Category Archives: Jason Alt

Unlocked Pro Trader: 5 Things I Learned Sorting By Color – Red

July 25, 2017 Jason Alt 4 Comments

Previous Installments:

I’m back and despite thinking I’d have some sweet Commander 2017 leaks to discuss, I am sort of without anything to talk about and thought it was the perfect time to pick up the “Things I learned sorting by color” subseries that I’ve done exactly one other installment of. I actually managed to get some insight into what EDH players want and need when it comes to the color green merely by looking at the top cards from that color.

I think there is stuff to be learned from looking at the other colors, also, so I’m going to… you know, do that.

Here’s a refresher of what I did so you can do it yourself.

Click the “cards” button on any page to open the dropdown menu.

Navigate to “color” to pick a color and then see the top cards in that color. It’s easy, but I still felt like showing you what I did so we’re on the same page, literally and figuratively. Are we good? OK, then. Let’s dive into Red because I’m sure we can learn a few things, hopefully things that we can use to predict which cards from new sets will catch on so we can buy those Magi of the Wheel when they’re $2 because that’s what we’re all about.

1. Removal Matters

The top 3 most played red cards are removal, that sticks out a little bit.

Removal, especially good removal, is at a premium in any color but in red, it seems like players are shoehorned a little bit more. Despite being pretty bad as a color, Mono-Red is fun to play and popular and that’s not going to change. When you elect to play Mono-Red, you accept certain realities and one of those realities is that you’re going to have a hell of a time dealing with Enchantments. Chaos Warp has become a red staple in part because it does something that red basically can’t do otherwise (and it used to be able to tuck a commander so a portion of its play is an artifact of that. It’s good enough not to take out of the deck even though its role is diminished and then a reprinting helped keep it accessible so more people can add it to new decks. That was a long aside. Any longer and I’m going to start putting numbered links to endnotes like I’m David Foster Wallace over here. Let’s get back to the previous sentence, already in progress) and that’s removing problem permanents like enchantments.

One of the Top 3 cards helps red shore up something it does badly, but the other 2 are cards that help red do what it does well – dish out a ton of punishment and destroy artifacts. Both mechanics – Blasphemous Act’s precursor to “Undaunted” and Overload, are very good mechanics and similar mechanics on future cards will get a long look, especially if they do the things these cards do, but maybe better. I mean, you don’t need an article to tell you a Blasphemous Act that does 15 damage for 9R is better, I’m just saying. People knew Blasphemous Act wasn’t a 9 drop but they still acted like Curtain’s Call was too expensive. That card was like $0.50 for a minute, so I appreciate a lack of imagination from the community sometimes since that was a nice quintuple up for me. Red even plays removal like Lightning Bolt which I think scales horribly in EDH but which is still in 6% of all 72,000 decks with access to red mana. Red does removal and red does it well, so when I saw a card like “By Force” I was pretty sure it was going to see play. It’s getting there slowly, seeing play in 256 decks so far. It’s no Vandalblast but it may make you more friends if you can leave some people alone.

Expect any future red card that can deal with Enchantments to get a real long look from EDH players and potentially become a staple, quintuply so if it’s Legacy-playable.

2. Can I Borrow That A Second?

It’s taking a minute, but I think Mob Rule, barring a reprinting, has legs. It has a few knocks against it. It’s not Insurrection for example, it’s a recent non-mythic, it can’t always go wide enough to get around big creatures or go big enough to get past an army of chump blockers (giving all of your creatures trample helps, but that’s a 2-card combo to build a bad Insurrection) and even so, Mob Rule is in 2% of the 72,000 eligible decks – that as much usage as Jokulhaups, Fiery Confluence, Warp World and Bonfire of the Damned.

Mob Rule

At sub-$1 foils like this seem pretty good and they’re not as easy to reprint, which is double plus good for this card. It’s not just big, massive swipin’ spells that red loves, though. Zealous Conscripts is a big card and it’s bigger because it combos infinitely with Kiki-Jiki. Molten Primordial gets a ton of play, also, so the combo potential is potentially an afterthought (I still see Maelstrom Wanderer decks run Pestermite, a basically useless card, when they could run Zealous Conscripts to Tooth and Nail for like I do) in the grand scheme of things. Conscripts is stupid and it’s better with cards like Deadeye Navigator or sac outlets so you never give the creatures back.

Threaten effects are over-represented in the Top 100 and I think that’s telling. When they’re printed, they tend to look like Limited chaff sometimes, but Threaten effects really get there. Pay special attention to those printed at rare because those have financial upside, especially in reprint-dodging foil.

Word of Seizing (Foil)

Rare Threaten effects are worth looking at, especially if they print new, very good ones. I don’t know how relevant financially this is but I do know that a significant portion of the Top 100 cards fit this bill and I’m not discriminating between things worth knowing and things worth knowing that may not make us money in the immediate future, here.

3. Always Be Combat

It may be all Narset’s fault, but extra attack phase cards are creeping up a lot. Taking extra attack phases is a great way to squeeze in a ton of extra damage and if you have cards to double damage or give creatures double strike, you’ve got a double double situation and that makes me want to get In ‘n’ Out burger but they don’t have those around here and the last time I went to In ‘n’ Out burger, it was in Vegas and the food was super terrible so I don’t even know, some people who have access to both In ‘n’ Out and 5 Guys says 5 Guys is better so I don’t know what to think.

Aggravated Assault

I talked a lot about how Mana Echoes is a “print or die” card that could get a ton of attention after people start building tribal decks and barring a reprint in Commander 2017 it could become $30 and basically unreprintable? Well, imagine all of that stuff but applied to this bad boy. They have a lot of choices for Relentless Assault effects to reprint if they’re inclined to do one in, what, Commander 2018? The reprint risk is mitigated by the plethora of equivalent, more reprintable targets leaving us with a $14 card that has no reason to come down, really. This ticks up slower but I think has the same “reprint or die” tipping point that some of the other cards I’ve highlighted have had. Just watch what happens with Patriarch’s Bidding. If it pulls a Phyrexian Altar, take a look at Aggravated Assault. They print another “triggers on swinging” card like Narset and this is $30, bank on it.

4. Chaos Reigns Supreme

Cards like Warp World, Gamble, Grip of Chaos etc. don’t seem terribly good, but that’s OK by Red players. Red isn’t terribly good and they’re not in it for the guaranteed win, they’re in it to mess things up. I play Warp World in my Prossh deck because I firmly believe in screwing with the game and, besides, if you don’t have a Food Chain out when you cast Warp World with 30 kobolds, your odds just went way up. I have had 50 Kobolds out and Warped right into Food Chain, Prossh and Goblin Bombardment. It’s hard to lose the game when you do that. It went from “Hahahaha guise wut if i casted warp wurld rn wuldnt that be lulz” to “I ween!” in under a minute. That’s the secret charm to these cards – you look like you don’t have a plan until it comes together. It’s the drunken boxing of EDH. Add to that the number of times a spell about to blow up one of your permanents gets something else instead or you force two people to hit each other who were leaving each other alone and you can break the game wide open. If you attack one person three times in a row, they’ll resent it, but if you randomly roll a die and get them three times in a row, they’re mad at the die. That’s politics, baby.

As much fun as those cards are and as many decks as they appear in (and in as many decks as they appear? And with as many decks in which they appear? How do I not end that with a preposition?) there isn’t a whole lot of financial upside to them since they’re pretty reprintable and they need to be like Gamble, old enough to drive, to drive their own price up. As much as chaos effects are cool, they might be bulk rares. That is, unless, you stop them from doing something at the same time.

Stranglehold

Also the name of a decent song by a terrible musician and worse person, Stranglehold is the kind of card that might need a reprint and might not get it. A Commander original, the reprint venues for a card like this are pretty few. Cheating a bunch of stuff into play with Warp World is one way to cheat, but being the only one whose cheaty stuff works is another. If you’re untapping all of your creatures with Relentless Assault anyway, why not play Smoke to lock them down? If you can’t take extra turns because why would you play Final Fortune (503 decks do, by the way, a lot of them Krenko because Krenko is a YOLO deck that plays Warp World and kills people with Purphoros. Wait, why don’t I like Mono-Red?), you can always put them in a Stranglehold. Then you can say “You best get out of the way” but they can’t get out of the way, you’ve got them in a Stranglehold, they’re basically stuck like right in front of you. Let their neck go, Ted. Idiot.

Prices aren’t going up a ton, but supply is dwindling. This is a card that people can take or leave but scarcity, modest demand, time elapsed since OG Commander and new decks being built by people who aren’t taking apart their old decks all conspire to push this price toward a tipping point. They don’t want to reprint a $13 Stranglehold but they basically can’t reprint a $22 Stranglehold. I’m finding some pretty juicy “Reprint or Die” cards I didn’t expect to find in Red.

5. Maybe Red Doesn’t Suck After All

Purphoros, God of the Forge

This card is reprintable. I mean, maybe. They reprinted Iroas, but that was in a boring deck and they haven’t really shown any indication of reprinting Gods recently. I think a lot of people are worried about this getting reprinted. I know I am – I have a lot of copies I am sitting on, although I sold enough when it first crested to have broken even so they’re all free copies, which I appreciate. Could we get hosed on a reprint, here? Yes, but this card is also so stupid that it could easily be $25 in a year or two, especially since it’s the 4th-most played card in decks with access to Red. Winning with this and a flood of tokens feels good.

That does it for me this week. I think there is some actionable stuff here and I think we should keep an eye out for cards that resemble cards in Red’s Top 100. Any upgrade on an existing card has a ton of applicability and demonstrated demand, and sometimes EDH can make stuff happen, especially on foils and mythics and older cards. Until next week!

Jason Alt, ProTrader

First Spikes Count

July 18, 2017 Jason Alt 8 Comments

Hello again,

We talk sometimes about second spikes on cards. I’m going to pretend that both you didn’t know that sometimes we talk about that and also that you don’t know what that means. When a card’s price is at a certain level and it jumps up rapidly, due to a large amount of the supply being bought out and retailers restocking the card at a much higher price, it’s said to “spike” and I can’t believe I feel like I have to explain this, like who even doesn’t know what that means? Let’s get through this. We mention “second spikes” when we talk about a card that has spiked once due to some circumstance and then, later after the price recovers a little, spikes again to different or sometimes even the same circumstances.

The first spike causes the price to go up which means dealers need to restock which usually means buy prices go up and finance people start feeding the dealers copies. Stores that have mispriced copies either change the price or they get bought at the old price, meaning the cheap, mispriced copies disappear forever and the new price is the new price, mostly. That means when a card spikes a second time, most of the copies are concentrated in the hands of dealers so without cheap copies to mitigate the new demand and dealers free to establish the new price, prices spike much higher and faster the second time. You probably knew all of that but since I want to talk about first and second spikes, it didn’t kill us to go back over it.

We’re seeing a lot of second spikes lately on cards that were spiked by Nekusar and Leovold because of The Locust God. I avoided writing about The Locust God initially because it felt like all we were going to see were second spikes on wheel cards. While that’s true to an extent, the Locust God is distinct from Nekusar in Leovold in a way that’s obvious in hindsight but wasn’t a factor I considered initially when I was evaluating it as a commander. That difference could cause some “first spikes” nestled among the second spikes and let you buy in at the ground floor on some important cards in a deck people seem excited about. What are we in danger of missing by focusing on the sexier, second spike cards that are more obvious?

How Are The Locust God and Nekusar Similar?

They’s is both the Magic cards.

Welp, I think we’re done, now. See ya!

You need more analysis than that? Fine. OK, since they both scale off of the number of cards a person draws, wheel effects seemed appealing right off the bat. By “off the bat” I mean, “it took like months for that stuff to go because all anyone cared about doing with Mind Seize was busting it for the Strix and Nemesis, not building Nekusar” but eventually, pieces of human excrement (this is an opinion piece) started building the deck and cackling like a Lich King whenever someone played a spell and got domed by Forced Fruition. Playing a Windfall to make everyone pitch a bunch of cards then get domed when your full hand made them draw a dozen cards added to their feeling of helplessness. It’s not much fun to play against and they get enough cards that they can build their web of hate.

Similarly, The Locust God loves wheel effects. You dump a hand and draw all new cards and suddenly the table is dumping the cards they tutored for and getting mystery cards and you have an army of Locusts. Wheels help you keep an army of critters ready to alpha strike and keep your irrelevant cards out of your hand while letting you cycle for new stuff.

How Are They Dissimilar?

Well, while Nekusar players casting wheel effects domes your opponents for a lot of damage when they draw cards, it doesn’t help you per se. Sure, if you sock away a lot of land in your hand and wheel it away, that’s good but if you cast a wheel with an empty hand it would have the same effect on your end game because you’re trying to hit them for damage. You can play spells like Forced Fruition because you’re trying to put them between a rock and a hard place and grind them out with Howling Mine effects and wheels.

The Locust God players don’t want the opponent to wheel. Sometimes it screws them, but sometimes it helps them. Nekusar doesn’t care how many cards they draw that are good because ultimately they won’t live long enough to use it and they will likely just get wheeled again. Half the time, Locust God players would prefer only they got to wheel. That’s an interesting proposition when you realize that while generic wheels have been good from Nekusar to Leovold to The Locust God, wanting “personal” wheels all of a sudden turns on cards that weren’t used before. You could chase the Portal Winds of Change to $50 or you could get on the bandwagon of first spikes at the ground level. What are some cards that The Locust God will uniquely make go up that weren’t good in Nekusar decks?

Mindmoil

This is a card designed for you in a Locust God deck. You don’t lose cards, you just bottom them meaning you could conceivably loop back around. You can also have easier (theoretical) access to them if you shuffle. Really, though, this is just about turnover. Keep on cycling hands and watch those Locusts fill the board. Find your skullclamp and your Mana Echoes, kill them with Impact Tremors. Boom.

Foil Moil doesn’t look too bad, either, below $5. Ravnica is pretty old and there are probably fewer copies of Mindmoil than there are of Mythics from Innistrad so once supply dries up, it’s likely to gallop out of control. I normally think saying “just buy the foils” is really lazy intellectually and it requires you to find people who want to foil out their Locust God deck rather than just spend that $20 on cards for another deck, but Foil Moil could his $20, at least temporarily. This is one to grab now while it’s still relatively cheap.

Arjun, the Shifting Flame

Mindmoilmancer is a pretty saucy commander in his own right. If you build around him, throw in a Locust God. If you build Locust God, throw in an Arjun. Commander 2015 stuff is never going to get cheaper unless it’s reprinted and while the Mizzix deck wasn’t super exciting, the value needs to come from somewhere. These are bought up, as evidenced by seeing Daxos decks still on shelves to this day, and it’s likely Arjun was underrated until now. This is a mythic-level card from an out-of-print set and it’s like a buck. You’d have to suck bad to not make money on this card. This is in 3/4 of the decks registered on EDHREC so it’s clear EDH players are aware of this card. With Locust God continuing to be opened and with people just now taking their completed Locust God decks to the shop to trounce people, there is upside here.

Tolarian Winds

Could be too late on the foils as they are selling out (I mentioned this on BSB last week and multiple listeners have sent me pics of the 7th foil Winds they bought) but there is hope, I think, for Beatdown Box copies. It may sound odd at first, but if you look at Portent, the Ice Age copies moved less than the Ice Age precon deck copies. If you remember, when Coldsnap came out, they made Ice Age block precons with Ice and Age Alliances cards in them and Portent got a reprint.

The Beatdown Box version could have similar upside. Tolarian Winds has a few too many printings to really move from one deck (that’s why we like Mindmoil but not Jace’s Archivist, for example) but foils are already irrevocably spiked and other premium versions could be next.

Magus of the Wheel

This is close to popping off as well. It’s got the exact same supply as Arjun but appeals to Nekusar players, also, as well as Feldon, Yidris and Vial Smasher players. This was a card we liked as a Nekusar card but just needed a push, and a push it got with The Locust God decks.

Impact Tremors

When you see something like this discrepancy, it means a card is moving.

The Market Price is good for showing you what things used to sell for, which is great when prices are pretty stagnant. People sold foil Impact Tremors for $3.50 +/- last week? List yours for $3.50 +/-. That is, unless you check the currently listed Median and it’s double the Market Price. When do you see that? Why it’s when something sold steadily at a price then got restocked higher. It means the price moved. Look at what things used to sell for but also look at the listed Median. It may be the same but it may not. In this case, it looks like Foil Impact Tremors is about to double in price, so get those copies under $6 while you still can. It’s a win condition, it’s a foil from a bad set and it doesn’t need a third thing.

Check out the EDHREC page for The Locust God for yourself if you think there are cards I didn’t mention (there are) that might get there (they might). Foil Forgotten Creation? Enter the Infinite (finally, right?)? You decide. I gave you a few tasty fish here to sample, but if you think you’ve learned to fish on your own, give it a try. As always, the comments section is reserved for the Guatemalan company that tries to sell us cheap NFL jerseys no matter how many thousands of Spam posts our filter catches and also for people telling me I’m wrong and/or telling me I wrote a great article. Sometimes it’s both. As long as it’s not neither, we’re in good shape. Let’s see if we have some C17 to talk about next time. Until then!

Jason Alt

Too Impatient to Wait in the Weeds

July 11, 2017 Jason Alt 5 Comments

I said we would talk about the Commander 2017 leaks this week and even though I’m not super duper inclined, let’s do it. More leaks happened, and it seems like Wizards isn’t running a very tight ship these days. Employees of print shops, dumbdumb LGS owners and even the employees of places like Gamestop are all conspiring to make sure we have stuff spoiled for us. It’s disheartening. I haven’t even really looked at the Ixalan rares even though a lot of them are spoiled because I’m not ready to worry about that stuff yet. I’m barely ready for Commander 2017 but everyone else seems jazzed, buying up all the stupid kittycat cards on the internet. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today – which stupid kittycat cards you should buy based on the stupid kittycat commander and how the right answer might be “None of them.”

This might end up the impetus for some bad buying decisions and some even worse building decisions. There’s a lot to unpack here given what we know in total about Commander 2017 but even though I’ve seen two of the “Eminence” creatures spoiled and rolled my eyes super hard at how every commander is Oloro, now, I still feel like we don’t actually know enough to really start buying cards discriminately. Indiscriminately? Sure, that’s covered. Every card with a picture of a kittycat on it is being bought out, including cards like Waiting in the Weeds.

I don’t know if that’s the right play. We have some data to look at to see if there are better things we can be doing with our money. It’s pretty obvious to see a kittycat commander and buy kittycat cards, but are you going to have people to sell those cats to? Are you hoping to sell to players or other speculators? I’m a little more skeptical about cat cards than a lot of the other people I see advocating buying cards like foil White Sun’s Zenith and I’ve also been writing about EDH finance for longer than anyone else. I’m going to try to prove to you that those two things are related.

Is Meowloro Even A Good Card?

Ehhhhh.

We have a commander that can boost a cat from the command zone or battlefield and also, when they attack, boost a small number of cats. It’s expensive to summon, mana-intensive to use its main ability and it is a complete non-bo with all of the rest of the cards I see selling out. If you’re trying to go wide with a cat deck, you’re better off with Crovax, Ascendant Hero as your commander. I don’t say that because Crovax is a good choice, I say that because Arahbo, Roar of the World (Even his name is stupid) is a bad choice.

The decks I have seen brewed (First example, Second Example, Third Example) don’t have much in common except a lot of them seem terrible, they run a lot of bad cards and they don’t seem to run many of the “obvious” pickups I see touted in finance circles. Like it or not, the durdles who are hardcore about this deck enough to make their decks on Tappedout before the other 99 cards in the deck are revealed are basically who is going to be building the decks. What they buy later matters more than what speculators buy now, and they still aren’t going to buy anything until they get the actual physical copies of the decks in their hands. We’re seeing stuff spike predicated on Commander 2017 but it’s not players buying the cards. Some of those specs are going to hit, but why use a scattershot approach when we can be smarter? Put simply, decks made around this card are liable to be bad and bought for novelty. Novelty still slangs boosters and singles, don’t get me wrong, but if you think this deck is going to be more important than the other tribes, I bet it’s not and I don’t care how well Regal Caracal is selling right now.

Will we see a deck built around Meowloro that’s actually some manner of Green-White midrange deck that doesn’t go wide because his abilities don’t lend themselves to the kind of “go wide” build that White Sun’s Zenith, Waiting in the Weeds and other touted specs go in? Will we see a cat deck built around another card in the 99 un-spoiled cards in the deck? It’s possible. How likely is it?

Will We See A Good Cat Tribal Deck At All?

People say they really want a cat tribal deck. But people say a lot of things and I tend to want to buy based on what people are doing rather than what they say they will do. Remember the Ezuri deck and all of the brutal decks people built taking a bunch of extra turns with Sage of Hours? Was that what people said they were going to do? I remember people saying that a card that wasn’t Ezuri was the money card.

I’m not implying cats will be as bad and underwhelming as snakes, but I am implying that typically, tribal decks need a lot of traction and don’t usually get it. I bet a lot of people build dragon decks, but I bet a lot of people put dragons from the dragon precon in other decks, too, and dragons are basically one of the three strongest tribes in Magic. Kaseto is helming fewer than 300 decks on EDHREC and the results are similar for other tribes that aren’t slivers or some other ridiculous tribe. Even Oldzuri is hovering around 600 decks so it’s tough to imagine a Cat tribal deck doing much better. Tazri is ally commander and we’re talking 800 decks there which sounds impressive but then we look at the decks we should compare Kaseto to. We have 1,257 Ezuri Claw of Progress decks, from the same precon as Kaseto and not strictly elfy. Meren comes in at 2,250 decks. We’re looking at only 1,000 decks total running Sliver Hive across all Sliver commanders. Compare that to 3,200 Atraxa decks to see what it takes to move cards. Atraxa is insanely popular and it’s going to take insane popularity to move cards like Brimaz, something I don’t think Meowloro is up to. I expect it to be closer to 300 decks than 3,000 and that’s a problem.

What Do We Do Instead, Smart Guy?

I’m getting to it, damn.

There won’t be 3,200 cat decks off of the back of this set, there just won’t be. Like, if there are, I’ll eat my hat. My hat is a Carmen Miranda fruit hat, so it’s not the craziest bet (I learned from Michigan legend EDT that you should specify a tasty hat) but I’m still going to have to eat a bunch of fruit that’s been on my head. Do I look like I eat fruit? Don’t answer that. Also, don’t bother answering when I say “How many cat decks do you think will come out of this set?” because the answer is “not enough.”

You want to buy a bunch of foils that won’t be in the deck, be my guest, but the rest of us want to make money and have buyers for the cards we come off of. It takes the Gitrog Monster’s 1,000 decks to make an old bulk rare hit $10 and stay above $5 in my estimation so if we’re buying cards much, much newer than Squandered Resources, they’ll need to be in way more decks.

I advocate waiting until the lists are published because non-speculators are slow to pick up cards and you’ll have time, but if you insist on buying stuff now, don’t buy kittycat cards, buy stuff that could go in more than one deck based on the precons. I have a few more targets.

Steely Resolve

This card is already on the creep toward $10 and I think if this isn’t reprinted, it’s a reasonable assumption that this hits that. Corbin said on BSB this week that he thinks the fact that this references Shroud rather than hexproof makes it a little tougher to reprint. If you insist on being impatient, I’d say grab these now. Once tribal builders are aware of this card, they’ll be willing to pay up to $10, I think and in the month following this card not being reprinted (in that case) it will climb to that amount. I’m waiting for confirmation, but if you’re feeling ballsy, you can take riskier bets than this.

Cover of Darkness

Everything I said about Steely Resolve applies to Cover of Darkness except for the fact that it says Shroud. Instead, it says Fear. If they’re not inclined to reprint Steely Resolve for that reason, they won’t reprint Cover for the same reason. This is great with zombies, a tribe that The Scarab God has reminded people to build. I might as well complete the mini-cycle (Red and Blue didn’t get a card in this cycle) with..

Shared Triumph

It’s a weak anthem effect but it’s also pretty cheap. This has the highest reprint risk of the bunch and I’m not bullish on this, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about an entire cycle of cards in case someone stumbled upon this card and wondered how I felt about it. I don’t care for it, but it’s a card.

Descendants’ Path (Foil)

This is down from its historic high and I think that’s noteworthy. Durdle Eldrazi decks pretended they were going to play this card and while some still do, this is mostly an EDH card. I think there is a medium reprint risk but since I’m trying to find picks for lunatics who won’t wait for the full spoilers, this foil is a decent pickup and seems almost 0 risk considering it’s a second spike on a card with cross-format appeal that goes in tribal decks with green, something both of the tribal decks spoiled so far have.

I still advocate waiting for full spoilers and I don’t think if 300 people total register Meowloro on EDHREC (I’m still calling him that because I forgot his real name and don’t want to even scroll up to find it) you’re going to find enough people to offload your foil Scythe Tigers or whatever other foolishness you bought. I think if you’re not going to be smart and wait along with me, you can at least buy smarter. Mitigate reprint risk and buy cards that appeal broadly so you’re not relying on the few people who build one bad deck to bail out your bad spec. Foil White Sun’s Zenith Bad. Foil Obelisk of Urd, better.

That’s all I have for you this week. Until next time!

Jason Alt, ProTrader

7 Thoughts About Hour of Devastation in EDH

July 4, 2017 Jason Alt

Hey, readers,

The Hour of Devastation is almost upon us and that means we get to wait around forever for EDH prices to move. The stuff that was going to move immediately already has – Solemnity was a massive earthquake that ripped through a swath of old Magic cards and made them suddenly valuable. Everything else could take a minute to move, which is probably a good thing because it gives us time to scoop cards up. Unlike previous sets, we’re not going to have to wait for card prices to plummet on our long-term holds because unlike with previous sets, this set isn’t worth jack and/or shit. Is redemption going to enforce a higher box price, forcing singles to take the hit? Are Masterpieces going to keep box prices low? Is this set just another Dragon’s Maze without the benefit of a Voice of Resurgence to keep the boxes at all worth buying? I don’t know how things will shake up, but what I do know is that it’s never been easier to buy our EDH cards right out of the gate. Let’s take a look at some thoughts I have had about this set and where it fits into EDH.

1)Solemnity isn’t done

Solemnity came along and made a bunch of prices go nuts. Lucky for you, I managed to predict a lot of them and if you read the article the same day it came out, you had a decent shot at getting some of the cards before they sold out and people started to cancel orders. Lucky for us, Solemnity interacts with a TON of cards and not all of them were mentioned or even all that obvious up front and there is still a chance to get in on a few of them.

Delaying Shield is like $0.70 currently and you straight don’t take damage with Shield and Solemnity out. This isn’t all that good without Solemity but it’s not all that bad, either. If you don’t draw your Solemnity, this is a card that lets you take damage as normal but also opt out of some of it if you choose to untap your mana and prevent some of it. Not only that, this prevents you from dying when everyone else dies so a lethal earthquake that would kill the table suddenly makes you the winner. Zedruu decks were running this already to take a ton of damage then donate the shield to let opponents deal with the consequences. This is fun in EDH, it’s cheap, it’s old so therefore scarce and it’s unfair with the most exciting card in the new set.

Solemnity decks are starting to shape up on EDHREC so take a look at the cards other people are running with it. While there’s not a ton populated yet, there’s stuff to learn. Zur is most likely the deck that benefits from this card. What other cards do Zur decks run? I don’t know, click on Zur and find out. EDHREC is still the best resource I have found for predicting price increases predicated on a card making another card better. And, before anyone accuses me of shilling super hard for EDHREC because I am employed by EDHREC, let me just say that it’s the other way around – I’m employed by EDHREC because of how hard I shilled for them before they even started paying me. If there were a better resource for what we do in this column, I’d use it. There isn’t. Go get the free money.

2)The Planeswalker decks are loaded

The set appears to be dumpster lasagna from a financial standpoint. The Masterpieces are hot and the set looks like it’s really balanced in terms of Limited (I have a feeling I’m going to take Deserts really hard in draft and ride that synergy wave) but that doesn’t really do much for the prices. Pre-sale data on TCGPlayer is super depressing.

Of the 14 cards pre-selling above $3, 3 of them (Nicol Bolas the Deceiver, Nissa, Genesis Mage and Visage of Bolas) are in the Planeswalker packs. Combined, the 3 cards total $21 in pre-sale value. The Planeswalker decks are available for $23 combined from Miniature Market. I’m not advocating buying at that price, but what I am saying is that there are 3 cards that people really like (or liked a few days to weeks ago when the Market Price was established – I bet those cards are cheaper now) and they don’t care that they’re not in boosters, they just want them to jam with. You think anyone is jamming an 8 mana Planeswalker in Standard? No chance. How about a bad mana rock that tutors for an 8 mana walker? No, this is casuals and EDH players establishing those pre-sale prices on those cards and making the rest of those planeswalker packs (each of which includes an Hour of Devastation booster pack) essentially free. People like Planeswalkers and this set has a lot of Planeswalkers and they aren’t all in boosters.

3)Obvious cards are too cheap

Mill is always a buy. Good mill even more-so. EDH players benefit from mill the least out of everyone (or so you’d think, but look at Phenax decks) but mill cards are always good financial decisions. This set has, basically, Mill Reflection and it’s like 30 cents.

This card is really good for taking out one player. Even if you play this in EDH, this makes it really easy to kill one person quickly so you can use your Traumatize on everyone else. Alternatively, curse yourself and fill your graveyard with cards to use to kill them. This is already a bulk rare and this will not be a bulk rare long-term. This is a sicko mill card and it’s very, very obvious as a pickup but people don’t seem to want to worry about that until much later. If you end up with someone who trades at TCG Player value, out a terrible card like Nimble Obstructionist for 10 copies of this and you’ll be very happy in a year or two. Is it still the dreaded “value trading!(cue Wilhelm scream)” if you’re doing it based on the values from two years from now? There are plenty of other obvious cards that are bulk already and which you should be targeting.

This one comes to mind, for example. Bulk is too cheap for this forever.

4)Gods could be too cheap

I have seen a lot of people excited about The Locust God and wheel effects. You may remember wheel effects from going up in price when Nekusar was spoiled and again when Leovold was spoiled. How many times am I going to be able to make money from Teferi’s Puzzle Box? Skullclamp, Windfall, Arjun, etc.

The Locust God is $6. Now I realize that in order to go up, this card will need to impact Standard, right? As much as it’s cool to Skullclamp your Locusts, or win with Purphoros, Skullclamp and Ashnod’s Altar (a pretty easy combo to assemble once you get Skullclamp going) we don’t have access to that in Standard. But do the guys truly need to be that good in Standard to maintain their current price? I only ask because this set seems like hot garbage, there are no cards over $20 and booster boxes are like $100 retail. If people stay away from the set because it’s hot garbage, scarcity will keep prices artificially medium. If they get high enough, it makes sense to buy boxes again and people will. But if people aren’t compelled by anything in the set, the value has to be somewhere and why not the Gods? $6 is already pretty reasonable and they could at the very least maintain some of their value if nothing else from the set jumps. I’m not saying invest, but I’m going to pay $6 for a copy of The Locust God now, build that hilarious deck and laugh at people and I doubt I’m going to look at the price of the God in 3 months and think I took a bath.

5)Read what EDH players are building

I was focused a lot on Solemnity shenanigans and brewing decks with lots of Gods in them for my Gathering Magic article so I didn’t really take a look at what people are doing with the rest of the set. Think about which cards will go into existing decks. Is there a card that’s going to go in Atraxa? There is?! Well that’s worth knowing.

I also recommend using EDHREC for a sort of reverse-engineering. Instead of typing in a God and seeing how to build it based on suggestions from the other decks in the database, start with a single card and see which generals want it. The cards in those decks are more and more attractive the better that commander is.

Swarm Intelligence is a new card and I think it has potential, but I don’t know where. What do other people think?

There isn’t much consensus, yet, but I didn’t think about Narset when I first read Swarm Intelligence, but it makes a lot of sense. And since The Locust God seems to be coming up a lot, it doesn’t hurt to see which cards are going in that deck because while some people may scrap their Nekusar deck for cards to put in the deck, some won’t and that means they’ll need to buy cards they already have. A lot of cards in the Locust God deck are creeping up lately and it pays to check that. Without looking, how much is Chasm Skulker worth, knowing it was first in M15 and was just reprinted in Commander 2016? Bet you were off. Bet you’re glad you looked because if you’re like me, you have a bunch of them shits in a box somewhere.

6)Bad Standard sets can be good for EDH

Not always, though. Let’s look at every card in Dragon’s Maze worth above $1.

Gross. Mirko Vosk is under $1. Where is this pressure on prices coming from? It’s not like boxes are flooding the market. Still, even this is less bleak than it looks at first. Voice and Progenitor Mimic are low due to reprinting. Deadbridge Chant is a solid EDH card, as is Savageborn Hydra. With strong, powerful Standard cards like Varolz and Aetherling worth diddly, it seems like EDH is the only thing making these cards worth anything. This is the worst case scenario for Hour of Devastation – no good cards and therefore no value no matter what set redemption has to say about it. Let’s look at a set that’s closer to Hour of Devastation in terms of being disappointing for Standard but giving us lots of EDH cards.

M15 is much closer, if you ask me. We had a lot of cards that were good in Standard like Hornet Queen and painlands fall off a bit and EDH cards came in and picked up the slack. Chasm Skulker is between $2.50 and $3.50 after a reprint and was a bulk rare when the set was Standard legal. I think Hour of Devastation will force the EDH cards to take up value in the coming years, which is perfect because I think there are cards like Neheb that are up to the challenge. They’ll be overlooked for a minute, but not forever.

7)Look for more Solemnities

Anything that is a good card could be worth some money and if it gets better as people discover how to use it properly, it could be worth even more money. That’s base tier. The we have cards that are good in one deck the way Abandoned Sarcophagus will be good in a cycling deck, and that deck’s increased popularity could drive up some of the prices of the other cards in the deck. That’s mid tier stuff. The truly worthwhile cards are ones that bring up multiple different decks, interact in a stupid way with a lot of other cards and in general are going to go ham with lots of prices. That’s Solemnity. Could we have missed another Solemnity in the set? It’s possible. If there are cards in the set that I think could be potential top tier finance cards, they’re these.

This not only could be the commander of his own deck, I think he goes in Athreos and Shirei-based Shadowborn Apostle decks and probably Kaalia decks. Are a bunch of people building Kaalia lately? I don’t know for sure, but I do know that Kaalia just became more affordable when it was jammed in the Commander Anthology set. Razaketh seems like it could make a bunch of other cards in other decks go up and I think it’s the closest thing we have to another Solemnity.

That’s all I have for you. 10 seconds before wrapping this up, I saw

so I bet you know what we’re going to talk about next week. Until then!

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