Welcome to March Madness, the only time of the year where you hear the word “Gonzaga” and it’s not the name of one of the 595 Legendary creatures introduced to the game in 2022 (I looked it up – it’s 347. I was barely exaggerating and I was trying to be as hyperbolic as possible). The March I am mad about is March of the Machine. We could talk about college basketball but I don’t know anything about it and Corbin Hosler does, and that’s two reasons not to talk about it right there.
Last week we talked about the two major decks from March so far, which is wild since the set is barely spoiled. Still, we have enough Legendary creatures for people to do quite a bit of brewing.
For reference, here was last week
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I’m back on my particular signature brand of BS for this week and it’s going to be a fun article to write. Finally, we get to write about cards I like to play. By that, of course I mean cards I want to put in decks. Notice I didn’t say “deck” because with the stupid, stupid, stupid, idiotic stupid poison counter theme in Phyrexia: All Will Be One (PAWBO for short), we have another theme that works hand in hand with it, enables other strategies (Planeswalkers) and is heavily in the best color combination (Simic). I am talking, of course, about Landfall Proliferate.
Proliferate is a big subtheme in PAWBO, but between the set which gave us a few Proliferate cards and the precons which seemed to ignore the main set in that regard, we have old cards and new cards that are both getting some new looks. While Ezuri is of course not the most popular commander in the set, I think it’s the best place to see the Proliferate cards that matter. Let’s take a look.
I really expected a reprinting of Inexorable Tide, but I think it might be a minute for a reprint. I also think if Inexorable Tide gets printed, it’s unlikely to be in a big set and that could hurt its upside. Also, this isn’t the first time we made money on this card.
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It’s a new year! New year, new me! Ish! Probably not that different! I don’t feel that different! And I took a few weeks off and got my head straight and finally offloaded some of my stress and now it’s back because we have Phyrexia: All Will Be One spoilers! It’s not a hard job but some days I feel like Lucille Ball watching those chocolates come down that conveyer belt and other days I feel like Lucille Ball watching those chocolates come down that conveyer belt but one of those chocolates is a card I want for a deck and I’m like “Oooo, a piece of candy” and that makes it all worth it! Let’s get up to some old tricks for a new year and look at the non-zero number of new decks we have to poke around at.
There isn’t a ton here, but these are all fairly interesting commanders. I don’t expect to see Elesh Norn remain the top commander in the set for lots and lots of reasons that you can skip reading if you know about but in case you’re not super familiar with EDH, Elesh Norn is White and that’s a bad choice. That said, I’m absolutely building a Seance deck with Elesh Norn and this sentence inspired this tweet.
Needless to say, I’m in a fantastic mood right now.
I’m building Norn as a Seance deck because I’m a nut, but how are other people building the deck? What cards should you buy? (The answer is Seance). I’m going to tell you because that’s sort of this column’s entire deal.
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Today I am going to show you the most played EDH cards of 2022. There are some who insist on calling the format “Commander” and I get basically nothing out of being a curmudgeon and insisting on continuing to call it “EDH” except not having to change, which at my age is all the selling point something needs. It was a bad year for people who fear change as collector boosters made foil rares feel worthless, product getting dumped on Amazon made sealed product feel worthless and having to cover 70 new Legendary creatures every 3 weeks made me feel worthless. I know it’s not your problem, but I want to be up-front about my mental health and make it clear that I am not joking that the release schedule had a deleterious effect on mine. Am I a weird outlier because I work 4 jobs in the Magic community and they all want me to write about every set (and every Discord community wants me to hang there, something I can’t physically do)? Or am I canary in a coal mine, signaling that even highly enfranchised and entrenched people like a guy with 2 kids who have Planeswalker names are feeling burnt out?
What will 2023 bring? They’re hyping the next set as their Avengers: Endgame moment where all of the planar portals jump out and we’re supposed to believe Huatli and Lukka are going to turn the tide. If the set is good, lots of people could start playing Magic. If the set is bad, it will sell a lot, people will complain and 3 weeks later they’ll shell out for the next product. There aren’t any sideways ships in the Suez right now, so I am hoping there will be fewer shipping issues which will cause a bunch of products to stack up at the end of the year like this time. If sets are more spread out, then the format will have “time to work” on the cards that it didn’t get this year. It feels like there are so many EDH decks now that no one card goes up because not enough people build the physical decks they register online because products come out too fast.
I want to talk about every set that came out in 2022, what the most played card was and whether EDH having so many products could even impact the price of those cards. Let’s get started.
Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty
No surprises here – Boseiju is number 1 with a bullet but the entire cycle is in the top 20. It’s sad to see highly-played utility rares like Lion Sash and Mirror Box end up bulk rares. The Hidetsugu hunt put so many busted remnants of collector boosters that there is basically no chance. No rare played in fewer than 40k decks is worth more than $2 and that’s pretty scary, frankly. This is why I like finding Scourge Rares that are going to go up because they print a new Cephalid Commander, new sets scare me.
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