Readers!

Rather than talk about incoming trends based on specific new cards, I want to talk about a shift in the way Wizards is doling out abilities to different slices of the color pie and about a trend I see continuing into the future. Not sure what I mean? I’ll back up a bit, and it’s going to involve you doing some reading but I think it’s worth it. I mean some reading that isn’t my article. Let’s talk about the article titled “Mechanical Color Pie 2021 Changes” by Mark Rosewater. This article covers all of the slight changes they’re making to which colors can access which sections of the color pie. It’s worth a read, but if you’re not looking to slog all the way through it (I had a difficult time doing it myself and it’s basically my job) I will post the section I think is most relevant to our purposes here today. 

Treasure creation (artifact tokens with “T, Sacrifice this artifact: Add one mana of any color.”)

Primary: Red
Secondary: Black and green
Tertiary: Blue

As the color of temporary mana, red is best at treasure creation. Black and green can both make treasure, but black tends to usually require some additional cost. Green historically has not had a lot of treasure making cards, but it’s squarely in pie for green to do so. For flavor reasons, like Pirates, blue occasionally creates Treasure. This is another deciduous thing that I questioned whether to include, but as we’ve been using it a lot, I decided to include it.

If they are adding cards that make treasure often enough to officially discuss which colors can have access, I think we should pay attention. It’s not just treasure, either. Food and Clues are lumped in nearly as much, and while the colors which make Food and Clue tokens may be slightly different, each color can make some combination of the three. We can’t necessarily lump them all together, but there is a card that makes them feel more interchangeable, and I want to talk about it.

Both the regular and extended art copies look very juicy right now. Now, I’m not sure if mentioning every different kind of token makes this card easier or harder to reprint, but since it wasn’t intended for Standard, at least at first, it may be relegated to supplementary sets. Certainly extended art and foil versions are even less likely to be reprinted, further insulating Manufactor from the potential consequences of its own success. Tokens aren’t going anywhere and the EA copies are beginning to sell out, making me pretty certain it’s never going below $4 barring a reprint. This is a card we want to be buying pronto, and as many copies as you think you’ll ever build with. This will take a bit more effort to push above $10 than a card like Aetherflux Reservoir or a similar artifact that was always obviously good then went nuts a year after it went out of print, but that’s only because there are extra copies out there. Still, Modern Horizons 2 was basically never drafted and a lot of the copies began their life in dealer inventories which means every copy that hits the market goes from dealer to player rather than the opposite way. A one-way flow of copies in pandemic times can help to accelerate a card going on a run. I feel very strongly about this pick and I think we have seen the floor and now I’d kind of like to see the ceiling in a year or two. You can’t have enough copies of this card.

Foil Tireless Provisioner seems low to me. In almost every deck, this is a better Lotus Cobra. In decks where you can make all 3 with Manufactor, this card is an absurd value engine. The difference between being able to store mana as Treasure tokens and having to use the mana right away like with Lotus Cobra is a huge one. I don’t cut Cobra for Provisioner, but I DO cut something. Foils of this under $5 seem like a solid play to me.

The whole article won’t be about foil copies of Uncommons, but that doesn’t mean we should ignore sick uncommons. This does a lot of work in a lot of decks, Magecraft limits its reprint options a smidge, foiling limits it more, and Red is primary for treasure from now on. This is likely a staple in about half of all treasure-themed Red decks (you need instants and sorceries to bother with it) but it also can be the only treasure card in a deck and still do a ton of work since you’re just converting early cantrips into late mana. This is a great card and it’s going to go work forever, despite looking kind of durdly at first blush.

Rather than chide myself for not catching this sooner, I really maintain Journal is a card that wouldn’t have gone really anywhere without help from other clue generators. While not a Treasure card, per se, this goes in a lot of the same decks and if you can make some clues, or just wait 3 turns, Journal can find whatever you need. With commanders like Lonis and Eloise running around, you’ll get a lot of use from Journal, a card that’s only halfway done spiking.

If this goes below $5, buy a lot. Even if it doesn’t go down much more, this is a really sick version of this card and a lot of players prefer it. You really can’t go wrong with Valut, though, provided you buy at its floor, a number I can’t even begin to predict.

Deadly Disupte and Unexpected Windfall are the gold standard for pairing card draw and Treasure production. They’re both profoundly unfair cards and their price in dollars reflects that.

The Treasure theme page on EDHREC is a great place to start your search. Not only does it have a ton of cards correlated with Treasure builds, it also has the list of the most popular Treasure commanders so you can look at their pages. Make sure you have that theme selected when you go to that page, though.

That does it for me this week. There may be more Treasure plays to make and more things to glean from the color pie article, but this is the news I think is fit to print. Feel free to hunt for more buried treasure on the pages I mentioned and call me out in the comments for missing something obvious. Until next time!

READERS!

I don’t want to talk about the literal spirit of Commander. I don’t even really want to call it Commander, since I like calling it EDH more, but since so many people are new and don’t even remember the good old days, I will, begrudgingly, call it Commander. I’ll come clean, the title is a stupid pun because we know we’re getting a tribal Vampire and tribal Spirits deck in Breaking Dawn or whatever and we should be ready for both.

We haven’t gotten confirmation that the deck will be Blue/White that I have seen (I’m sure there’s an article on the mothership or something) but based on the last 2 decks being two color and tribal, we can infer we’re getting RB Vampires and UW Spirits. On that basis, I decided to do what I did last week and delve this time into UW Spirits decks on EDHREC to see if there are any cards we should be buying in advance. A lot of the Spirits cards are reprintable and are nichey, but they have Modern applicability, too, so it’s possible we have additional chances for growth. That said, Modern applicability makes them even more reprintable. There probably isn’t a better target than last week’s Bloodline Keeper, but we can take a look anyhow.

In case you don’t feel confident navigating the site or feel like you pay me to do stuff so I should do it for you, here is the full Spirits tribal page on EDHREC. There are some non-Azorius cards here, which we can ignore, but it doesn’t suck to know how people are building everything. Let’s get into it.

This is… a mess. It’s pretty clear I should focus on a UW spirits commander. But which ones?

I can already tell that I am more likely to uncover some busted Kamigawa block tech in a Celestial Kirin deck than I am to find a good spec in the Ranar deck, but I’m going to do my due diligence anyway. Kykar is a combo deck that has Spirit tribal lords in it because why not swing for 3 with your tokens in a pinch, but I doubt it’s built like the new deck will be. Still going to look.

Let’s rule some stuff off right off the top, OK? I would bet money Supreme Phantom is in the deck, ditto for Rattlechains, Selfless Spirit etc. We can buy anything from that list that isn’t in the deck when the decklist is spoiled, but we’re not making money on Drogskol Captain any more than we did off of… the Dimir Zombie one. Diregraf, that’s the one. I am honestly more likely to lose money with a reprint of Skyclave Apparitions that are in a box somewhere that I will forget to sell in time than I am to make money with Shackelgeist. I think there IS a card that’s a couple bucks now that goes to like $8 if it’s not reprinted, at least in the short term, which means you need to buy now.

At a $2.50 buy-in, which is like $0.50 over CK’s buylist, this seems lowish risk. This is an easy dump to a buylist for $5 a copy in 2 months if we don’t catch a reprint. I don’t think there are too many other opportunities from that whole cohort of “Modern Spirits deck” cards. Spell Queller maybe? I like this as a medium-risk pickup. If it’s in the deck, you likely take a bath, but you may be able to panic dump to a tardy buylist site if you see it’s reprinted? I don’t know, I don’t react quickly enough to try and get others to subsidize my mistakes, I put them in a box, forget about them, they go up, I don’t sell, they get another reprint then I find them an cry. Your technique might be different.

While we’re talking about Spell Queller, I actually don’t hate it.

Queller isn’t getting cheaper barring a reprint, and with the USA deciding that not spreading Covid is boring, we’re likely looking at a return to sanctioned Modern, which could perk this back up. I like it at $3.50.

The Ranar page isn’t turning much up, so let’s get creative.

That huge spike in 2019 was me making you all a crapton of money when I saw that Teysa decks were going to make use of this. I am not going to make you “buying in at $0.50” money anymore, but I am going to make you some money if this isn’t reprinted. It’s actually not the most synergistic with Spirits in all cases, so the commander may matter, but with multiple Legendary creatures in the deck, I think this synergizing poorly with the main commander means it’s less likely to get reprinted but you still have chances for it to go in another deck. I like this for those reasons. I realize the decks are finalized and some people know the contents, but I’m still guessing here and I guess this is real solid at $5.

Rooting around in Cloudhoof Kirin’s cards, I found this bizarre gem. It’s actually super strong but 6 mana sort of bites. I think random stuff like this could be in play, but if you look at the Zombies stuff that went up, it was $5 cards going to $10 rather than $0.75 cards going to $2, and there aren’t a ton of $5 spirits. The issue with trying to find secret good tech in the Kamigawa Spirits is that all of the Azorius ones are like 6 mana. No wonder everyone hated Kamigawa block at the time.

This has turned into a bit of a bust. One thing I can do is look at what I think the commander’s abilities might be and try to see if there is anything that could synergize with… a thing I’m making up. It sounds lower value than I think it is, especially when I type ellipses.

For example, if something puts Spirits from your hand into play for free, which could be solid, bigger, more expensive Spirits are in play. The upside? Those dumb Kamigawa ones are better. The downside? Anything really good is likely reprinted in the deck.

If it manages to dodge a reprint and if it is at all decent with a commander like that, Drogskol Reaver is a solid card on its way to $8-$10 that could be a real player in that deck. A reprint likely knocks this down forever, but something like this seems necessary to beat the Vampires deck. Don’t forget, the decks were designed to play against each other and the Vampires deck likely swarms fast so it might be necessary to have some lifegain because spirits are all like 3 mana 3/1 fliers and it sucks to block a 1 mana 2/2 with those. I think Reaver is just a good card and people seem to like it enough for it to go from bulk rare status 5 years ago to over $5 now.

Kataki is in the process of going off, but if you can get copies under $10, see that you do. I wish I’d thought of it sooner.

That does it for me this week. In general, the cards that did the best from the Zombie reprint were $5ish cards and there are a few of them, albeit with decent reprint risk. Still, the Wilhelt deck didn’t reprint cards we thought they might, and they hosed some others’ Rooftop Storm specs. All I know is that you really only need one solid card to make some money with and while there aren’t a ton of great options here, you only really need one. I personally like Hallowed Spiritkeeper – something about cashing in on the same spec multiple times makes me happier than hitting with something new. That does it for me – until next time!

Readers!

We talk about how there are no “missed” specs, only opportunities to invest money elsewhere, and doesn’t it take a lot of experience and mental discipline to start to feel that way? When you miss the boat on a spec, it feels bad – doubly so if you wanted copies to play with as well. I won’t tell you we didn’t miss some stuff by virtue of ignoring it because it sounds like I’m making excuses for something it was too late to talk about – Wolves and Zombies going nuts. Predictably, very predictably, Wolves and Zombies got some extra attention with A Zombie precon and a Legendary Wolf creature in Innistrad: Team Jacob last week. We could do a post-mortem on what you should have bought so you know for next time, but we likely still would have under-estimated the demand based on how things shook out the last time we traveled to Innistrad. Instead, let’s look to the future and remind ourselves that way more people play EDH now than did 5 years ago and anything we get right here is bound to look even better in a few months.

It may be a bit too late for some Vampires, but not all specs are created equal. Do we expect Stromkirk Captain to be $9 just because Immerwolf went nuts? Not exactly, and any mitigating factors will be discussed here. However, we DO expect some movement, and we expect some reprints, too. So how do we get ahead of the movement and avoid the reprints? By doing what we always do – guessing.

Guessing with data, sure, but still guessing. Ultimately we may be way off-base with some of our guesses, but let’s look at some prices anyway, shall we?

Immerwolf has a very powerful effect, one printing, is the closest thing this tribe has to a Lord and is in the color of every wolf deck.

Stromkirk Captain has 2 printings, including one in a commander precon, is just another Lord in a deck with many and is in colors that aren’t always necessary to play in a Vampires deck considering there are a lot of White and White-Black Vampires in Ixalan. So do we expect this to do nothing? No, not exactly. The foils have only been printed once, can’t be in a precon and are basically gone from the internet. The foil basically went from $2 to $20 overnight, so that tells me the non-foils, preferred by actual EDH players anyway, are in play. At a $0.50 buy-in, these will buylist for a couple of bucks if not reprinted. Is the reprint risk kind of high? Yes, and that’s another reason why Captain can’t go off like Immerwolf did. Let’s look at cards with more potential.

WotC has said about 20 different times 20 different ways that they’re not putting DFCs in the precons. That means Bloodline Keeper has a basically 0% chance of a reprinting next month. This is already on a moonward trajectory, but these will be gone under $25 very soon and you’ll likely be able to get out closer to $40 than $20. This seems like a pretty sexy spec to me and $15 is just the beginning considering it got that high when the Vampire precon came out and more copies are in the hands of dealers than they were 3 years ago. All of this points to a pretty nice payday for people in a position to sell when the precon list is spoiled. Let’s be ahead of the curve instead of cursing ourselves for not predicting Gravecrawler would pop.

Foil Indulgent Aristocrat is a high buy-in at $10, but it also seems like the floor for now. Dealers seems skeptical given the high amount of daylight between retail and buylist.

Nocturnus is affordable and has been stable since the 2018 precon came out. However, it’s somewhat reprintable and while it’s obvious to people who built Vampires back in the day, it might not be obvious to new builders. I still think if you can get in under $10, and you very much can, it seems safe.

This seems like it mitigates reprint risk a bit by being kind of a weird Ixalan specific vampire. It doesn’t have a keyword ability or anything and it’s already gained a lot of value this year, so if you want to skip it, that is probably a decent call. Still, this is a card that doubles in price minimum under the right circumstances, so I would be remiss if I didn’t point out there was a chance for this.

This card is halfway between shrugging off its last reprint and flirting with $3 again. I think it gets there.

There are a few ways the deck can go. So far I’ve been looking at Edgar Markov lists for synergistic cards, but the different vamps have different high synergy cards.

I stuck with Edgar Markov because the Midnight Hunt precons were two color and they were the colors of the tribes in original Innistrad. That seems to basically rule out White vampires, but it doesn’t rule out a lifegain synergy rather than a +1/+1 counter one, so you could get ahead of the curve by correctly guessing the subtheme of the deck. You can buy specific cards when the decks are spoiled, but then you’re competing with everyone else and the whole point of thinking about this now is to avoid the rush later.

That does it for me this week, folks. Remember to go to the Vampire tribal page on EDHREC and look at the lists from every Vampire commander before you buy anything. Until next time!

Readers!

Last week I talked all about panning out and looking at the format at macro scale to see that not all “best commander in the set” are created equal. I don’t think I do that enough, and a constant parade of new products made me very comfortable just writing about a new deck every week. The thing is, I found last week’s article useful because it got me thinking about things I take for granted, and things I gloss over when I focus on new stuff. The thing is, there is a class of “new” cards that we all gloss over, but which we should pay a lot of attention to because if there is anywhere to make easy, free, reliable money, it’s there. I’m referring, of course, to cards that are in the Top 100 cards in the last week but not the last 2 years meaning they are relatively new staples but still have a chance to go up in price. That’s a mouthful but hopefully they’ll… be a walletful? Because of the money you’ll make on them? That you’ll put… in your wallet? Look, they can’t al be gems, I’m here to find you some picks, not make jokes. To that end, let’s look at some cards.

Just in case it’s not intuitive, the way to find the page is head to the edhrec homepage first.

In the top left there is a series of drop-down menus. We want Cards.

Select Top Cards from the menu and it will take you to the Top Cards page. I mean, obviously, but I’m setting up the next pic, chill. You asked for this (play along, I’m pretending you need this because someone probably does).

On that page, you can select the date range. I’m going with the past week. If this was too hard to follow or if you figured I would link it for you, I’m going to link it for you. Let’s look at some cards, shall we?

Sol Ring
Arcane Signet
Swords to Plowshares
Cultivate
Counterspell
Beast Within
Cyclonic Rift
Rakdos Signet
Izzet Signet
Orzhov Signet
Dimir Signet
Rampant Growth
Path to Exile
Kodama’s Reach
Boros Signet
Rhystic Study
Chaos Warp
Heroic Intervention
Demonic Tutor
Talisman of Creativity
Azorius Signet
Farseek
Smothering Tithe
Brainstorm
Blasphemous Act
Boros Charm
Assassin’s Trophy
Dovin’s Veto
Rhythm of the Wild
Eternal Witness
Lightning Greaves
Anguished Unmaking
Talisman of Indulgence
Talisman of Dominance
Sakura-Tribe Elder
Birds of Paradise
Talisman of Hierarchy
Llanowar Elves
Ignoble Hierarch
Despark
Three Visits
Swiftfoot Boots
Esper Sentinel
Eladamri’s Call
Negate
Generous Gift
Swan Song
Talisman of Conviction
Growth Spiral
Ruinous Ultimatum
Vampiric Tutor
Dockside Extortionist
Mirari’s Wake
Terminate
Enlightened Tutor
Fierce Guardianship
Putrefy
Mystical Tutor
Damn
Simic Signet
Deathrite Shaman
Elvish Mystic
Mystic Remora
Avacyn’s Pilgrim
Reclamation Sage
Noble Hierarch
Elves of Deep Shadow
Windfall
Nature’s Lore
Sylvan Library
Arcane Denial
Teferi’s Protection
Faithless Looting
Sun Titan
Eerie Ultimatum
Mind Stone
Fyndhorn Elves
Ponder
Jeska’s Will
Dark Ritual
Gruul Signet
Abrupt Decay
Return of the Wildspeaker
Vandalblast
Deflecting Swat
Mana Drain
Toxic Deluge
Supreme Verdict
Nature’s Claim
Golgari Signet
Rakdos Charm
Bedevil
Fellwar Stone
Beast Whisperer
Solemn Simulacrum
Mortify
Feed the Swarm
Worldly Tutor
Preordain
Commander’s Sphere

If you’re interested in seeing the list in list form, here it is, and you can also make the EDHREC site do that for you.

There are a LOT of staples on here. We can cut this list down by using our list comparison tool to cut out cards that are in both lists, meaning we’ll only get recent cards. That seems worthwhile to me, let’s do that.

There are 89 cards in both lists, which gives us 11 cards to work with which is… fewer than I thought. However, the list of 100 has a lot of cards that “feel” new and which also are less than 2 years old, meaning they ARE new. Let’s look at the 11 first.

Feed the Swarm
Jeska’s Will
Damn
Deflecting Swat
Rakdos Charm
Ignoble Hierarch
Bedevil
Worldly Tutor
Return of the Wildspeaker
Esper Sentinel
Three Visits

A lot of these are not new. However, some of these should pop out at you.

This seems fairly obvious. If Modern comes back in paper, a non-zero number of decks need this, it’s potentially a card if paper Legacy ever happens and it’s in a LOT of EDH decks for how new it is. It made the Top 100 cards of the week. How many Jund commanders were printed since the set came out? 0, that’s who. With the price beginning to rebound on Card Kingdom, it’s time to pull the trigger. I realize there are other targets, but this just feels like free money.

I posted this so we could talk about it. I’m not sure I love this at a $32 buy-in, but one potential wrinkle is that this is not playable outside of EDH, so while its price is somewhat controlled by a lack of cross-format appeal, it’s also kind of tough to reprint. I don’t love this at $32 because I have to imagine if this approaches $50, they’ll find a way to reprint it, but since the precon it’s in costs like $35, you might just use this as a way to get 99 free cards for now and re-evaluate later.

Bedevil got a reprinting, which was inevitable, but given that it was nearly inevitably going to be reprinted in a commander deck, let’s look at the foil.

You know I don’t love foils, but this appears to be gettable for cheaper than the non-foil peaked at, so it seems like a pretty sold pick-up to me. The foils are cheap, harder to reprint than the non-foil which just got hit, and it’s basically a format staple moving forward. Sure, it wasn’t in the 2 years ago list, but can we agree if it’s on the list of cards for the month that Prosper and friends are going to make this a buy at $6?

That’s me convinced.

I won’t lie, I didn’t imagine this card would be this popular, but Damn is showing up a LOT. It’s not done plummeting, but when it stops, I especially like the old border versions of the card. Damn is played more than I expected and I might not have noticed it was getting played enough to make the Top 100 until it reversed its price trend and started creeping back up. I’m glad I noticed now.

Duh.

I thought the ship had sailed on this card when it hit $15. It’s crazy that we all had a chance to get this for under $10 and not all of us got enough copies to make bank selling now that CK thinks it’s worth almost $30. If you can get these from Europe for under $10 for English copies, it may be worth it, but also, TCG Player has these for under $20 and that may be the play. CK buylist was nearing that at one point, and it’s not like this is getting worse in EDH.

I think all of these cards are going to go up more, even the ones that are already kind of expensive, and I think it’s good practice to abandon my very specific method occasionally and get back to fundamentals. I think these are fundamentally sound picks and I stand by all of them.

That does it for me for this week, readers. Thank you for your kind attention and continued support, and if you have any questions about how to use EDHREC as it is or suggestions for how it could be, I’m oddly enough an excellent person to talk to about it. Hit me up in the comments or the MTG Price Pro Trader Discord which is pretty insane value. Until next time!