I’ve titled this article ‘preorders’ for the sake of brevity, but that doesn’t mean “go and preorder these now because it’s the lowest they’ll get”. Some of these cards may well dip a little lower than their current prices, but I doubt it will be by much, and so this is more of a notice for cards to keep an eye on and buy down the ladder if you can. This article series is, after all, entitled “The Watchtower”…so keep an eye out!

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Heroic Intervention

Price today: $4
Possible price: $10

When Heroic Intervention was first printed in Æther Revolt, it was pegged as a reasonable EDH card for most green decks. What I (and a lot of others too, I think) didn’t expect, however, was that it would go on to make its way into over 27,000 decks recorded on EDHREC, putting it into the top 20 green EDH cards of all time. From close to bulk status during its time in Standard, since then it topped out at an impressive $17 (and that is impressive for an EDH-only card printed in the last 3 years).

Now we’re getting a reprint in M21, and the price has plummeted down to around $4 for the M21 preorders. I could definitely see it going slightly lower than $4 when the set releases, but I definitely wouldn’t hang around too long on this one. It’s a card that’s in 15% of all the possible decks it could be in, which is strong numbers for a mono-coloured card, and this means that people know how good it is now. It’ll get put into at least 15% of the new decks people build going forwards, and people that didn’t buy copies because they were $17 will for sure pick these up below $5.

I’m calling Heroic Intervention at a conservative $4 to $10; I think it’s entirely possible that this card could see $15 before it’s reprinted again, but I feel pretty confident saying that $10 inside 18-24 months is very reasonable. This is an easy one to buy a stack of and put away in the closet and forget about for a couple of years, leaving a nice surprise for your future self.

Azusa, Lost but Seeking – Arbitrage Pick

Price today: €5 ($5.50)
Possible price: $20

Azusa being reprinted into Standard during this era of green-based midrange and ramp-esque decks is an, uhh, interesting decision, but I’m not here to talk about Azusa in Standard. I won’t pretend to be someone that can accurately predict the future metagame in Standard, but what I will do is say that Azusa is preordering for under €5 on Magic Cardmarket. Over on TCGPlayer, preorders start at around $10 which is far less enticing, but picking this up at €5 seems pretty insane to me.

Bear in mind that before the reprint announcement, the A25 (Masters 25) version of Azusa was $35, and the older versions more expensive. Sure, there’s going to be a big influx of supply with the new printing in M21, but there are going to be a lot of EDH players that pick copies up now that they’re cheap, and that’s not even accounting for its potential for play in Standard. We’re going to be entering a Standard with Azusa, Cultivate, Solemn Simulacrum and Ugin, so a streamlined ramp deck seems like it could be quite powerful. Yes, I know I said I wouldn’t talk about Azusa in Standard, but come on. It’s a very powerful card.

Anyway, back to real data – Azusa dropped down to $16 after the A25 reprint and climbed back up to $35, so buying this at €5 is surely a slam dunk. If you’re in Europe or have a contact, then I’d get on this. As I said, she’s preordering for $10 on TCG which is still fine, but I’d keep an eye out to see if it drops lower on or after release. Additionally, we’re getting an extended art version in M21, so I’ll be looking out for the prices on those to bottom out.

Mangara, the Diplomat

Price today: $7
Price I want to buy this at: $4-5
Possible price: $10+

This has been a slightly contentious card in the MTGPrice Discord over the past couple of days, but for the time being I’m coming down on the side of “I think this card is really good”. I’ve played enough games of EDH with various playgroups to see how many people don’t bother paying the tax for Rhystic Study, and I think that this card will see similar play patterns. Restricting your opponents to only playing one spell per turn (unless they let you draw a card) is more harmful than you might think, and I predict that a lot of people will just ignore it and let you draw the card. After all, it’s only one card – how bad could it be?

I think that the attacking clause on Mangara is going to be far less relevant than the spell clause, but even so I think that this is going to become quite a popular card in white EDH decks, particularly prison style builds. I’m definitely going to be trying it out, at any rate.

I’m cheating slightly with this, in that I don’t quite like the current preorder price of $7, and would like to wait a bit for it to come down to $4-5. I think that this will happen because it most likely won’t be a relevant card for Standard, and EDH players tend to be much slower at picking their cards up, but once it bottoms out then I’m definitely going to be picking some of these up. I’d be far less excited about it if it were a Rare, but the fact that it’s a Mythic means that once players start to pick their copies up, the price will rise far more sharply. I think $10+ in a 12-24 month time frame is quite doable.

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David Sharman (@accidentprune on Twitter) has been playing Magic since 2013, dabbling in almost all formats but with a main focus on Modern, EDH and Pioneer. Based in the UK and a new writer for MTGPrice in 2020, he’s an active MTG finance speculator specialising in cross-border arbitrage.

It seems like Ikoria only released a couple of weeks ago (it’s been nearly two months??), but Core Set 2021 is just around the corner. Preview season is well underway and so today I’m taking a look at some cards that will be impacted by the new release. I’m specifically looking at some cards where supply is on the lower side, so you might not want to hang around too long on these!

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Containment Priest (Invocation) – Arbitrage Pick

Price on MKM: €24 ($27)
Price on TCGPlayer: $45

After my Golos arbitrage pick from last week, I got a couple of messages from EU readers thanking me for highlighting the opportunity – so I’m back with another one! I may make this a semi-regular thing depending on feedback, so let me know what you think. Anyway, onto the pick.

Containment Priest is being reprinted in the upcoming Core Set M21, which means that this will make it legal in Standard, Pioneer and Modern for the first time – up until now it’s only been legal in Legacy and EDH. Containment Priest has often been a sideboard staple against decks like Reanimator and Sneak & Show in Legacy; it’s a powerful effect with a decent body attached to boot, and I think that this will certainly start showing up in Modern and Pioneer sideboards. It’s good against Dredge, and interestingly also stops Yorion from flickering creatures.

At the time of writing, there are only nine NM foil Invocation copies on TCGPlayer, starting at $45 and ramping up. Over on MKM, however, there are upwards of fifty copies starting from €24. This is by no means a ‘high demand’ pick, but more of a ‘low supply’ one; this is going to start showing up in Modern and Pioneer sideboards and some players are going to want their fancy versions, so this arbitrage gap is an easy one to take advantage of.

More Clerics for the Cleric Gods

This is a slightly more speculative pick, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad one. We’re not very deep into M21 spoilers yet, but we’ve already seen four different Clerics previewed – one of which is a rare and another a mythic. This may just be a coincidence of creature type, but it could also be a sign of more Clerics to come – and the rare and mythic ones spoiled are definitely going to be good in EDH.

I was slightly hesitant about this pick because Clerics, although actually quite fun and powerful, is far from the most popular tribe in EDH. However, if we take a look at some of the older foils that are very important parts of the deck, supply is sufficiently thin on the ground for me to feel confident telling people to sweep up the last few crumbs. It’ll only take a handful of people wanting to pick up some foils for this sort of deck for you to be able to turn a profit here.

Edgewalker, Battletide Alchemist and Rotlung Reanimator are all key pieces in any Cleric deck, and all happen to be old, single printing foils. Supply is super low on all of these foils, so I’d advise hunting around various vendors for cheaper copies of these. As ballpark examples, I could see:

Edgewalker – $15 to $25
Battletide Alchemist – $5 to $15
Rotlung Reanimator – $8 to $15

Being very old foils, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more drastic price increases than that, so these numbers are probably on the low side. I’d also advocate going over to EDHREC and taking a look at other popular cards from this kind of deck, to see what else might pop with more Cleric support.

Also it’s a super fun deck to play, everyone should build it.

Door of Destinies (Foil)

Price today: $8
Possible price: $15

Speaking of tribal decks, we’ve also had a Legendary Dog Cat previewed for M21. Yep. A Dog Cat. Rin and Seri, Inseparable, is a new legend that is obviously geared towards pet owners and cute animal aficionados, with the idea of people building Cat/Dog EDH decks. Most of the Cat and Dog lords have already been bought up over the past couple of days, but there are still some foil Door of Destinies(es?) hanging around that look pretty juicy.

I don’t need to talk too much about this card; the numbers speak for themselves. 15k EDH decks, a must-have for any tribal deck and colourless to boot. Check check check! TCGPlayer has M14 foils from $8 and Morningtide foils from $15, and I can see both of those price points doubling up. Supply is running very low on NM foils for both versions, and there’s also the (ugly) prerelease promo running around to look at too.

Tribal decks will always be popular in EDH, and we haven’t seen Door of Destinies printed since Commander 2017, so it could well be in for a reprint within the next couple of years – but not necessarily in foil. Even so, I don’t think that the hold time on this will need to be very long in order to realise some solid gains, due to the low supply on the card across the board.

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David Sharman (@accidentprune on Twitter) has been playing Magic since 2013, dabbling in almost all formats but with a main focus on Modern, EDH and Pioneer. Based in the UK and a new writer for MTGPrice in 2020, he’s an active MTG finance speculator specialising in cross-border arbitrage.

I knew that I wanted to talk about a particular product (wonder what that could be?) in this week’s article and so decided that today would have to be a mixed bag of odds and ends – but don’t take that to mean that these aren’t good specs! I think there are some excellent opportunities here, so read on for some bits and pieces of miscellaneous value.

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Secret Lair: Heart of Steel

Price today: $40
Possible price: $70

This is a bit of a different pick to normal for me, but I think it could well be a good one. There are five news Secret Lair Drops going live very shortly after I’ll be posting this article, and the catchily named “Can You Feel With a Heart of Steel?” looks like it could be the best value set to be had. There are only three cards here – Walking Ballista, Darksteel Colossus and Arcbound Ravager – but they’re all full art foils with some great looking new artwork, and we all know how popular a card Walking Ballista is.

In case you didn’t know how popular Walking Ballista is, it’s been a Modern staple for years and a Pioneer staple since the format was invented, and on top of that is listed in over 12k decks on EDHREC. I think that this promo might appeal to EDH players in particular, seeing as they’ll only need one (per deck) rather than the full playset. Darksteel Colossus isn’t quite as much of an EDH staple but still shows up in decent numbers, and although Affinity has fallen by the wayside in Modern since the banning of Mox Opal, Arcbound Ravager still has some impressive chops in Hardened Scales decks.

Even if we set that aside, the raw numbers just look great here. Regular Walking Ballista foils start at $45 on TCGPlayer – that’s already more than the cost of this whole Secret Lair. But on top of that, you’ve got the Darksteel Colossus (foils starting at $15) and Arcbound Ravager (current promo version sitting at around $9). That’s $60 right there, and I think that these Ballista promos will easily be the most desirable foil for anyone looking to upgrade their deck. I could see the Ballista alone selling for $50 in a few months, and then the other two cards are just icing on the cake, to resell or use in decks as you please.

Arbitrage Opportunity: Golos, Tireless Pilgrim (Foil)

Price on MKM: €8
Price on TCGPlayer: $40

I wanted to do this as a regular pick, but the price on TCGPlayer is already sky high, and there are only ten (10) copies available across five sellers. It’s a similar story with both the prerelease foils and promo pack foils, both of which are in even shorter supply still. Over on MagicCardmarket (MKM), however, it’s quite different. Supply still isn’t hugely deep but prices across the three different versions start at just €7, with a fair few available under €10.

Obviously this isn’t a pick available to everyone, but for readers in the EU or for readers in the US with an EU trade partner, foil Golos, Tireless Pilgrims are ripe for the taking. As well as being the most popular commander from M20, Golos is also a high pick for a place in the 99 of other five colour EDH decks. He’s also seen a smattering of Modern play in Tron decks, but the main draw here is EDH, and the supply is low.

What’s also enticing about this pick is that it doesn’t need to be a quick flip, so there’s not too much rush to ship it over to the US from the EU. If you’re looking to get started with some arbitrage opportunities like this then check out my Guide to Arbitrage article I wrote a couple of months ago, and feel free to shoot me any questions on Twitter or Discord.

Mystic Sanctuary (Foil)

Price today: $5
Possible price: $10

Well, I wrote my last section for today’s article in relation to a companion deck, but now that Wizards have nerfed them into the sun I guess I’d better write about something else instead.

Mystic Sanctuary has completely changed the face of Modern. That might sound a tad melodramatic, but I honestly think it’s true. You just can’t play a blue deck (outside of tribal decks like Merfolk and Spirits) any more without playing this card. The top blue decks: Bant Snowblade, Scapeshift and Uroza (all of which are currently Yorion decks, but it’ll be interesting to see if that changes with the new tax on Companions) play 2-4 Mystic Sanctuary; it’s too powerful not to. Rebuying Cryptic Commands and Archmage’s Charms is great, but the fact that this is an Island that you can fetch makes it kinda ridiculous.

On top of the Modern play, this is the most popular card from Throne of Eldraine for EDH play. Over 12k decks are listed playing it on EDHREC, a good 2000 more than the next most popular card. Yes, this is a foil common from a recent set that I’m picking here, which is normally not something I’d consider – but this is a card that’s going to go in every spell-based blue EDH deck and Modern deck for the foreseeable future, and so I think that foils are an entirely reasonable pickup at $5 to double in 12 months or so.

There’s a pretty decent supply of these around the $5 mark, so it’ll take a little while for those to drain – but the demand is definitely there. I’d be happy to stash a couple of playsets away for 6-12 months and see where we’re at after that.

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David Sharman (@accidentprune on Twitter) has been playing Magic since 2013, dabbling in almost all formats but with a main focus on Modern, EDH and Pioneer. Based in the UK and a new writer for MTGPrice in 2020, he’s an active MTG finance speculator specialising in cross-border arbitrage.

Last week I moved back from MTGO picks to looking at some longer-term paper specs, and this week I’m going to be continuing in that fashion. In my last article I mainly focused on cards that are popular in EDH, but today I’m taking a look at cards I think will be relevant to the more competitive formats when paper Magic gets back up and running again.

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Lukka, Coppercoat Outcast (Foil & Alt Art)

Price today: $12
Possible price: $20

Lukka, Copper Outcast (feat. Yorion as companion) has been thoroughly dominating Standard over the past couple of weeks, where the name of the game has been ‘who can get an Agent of Treachery into play first?’. A few other decks are still putting up strong results too (Jeskai cycling, mono-red, Temur Reclamation), but with many pros touting it as the best Standard deck we’ve had in years, Lukka is the clear top dog.

It’s not just Standard that Lukka is putting up results in though – he’s found homes in both Modern and Pioneer too. The Pioneer superfriends deck has been clawing its way up the metagame ranks, again using token generators and Lukka to cheat out early Agent of Treacherys, backed up by Yorion and a suite of other powerful planeswalkers. Over in Modern, Lukka has seen a smattering of play in the Gruul Obosh decks, which have moved more away from a Ponza style and become extra midrangey.

The point I’m making with all this is that I think Lukka is a strong contender for one of the multi-format all-stars from Ikoria, and even though Agent of Treachery rotates out of Standard in the fall, I don’t doubt that the Lukka decks will change and survive rotation, and that Modern and Pioneer play of the card will continue to increase.

I was planning on just talking about the regular versions of Lukka here, but then when I took a look at the prices on TCGPlayer I noticed that there are both regular foils and alternate art versions starting at pretty much the same price as the normal version, give or take a dollar. Even with the increased foil drop-rate these days, this seems like a no-brainer to me. Once paper Magic gets back on its feet, people are going to need their copies of Lukka, so I think that picking up these more premium versions for basically the same price as regulars is easy money.

Abbot of Keral Keep (Foil)

Price today: $4
Possible price: $10

There could well be a new best deck in Modern. A little over a week ago, Red-Black Prowess took three of the top four slots of the Team Lotus Box Modern League tournament, only losing out on the top spot to Ad Nauseum. Somewhat oddly titled ‘Lurrus Jund’ on MTGGoldfish, the only hint of green to be seen in this deck is on Manamorphose, so I think they need to update their deck labels. This is definitely a Lurrus deck though, using the companion to replay their cheap creatures from the graveyard later in the game.

Four maindeck Cling to Dust was one of the MVPs from this new deck, giving a good maindeck answer to cards like Uro and providing a life buffer against other aggressive decks. But another surprising powerhouse is Abbot of Keral Keep, something that wasn’t often seen in the old mono-red versions of this deck. Here it’s in as a playset though, because beside the obvious fact that your deck is loaded with cheap spells to play off the ETB trigger, if you can cast one of these twice in a game with Lurrus and get lucky enough to be able to play both spells off it, then you’re REALLY flying.

Abbot foils start at $4 on TCGPlayer, but once you get past the first 10 or so listings, the ladder climbs very sharply. This is a single printing foil from almost five years ago now, and once those cheaper copies are gone, the new price is going to be at least $10, probably higher. It’s also worth noting that there are only five listings for the prerelease copy, so if you’re quick enough you can grab the cheaper ones there too.

Fiend Artisan

Price today: $15
Possible price: $25

Speaking of Lurrus decks (because let’s be honest there’s not much other than Lurrus and Yorion going around at the moment), I’m taking a look at Fiend Artisan. I talked about this card in relation to MTGO a few weeks ago, and it’s done well over there but I think it’s a good pick-up in paper too. It might not quite be good enough for Modern, but Fiend Artisan has seen a good amount of play in both Standard and Pioneer so far, both in Aristocrat-style decks.

In addition to this, it’s one of the more popular EDH cards from the set, already seeing inclusion in close to 600 decks listed on EDHREC. I mean, why only play one Birthing Pod when you can play two? Being a mythic from Ikoria, supply is much lower than other rares that players are buying, and this is a card that’s being torn in two between competitive play and EDH play. Those factors mean that it won’t be hard for Fiend Artisan to run a high price tag, and I think that EDH players are the most likely section of the market to be buying cards right now – so if you want these I’d pick them up sooner rather than later.

There are a few of these around at $15 and more at $17, so if you can snag the $15 copies I think you’re golden, and if you’re on the $17 copies then you’re still doing fairly well. The Pioneer Aristocrats decks will probably ebb and flow a bit depending on how much graveyard hate there is around, but when those decks are left to their own devices it can be pretty brutal.

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David Sharman (@accidentprune on Twitter) has been playing Magic since 2013, dabbling in almost all formats but with a main focus on Modern, EDH and Pioneer. Based in the UK and a new writer for MTGPrice in 2020, he’s an active MTG finance speculator specialising in cross-border arbitrage.