Watchtower

The Watchtower 01/25/21 – Closing in on Kaldheim

Kaldheim release is just around the corner, with the Arena release happening this Thursday (28th) and paper release next Friday. As with most Standard set releases, I like to do an article beforehand having a look at which cards I think are worth keeping an eye on, to pick up when they hit their lows. When paper Magic is back in business I might get a chance to talk about some potential preorders, but until then I don’t think that any preorders will really be worth it.

The World Tree

Price I want to buy at: $3
Possible future price: $10

Kicking things off with a fun one, this card should be a shoe-in for pretty much all five colour decks. Aside from the activated ability on it, enabling all your lands to tap for mana of any colour is big game when you’re trying to cast ridiculously costed spells, and being able to fetch Gods up from your deck is just gravy on top (but will be very popular with the casual crowd).

The early EDHREC stats back this up, with it being the most popular card from the set in terms of percentage inclusion, being in 40% of all decks it could fit into that have been registered since the card was added to EDHREC. I don’t think that this is just an EDH card though – I think that this could have some competitive applications as well. Standard, Pioneer and Modern have recently been more and more inclined towards having four or five colour decks at tier one or two, utilising powerful cards like Niv–Mizzet Reborn and Omnath, Locus of Creation – and The World Tree will slot right into those.

There’s also a neat little combo within another card from Kaldheim, Maskwood Nexus, that lets you put all the creatures from your deck into play. I don’t know if that’s going to actually be good anywhere, but I’m sure that people will try and set it up in EDH. Preorders on TCGPlayer are a little silly at $16 right now, but over on MKM you can preorder them for as little as €4. I think this is indicative of lower prices to come, and at peak supply I see these going as low as $3. It’s worth keeping an eye on, and a year or two out I think that this will be a $10+ card.

Realmwalker

Price I want to buy at: $1
Possible future price: $6

Realmwalker is another of the early EDH front-runners from Kaldheim, and I can see why. This card slots right into any tribal deck that can run it, and can serve both as a powerful value engine as well as a potential combo piece. Being able to cast creatures off the top of your library could enable some serious shenanigans, and is an effect that Dragons and Elves decks alike can profit from.

It’s not just EDH that might want this card though; it could be good enough for Elves decks in competitive formats to pick up. I’m certainly not an Elves expert, but Realmwalker does have an Experimental Frenzy feel to it, which has proved its mettle in Standard and Historic, and so I think there could be potential for this to see some constructed play.

It’s worth noting that this is the buy-a-box promo for the set, which does add a fair amount of supply into the market but on a longer timeline I think that this is still a great hit. I expect it to have a similar trajectory to that of something like Ramunap Excavator, with a long steady growth and a nice buylist price down the road, and the potential to spike along the way.

Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider

Price I want to buy at: $10
Possible future price: $30

Vorinclex is the Nyxbloom Ancient of this set*.

*There are a couple of caveats. I don’t think that Vorinclex will be quite as prevalent as Nyxbloom has been, because it does have slightly narrower applications than the mana tripler, but the flipside to that is that I think this card could see competitive play, and so that might make up for the lost EDH decks.

In general, however, almost every set has a mythic or two like this that will get relatively low at peak supply and then just grow and grow as EDH demand outpaces supply. See: Finale of Devastation, The Great Henge, Nyxbloom Ancient, Fiery Emancipation, etc. These are all mono-colour cards with wide applications that can fit into a lot of decks, and you’ll do well to be able to identify them ahead of time for each set so that you can pick them up at their lows.

Regular versions of Vorinclex are going to do great, but there’s also the Showcase and Phyrexian versions to consider here too. Being a Showcase means that it’ll hit lower prices than an Extended Art version might (as they’re only in Collector Boosters), but I honestly don’t know where the Phyrexian versions are going to land. Preorders are going for €36/€120 on MKM for non-foils and foils respectively, so I think that you might be able to get non-foils around $25-30 and foils for uhhhh $?? I’m not sure yet. One to keep an eye on for sure, because I doubt we’ll see it reprinted in Phyrexian for a long time and foils are going to be pretty scarce.

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, he’s an active MTG finance speculator specialising in cross-border arbitrage.

Casual Fridays

The Math on Kaldheim

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There’s a lot to unpack in Kaldheim, in terms of how rare the rarest cards are, and considering Commander Legends just taught us a very Jeweled Lotus lesson, let’s pay attention, yes?

First, some basics. I’m going to be breaking down the special versions of cards, as those offer some of the highest upside possible. We all like to get the prettiest version for our Commander decks, so let’s keep our eyes on the prize.

There are 64 rares you can open in a booster pack, plus five themed rares available in Set Boosters, Theme Boosters, or Collector Boosters. There’s an additional 15 uncommons only in the Set/Theme slot which will merit their own discussion later. Wizards designed these cards to go with different themes but not affect the Limited experience. At least these can be opened in a booster, though it seems they are not available in foil.

There are 20 mythics in the set, and all of them have at least one variant, either Showcase or Extended Art, and no additional ones past that. Two of these mythics have two variants: Vorinclex has a Showcase frame and a Phyrexian frame, while Valki, God of Lies has a Borderless frame and a Showcase frame.

In addition to that, the five mythics with Foretell as a mechanic don’t just have an Extended Art treatment, they have alternate art to go with their Borderless-looking frame. 

It would appear that Draft Boosters and Set Boosters can have both foils and nonfoils of Showcase or Borderless treatments, but no Extended Art at all. If you find a post/article that says different, please clue me in.

In Commander Legends Collector Boosters, there was some variation that led to Foil Extended Art mythics being ridiculously rare. A lot of that variation has been taken away in Kaldheim, which should lead to lower prices on most things. My focus today is on the five CB slots with rares/mythics, because each CB has a pair of slots for Showcase uncommons, one foil and one non-foil. There’s going to be plenty of those, and they will make a delightful spec in a couple months.

So, in those last five slots, we have the cards that we care the most about. Please keep in mind that these numbers are statistics, these are predictions. Some people will have better luck and some will have worse luck. Would that we all had the good luck all the time!

A foil rare or mythic in the regular frame. This does include the Sagas from the next slot, giving you a chance of opening a foil Saga here and a nonfoil of the same Saga in the next slot. In this spot we have 64 rares and 20 mythics possible, so that gives us a drop rate of 1/84 for a particular foil rare and 1/168 for a particular foil mythic. Keep in mind that these are the same cards as in Draft Boosters, though that’s a bit balanced out by the lower number of Draft Boosters getting opened in the middle of the pandemic. 

A nonfoil rare saga/theme rare/Commander deck rare or mythic. There are only ten rare Sagas, five theme rares, and 17 Commander rares/mythics available. It seems like the mythic symbol doesn’t matter as much for this, the assorted Wizards releases indicate that they all drop at the same rate in this slot. Plus, all of these are nonfoil. Your odds are 1/32 for one of these, making them relatively common as a side effect of the hunt for more valuable cards.

A card in non-foil Extended Art. This is the slot for everything without a special border, and there’s 36 rares and four mythics that fit this bill. Since rares (until they tell us different) come along at twice the rate of mythics, you have a 1/38 chance of a particular EA rare and a 1/76 chance of a particular mythic EA. Yes, that’s nearly twice the rate of the regular frame foil mythics in these same CBs, offset by the other places you can get those foil regular mythics. 

A nonfoil Showcase/Borderless. For this slot, we have 18 potential rares and 16 potential mythics. So to nail one of these, it’s 1/26 for a specific rare and 1/52 for a specific mythic. This is slightly complicated by the double-up of Vorinclex and Valki. Wizards did the math on having two special versions of Vorinclex and Valki, God of Lies. Their two treatments are combined to drop as often as other mythics. Think of it as a coin flip. You have a certain chance to hit the mythic, but then you are 50/50 on which version you’re going to get, making each version half as common. If you like the real numbers, in this slot, for nonfoil, you have a 1/104 chance of each version of Valki or Vorinclex.

A foil Showcase/EA/Borderless. The big money slot, given that there’s 54 potential rares and 20 potential mythics. The only difference between this slot’s potential and the foil regular-frame rare/mythic slot is that you can’t get a foil Saga here, as there are no special frames for Sagas. Your odds are slightly better here: 1/64 for a specific rare and 1/128 for the specific mythic EA/Showcase/Borderless. The Valki/Vorinclex odds are that much worse, being 1/256 to get the version you want.

Let’s have a tl;dr table, shall we? 

For a particular…Odds of it being in a CB pack# of CB Boxes needed to open one 
Foil rare in the regular frame1 in 847
Foil mythic in the regular frame1 in 16814
Nonfoil Saga or Theme rare or Commander-deck exclusive1 in 322.6
Nonfoil Rare in Extended Art1 in 383.2
Nonfoil Mythic in Extended Art1 in 766.3
Nonfoil Rare in Showcase or Borderless1 in 262.2
Nonfoil Mythic in Showcase or Borderless1 in 524.3
Foil Rare in EA or Showcase or Borderless1 in 645.3
Foil Mythic in EA or showcase or Borderless1 in 12810.6
Foil Phyrexian Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider1 in 25621.3

The good news is that Vorinclex and Valki are among the priciest cards from the set right now, so hitting either version is profitable, for now. Jeweled Lotus is the comparison people want to make, but that was significantly rarer, needing 400 packs to get there. 

We shouldn’t see the huge prices out of the gate in Kaldheim that we saw in Commander Legends, mainly because of the switch from the 30% chance of foil upgrade to the slot dedicated to foils. That 30% chance wasn’t there in other Collector Boosters, and represents quite a shift. It’s very likely that the shift in CL caused much more of a selling frenzy than would have otherwise happened. We will see if having a single, mega-chase version of a card (the Phyrexian Vorinclex) has a similar effect on prices. 

One more item that I’ve encountered that may end up being super relevant: The uncommons from the Set/Theme Booster exclusives are ONLY in those specialized boosters. The entire list can be found here, but the rares can show up in Collector Boosters while the uncommons are trapped. They are Standard-legal, so there’s a scenario where in eight months, a new interaction occurs and some price gets out of hand.

Finally, if you’ve found an error in my math, please reach out to me in the comments here, on the Discord, or on Twitter. 

Cliff (@WordOfCommander) has been writing for MTGPrice since 2013, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the official substitute teacher of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at a GP and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.

Jason Alt, Unlocked ProTrader

Unlocked Pro Trader: No Rest For Tiny Bones

Readers!

I know we love to talk about how we like second spikes, but we’re about to see a very interesting set of second spikes that could teach us a lot about mtg finance if we pay close attention. Today’s case study pertains to a commander that everyone wanted to build and no one wanted to play. Did the prices fall off because people got sick of the deck before they even sleeved it up like they seemed to with Xyris? Did they just not get to play the deck because of Covid? What can we learn about mtg by looking at two similar and profoundly toxic decks, the second of which may be so toxic that it punches straight through how boring it is and gets adopted by griefers the world over? I’m going to tell you that, damn, give me a minute. It takes me a paragraph or two to get situated. First paragraph and I’m already pretending you asked like five questions already.

I kid, I am actually glad I’m pretending you asked all of those questions because those are the same questions I asked myself when looking at a new card from Kaldheim that I legit wrote another “I hate Nevinyrral article” about on Coolstuff. If you’re reading this on Thursday, it came out today, go to Coolstuff and check it out. I feel a little silly trying to make the case that you might want to read my article in the body of one of my articles that you’re reading, but life is messy sometimes. Just click this link then click the one with my name on it. Thanks for the support!

OK, we’re back. Do you like how I dunked on Tergrid? I think I made the case that it’s troubling because it is so seductively powerful and has a much better payoff for the toxic discard and sac effects than Tinybones did that it’s bound to be a much bigger problem. I think the deck is going to be really unfun to play against, like Tinybones, but unlike Tinybones, I don’t think it will be unfun to play with. Tergrid makes symmetrical discard effects like Bottomless Pit into asymmetrical value engines and it’s shocking that this is not at mythic. This is a finance article, why do we care about what the stupid card does?

Here’s Why

This post-Tinybones decline was more precipitous than we’re used to seeing. Can a decline be precipitous? It makes me think it means “headed toward a precipice” but it also means steep. That’s a steep decline if you ask me – from $10 on its way to $7 or maybe even $6 when it got the call that it was back in the game. Didn’t even have time to report to the minor league club and there was an injury call-up. This new deck could make Necrogen Mists go even higher than $10 on CK considering no one could get their hands on Tinybones, those that could had to pay like $50 for it and anyone who built the deck was immediately hated out or got bored.

Tinybones is still on top, but it is closer than it was, and Neyith came out of nowhere. Neyith was behind all 4 of these other commanders, plus Emiel, plus Sethorn which was itself behind Kels. What people brewed waiting for Jumpstart product that came half a year later and what they built when they had the product differed a lot. It makes sense.

Before we talk about the cards that are going in Tergrid that weren’t in Tinybones, we should figure out what happens if Tergrid is as unfun as Tinybones and whether we should avoid decks that people aren’t super into building in the future. Let’s take a look at some cards that 100% went up because of Tinybones. Necrogen Mists was one, what’s another?

Pepperidge Farms remembers when Bottomless Pit was $15 on TCG Player an we have the data to prove it. A $15 price tag on a niche uncommon was never going to be sustainable, but it hit $5 on Card Kingdom before it sold out and by the time everyone restocked, no one cared. You can get Bottomless Pit for $1.50 on Card Kingdom, like 25% of what its buylist price was during the throes of Tinybones fever. I think it’s a buy if Tergrid is here to stay, but it may take more than one deck to make it stick above $5. I think Tergrid is more devastating and easier to get than Tinybones and I think it could help people out who bought Pit at $4 trying to get that fabled $15 and ended up holding the bag. Is that you? Shhhh, be quiet, put your hand down. You don’t have to admit it in front of everyone, just do something about it. You have another chance to break even, maybe better, and you should take it.

Here’s a very interesting case and I think it highlights the difference between a Saga rare and a Stronghold uncommon. Oppression, despite not seeing a ton of new play outside of Tinybones, never saw a drop-off in its price and it’s a solid Hamilton on TCG Player. Not just that, the solid Hamilton on TCG Player is its all-time high.

Freaky. It seems like there are so cards that just needed a nudge. Want to see something even crazier? Oppression got a reprint.

Figure that out.

It seems like the next time we get some Tinybones-tier card that makes people look at older cards that were too symmetrical and punishing to get a serious look, they may be safer if they’re old rares, even with reprintings. I’m looking at Yurlok, I guess. Is Citadel of Pain the Bottomless Pit in this scenario?

Not yet, but it’s too soon to tell.

This former bulk rare never retraced, either. It is looking more and more like Bottomless Pit suffered from a conspicuous buyout that sent people scrambling to the LGS to find the $0.75 copies to try and buylist for $8 that a slow, steady climb experienced by Lethomancer didn’t trigger. I also think people didn’t realize there were quite so many Bottomless Pit effects and if they didn’t check EDHREC to see what was going into Tinybones, they might not have known of any. Whatever the case is, I think Lethomancer is on its way farther up, not down. I think a lot of the Tinybones specs are in play, and I think another class of cards is on the way up, too.

A These Cards On Thy House

It’s Pox o’clock, baby!

This makes them discard AND sac creatures so with Tergrid out, you’re going to absolutely house the opposition. This is a ridiculous blowout and it’s why Tergrid is going to be so much better than Tinybones. Tinybones made everyone have an empty hand except you got to Phyrexian Arena on every end step but everyone hated you and blew their topdecks trying to take you out. Tergrid just straight robs them of a fighting chance. You can get hit by symmetrical discard effects and it doesn’t matter because you’re getting a ton of free perms.

Here, a foil spec idea. Don’t say I never did anything nice for the people who like foils for some reason. This is off of an all-time high of around $15 so a second spike is going to be… well, precipitous. Or not, what do I know about foils? This is also a $4 foil in Conspiracy and M12 but the art sucks.

I am going to be watching Death Cloud very closely. We are seeing two factors fight each other and I want to see who wins.

Factor 1 – There are 2 printings of this card, the second of which is Modern Masters.

Factor 2 – This seems almost tailor-made for a blowout scenario like Tergrid being in play. It’s irresponsible to build Tergrid without Death Cloud.

This card flirted with $5 without a brutal card like Tergrid to give it a boost, so I think sub-$3 you are in excellent shape.

Oppression didn’t go down post-Tinybones, I really don’t expect this price trend to do anything but get… precipitous-er. This is on its way to $10 anyway, and I’m glad Tergrid made us notice.

Here is the Tergrid page, you can figure out what you think will go up and argue with me in the comments for omitting something you like.

What would have happened to Tinybones cards if not for Tergrid coming along within 6 months? It’s hard to say, but I do think Tergrid could make the ones that didn’t retrace go up even more, you know, p-wordly and I think new ones like Pox and Death Cloud could be along for the ride. As a financier, I hope Tergrid demand is organic and the specs pay off and you have plenty of time to get out. As someone who likes to play EDH, I hope no one builds this bull$^&* deck and Wizards stops making cards like this.

That does it for me! Thanks for reading and don’t forget to argue with me in the comments or on Discord. Until next time!

Watchtower

The Watchtower 01/18/21 – Buying Bricks

I talk a lot about foils in my articles, especially FEA cards and in general, the most premium versions of things. This is because in today’s era of huge print runs, a lot of the time the easiest things to make money on are the cards with the lowest print runs and thus the shallowest supply, which is more often than not the most expensive version of a card.

But, as I alluded to in my article a few weeks ago, there’s money to be made elsewhere as well. When we talk about buying ‘bricks’ of cards in MTG Finance, we’re generally referring to acquiring a large stack of the same card – somewhere in excess of 30-40 copies. The most common plan for these is to sit on them a while and then sell to a buylist, but sometimes you’ll do ok selling singles as well. So what are my latest brick targets?

Valakut Awakening // Valakut Stoneforge

If you’re reading this article then you’re probably plugged into the world of MTG Finance, which means that you’ve probably seen the wild spike that Wheel of Fortune experienced over the weekend. A week ago this was a $300 card, and now even LP copies are selling over $700. We see runs on Reserved List cards happen every now and again, and we’ll probably see a mild retrace on Wheel as people rush to list their copies – I certainly don’t think that this is really a $1-2k card…yet.

But as prices for Reserved List cards like this skyrocket, EDH players are constantly in need of substitutes that they can play instead of splashing out on a real Wheel – and so we come to Valakut Awakening. I’ve already gone on many times about how good these MDFCs are, and this is no exception. I’ve called the FEA copies as a spec before and I’m back to say that I think you could do well to pick up a bunch of the regular non-foils as well.

Valakut Awakening doesn’t put cards in your graveyard like Wheel, if that’s something you need to do, but it is instant speed, gives you card filtering choices and is a land on the other side when you need it. The EDHREC numbers back this up, with it being the third most popular card from the set at over 5000 decks recorded running it. You can pick these up as low as $2 on TCGPlayer, but if you want to grab a ton at once then you’re looking closer to $3-4. CardKingdom are already paying $3 cash on their buylist for these, which shows how popular it is, and I think that given a year or perhaps even less, you should be able to double up or more to a buylist here.

Thieving Skydiver

Price today: $2
Possible price: $5

This is another one that I’ve picked the FEA version as a spec before, but again I think that the regular non-foils are going to perform well too. It’s the second best performing EDH card from Zendikar Rising, and it’s one of those cards that you can easily drop into any and all of your blue decks to great effect. Stealing artifacts is huge in EDH where people are dropping Sol Rings and Mana Crypts all over the place, and you don’t even lose the artifact if your Skydiver dies.

People who own multiple EDH decks that run blue are most likely going to want multiple copies of this card, and once you start to need 3, 4 or more copies of a card for your decks then you’re probably going to want to buy the regular versions over EA or FEA to keep costs down a little. 

Supply on these is definitely deep at the moment, but given enough time it’s not going to stay that way. You can pick up a ton of copies at $2 on TCGPlayer, and CardKingdom is already paying $1.70 credit on them which again shows that they’re needing to pay a premium to keep them in stock. They’re a little cheaper in Europe with stacks available around $1.50, so that’s an even better option if you can get them. I think that we could see a $4-5 buylist by the end of this year, and for such a new card I don’t expect a reprint for a little while yet.

Akroma’s Will

Price today: $4
Possible price: $10

Hopping over to Commander Legends now, which is still just about in the brickable category, although supply is draining fast on the more popular cards. Akroma’s Will is one of the most popular white cards from the set and for good reason – it’s effectively a Heroic Intervention and Flying Crane Technique rolled into one, but for only four mana. It’s flexible and powerful, and a tool which the majority of white decks would do well to be playing.

I’m honestly surprised that these are only $4 at the moment – but as I said, supply won’t be around long and that price is going to push up. You can still get a decent chunk in one go from a couple of vendors on TCGPlayer, which I think should pay dividends in 6-12 months. Given that these are going to be pushing $10+, you may end up having a better time selling these as singles rather than to a buylist, but either option should turn out just fine.

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, he’s an active MTG finance speculator specialising in cross-border arbitrage.

MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY