Category Archives: Jason Alt

Unlocked Pro Trader: Hapatra Hazard Construction

Last week I was going to write about all of the cards that Hapatra was going to make spike in price. It was going to be a pretty sweet article, to be sure. A few cards like Crumbling Ashes had already started to creep up so pointing out the rest of them was going to be pretty valuable.

However, a wrench was thrown in the works and Protean Hulk was unbanned in EDH. Since I figured that was an “all hands on deck” situation, I wrote about the stuff that was going to go up as a result. I figured Hulk stuff was going to go up immediately as people panic bought as a result of a major event whereas Hapatra cards were going to slink by in the background a little bit, or so I thought.

The truth is, Hapatra is the most popular Amonkhet commander on EDHREC (though not the most popular overall. You think a little thing like an exciting new commander is going to make the internet stop farting out 110 new Atraxa lists a week?) and cards are taking off. A lot of ships have sailed and I realize that referring to specs as “ships” is mixing boat metaphors a little bit. I guess the rising tide raised them and now they’re capable of sailing? Look, the point is, you’re too late on some cards and on others you’re not.

 

What Are We Too Late To Buy?

Crumbling Ashes

Basically as soon as we found out we were getting -1/-1 counter stuff in Amonkhet, this card disappeared. It’s in the $7 range right now and it could come down, although there’s not a ton of pressure on it to do so. There aren’t that many copies, what with a Shadowmoor Uncommon being about as scarce as an Amonkhet rare and with a non-trivial amount of casual and EDH demand for this card before this point. There aren’t copies being ferreted out in collections and store inventories fast enough to control the price so it’s basically a $7 card from now on, barring a reprint.

Blowfly Infestation

This is in the $4 range everywhere it isn’t sold out, except for Card Kingdom which has 1 solitary $0.99 copy which throws off our metrics something fierce. Someone do me a favor and go buy it? It’s Near Mint.

This is another card that rewards you for killing their stuff and it’s a nice tandem with Crumbling Ashes. This is a card I would have warned you about last week and there was probably more than a solitary $1 copy then, to boot. C’est la vie. While it’s important to note the cards that spiked already, let’s not despair – there’s money to be made, still.

Few more.

Quillspike

This gets played in and outside of Hapatra decks, both. When people started messing with -1/-1 counters stuff again, including in Modern, people remembered this combo existed and the low supply coupled with the renewed interest gave some upside to this as well as the other piece of the combo, which also spiked for another reason. There’s ample evidence to suggest the printing of Vizier of Remedies spiked Devoted Druid first and brought Quillspike right along with it.

Devoted Druid

This is going to make infinite mana in a lot of decks (although not Hapatra, though it does make an infinitely-large Quillspike, still) and not all of them EDH so it’s natural stuff that seemed to have cross-format applicability would spike first.

While it’s not 100% fair to say that it’s too late to buy any of these cards, I think there are better targets, so why buy on the off chance that there is some blood to be wrung from these stones (there I go again, mixing my metaphors. I’m like the Krombopulous Michael of mixing my metaphors. Oh, you think that’s a funny reference? Well, I made Krombopulous Micheal up. Try thinking for yourselves for a change.) when we can just buy cards that are sexier targets and aren’t all bought up yet?

What Are We Not Too Late To Buy?

You should know by now what I did. My first step was to go to this page and just look at cards. There are some very sexy targets still out there. That’s the second time in 2 paragraphs I’ve referred to spec targets as sexy. I think that’s because we only spec because it’s sexier than the way I make 90% of the money I make at MTG Finance – grinding. You don’t want to read an article about grinding, you want to check the mail with a tent in your pants. I get it. Let’s move on.

Dusk Urchins

Say! Do you wish your Black Sun’s Zenith was also a Blue Sun’s Zenith? Well now you can!

This card is pretty good. Its stats are wonky for EDH but the fact that it can draw you some cards seems pretty good to me and you’re already going to be playing with -1/-1 counters. You can draw more than 3 cards with this and that’s what makes it so good. I think this goes up along with the popularity of Hapatra decks, which some people insist are not good EDH decks, as if that matters even a little bit. Oh snap, false alarm. The Gitrog Monster decks don’t Tooth and Nail everyone on Turn 4. I guess I better give back all of the money I made on Squandered Resources. On second thought, I better not, because I used it to buy a flight and hotel for GP Vegas. Maybe I’ll just stick with paying attention to trends irrespective of whether I agree with them.

Speaking of Black Sun’s Zenith

Despite being sort of a durdly deck full of weird, midrange black creatures and expensive spells and therefore not selling as well as the sexier Red (Mom’s Daretti), White (Kor Set) and Green (Like, every card in there is a $5 elf) Commander 2014 decks, stuff from the black deck is finally starting to move and this card is no exception. It’s basically above its floor now and showing signs of even more life. How bow dah. Put these in a deck where you want things to have -1/-1 counters on them and watch how many creatures it does that thing to.

Necroskitter

This and the next card I want to mention are both at their floor following a reprinting in Modern Masters and that’s good. If you buy in at the floor, your risk is pretty low since they’re unlikely to go down as a result of increased interest. This was between $5 and $8 before the reprinting which was also before the printing of Hapatra. Will this be $8 again? No. But you didn’t buy them at $1 when they were $8 either, so you’ll probably profit the same amount as if you bought them at $3 or $4 before because you read the casual tea leaves better than I did in those days. Necroskitter was always a card I got sold to me as a bulk rare and remembered to pull because it buylisted for $2. Those were the days.

Midnight Banshee

Another card in the same boat (Look, I’m not going to change the way I talk at this point, so get used to it) as Necroskitter is a card that was $4 or $5, probably because of Skeleton Ship and casual and crap like that. This got a reprint, it’s at its floor, it’s starting to move, you know what to do.

Cauldron of Souls

We talked about this card recently and I think it’s worth repeating. This is a little above its floor and I think it’s as cheap as it’s going to get. Commander 2016 versions are gettable around $2 and that seems good to me. You know how I talk about the U-shaped graph of a card that gets a reprint then recovers nicely? We like to see reverse-J-shaped graphs because we know we’re buying in at the floor if you expect the card to recover. We expect this card to recover.

Flourishing Defenses

This is basically a Blowfly Infestation with a lower power level and less cross-format applicability but a high degree of synergy. This also has a way lower buy-in price and you’re basically at the floor on a stagnant card with the same low supply as Blowfly Infestation and Crumbling Ashes, cards from the same set. This isn’t as good but it’s good and it’s going to be how you win a lot of games. Imagine this with Skullclamp. Hubba hubba! That’s a spicy card drawing meatball. Throw in Attrition and Perilous Forays and you got a stew, baby! Beastmaster Ascension, Cryptolith Rite, this even pairs nicely with Nest of Scarabs. This is going to be played in a lot of Hapatra decks, and I’d spec on something old before I took a chance on much newer rares. We’ve established what can happen to this card on the basis of watching Crumblisg Ashes. It’s less healthy than that card but it’s not a complete slouch. At least pick these out of bulk.

That does it for me this week. Did we miss out on too much by not publishing this last week? I don’t think so. I think while there are cards we missed out on, there are still plenty of opportunities. Besides, half the cards we missed out on began spiking before last week. If you find this article series instructive, and this is going to sound like shameless self promotion, my Gathering Magic article series isn’t a bad place to also check. I don’t discuss finance per se there, but I do talk about cards I like in EDH decks and I discussed Hapatra there two weeks ago. I mentioned quite a few cards from the Hapatra EDHREC page and if I’m building with them and others are building with them, someone is going to buy them – that’s how this works. Thanks for reading and let’s meet back here next week to discuss a few more slow gainers that we have some time to scoop up. Until next time!

Unlocked Pro Trader: Hulking Out

#&$@ Leovold. I don’t care, don’t let the door hit you in your three toughness. Buff-ass bureaucrat, sitting behind a desk shaking hands with his 3 toughness. Like he needed to be a 3/3 for 3, like his stats matter. Like he would be unplayable in Legacy if all he said was “Your opponents can’t cast Brainstorm or win with basically any combo deck.” Like people would say “I don’t know, a 1/1 for 3 is a bad rate for my EDH general when all his text box says is ‘If you resolve Teferi’s Puzzle Box, no one but you gets to play Magic.'” Eat a bag of elf $^%&, Leovold.

That said, I made a lot of money off of cards that Leovold made expensive and while I don’t think any of those cards will tank too much because of price memory and the post hoc justification about how they’re all played in Nekusar,  Nekusar himself actually is trending up in price because Legacy and Vintage are making up the bulk of his demand and with the elimination of Sensei’s Top, people are going to lean on him harder than they did before. Leovold, you made a lot of people a lot of money and for that we thank you. If your demand continues to increase, maybe my LGS will clear out a few more of the boxes of Conspiracy they accidentally overordered and can’t get rid of.

Out with Leovold and in with a card that may or may not have belonged in card jail – Protean Hulk. For those of you who don’t know what Protean Hulk does, he basically enables combos that are so convoluted that my favorite story about Protean Hulk is from 2005.

 

People were playing a Flash-Hulk deck in what I have to imagine was either Extended or Legacy at a GP. Day one, everyone was scooping to a resolved Flashed Hulk because the Hulk player would get a bunch of cards and say “I win the game with my combo” and the other player would say “Darn, you won the game with your combo. I hope you don’t win the game with your combo next game.” Day two was veritably lousy with copies of the deck because it got so many free wins. On day two, people started to say “Please demonstrate the combo for me” and then the Flash Hulk player would start to say “Well, I go get these creatures and then I combo” and if you asked “How does the combo work?” or said “I use Mogg Fanatic to kill a creature in response” some players would demonstrate the combo properly but others would burst into flames and you would get the free win instead of them.

Protean Hulk sure does enable a lot of combos. But which ones? And how? I’m going to be honest, I don’t really know as much about a card that’s been banned in EDH as long as I’ve played EDH, but I have been playing Magic in some capacity since 1996 so it’s not like I can’t figure it out. You want to make some money? Well, all of the copies of Protean Hulk are gone, so we better look at combo pieces instead. Those are largely untouched. Let’s make some money, shall we?

Flash

Maybe this first one is a little bit obvious, but with the bulk of the EDH decks excited about Karador builds and the like, Blue stuff gets lost in the shuffle. This is already disappearing a little bit but there are still cheap, loose copies floating around. I have a bunch in the dollar box at my LGS I need to swoop in and scoop up unless someone beats me to it. I think this has upside and with its two printings coming from extremely low-volume sets, supply is not going to keep up with demand for long.

Body Double

Do I sort these by color, or…

Either way, Body Double is a card that plays a big part in a lot of Hulk combos. It was used in some of the classic Hulk combo decks and it’s being touted as a combo piece now. It’s blue, like Flash, so it likely ends up playing a part in a combo deck. I doubt you can do any combos in just Simic, but The Mimeoplasm has the infrastructure to just start jamming Hulk combo without much retooling and Tasigur and Sidisi and other decks will get there, also. Body Double got a duel deck reprinting, which hurts, but so did Coalition Relic. This is a low-risk, low-to-medium-reward spec, IMO.

Grand Architect

Hulk can get you the Pili-Pala, Architect combo, which can give you all of the manas. With infinite mana, you can do a lot of dirty things in Simic, Temur and Sultai or Bant. Win with Helix Pinnacle, deck yourself with Thraisos, deck everyone with Prosperity, etc. This also got a little heat when Breya came out and with that cooling off, this could be a second spike scenario and you all know how we feel about those. We’re in favor of them, that’s how.

Saffi Eriksdotter

Not sure who “Erik” is but his dotter is a beast of a Magic card. Already spiking hard recently. this card is not going down anytime soon, unless it’s considered “Iconic” enough to be included in “Iconic Masters” which may turn out to be a set where they fart out a ton of cards that badly need EDH reprints, something I welcome. You know how many $6 Phyrexian Altars I’ll sell? Because I currently sell 0 because they’re too expensive. Anyway, Saffi gets played in Hulk combos a lot because she interacts with Karmic Guide, another card I have been predicting is due for a price increase for a minute. I hope you stocked up.

Boonweaver Giant

Foils of this combo piece are under $0.50. I think of this fact every time people try to convince me that competitive EDH is a major driving force behind prices. This card has upside and the foils are safer from reprinting than the non-foils, but this is an important combo piece played in a lot of “competitive” EDH decks and the foil is worth less than guac at Chipotle. I think this will get some extra attention and there aren’t a ton of copies available so renewed interest could trigger a price avalanche, so buy in before that, I guess. What do I know? I predicted competitive players would buy Dramatic Reversal enough to make that foil price go above $1 and they printed Paradox Engine 2 months later.

Phyrexian Delver

This card is part of basically every combo I see, barring the ones that don’t use black. It’s not quite Karmic Guide but it does a pretty good impression and while your life total can sometimes matter, depending on how long the game goes, you shouldn’t need to use Delver to get Hulk back more than two times no matter what the rest of the combo looks like. If you have to go Whiteless, this card is part of the combo nearly every time. I think there is very little risk here and despite the Commander deck printing, there is upside enough to move the price. You know what’s even safer than the non-foils of a card they’ve demonstrated their willingness to print?

If you can find foils, they’re probably headed to $40 and beyond soon. This used to be a pretty reasonable card until, I guess, everyone started thinking about how good it was in a lot of combos and I credit Commander 2015 for reminding people the card existed. Hulk hype is driving this up a bit more, I think (I’m writing this under 24 hours after the announcement and the price has been on the move for a minute so it’s not just Hulk doing it) and this was a junk foil until pretty recently so there may be just rando copies in binders.

Feldon of the Third Path

It’s been a while since I revisited this card which is a shame, because it started to move while no one was looking. The spread is pretty low on this for a card that’s inching above its historic high. I think this card is taking off, and how well it pairs with Hulk combos has something to do with it. If you have a sac outlet, especially Ashnod’s Altar, you can KO them with Hulk, Lightning Mauler, Kiki-Jiki and Zealous Conscripts. Kiki-Conscripts was a known combo already, but Feldon helps you find both pieces from your deck by making another Hulk to get the job done. This is a complicated combo that takes a lot of mana, requiring you to use cards like Priest of Urabrask and Skirk Prospector, but we’re trying to KO people and if all those cards need to do is be somewhere in your deck, you’re OK with running a lot of components as long as you can find all of them with Hulk.

Feldon is already on a good path (heh) so whether or not Hulkamania moves his price at all, it’s already a good card to be about. Buying at the floor was better, but buying right before it crosses the threshold of its historic high with a very low spread seems also fine. Breya is a deck that loves this and with WotC being fully aware that people want a UR artifact commander, we could get one any day now and then a card like this has real upside.

Karmic Guide 

This was in Commander 2013 and I predicted it could climb in price. I was totally right. Then came Eternal Masters. I think this could climb again and maybe even flirt with $5, but Iconic Masters is coming soon.

I think Karmic Guide is not where you want to be. That said, it’s part of every single combo with Protean Hulk in decks that run White, so maybe you want to at least have them on hand.

I think Hulkamania will be pretty rad at first but as time goes by, it will taper off (much like the real Hulkamania) and Hulk decks will be just another deck. Hulk really isn’t getting us combos that are that much worse than Tooth and Nail was getting us, especially if you are not playing Hulk for 2 mana with flash. There are counterspells, removal spells, graveyard hate spells and the RC can always just re-ban Hulk if this experiment doesn’t work out. Sure, twitter and Reddit will pule and whine about how Sheldon and co. don’t know what they’re doing, but they say that literally every ban announcement anyway so those complaints are like the buzzing of insects at this point.

That does it for me. I have been doing a lot of reading about Hulk combos but if there is something I missed, throw it in a comment and we’ll talk about whether the buy-in makes sense. People bought all of the Hulks but there are plenty of targets left. Buy before everyone else and your orders won’t get cancelled. Until next week!

Unlocked PRO TRADER: THE AMONKHET STUFF EDH CARES ABOUT – PART 2

What’s up, nerds?

I am going to finish up the spoilers today by talking about the stuff I missed last week because it hadn’t been spoiled yet or I didn’t want to. I also had some requests from you nerds, and I don’t want you to think I don’t read your comments so I’m going to address those points.

As a reminder, let’s take a look at the cards from Aether Revolt that are worth more than $2 now that it’s been a few months.

Not too many cards here.

Next week I’m going to talk the whole time about all of the cards that Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons is going to make expensive because that’s what this column used to be about before everything Wizards did kept distracting me. Hapatra her(Him? Their?)self is unlikely to be a factor finance-wise but we’re not so much concerned with that. We’re all about throwing big rocks in the pond and studying the ripples they make and not so much caring about the price of the rock. I think Baral being $2.15 means that the conversation about Hapatra’s price is liable to be a short one. Still, next week’s conversation is bound to be a lively one as all of the -1/-1 counter tribal cards (Except Kulrath Knight, dammit) can go in a Hapatra deck and it’s the most popular of the new commanders on EDHREC.

 

Before I launch into the stuff I wanted to talk about this week, I had some requests last week and I’m going to address those before I move on.

Samut, Voice of Dissent

This card sure does have a lot of abilities. The question, though, is whether any of it matters. I think for this card itself to be relevant financially, it will need to get picked up in Modern or Standard and I’m not sure that’s going to happen. While it’s cool to have a Flash, Double Strike creature, are we going Voltron? I think you’re a bad Uril deck. Are you some sort of Naya commander, giving your creatures haste and untapping one of them a turn? Does that help you out at all? I can’t predict which cards will go up as a result of this printing because I don’t know what Samut players want. Neither do they. A brief trip over to EDHREC to look at the Samut page reveals a disorganized hodgepodge of random Naya goodstuff and a total lack of cohesion. Until something solid built around this card materializes, I’m forced to conclude that despite this card having every ability, it’s not going to be a force financially due to its lack of focus.

Vizier of Tumbling Sands

This is a real card and the cycling certainly doesn’t hurt its case, especially with creatures like Phyrexian Ooze and The Mimeoplasm out there. However, I don’t know that this will ever be worth actual money. I know this because I can compare it to something that is worth actual money.

Aphetto Alchemist is worth actual money. I’m not sure if anything outside of EDH is playing it (Whereas Fatestitcher got where it is because of use in Modern Jeskai decks) but EDH use has been enough to send this card surging into “actual money” territory which is a good place to be. The problem? The bulk of the use Aphetto Alchemist is getting is from Azami decks because Alchemist is a Wizard. Being a Wizard is very important in Azami decks and Vizier is a Cleric, not a Wizard. Being a blue Cleric is like being the Valedictorian at Summer School. If your plan is to snag free copies of Vizier out of draft chaff, box them for a minute and wait until you can buylist them for quarters, that’s a fine plan. If you want to do anything beyond that with them, good luck – I don’t see it happening. It’s a good card, but so what?

That’s all for requests this week, so if you had a card you wanted me to talk about and I didn’t, I’m sorry. Maybe we’ll talk about it next week before I get deep into Hapatrananigans. Nagananigans? Not snakenanigans, certainly – Naga aren’t snakes, guys, the cat god doesn’t make cats and I just said a creature with 11 keyword abilities isn’t a good commander. What’s the world coming to?

Anyway, here’s the stuff I didn’t talk about last week because it hadn’t been spoiled yet or I didn’t feel like it.

Gideon’s Intervention

This is Nevermore with way more flexibility. If you say the name of the card after it’s played, this still hampers it. Nevermore is in about 2,000 decks on EDHREC and has climbed to nearly $1 in price. I don’t know that this can get much higher than that despite being a better (albeit slower, which isn’t necessarily the best thing for a card that’s supposed to come down before another card) version of it. I still think this will impact the format and it’s worth looking after.

Vizier of Remedies

This plus Devoted Druid is infinite Green mana. I don’t know if you want that much mana, but that’s a thing you can do. This can also mitigate some of the pain associated with creatures that put -1/-1 counters on your own creatures or opponents trying to do that. This nerfs Hapatra, but that’s too narrow to bother jamming in your deck. This will be used to generate infinite mana with Devoted Druid and that’s about it. I think the price will start high so there isn’t much opportunity here, but be aware that this is part of a good combo.

Forsake the Worldly 

People play cards like Revoke Existence. This is better than that card in several ways.  It’s an instant, it has cycling and it still hits artifacts and enchantments. I’m not sure if this will be a staple, but I am generally in favor of flexible, instant-speed removal that isn’t a dead draw and this is those things. Foils may be money.

Lay Claim

I don’t know how inclined people are to do this, but I am generally in favor of replacing cards that cost 1 less mana but don’t have cycling. I use Take Possession in my decks and I have even used Confiscate a few times. If you have Confiscate, replace it with this for sure. I like this a lot in Maelstrom Wanderer, in fact, and this like replaces the Take Possession that’s in there since I don’t whiff when I draw this like I do with other expensive spells in that deck early when all I want to do is ramp my mana. I’m in the market for a foil of this, and maybe more.

Shadow of the Grave

Yidris decks want this for sure, right? If you’re dumping a lot of cards to a wheel effect, drawing back double is going to get you there and even if you have to discard down to hand size, you can easily find 7 cards that will win you the game or at least help you stabilize. I think this could be used, though maybe not enough to keep it from being a bulk rare. Still seems dumb in Nekusar, Leovold and Yidris, and those decks combine for a lot of play.

Faith of the Devoted

A new, better Lightning Rift? Sign me up.

Combat Celebrant

Things that do this thing are always playable. Find a way to blink this dude and/or give him haste and you’ve got a stew, baby! I’ve been known to put Bear Umbra on Hellkite Charger, so you know how I do.

By Force

This is very good. I don’t know if it’s better or worse than Shattering Spree but I’m inclined to say better unless you’re in Mono-red. This is savage, but maybe not as exciting as other variants.

Manglehorn

This is bonkers. I’m not sure I’m replacing Acidic Slime with it, but this is just such a good hoser. It’s good to blink, it’s good not to blink, it’s maindeckable. I love this card. Love love love love this card. Get foils.

Gift of Paradise

Overgrowth is in almost 700 decks on EDHREC and this card is much, much better. Hargismb actually read the card and has a different take on it. I have changed how I feel.

Cascading Cataracts

This card is fun. I remember playing Crystal Quarry in a mono-black deck that used Last Stand to dome them for a ton because you only had Swamps. It was probably a decklist I got out of Duelist magazine but, whatever, I liked it. 5-color players are using Crystal Quarry enough that it’s a $5 card. This is better than that but not as rare so I bet this ends up around $3-$4ish in a year or two. Not bad for what almost assuredly starts out a bulk rare.

I think there may be a few more relevant cards but I think they’ll reveal themselves as people start to build decks. I’m going to talk to EDHREC about a custom report that ranks the cards from each new set based on the number of decks they’re in so I don’t have to do it manually. Next week there will be plenty to talk about and we can even spend the next few weeks speculating about which four tribes will be represented in Commander 2017.  Until next week!

Unlocked Pro Trader: The Amonkhet Stuff EDH Cares About – Part 1

The set isn’t fully spoiled and I imagine there will be stuff spoiled between this article and the end of spoilers that will be relevant. Instead of waiting for that, I’m just going to get started and we’ll wrap up later. First, though, let’s take a look at how Aether Revolt is doing financially.

17 cards over $2. This is what we’re hoping the Invocation Masterpieces will do to prices in Amonkhet but it’s hard to say. Also, I was surprised to find that the 4th most expensive card is not even in regular boosters – it’s a durdly Planeswalker from the Planeswalker packs. Its high price is only surprising because I didn’t think it was that good – being in the Planeswalker deck means Masterpieces had no effect on its price.

 

So what I’m seeing is that basically 25% of the people who preordered Walking Ballista and hardly anyone else made money pre-ordering. Prices go down on just about everything 3 months later due to more boxes than ever being opened. Does it make sense to have a $7 uncommon in that context? Maybe, maybe not. What is EDH going to do?

Looking at Aether Revolt prices, we see Paradox Engine, Planar Bridge, Baral and Mechanized Production which seem to be expensive solely because of EDH. In the case of Paradox Engine, we have a card that’s one of the most expensive in the set solely because it’s bannably good in EDH and is basically warping that format. Could it be banned? Maybe. But until it is, it’s going to continue to be one of the most valuable cards in the set. Everything else got smashed down to like a buck and while that is good long-term, you’re looking to see what to pre-order (if anything ) and/or how much of a bath you’re going to take on the stuff you buy early. Do you need cards to play with right away? Then suck it, up; you’re going to lose some money, it happens. Are you willing to wait a minute? I think I can help you, there. Let’s look at what we should care about and what it will be worth in a few months.

Annointed Procession

This card is pre-selling for $3 on SCG and I think that may be too little and too much. Long-term, I think this has chops and can really get there because it’s a carbon copy of a card that is already expensive. I also think this goes down before it goes up.

Parallel Lives was under $3 for a minute and that was a while after it was printed. Parallel Lives is also in more appropriate colors for this effect. That said, lots of white token-based decks that never had access to green have been waiting for this. I think Parallel Lives’ price helped establish the preliminary price for this card but it can’t maintain it. At peak supply for this card, it will be very hard-pressed to maintain even $1 unless it’s directly impacting Standard, which I doubt. This is this set’s Dictate of Erebos, which means we’ll have time to get these for cheap and we’ll be getting $3-$5 for these in a year or two. This is a great opportunity, just don’t buy in too early.

Cast Out

I don’t see this being quite as expensive as Fatal Push (or as secretly rare – I have seen boxes of Aether Revolt with 2 copies of multiple rares and only one Fatal Push) so I think a good target for this is “free in draft chaff” if you can get them. EDH plays effects like this and tacking cycling onto it makes this pretty attractive. Get foils while the base price and multiplier are both low.

Regal Caracal

Cat lord. Maybe EDH doesn’t want this (a non-zero number of people absolutely will) but 60-card casual overlaps with EDH sometimes and obscures where the demand is coming from. The advantage of appealing to 60-card casual is that they can snap four of these up at a time. I think once this is bulk, you set it aside when you process bulk rares and that’s all you need to do. Forget these in a box and find them in two years when you can buylist these for like $1.50 each and use the proceeds to buy your family’s freedom from the marauding gangs of paramilitary thugs or Spam or air filters or whatever we’ll need money for in two years.

It’s going to look like I’m omitting “As Foretold” but since that’s not EDH-exclusive, the price won’t be affected by anything we do so it’s not really worth discussing. $25 is probably too much, but I don’t know if it will ever get so cheap that we’ll be glad later we paid that price. This card is just going to straight ruin prices on a lot of cards for a minute.

Kefnet the Mindful

This card is better than anyone thinks, probably. Still, it’s going to have a tougher time finding a home than most Sea Drake variants. I don’t want to pay $6 for this for sure. In general, these gods are way worse than the Theros ones and those prices are still low on some of them. I don’t expect this to ever be worth enough that we’re glad we bought in before these rotate out of Standard.

New Perspectives

This is just another bulk rare which likely languishes at bulk for a minute, but currently Lifecrafter’s Bestiary is a bulk rare and we know that can’t stay cheap forever. This card is good, albeit narrow. I feel like EDH will use its first ability as often as its second, especially in decks like Roon and Brago. Pull this out of bulk and box it up and wait.

Pull from Tomorrow

The marginal upside of being “allowed” to discard a card for certain decks isn’t enough to pay $3 for this right now. This will be bulk eventually but it will also be worth getting because it’s got more utility than some other cards that do this (though you can’t make them draw out like you can with Stroke of Genius, etc). In a world with a ton of cards that do this exact thing, this differentiates itself slightly by letting decks like The Mimeoplasm discard and that gives it longterm upside that Standard players won’t understand. Get these at bulk.

Liliana’s Mastery

How long do we expect casual gold like this to be a bulk rare? I sound like a broken record, but get these in bulk and hold onto them. It’s fine to sound like a broken record during preview season considering there are only one or two cards that won’t go down in price, and usually one of those cards only reveals itself after pro players have done significant testing.

Lord of the Accursed

“Why is an uncommon worth $4?” – Someone on reddit in two years

Champion of Rhonas

No, I didn’t forget red, I just don’t have any red cards to talk about because, like always, there are no good red EDH cards in sets other than Commander

This is better than Elvish Piper in some situations. It’s also not worth $6. I think this will probably get very cheap. Will this be one of the 17 cards worth more than $2 in a few months? I tend to doubt it. Here’s what I do – I ask myself “Am I more excited about this card than I was Aethersphere Harvester” and when the answer is inevitably “No” I decide that I don’t want to pay more than $2 for it.

Channeler Initiate

At $3, this may actually be underpriced, I don’t know yet. What I do know is that this can put -1/-1 counters on creatures other than itself which is not always a bad thing and this can grow itself while it helps your mana.  This card is really stupid. Then I remember that Somberwald Sage is stupid in EDH and that’s like $1.50. Who knows? If this goes up before like 3 years, it’s probably because Standard wanted it, which I can see. This is a better Werebear.

Shefet Monitor

This is not a 6 mana creature. This is a 4 mana spell that says “Search your library for a basic land or, I guess, a Desert, put it into play untapped, shuffle up then draw a card. Put a dead lizard in your graveyard that you may end up putting back in your hand or accidentally reanimating.” and that’s a pretty decent spell.

Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons 

This could be a sweet general, but I expect it to get played less than Baral. What’s Baral going for? Scroll up and check, then buy accordingly.

Neheb the Worthy

Whether you try to buy this guy or buy other Minotaur cards that might go up, I think you’re screwed no matter what you didgeridoo.

I may or may not write the second part to this before next week if they wrap up the spoilers, soon. To review, I think there is probably one slam-dunk opportunity in the set so far and that’s Annointed Procession. The good thing about there only being one sicko target is that we can all focus on it and ruin the price for everyone like the dirty finance mafiosos that we are. Got a card you’d like me to discuss that I omitted? Leave it in the comments section. Until next (week?) time!