Nerds,

I can feel the herd getting restless. In fact, people have spent so long waiting for me to address the fungus monster in the room that they took it upon themselves to make a reddit post and tried to do it themselves. Things went… OK.

Magnified 20x, a grocer’s apostrophe looks relatively harmless, but in a sentence it can cause acute migraines in 5% of the population, myself included. ‘Superfluou’s apo’strophe’s a’side, this was a pretty good reddit post and probably should have gotten a good discussion going. It didn’t.

Would it have? Or do we have years and years’ worth of data that says otherwise?

Have they? Or did they just get lucky that Commander 2017 was tribal so they could run out and buy cards like Waiting in the Weeds and then pat each other on the back as they tried to sell them to each other? Also, buyout is a noun.

I feel like eyebrows Goofus is onto something, here. I don’t agree that the sheer number of new commanders will keep anything from spiking, but I do think that the card everyone wants to talk about may suffer from affecting too many cards that could go in the deck. If Muldrotha is basically less popular than Atraxa, there’s a chance nothing goes up at all. When there are too many boats and not enough tide, something about the boats don’t go up? Look, I’ve been trying for awhile to pretend the boat metaphor was an actual sinking boat and abandon it.

I think we should look at the sheer volume of cards that could go up based on Muldrotha decks being a thing, which I think they will. We can evaluate whether or not any of them have a chance of going up or if there are just too many ways to build the deck. Let’s begin.

Embarrassment of Riches

I think we should look at Muldrotha before we continue. You cut down on the number of RTFC errors you commit as a writer by R’ing the F’ing C.

I can’t F’ing R this F’ing C. Let’s enlist the help of some type.

The first class of cards I want to look at are the really annoying enchantments. What if, instead of building a board, we just spammed the same one back out every turn, ruining everyone’s lives?

Cards in this class – Hesitation, Standstill, Mystic Remora, Decree of Silence, Lunar Force.

Standstill is at a historic low and while that means it could have upside, it also means Muldrotha is on its own. It would have to pull a lot of weight considering Legacy isn’t really doing Standstill any favors right now and it’s not really an EDH card at the current moment. Pass.

Spikes caused by the previewing of a card are like clockwork. The card goes from x to 8x then falls to 4x barring actual adoption. You don’t really ever eat it if you buy at x but those who buy at 4x hoping to get out at 8x tend to eat it. Don’t hope to sell to greater fools, just get out when you can. The only thing this card has going for it is that everyone ferreted out the cheap copies to avoid paying $7 so if this goes up again, there are no cheap copies squirreled (the opposite of ferreted) away and the only source of copies is the cold, merciless open market.

Hesitation is and will likely stay a dime. Mystic Remora is already good and this won’t likely change much. We’re off to a rough start because while these strategies are annoying, I don’t think they or any other strategy will be universal and they probably need to be.

Contamination

Muldrotha sure isn’t going to make this card cheaper, is it? While this isn’t on the Reserved List, it’s not likely on anyone’s “this needs a printing” list, either. It’s so absurdly anti-social that only the spikiest of decks will consider running it, ruling it out of Commander precons. Usually this card is mitigated by the upkeep cost, but you can let this die and just bring it right back.  Gross.

How about board control?

Cards in this class- Nevinyrral’s Disk, Pernicious Deed, Oblivion Stone.

Nev’s Disk has been printed tooooo many times.

Deed isn’t looking too bad. It has decent ‘REC metrics and adoption in more than just EDH. I expected to poop on almost every pick, but this doesn’t seem too bad. It’s at its floor as are a lot of Conspiracy 2 cards and is beginning to recover. I think this is the time to get in on deed regardless and its utility in Muldrotha could be a good a time as any to make some bucks on a solid card. I didn’t expect to like this as much as I do, but Deed is probably solid right now.

This is no pricing error, you can actually snag a foil Iconic Masters O Stone for the same price as a Mirrodin one. I think that’s bound to look pretty silly in 6 months. I can’t imagine eating it because you bought foil copies but I guess nothing is impossible. People are done drafting Iconic Masters which means new copies enter the market at the speed of people popping $12 booster packs. It seems like we’re basically at peak supply and we have a glut of these foils I don’t mind swooping in on.

Finally, I want to talk about cards that are just really good with Muldrotha and how there aren’t too many cards in this camp for Muldrotha to push up since I expect them to be in 70%+ of all Muldrotha decks if people are smart.

Defense of the Heart

This is not on the Reserved List but it probably should be. This is also going to be in every Muldrotha list ever if people are smart. This is busted as heck and at least one of your opponents is bound to have the requisite number of creatures. Play Forbidden Orchard if they refuse to play along. This is just too good in Muldrotha decks and outside of them, too, I guess. This is a rare from Urza’s Legacy and while it’s not on the Reserved List, it’s not on anyone’s “reprint this ASAP” list, either – not in a world where Phyrexian Altar is still unreprinted.

Command Beacon

I’m betting that Commander 2018 is Planeswalkers. That being the case, the earliest this gets reprinted in a Commander precon is Commander 2019. For those keeping score at home, that’s like 18 months from now. You think you can make some money buying in at $10 and sitting on them for 18 months? I do.

Spike Weaver

This managed to avoid ending up on the Reserved List because it’s not quite as good as Exalted Dragon, you see. That said, it’s been expensive for a while and it doesn’t seem like there is a convenient place to reprint it. Its combo potential is very high making it a tricky EDH deck inclusion and it’s very set-specific making it tricky to print elsewhere. This is also pretty damn good with Muldrotha since you can fog over multiple turns then replay him full of counters and ready to rumble.

Mindslaver

Lol.

LED

Different lol.

I think we will have time between EDHREC filling up with Muldrotha lists and prices actually moving and I plan to revisit the commanders I covered to see if there is anything I missed, but I think you should take a stab at Muldrotha. In my limited dicking around with it, I found the following cards do a lot of work.

Caustic Caterpillar, Vessel of Nascency, Seal of Doom, Seal of Removal, Seal of Primordium, Fleshbag Marauder, Sidisi, Undead Vizier (another reason to look at this card – I think you go deep on Sidisi nowish). Other people are beginning to post lists, so see what they’re on and we’ll revisit when we see stuff posted on the ‘REC.

Thanks for reading, nerds. Next week we’ll wade into the giant pile of potential commanders and look at more opportunities. Until next time!

Everything old is new again and everything new seems to care about everything old. The Weatherlight has a new captain and while it’s not a Green/White creature, she is a creature a lot of people have been waiting on for a long time. We finally got the “Izzet-colored, arifacts matter” commander that people have been clamoring for and while she is sort of… linear, she also has a few surprises in that her card drawing triggers off of more than just artifacts. Let’s look at the card, shall we?

We can’t look at the card. Despite the fact that we have all of the information about the card, and it leaked because of a mistake Wizards made, they have decided that unveiling the art when they had planned to will still be exciting and it’s sort of hard to argue. Leaks like this are garbage. I saw someone compare it to sneaking downstairs the night before Christmas and peeking at all of your presents so you’re not surprised on Christmas morning and I’m not sure I agree. To me, it’s like finding out Santa Claus isn’t real and your parents got you socks. Also, I’m in my 30s and I was pissed off this year because no one got me socks. I had to buy my own socks like a peasant. I guess what I’m trying to say is that if I weren’t a financier, I wouldn’t have even looked at these stupid leaks and it’s a good thing I looked because this is the second commander I came across that is going to build a very linear, obvious way and that will bump a lot of cards.

Card Bumps, You Say?

Yeah, man, why you think we’re here if not to talk about the money we’re about to scoop up because we’re even farther ahead of the curve than normal? While it sucks that these leaks happened, the silver lining is that we have a few extra weeks to predict what EDH players are going to build when they finally get ahold of the cards. Normally there is a gap between cards coming out and people buying them in large enough quantities for prices to move but this time the gap will be even larger since we can start thinking about what to buy now. Let’s make the most of this time and look at what I expect to end up in Jhoira decks.

The first thing to remember is that Planeswalkers are now Legendary so they are eligible for the trigger and may get jammed into decks alongside Jhoira.

Dack Fayden

With no real impetus for an impending reprint and a lot of this card’s meteoric past rise being predicated on use in formats where people may want more than one copy, how well this pairs with Jhoira could see it gain a few bucks in the coming months. I don’t know what sort of adoption it would need to really go up based on being a one-of in one EDH deck and with so many Legendary creatures being printed in Dominaria and with Commander 2018 promising to be packed with value, we could see a logjam in new decks being built with no clear winner presenting itself, but with the amount of clamoring we’ve seen for Jhoira, I expect this to over-perform relative to other commanders. But there I go again, listening to what people say they want like an idiot.

Saheeli Rai

Currently made out of plutonium, people are dumping copies of this part of a banned combo as fast as they can. At their absolute floor, copies of this card are a steal and those abilities are all really nuts in an artifact-based EDH deck and, hey, playing Saheeli happens to draw you a card, too. Saheeli should be really cozy with Jhoira and their fates are intertwined, meaning if Jhoira is as popular as everyone claims they want it to be, we could see a nice price recovery for this card.

Tamiyo, The Moon Sage

I don’t want to spend too much of my verbal budget on Planeswalkers since this was supposed to just be a bullet point in the larger point I was making, but I found more good planeswalkers than I expected. Tamiyo isn’t really going anywhere but it sure equilibrated higher than anyone would have thought. This is good alongside Jhoira and it’s also an expensive, powerful planeswalker and its current malaise might be snapped by renewed interest. I also have the least confidence in this of every ‘walker I suggested.

Tezzeret, the Seeker

Modern Masters 2015 was a while ago and while this hasn’t begun to recover yet, I don’t think another reprinting is imminent and I think as good as this is, it’s going to tick back up. It probably has some unknown amount of competition from unprinted Planeswalkers. It seems like every time I get a handle on what Planeswalkers are supposed to do, they print another 30 in a a 12 month period and it throws everything off. This is a better than average planeswalker and it is blue and it deals with artifacts and that has to be enough.

What Else?

Well, it isn’t just Planeswalkers that trigger her ability and I think she is going to be a good either eggs or storm commander. I am excited.

Aetherflux Reservoir

The non-foil is on a downward trend approaching rotation…

As is the foil. I think both are good picksups then, I think reprint risk is pretty low and I think this is a solid EDH finisher in Oloro, which is a Top 3 deck of all time in popularity as well as a great inclusion in a lot of storm and spellslinger decks. Its EDHREC profile shows some pretty robust inclusion and speaks to its versatility and ubiquity. More lifelink or lifegain-focused decks coming along only adds new interest in this card and that’s particularly good for a foil that has demonstrated the ability to flirt with $8 while still in-print. I don’t know how much lower foils of this get but this is a no-brainer pickup.

Helm of Awakening

Helping your opponents isn’t always great, but 3,005 people on EDHREC have decided they’d rather play a card that they can really abuse and allow opponents get some tangential benefit from than not play it and here we are. Cheaper and more accessible than Stone Calendar and cheaper mana-wise, too, this is a card I keep seeing pop up in Jhoira lists and I expect that to continue. This makes eggs even better as you get to play them for cheap or free and use their mana to freewheel the activation on the next egg, letting you chaing them. Combine that with the double draw trigger and you will always have a full mitt. This also turns cards like Sensei’s Top into free cantrips and generally makes it easier to go off early in the game. We’ve seen rares from this block hit $10 with less provocation.

Semblance Anvil

This is looking pretty healthy. It’s fluctuating but the overall trend is upward and with a set-specific keyword, its reprint options are somewhat limited (though set-specific keywords have never stopped them from jamming the card in a Commander precon which is the worst case scenario). I honestly think this card has been secretly way better than people give it credit for and I have no idea why it doesn’t get more play. If you name artifacts, you just dump your hand and if you have a Vedalken Archmage in your command zone ready to go at all times, you fill your hand as fast as you can dump it.

Unwinding Clock

Whereas here, I can’t find any possible way to balance this ability against anything in the other precon decks, so anything with an artifact focus would be too good with this and any deck with this but no apparent artifact focus couldn’t really justify the slot. Therefore, I think this would be a very unlikely reprint in a Commander precon. I don’t know if that further limits its reprintability compared with something like Semblance Anvil but I do think it’s unlikely to be in a Commander precon. They invent 5 new sealed products a year, so never say never, but I bet this grows for years and I bet you feel silly for not getting these a few years ago when EDH proved what a driving force it was. I was celebrating with the triple up I got on Caged Sun (meaning I sold them way too early) and I missed an even more obvious card in hindsight.

I think there are a few more cards that have upside and maybe I’ll cover them next week, maybe I’ll tweet about them, maybe they’ll be in the Gathering Magic piece I wrote this week, maybe I’ll podcast about them, maybe I’ll write an EDHREC article for no reason or maybe I’ll be a guest on someone else’s podcast and talk about them. Follow me all over, I have so many insights I can’t hold them all and they fall out of my grasp like hilarious, errant citrus fruit. All of these finance tips will be lost. Like limes in the rain. Until next time.

Hey nerds,

You don’t have to care about EDH to find this column edifying and I get that. You might be less excited about the stupid card that was accidentally spoiled but not yet revealed than I am, but maybe cram your lack of excitement and focus on how much money you’re about to make.

If you don’t know anything about EDH, you might think Boros is great. Boros has been good a few times in Standard after all. A combination of weenies and burn is always poised to overrun opponents before they even get set up and big, flashy angels with swords made out of fire seem to tear it up constantly. You probably think Boros is exciting and fun in EDH.

Boros in EDH consists of 25 commanders that deal with attacking with creatures and Brion Stoutarm. You like putting equipment on creatures and attacking? Goody. You’ll love it when your opponent combos off on turn 6 and kills you because you have no way to interact with anything.  Boros can be fun and it can get powerful and I’m not going to sit here and pretend that Assemble the Legion isn’t one of my favorite cards ever printed. But for the most part, if you don’t want to put a bunch of goblins in the red zone, Boros is a bore. That’s about to change and I think that’s more significant than Golgari or Simic getting yet another busted general. This new card is good enough that people are going to build it on principle but also, anyone who is sick of their Boros decks being boring will be on board. Anyone who has a deck of every color combination will want to build this and abandon their stupid Jor Kadeen nonsense. So there is not only future demand, but pent-up demand for a general like this and I think that’s significant. The other thing that’s significant is that since there has never really been a Boros general like this, while Boros staples have some upside because, of course they do, a bunch of brand new cards are about to get a bump and that means they go from bulk to not bulk and that’s the best way to be.

What’s The Card?

I wish I could show you. The best we have is a mock-up from Mythic Spoiler, which is better than nothing, but only barely.

If this doesn’t excite you, you must not play EDH. This card is stupid and it’s about to make a bunch of stupid cards stupider. It has a big enough butt to survive an Hour of Devastation, for starters. The amount of life you’re going to gain from spells like Blasphemous Act (should your spellcows survive) is going to make it pretty easy to dome people with Aetherflux Reservoir or just win the game with Felidar Sovereigns.

People are starting to brew with spellcows already and those people have large readerships who are going to get as hype as I am about spellcows and go buy their own decks. But they’ll wait until Dominaria is actually released to buy the rest of the deck because they are not doing it correctly. Let’s do it correctly and get ahead of the ensuing buying frenzies so we can be sellers when everyone else is a buyer.

What Are We Buying?

Good question. Looking at what people are brewing with and which cards I think are inclined to be good in the deck, I have a few picks I think are good buys.

Sunforger (foil)

From the dizzying highs of Tiny Leaders hype (remember that adorable time in Magic’s History?) to the crushing depths of two reprints within 2 months, Sunforger has been through a lot. Probably a bulk rare forever or at least for a long time due to how many copies are recent, available and unclaimed, I think there is still money to be made on the Modern Masters foils. They’re only a couple of bucks but there were fewer foil printings than non-foil printings and I think the lower supply is more susceptible to increased demand. Sunforger fetches a ton of good cards in this deck and being able to suit up something with lifelink to swing at them and then Lightning Helix them right after or other crap like that is what is going to make this deck fun to play. Sunforger packages are common in Boros and I don’t forsee another reprint for a good long while. Foils are flat and when the demand profile changes, that will change.

Aetherflux Reservoir

A feature of foil cards that isn’t discussed all that often is that a high foil multiplier usually only works in one direction. A low one doesn’t but a high one tends to. A high foil multiplier gets higher as the non-foil price dips at rotation and the foil doesn’t. This is usually because a high foil multiplier while a card is still legal in standard indicates that the card is played primarily in a format that isn’t standard which means that people aren’t dumping their valuable foils at rotation because they’re in decks. You don’t have to worry about what’s going to happen at rotation and you can pretty comfortably buy foil copies this close to rotation. If it does dip at rotation by a lot, just buy the same amount again and mitigate how much you lost. All of the copies will go back up and your average price paid will be lower which makes your gains even better. This is an EDH staple and as boring as it is sometimes, don’t expect EDH decks that are capable of gaining a lot of life to go away anytime soon. I like foils of this. At rotation, non-foils will probably be bulk rares and I think it might be fun to pick up one or two hundred at bulk and sit on them to see if they hit $3 before they get reprinted.

Brightflame

What’s the ceiling on a Ravnica rare with no reprints? $100? This won’t be $100, but I think it can go up quite a bit based on the difference between its current demand profile (362 decks on EDHREC) and its future demand profile (more than that, I bet) due to how quickly the very few copies listed online will sell out. Can one commander supply enough demand to make a bulk rare go nuts unless it’s Atraxa-tier good? Maybe, maybe not. But we saw what The Gitrog Monster did to Squandered Resources and I think hitting $10 and settling at $5 is the dream but isn’t THAT unreasonable even given the difference between the amount of Mirage block and Ravnica block out there. This should stop being bulk given how good it is in this deck.

Balefire Liege

Balefire Liege won’t trigger your commander but it will trigger separately and get you some more reach, making it worth it to play with Lightning Helix in EDH, finally. This also triggers when you play creatures and enchantments so you’re going to be dangerous when any of your spells resolve. Wizards has shown a willingness to print these Lieges into the ground to get them into the hands of EDH players but for some reason, this one stopped being popular enough for them to bother and it hasn’t been reprinted since literally Planechase. That was a long time ago, so I think these are poised to go up based on any new demand, quite a bit should be coming from this deck which, I’m banking on getting built a lot.

Serra Ascendant

I think this is just about at its floor. It’s a good card, some players want four copies of this rather than 1 and it’s cheating in EDH. I think, like some of the other cards I mentioned being at their floor in Iconic Masters, now is the time to buy these regardless. Are these good in the spellcow deck? Certainly. But on top of that, they’re good, not likely to be reprinted soon and they have cross-format appeal. All of those factors added up and you have a card that’s going to go up no matter what happens. I even like the new art better, which is rare.

Reiterate

Mizzix hype spiked this card hard a few years back and the result of that is a price that’s stable for now but which can be easily upset by renewed demand. A second spike is going to spike harder and faster and stabilize higher. I don’t see a reprint coming soon so this is a pretty safe pick. I was going to do 5 this article instead of 6, but you figure out something I could have cut. This is all solid.

I like these picks a lot and I plan to keep googling “Firesong and Sunspeaker EDH” to see what other people are brewing. A lot of it’s garbage but the thing about garbage is you can still make a really tall stack of it. If enough people buy a bad, or obvious card, congratulations, the price went up and you made money. Probably the best aspect of Firesong and Sunspeaker and one I haven’t mentioned yet isn’t how exciting it is that Boros is finally getting a general that doesn’t suck, it’s that this deck, for as exciting as it looks, is probably going to be pretty linear. It’s really obvious how to build it and when that happens, you have a lot of people who want to build the deck vying for the same obvious cards, which is great for us. Get the obvious cards early, watch what people are brewing and note innovation and get ahead of that and remember that people being excited about something that doesn’t interest you can still be a money-making opportunity for you. That does it for me. Until next time!