Readers!

We have data! You know what that means! I get to stop guessing!

Before I run headlong into data, I should write a *bit* above the fold. I have done a lot of these “first data we have” articles by now and I have noticed some trends. In general, you can get a feel for whether the most popular commander initially is a flavor of the week or whether it’s going to hold strong. I think obvious commanders are built the most first and good ones last the longest. Sometimes a card is Omnath, Locus of Creation and it’s both good and fairly obvious. Sometimes Golos is in tenth place for 3 months then it’s in the Top 25 commanders from the last two years once people realize how absurd it can be. I think Commander Legends has so many cards that are obvious and powerful, the “most built” doesn’t mean a ton – this set will cause more decks to be built than any set in the last two years. I’m literally picking the most popular because I have to write about something. That said, I didn’t see this coming, and you probably didn’t either, so let’s talk about what came out on top.

At 66 decks, Obeka is running away with the top spot. Right now it’s not all that close, either. What makes Obeka so compelling? Let’s look at that in a minute. First, how not close was it?

I expect this list to change a lot in the coming days. We are looking at 66, 39, 36, 30, 28. A lot of the counts are fairly tight except Obeka is lapping everything. Why? Let’s take a look at what the deck plays.

I expected Sedris to feature heavily. This card being in Grixis was no accident – we were meant to think of Unearth right away. Sedris decks have been ending the turn to keep Unearth creatures around for years and now instead of our Unearth enabler needing to find ways to end the turn, we have an end the turn enabler with no shortage of juicy payoffs for that ability. Final Fortune and Last Chance already shot up, so there’s not much chance you can make money unless the copies you get are mispriced. However, there is still a lot of meat on the bone left. Let’s look at some of it.

Glorious End is selling out, but it’s a fairly high-volume card given how recent it is. However, it’s a Mythic and a lot of the copies have been relegated to bulk binders and boxes to dig through rather than being accounted for in store inventories. This means copies are still out there and their introduction into the market will delay a big price spike. If you can track down some loose copies, this seems like it goes to at least $5. It may not hold there, but if you get in for a buck and out for $3.50, can you complain?

The good thing about Kikity-Jikity is that it’s good in almost every Red deck and will be money whether or not Obeka stays on top. The bad thing about Keeks to the Jeeks is that it gets printed roughly every year. Kamigawa original copies do a better job of shrugging off the reprints than the new versions with the new art, but Iconic Masters dragged the price down to around $10, $20 for foils. I like both of those prices. I’ll pay $20 for a foil if the Kamigawa original is more than that. I think Kiki could get reprinted soon, but I also think we can make a bit on them before that happens. I don’t have the utmost confidence in this as a spec, but this is a card you’re never going to lose a ton of money on, and that’s worth knowing, especially if it gets reprinted again and you can buy in for like $8 again.

The Iconic Masters version has grown by 50% over the last two years and I don’t see Wizards adding cards that make it better making it a worse gainer next time it’s printed.

Sundial is already going up, but it went up a year ago so I think even if you buy in around $3, enough copies were concentrated in the hands of dealers after the first spike that there won’t be loose copies the market can soak up and retail operations holding large quantities will determine the price, meaning this is headed to $10, at least for a bit. The Mystery Booster retail edition copies will slow things down but not forever. This is a solid pick-up and there are plenty of copies for you to get in slowly and not have to worry about panicking.

A commander that makes good cards way better is just as good as a commander that makes bad cards good. Sure, you can grab a bunch of bulk copies and cash out at the top with a commander that enables bad cards, but you can also have other chances to dump good cards made better. Whipe of Erebos was always a solid pick-up and has been a nice gainer, but having another reason for it to go up in price is great. The other demand will sustain and help justify a higher price meaning it won’t crash of people grow tired of Obeka. $4 copies on CFB while the card heads to $10 on Card Kingdom is just what I like to see.

This is on its way to the moon by now. If you snag a cheap copy forgotten in a box or bin, good on you, but being on the Reserved List and being from a set with no good cards in it will make this a $20 card soon. Will it hold? I don’t know. It’s just worth noting when cards like this pop.

This is way less sexy but it’s almost as old and rare. It’s not on the Reserved List, but no one is reprinting Dawn of the Dead, so you basically have a $5 Obeka card that you can get for just over a buck at CSI. Sounds good to me.

There are a lot more cards on the page for Obeka and some of them might never pop and some have already, but I think paying attention to the deck and how it’s built could yield some benefits, particularly with Sundial which is a backup for the commander and which is underpriced currently.

That does it for me this week. If you want to discuss any cards I missed or omitted, do it in the comments or message me in the Mtg Price Pro Traders Discord server if you’re a member. Until next time!

Readers!

We don’t have any data but I need to save myself from election day doomscrolling on social media. It can be a bad day on Twitter or a silly day of trying to guess if people like the same stupid garbage in EDH that I do. I can’t stress enough that this is stuff I like and stuff I like isn’t always going to be popular with other people. Here is what I’d do with the new cards and what I’d need to do it.

All of the Krakr garbage (Krark-bage) was pretty obvious, but this is a Cheerios combo piece in the command zone. As Mtg Price’s resident breakfast cereal expert, I can tell you that Cheerios is a trash cereal only given to literal babies, but the deck is fun. Currently, Cheerios decks run 0-cost equipment and Puresteel Paladin, but there was a time in Magic history where Crimson Kobolds and Kobolds of Kher Keep were bounced with Cloudstone Curio with Glimpse of Nature until you get Grapeshot them to death. I don’t think you want to Grapeshot people in EDH, per se, however…

The Mystery Booster slowed the hype train, much like a wayward cow on the tracks might slow but not stop a runaway locomotive in a Denzel Washington movie when he was in his “Make movies about trains with Tony Scott” period.

Reservoir is down from its maximum but there is a lot of room to grow, especially if you can snag $5 copies from TCG Player and it’s already $8 on Card Kingdom. If it hits $14 on CK again, they’ll be offering $10 in credit and an easy double-up for barely any effort is pretty sweet. I think this card is a monster and it’s a great finisher for a stupid Cheerios deck. True, it’s a multiple card combo, but having one of those pieces in your command zone is a game-changer.

This card needs a reprint that isn’t just a more expensive masterpiece. I liked these at $35 before they hit $45 and dropped again. I think they can hit $50 or $55 if they don’t get a reprint, and it’s looking like they won’t. These are good in more than just the hypothetical Cheerios deck I bet no one builds but me and the price reflects that. There are so few copies in the hands of vendors, if I wanted to take $500 and just jack this price all up with a few well-placed buys then say “See, I called it” I could, but since I don’t have a YouTube channel I don’t see a point.

I have like 50 of these but I used them as tokens in my Prossh deck, so I am never coming off of them. I think there are a lot of lunatics like me, and with several cards like Kher Keep making tokens called “Kobolds of Kher Keep” these are attractive tokens as well as Magic cards in their own right. I’m a little surprised these stayed under $5 apiece, honestly.

For reference Crookshank Kobolds cost half as much because no one wants them as tokens. That said, Crookshank Kobolds are *only* half as much, which doesn’t seem right, either.

Unfortunately, you only get 1 copy of each in a 99 card deck, but they’re not as important as the Curio, which is easy to tutor for in a red deck. You can also build the deck with any other color(s) you want because Rograkh has partner. The deck could be fun. I don’t know what else in the deck would be expensive, though. You could build a pretty competitive deck for under $50, which is appealing, even with $30 of that being tied up in Curio.

The fluctuations between $7 and $1 are the $7 copies selling out and our algorithm scraping the $1 the sites want for the oversized card. It’s funny. What’s not funny is how much Yidris is going to cost when everyone builds a new cascade deck and none of the 4 color commanders are reprinted in Commander Legends. I should have recommended this weeks ago but, I goofed.

This isn’t directly related to anything in CL, but it IS in Maelstrom Wanderer and also, I like this card and it’s getting more expensive on CK because it’s bonkers, but also it’s cheap on TCG Player. If this is $11 on CK and $5 on TCG Player, you can practically arbitrage them.

I say this a lot but not all of you read all of my articles, so I’ll spend a little ink on this before I wrap things up. Do cards that are $11 on Card Kingdom and $7 on TCG Player sell on Card Kingdom for $11? You bet. There are a lot of reasons for this, but just know that Card Kingdom is a very good indicator of the health of an EDH card’s price and EDH is carrying a lot of the weight of the paper market right now. I think something is underpriced on TCG rather than thinking it’s overpriced on CK, and for EDH-only cards like this, it may help you to think in those terms as well.

That’s all for this week. Next week we will have a full spoiler, some data, maybe a new POTUS and I’ll be chasing the Shandalar speedrun world record on Twitch. Frank Karsten is sitting in 5th place and I’d love to knock him off of the leaderboard. Until next time!

Readers!

You know how I am always talking about how my data-driven approach has caused my confidence in my specs to increase as well as my hit rate? You’re getting better advice and making more money, I look smart, people go to EDHREC, etc? This is the week every 6 months we forget all of that.

Well this card is pretty stupid and ignoring the cards that could go up as a result seems stupid, also.

This is the biggest winner in terms of playability because you can force two players at once to hand over their decks (hopefully not on webcam) and you can take anything you want. Normally you’d target yourself and someone you kind of like, but Agent changes the whole game. I already liked this card, for the record.

Being the 9th-most-played card in a frankly STACKED set like Core 2020 is a good indicator that Schemy boi had some upside already. I also think Schemes Supremes over here is sort of tough to reprint per se in the kinds of products where they historically have printed Commander cards so it could be fairly insulated against a reprinting. Sure, you’ll make a ton buying Vampiric Tutor when it bottoms out and then goes back up because it’s Vampiric Tutor, but you didn’t need me to tell you to do that.

Fantastic Voyage over here was already in the midst of shaking off a reprint. It’s curious that it bottomed out 2 years after it was reprinted and not right in 2016 when the Commander deck containing it came out but you can see that the ceiling on the card is about $13 when its supply was half of what it currently is. EDH took it from $2 to $6 as a matter of course, I think its synergy with Opposition Agent makes it a card to *watch* if nothing else.

The internet works fast and this card is drying up faster than it already was. It’s been increasing the whole last year despite being a profoundly boring card to build around. Buying these now will be risky but if you have these, sell into the hype imo.

Any card that spent the year growing in price by 50% on Card Kingdom and stayed flat everywhere else is worth looking at in my opinion, as Card Kingdom is the canary in the coalmine for prices on EDH-only cards. If you can get this for half of what CK is charging now and it goes up, you can probably just turn around and buylist these to Card Kingdom for like $10 in store credit if it spikes. It was climbing anyway, so you actually can’t really lose, here.

This is a trap.

I mean, I think. The *second* time someone did OK at an SCG event with that stupid Food Chain, Misthollow Griffin deck, I really didn’t expect that to be the reason Food Chain went from $10 to $50 considering the initial print hype only made the card go from like $2 to $10 and EDH demand didn’t change at all over that time period. So when I say “this is a trap” I am basing this off of the fact that a deck built around Krark will be terrible and worse than Zndrsplt and Okaun decks already are, which is bad and mostly a novelty. If you have the cards, and you should know what the cards are without my help, sell into the hype. Here’s what I think moves but not sustainably.

This is mostly sold out, but what’s actually curious here is the price trajectory on Card Kingdom specifically.

It is obvious where Battlebond came out, but the price started ticking back up over time after the initial feeding frenzy ended. The deck isn’t built a ton and it’s sort of clunky and all of the stuff that was bulk before went right back down to bulk, but the iconic card stayed high on Card Kingdom specifically. It went back to $4 on TCG Player and up to $20 this week (second spikes will do that) and I still have a bunch of mine from last time because I couldn’t sell them and didn’t want to out them for CK store credit (they’re paying $9 now). Iconic cards don’t plummet like cards like Game of Chaos and Squee’s Revenge are going to. It’s likely too late to make nay money here unless you still had copies from last time, but I think that’s probably fine. The deck sucks without access to Blue, anyway. Also, I think it kind of sucks with access to Blue.

Legendary Creature – Spirit

Reach Whenever another permanent enters the battlefield under your control, if it wasn’t put onto the battlefield with this ability, you may put a permanent card with an equal or lesser converted mana cost from your hand onto the battlefield. Partner

So this card is actually incredibly busted AND it has partner so you can add another color (Blue) or other colors (Blue and Red or Black or Black and Red) and did they test this card? It generates a ton of value.

The good news is this is incredibly powerful and will cause a lot of decks to be built. The bad news is that anything this enables is already expensive and probably won’t go up much. I think it’s worth looking at every landfall token producer in this context, every Karoo all the way back to literal Karoo and that cycle and what this gets partnered with. Omnath, Locus of Rage, Emeria Angel, Scute Swarm – there’s no wrong way to generate infinite tokens with this stupid card that, I would like to remind you, can be your commander.

Here is what I think this card is most nutty paired with.

Once flirted with $30, now gettable under $15? Okey dokey. The Mystery Boosters didn’t add as much supply or as cleanly as people think and this is a card that is worth $30 because every set has one or two cards that as good with it. Purphoros and Impact Tremors will always be good in a certain kind of deck.

This is stupid. You make infinite clues with a Karoo. I don’t understand the rationale behind Kodama.

Now, I don’t speak German and some people are alleging that it’s been mistranslated and should read “nontoken permanent” which would still be quite good, but I haven’t seen anyone from Wizards verify that so I’ll assume the translation is correct. Insanity.

Karoos are back on the menu, boys. Yank these out of bulk – CK was getting nearly a buck apiece on these recently.

I’m sure there is stuff that I should have talked about, like the fact that pirates are a huge theme in the set, but since we don’t have any data and anything we’re baking on as a result of these particular cards is a gamble, I’ll save data for when we can afford to wait. For now, sell into hype, buy at your own risk and don’t take any wooden nickels. Until next time!

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Readers,

I’m a huge shill for EDHREC, a website you should and probably are using for MtG Finance research. I think I’ve spent the better part of a decade making the case for the site as a tool for financiers. It is not in my capacity as a shill that I come to you today with a technique you need to learn, however. No, I come to you today to help you get the most out of this tool by showing you something I do every time precons are released. We did technically get some new precons and while they’re Kirkland brand compared to the typical EDH precons we’re used to, they’re… kinda not that bad. They’re jammed with quality reprints that blew out some of my specs (who called Admonition Angel and Angry Omnath in a $20 deck? Not this guy…), Not only that, the commanders really aren’t that bad at all. This was a good way to make some commanders that work well with the set without having to worry if they were too good or too weird for Standard.

If you look at the page for Anowon, for example, you see the average list, which can be confusing. What on there was reprinted in the precon? How many of those cards are overrepresented due to the precon effect? It’s not super easy to figure that out, sometimes. Luckily, EDHREC doesn’t just scrape data, we analyze it a bit, and we compare the list of the precon to the average list after we have a few weeks of data and the cards that are missing from either list tells us a lot. If there are cards in the precon that are missing from a lot of the registered list, we can tell that people are cutting that card. If there are cards that show up in a lot of the finished decks that aren’t in the precon, we can tell people are adding the card. Like, this sounds obvious, but aren’t you glad someone is automating that process? When there is some data to look at, we generate a “Precon upgrade” page which says what people are adding and what people are cutting.

This page is full of useful information and while we might not have enough to do a full article treatment on, we can look at both decks to see if anything sticks out. Knowing that this tool is available is good for anyone who uses EDHREC data for speculating. Let’s take a look in depth.

It’s VERY basic. The categories are “Cards to Add,” “Lands to Add,” “Cards to Cut,” and “Lands to Cut”. It’s a lot to take in at a glance, but they did the favor of sorting it by the percentage of decks that either made the cut or addition. That means the top-left card, Reconnaissance Mission, was added the most. The first cards you see when you glance at the list are the most important and they get less so as you go on. That helps you figure out what matters quickly. If we’d done this sooner, we may have caught a few of these ships before they sailed.

The cards that were cut don’t matter a TON but they’re good to know. They’re not that relevant financially because “don’t buy this” isn’t as good advice as “buy this” and if you want advice, just buy the “buy this” stuff. If you have the stuff and want to get out because people aren’t playing it, well, it’s kind of too late because the card just got reprinted. I guess if you thought that it seeing play might bring the price back up, it’s good to be disabused of that notion (be kicked in the ribs as you cling to hope, the signature mood of 2020).

Let’s look at what’s getting added.

Not gonna lie, I missed this one and it stings. I touted this as a spec many, many moons ago and when it never went anywhere, I lost faith in my ability to assess Magic cards. What I should have done was reassess my ability to be patient and believe in myself. You’d think I’d learn that. If you listened to me when I said to buy these and didn’t sell them when you got bored of them doing nothing, congrats on the twelve-up. These are gone under $6 – don’t let Channel Fireball pretending to have them for $0.60 fool you – these are goneso.

Anowon and Zareth San both coming down at the same time gave a lot of people a lot of chances to play this and adding the Monarch to games of EDH is fun and a good thing. I liked a lot of the Monarch cards and it took them so long I figured I was just a Timmy and didn’t know anything anymore. Nope, just years ahead of the curve. Remember, there are no failed specs, merely longer-term specs. Ask Travis Allen about that one when he had to stop messaging me every 6 months to make fun of me for recommending people buy Clerics in like 2016.

We get to see what Thornbite Staff’s price would have done if it was a real card and not an illusory, obvious spec based on a Vannifar deck that never materialized. I suspect this hits $5.

Welp. Focused too much on the most-built EDH decks to catch this one before it was too late. I even wrote an article where I combined all of the Green decks into one deck. Should have combined all of the evasion creature Blue Black Rogues-matters decks into one. Congrats on the quadruple up if you caught this in time. I should really write an article every day for two weeks when a set comes out and then take 3 months off.

Ever wanted to watch a reprint get shaken off in real time? This returns to its former glory days of $5 and I was getting these in bulk from people who drafted Iconic Masters. Don’t sleep on Timmy cards, folks. Timmy has money and isn’t afraid to buy 4 copies of EDH staples for 63 card, unsleeved decks to play at a kitchen table. Timmy is my hero.

Got a feeling there will be some goodies in here, too. Green is an EDH staple color, so we may need to dig a bit deeper, but there are specs here, and maybe they didn’t all pop already like they did in Anowon.

This is a high price for a “secret reprint” card that was in the Dovin, Architect of Law Planeswalker deck. Yeah, bet you didn’t know about THAT! Try playing prereleases at a cool LGS who gives you Planeswalker decks as prize packs when you go 3-0. There are packs in those decks, you can sell the Planeswalker, you can sell the code so people can redeem the Planeswalker on Arena and you can get a free copy of this card and watch it creep up to $4 and stay there. A non-mythic rare with a reprint the same month it came out and it’s creeping up? This card is the truth.

Mystery Boosters did major harm to the perception of this card’s price but not to its demand. This will rebound and it will do so very precipitously and I will write in an article “This took so long I lost faith in my ability to judge when a reprint would be shaken off and I didn’t buy any of these” except I will probably buy some of these because this card is good as long as Green decks put extra lands into play, which is forever.

These are too cheap.

This card is insane and people are overlooking that fact. Anything that was considered for a ban in Standard can be $10 after a year or two of brisk EDH play, so sayeth 75% guy.

What do we think? Was it super useful to you to see cards people are jamming into the precons? A lot of them have started to go up already, making me think we’re onto something here. Join me next week where I’ll shill harder for a site I very publicly work for, which isn’t technically shilling since a shill is someone who pretends not to be affiliated and I’m not doing that but people used it wrong for so long that it just means whatever people want, like how the word literally can mean what figuratively means, also, because ultimately none of this matters, the sun is cooking our planet alive anyway good night. Until next time!