the only foil printing with this art isn’t bad. The Judge foils aren’t a bad place to park money, either, and they’re generally below $40 on TCG Player, still.

6. Core Set 2020 Top Cards

On EDHREC, there is a series of dropdown menus at the top of the main page and one of them says “sets” and clicking on Core set 2020 will reveal that, while we don’t have a ton of data, some cards are beginning to emerge. Risen Reef is a card I like very much because while it’s a bad, 3 mana Coiling Oracle at first blush, you can probably play a few elementals in a lot of decks and trigger additional rips. It’s no worse than Oracle beyond costing an extra mana (and not being an Elf, I guess, which can matter) but it is significantly better in a lot of other situations. There are a lot of good elementals in the decks that want Reef and foils will be dirt cheap on what could end up a staple.

7. Coremmanders

No real shocks here, per se, but it is intersting that more people have so far built Rienne than Kaalia. I expect that to change.

Also, Sephara was built using EDHREC by The Prof in his preview of the deck and while that may or may not get people excited about the deck, his specific list is more than likely a jumping-off point for people to a greater extent than decks not generated by him. Watch his video and watch his list.

8. Sephara in Depth

Looking at Sephara’s page on EDHREC so far, there is quite a bit of overlap with Teysa Karlov, at least the white portions of it. Those cards that overlap used to be bulk and Teysa got them wrested from their hiding places and any with upside could climb to a respectable number now that people are forced to deal with a store to get their copy rather than just having one in a junk box. Not that having a card in a box somewhere has stopped me from just buying a card so I don’t have to look for it.

I like the new Bishop of Wings with Divine Visitation and a sac outlet, but Divine Visitation is just nuts on its own and it’s too cheap right now. Visitation is a $10+ card waiting to happen but you probably have some time to grab yours (also, the reprint risk is Medium/Medium High).

9. Gargos in Depth

Gargos is getting more decks built than I had expected. A Hydra tribal commander without red or blue seems really silly to me, but it’s happening and with a few new mono-green hydras, we may be right where we need to be for things to happen.

The Gargos page shows all of the green hydras, but there are a few interesting cards used in those decks on the utility side. I might as well discuss those at the end.

10. Kethis in Depth

Yawgmoth makes an appearance in a ton of Kethis decks. He’s a sac outlet and a discard outlet which makes him perfect for a deck that can bring creatures back from the graveyard. I’m not sure exactly how I want to build Kethis so I have been avoiding trying in my Coolstuff articles, but people seem pumped despite, you know, the enormous card advantage, negligible cost reduction, limited window to play spells without having to re-activate, limited scope of creatures able to be reanimated and being a worse Karador in every single way. You can get back Planeswalkers, though, so that’s neat.

10 Picks With Minimal Explanation

Nice trend, low reprint risk and high synergy with Gargos.

Kethis and new Sisay both reference Legendary creatures.

You don’t want to build a new Omnath deck and not include this.

Good in Omnath and also fetches Ingot Chewer and Wispmare in the Hogaak deck I hope gets banned.

This is entirely too cheap and I can’t figure out why.

If Gargos didn’t do this, and it didn’t, imagine what’s going to happen now. Casuals don’t foil their casual decks per se, but look at that price graph.

I don’t know where this foil bottoms out but when it does, I’m a buyer. Too good on its own, in Oathbreaker and in Kykar to be ignored. Look at the price of Narset for its absolute ceiling and extrapolate from there given its smaller degree of appeal compared to Narset.

I get these as bulk rares all the time. You should buy bulk rares sight unseen.

Cards that cost more on TCG Player than Card Kingdom make my Spider Sense tingle.

That was a lot of work but you’re worth it. Catch me next week!

Readers!

I’m not going to sugarcoat it – I’m not really in the mood to write my normal type of article. I have a bunch of ideas about picks and I want to get them all down before I forget any of them and that means the structure of the article is going to suffer. I really like to write two or three paragraphs before the Pro Trader paywall comes down and if I don’t do that, the transition is going to be pretty abrupt and

OK, everyone still with me? Let’s talk about the card I think is going to make money moves and then we can talk picks. Here’s your boy.

Dwayne Yarok Johnson over here is in some serious card advantage colors and ETB effects abound. Panharmonicon was already a sick card and now we have one in the command zone, in good colors, with good stats to boot. Luckily, we already have EDHREC data flowing in so I don’t have to guess like I did for Kykar (I nailed it, though). I mean, there are 4 decks in the database but I poked around reddit and other places deckbuilders hang out and I also know how to build EDH deck so I think we’ll be fine. Let’s look at what’s inclined to be on the move on the basis of this elemental horror.

Ob is recovering nicely from his reprinting, as predicted. This isn’t the first time I have mentioned Ob since Iconic Masters but it may be the last because this much growth isn’t sustainable. The good news is that the card has plateaued and new usage will trigger more growth. Before the reprinting, the peak price of Ob was lower than it is now, meaning it’s at an all-time high despite more copies. I think this may be a weak buy considering how high it’s already gone but I also think if you can get them below $10, you can probably get out at $12-$15 fairly easily and I don’t know that another printing is coming soon. This card is too good in this deck but also elsewhere.

For years, “stagnation” described this card’s price but it has picked up a bit lately and also, it’s really dumb in this deck. Every time they play a land you draw 4 and they exile 4? It’s pretty powerful and you may need to quickly find a way to get rid of Sire before it kills you. Check yourself before you deck yourself, if you will. These are gettable under $2 and Yarok could make them $5, especially since it’s a mythic long out of print.

This is down from its peak which means another peak would be higher, but this is mostly just a safe bet. I’m not sure how many people are going to jam a $40 card in this deck, but I think with Palinchron being on the Reserved List and the odds of a Lotus Field situation being pretty remote given what a mistake the “untap X lands” cards were, I think this is just a safe buy that goes nuts. You untap 14 lands when you resolve this and that’s a lot of lands.

Even if you think this is reprintable, which do you think happens first? A reprint or this thing selling for a solid Hamilton on TCG Player? Gettable under $7 right now, the clock is ticking on this. I think you can easily makes 30-40% even if you think it’s getting reprinted soon.

I actually like the financial metrics of this less than other cards, but unlike other cards, it hasn’t gone up already and that’s good. I think this can shake off its latest reprinting eventually and even if Yarok doesn’t do it, something will. Let’s look at EDHREC, shall we?

4,851 is in 5% of total decks, but how is it performing versus other Green cards?

Despite Green being the “creatures” color, Primus, which is the 11th-most-played Green creature doesn’t crack the Top 100 Green cards. However, it’s played more than Kalonian Hydra and almost as much as Fertilid. I think Yarok could move the needle and if not, the other things that made this card peak at $10, get reprinted and peak at $10 again are still likely true.

It’s worth noting that this basically doubled to 30 over the last month and some stores online have them for $15. I snagged a couple of copies from a site I use but there are plenty of other obscure sites and some have copies. This needs a reprint, badly and perhaps the Invention printing shows they know that, so be nimble.

That does it for me this week. I recommend keeping an eye on the EDHREC page for Yarok over the coming weeks because this card is Muldrotha-tier advantage engine and people love Deadeye Navigator shenanigans. If you think of anything else, leave me a comment. Until next time!

That title isn’t a pun, I literally just couldn’t think of a pun with the name of the card and you don’t care about the pun titles. No one has ever sent me a message telling me I made a sweet pun in the title. Well, on this site, anyway. My puns are lauded on Coolstuff. LAUDED. I give you people metaphorical GOLD and all you want is literal gold in the form of money-making specs. Fine. You’ll have your specs. I’m writing this super early for Pro Traders because this card got spoiled today and I think it matters. Let’s take a look at the card I mean, first off.

Look at this flappy boi. It’s like Young Pyromancer turned into a goose thing. This puts you in Monastery Mentor colors in EDH and gives you access to Cathars’ Crusade if you want to beat them down, ways to tutor for an Isochron Scepter and a Dramatic Reversal to throw on it and plenty of other madness. Here’s what I think has a chance of going up, probably in the next 48 hours, if people think this deck matters.

For the record, Competitive EDH people seem convinced that this is a really viable engine so on top of this likely to be appealing in the kind of EDH played by 90% of the community, the deck could potentially have legs in cEDH as well. Does that do anything for prices? Eh, yes and no. cEDH decks are super homoegenous so the staples are going to get played in most builds in that format, but they’re cards that were already expensive because they’re good in everything. Take a look at a build for Kykar someone on the cEDH sub came up with. Granted he shot from the hip, but all of their decks are built this way.

WHAT IS THIS, A DECKLIST FOR ANTS?

This deck is jammed with tutors, countermagic, card draw and like, 10 Kykar-specific cards. It has a way to get both of its creatures into play and that sets up the Sensei’s Top/ Future Sight combo which makes 80 birds and draws the deck. It’s very consistent and that’s what cEDH is about, but Kykar won’t move the needle on Merchant Scroll or Wheel of Fortune or Rhystic Study. I think people building casually will move the needle on cards not played before and that’s why I acknowledge what cEDH is doing but don’t see much opportunity to make money in it, and I’ve talked about that a lot recently. Go back to my articles about Vannifar for a more in-depth discussion about it.

I don’t have EDHREC data yet so I’m going to talk about cards I think are in immediate danger of repricing themselves in the next few days. This is where Pro Trader really pays off.

Down quite a bit from its all-time high, Echoes is poised to go right back up, especially in the near term. It’s already rebounding a bit, and between Slivers being reintroduced and Kykar doing crazy shenanigans, I think Mana Echoes pops this week. It’s tough to reprint and it was $35 when they decided what was going in Commander 2019 so I think it’s safe for now. If you want these, I wouldn’t wait for it to get cheaper, especially since it’s recovering quite a bit.

This seems to rise from the ashes stronger each time it’s reprinted. Skullclamp is already a real workhorse in Teysa, a deck people are still playing, and it’s going to do even more work in this deck. It’s even easier to keep the party going because you can sac one spirit to pay the equip cost on another and keep the old grip full. If you have Saheeli, or Sai, or Monastery Mentor or Young Pyromancer or any of the myriad ways to make 2 tokens per spell, you’re going to draw your deck. Seems good. This has a lot of printings but also a lot of upside in the near term.

Pepperidge Farm remembers when this was a $10 foil. It’s not quite the insane, take-Modern-by-storm deck it once was and people are off it, mostly, but the foils ended up in the hands of dealers who are ratcheting their buy price (the blue line on the graph) and this card is going up regardless. I think it’s actually just insane in a Kykar deck and maybe the non-foils pop as well, but the foils are for sure in play, especially since this is one of the few cards cEDH decks aren’t already playing that they will play in this.

I don’t know how much Kykar can push this, but it’s in a deck that no one bought much at the time but which is super worth popping now given the $150 worth of cards in it. It’s not an easy card to get and Kykar is the perfect deck because you can get away with only running 2 creatures. You have plenty of tokens to sac and then you just hit Kiki combo or Ilharg and Medomai or something brutal and just win. This is the best Polymorph variant, and between the mana rocks you should run in the deck and the fact that this is more like a 4 mana spell than a 7 mana spell, it should be pretty easy to get this to go off. I think the deck is worthwhile if you can get it cheap since it has 3 $20 cards in it, and I think this card is good in Kykar. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

The internet is getting cleaned out of these so find them while you can. The Izzet Vs. Golgari deck is a good source of them – I bought a ton at Target when it was new and I am still sitting on them sealed despite watching Grave Troll rise and fall and Life From The Loam spike and get reprinted. It may be time to dig them out. There are Japanese versions of that deck floating around and it’s tough for dealers to move those copies, so take a risk on that and hope people are interested in those, or scour obscure sites for a few loose copies. The price basically double today so even if you have to pay like $4 shipping per copy at the old price, you’re still up.

That’s all the news that’s fit to print. I don’t usually write my article a day early but you deserve it. Thanks for reading. Until next time!

Readers!

I’m not here to tell you how to feel about Oathbreaker. Is it a silly thing or is it a real thing? I don’t know. Is it Brawl which failed despite support from WotC or is it Tiny Leaders which failed all on its own? Oathbreaker proponents swear it’s the future, but they said that about formats in the past.

Either Oathbreaker is the new frontier or it’s the new Frontier. It’s actually not up to me to decide. I deride Tiny Leaders for being a wacky thing no one cared about long enough for it to sustain itself but the thing is, I recgonized there was short-term money to be made in that format and I loaded up on Sunforger and made that money. I regret nothing. Whether or not we ever build a Oathbreaker deck of our own or the format takes off long-term, there is short-term money to be made.

Don’t understand the format? Don’t worry!

WE BUILT A SCRAPER!

EDHREC is now in the beta of OathbreakerREC which will possibly outlive the format, we’ll see. It’s a trove of information already and to the extent that things here are actionable, they’re worth looking into for sure. Let’s look at the front page, shall we?

We include both the Oathbreaker and the signature spell together, making it easy to browse visually. You can click in the upper right hand corner to browse by name if you want, but I like the pictures because seeing the images and names together helps me remember. Clicking on any given one takes you to the deck just like with an EDH deck on EDHREC. It’s the same thing but with 60 cards and Sol Ring is banned.

A few things popped out at me just doing a cursory glance at this page and I am happy to share them.

Of the 18 top decks, only one signature spell is repeated.

Triumph sees fringe EDH play but is pretty pushed in this format where it’s quite easy to make sure you have a Nissa planeswalker in play because you always have access to one.

Here are the EDHREC stats.

And here are the stats from the burgeoning Oathbreaker section. 1.3% of the decks isn’t exactly melting faces, but I don’t know what an impressive percentage would be. I DO know that this is in multiple decks and that means if either one takes off (I assume this is a solveable format like Tiny Leaders was) then there is real upside.

Could the price on the foil copy climbing even as more packs get opened (I mean, War of the Spark was 5 expansion sets ago, we’re already on to Core 2020) be due in part to Oathbreaker? I don’t know how high this gets on the basis of that set and I don’t think you buy in at $2.50 under any circumstances, but we’re working a process here, letting the data talk to us. The data said “Here’s a thing!’ but it seems like we’re late to the party. We won’t always be!

Let’s look at a card that has crossover appeal with EDH.

Windfall has much stronger EDH adoption due to decks like Nekusar and The Locust God.

It’s $7 too high a buy-in? What is the ceiling on a card like this? Will they continue to do sets like Modern Horizons and avoid printing cards that would be too good in Modern? If so, Windfall likely doesn’t get reprinted again anytime soon. But for a $7 buy-in, you’re looking for it to hit like $15 before you’re happy. $15 for an uncommon? It’s possible and it’s already doubled from around $4 to around high $7.

Compared to something like Nissa’s Triumph, this seems a lot more like the power level we expect to see in the format. Once you stick Wrenn and Six, say on turn 2, you can cast Crop Rotation for G and then again for 2G to get Dark Depths and Thespians’ Stage. I think that’s how this works. In any case, Crop Rotation is busted.

A $200 buy-in seems pretty reasonable to me given the fact that Crop Rotation could be reprinted in a Masters-esque set any minute. Yikes.

The $6 Crop Rotation from the Nissa vs. Ob Nixilis deck makes me want to look at the value of the rest of it. Looks like this, $4 Nissa, $3 Ob Nixilis and the fourth most expensive card is… Wood Elves. That’s not great, but there are 2 decks and if you add up all the nickels and dimes, you get about $28 in value. I think some of the cards in that deck can rebound given cards like Leechridden Swamp, Smallpox, Cloudthresher and Abudance being basically free right now. eBay doesn’t have the decks under $25, but it’s always worth looking when one card in a Duel deck spikes. If you can still find Izzet vs. Golgari for sticker price, you double up, for example.

I think all of us predicted what the number one deck would be.

Moonmist bumped when they printed a (terrible) Werewolf Commander, could it be due for another bump?

Probably some money to be made here, second spikes and all that. The foil plummeted from $6 to $2 but is hanging around $4 now. I think if this does catch on, it goes to $8 or $10 fairly easily. Let’s look at the rest of the deck.

There’s no money to be made, here. It’s all dumb tribal wolf stuff with rares and uncommon from the post-mythic era that 60 card casual, EDH and Oathbreaker combined will labor to move up.

So far our foray into Oathbreaker is looking pretty fruitless.

The one deck I do think benefits from the format the most is a degenerate Saheeli deck.

Thoughtcast makes the deck very consistent, playing a mana rock makes a 1/1 creature and enough of those creatures allows you to reduce the commander tax on Thoughtcast because it has Affinity. If I were to build an Oathbreaker deck, this is the one I’d build. These 5 cards speak for themselves so they won’t get a paragraph. Here’s 5,000 words to end the article.

Until next time!