Casual Fridays

Zendikar Falling

I know, I know, it’s a reductive title, but it’s accurate.

We are at max supply of Zendikar Rising, all the attention is on the Kaldheim previews that we’re getting, and all I want to do is buy lots and lots of ZNR cards. Let’s look at some of the tastiest options, where we’ll get in and where I’m hoping to get out.

Bala Ged Recovery ($2 regular/$4 foil) – There is no alternate frame available here, but in a different era this would be a slam dunk for an FNM promo. Yes, it’s a $2 uncommon when the set is at its maximum, but it’s already in a TON of Commander decks and this is exactly the sort of card you want as a double-faced land. Early on, you just want the land. Later on, it’s a cheap regrowth and you’ll likely play the card you just got back. It’s not super simple to reprint a foil double-faced card, and there hasn’t been a double-faced card in The List yet or a Secret Lair thereof. It’s possible that a Commander deck will have one random double-faced card, but that’s pretty unlikely. These look relatively safe from reprints and should start a steady growth, especially in foils. I won’t be shocked when the foils double up in a year.

Feed the Swarm ($1/$2) – Same principle applies, although this is notable for being targeted enchantment removal in black, which hasn’t really gotten this effect before. It’s not a great removal spell for creatures, but it’s got a lot of power due to the unique nature of the removal for enchantments. It’s already been put into more than 5,000 decks online, which is an amazingly fast adoption rate, just behind Bala Ged Recovery. The buy-in is low here too, as there isn’t a special frame to chase, just plain old foils.

The Pathways – I’m ambivalent on these. I think they are good, but they aren’t really staples the way that the Triomes are. Not fetchable, and not even as good as buddy lands or Temples. The adoption rate has not been low, but this is just going to be slotted in a whole bunch when you have them. The extended arts look good, I just don’t see a huge growth market because while they are flexible when you play them, you’re locked in. 

Scute Swarm ($2/$2/$3 showcase/$4 showcase foil) – It’s already in nearly 5,000 EDH decks online, and while I don’t relish the idea of keeping track of something like this, it does grow at a geometric rate. Heaven knows there’s enough ways to make this go nuts in Commander games, and if you’re really feeling spicy, mutate something onto it first. This card is a challenge, and something that can already break Magic in its online incarnations. Players dearly love saying “How crazy can I go with something like this?” and that tends to lead to profits. 

Felidar Retreat ($1.50/$1.50/$1.25/$3) – This has been added to decks more slowly, as it’s not in the mega-ramp color that green is, but it’s still an amazing card if you can trigger it regularly. I think it’s being added to +1/+1 counter decks more than token decks, but it does straddle those two worlds admirably. 

Ancient Greenwarden ($14/$16/$18/$24) – I do love mythics at their lowest price points, and especially ones that enable all sorts of shenanigans. We’ve got crossover between the ‘play lands from the yard’ decks like Gitrog Monster that can power out value engine after value engine, cross-referenced with the doubling up of anything that triggers off of lands. Best friends for the Greenwarden include Polluted Bonds (already a big spike on that card though), Field of the Dead, and of course, Tatyova, Benthic Druid.

Thieving Skydiver ($1.25/$1.25/$3/$8) – It’s hard for this to go wrong. It’s been added to a lot of decks online and it does something we all love doing: stealing from other players. Your ramp is now my ramp, thanks so much! There are a lot of decks with comes-into-play abilities that are worth copying, but this one needs to be returned to hand to be used again. Erratic Portal should be the first thing you steal, but play it with Crystal Shard as well.

Malakir Rebirth ($0.50/$1.50) – It’s not as immediately popular as some of the other DFCs from this set, but this is a freebie. Most Commander games, you’ve got a creature that you want to keep in play, and this is one mana to save it from 97% of removal spells. No one would add just the spell to their EDH deck, though, but having this as a land when you need it makes it good enough. I especially like a low buy-in here, though it’ll require you to be a bit more patient on growth. An excellent target for buying in larger numbers, and then buylisting the whole stack.

Glasspool Mimic ($2.50/$3/$4/$6) – Clones are often awesome in Commander, but this one does have the drawback of only copying your stuff. Still, it’s a very cheap Clone at three mana, and it’s a land! I’m in the camp of ‘up your land count to 45+ in Commander’ using these rather than using them as an excuse to shave lands, but you do you. This is also used in a lot of Modern, Pioneer, and Standard decks online, and has the bonus of not rotating out of Standard until October of 2022, hopefully meaning that people will get to play with it in person again.

All five mythic MDFCs – I’ve written before about my love for these, and you should, at the very least, get the ones you’ll play in your own Commander decks. I’ve got Agadeem’s Awakening in every black deck of mine, at the least, and I’m equally big on Turntimber Symbiosis. I think you treat these as spells, and treat the land side as a bonus. Regardless of which version you like, they are all at their lowest price and are worth picking up. 

Lithoform Engine ($10/$11/$14/$20) – Finally, a shoutout to a card that does it all. Copying spells is already awesome, but this offers a real ‘I can do it all!’ feeling. It pays for itself pretty quickly, copying the cool things you’re doing. It’s not in a huge number of decks yet, but being colorless it’s able to be put into any deck. Its popularity in Commander is reflected in the price: there’s not paper play going on, all price movement is EDH-based right now. This is the #3 mythic in ZNR based on price, and you should get your copies while they are cheap.

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 Brainer Plays

2020 is over and I don’t feel any different. The year was a marathon and I feel like they keep moving the finish line. I’m getting pretty mentally worn out and with there not being much I haven’t covered from Commander Legends and not much known about Kaldheim yet, I need something easy – we all do.

There was technically some easy money made already from Kaldheim where Magda made everyone say “OMG BUY DWARVES” and Toski made everyone say “OMG BUY SQUIRRELS” and I’m still over here laughing about the time everyone bought Bitterblossom because they heard Throne of Eldraine would be a Fairytale set and everyone said “I STOPPED LISTENING AT FAIRY.” I think it takes a decent amount of savvy to buy Brass’ Bounty and Hellkite Tyrant when Magda was spoiled (but not years ago when I said to) but whenever something like that pops up and we don’t have time to talk about it, I don’t sweat it. Money you didn’t make isn’t money you lost. Besides, spikes like that are my least favorite to deal with. It’s too much stress for me. Let’s take it easy this week. Want to know what I’d buy?

Here you go.

If it looks a little over-simplistic, look, I already said I wanted to take it easy this week. I can’t take it any easier. You can have 4 precons for $90. Other sellers have more sets for around $110, which is a lot more but also isn’t terrible. How good is every deck from Commander 2019 for $90? I can answer that in one graph.

Well, good night, everyone!

You’re still here? OK, if buying a $50 card plus 399 other cards for $90 doesn’t immediately scream “BARGAIN” to you, I get it. Let’s drill down a bit more. I want to see how fast we can get to $90 retail.

$50 plus Seedborn Muse ($10ish) plus Ohran Frostfang ($7 and has upside from Toski) plus K’rrik ($5) plus 4 Sol Rings ($12) plus 4 x $4 cards (Lightning Greaves, Bone Miser, Thran Dynamo, Sevinne’s Reclamation) is $100. You’re 10 cards in and you’ve made $10. Is there a LOT of chaff here? Yep! Is Dockside due for a reprinting and may be “listed” and reprinted sooner rather than later? Seems likely. Can you make some money flipping this stuff? Yep. Can you try and flip a few of the decks unopened? Sure. There’s money to be made here, fairly easy money, and more money to be made if you’re willing to sell off some of the $3 cards rather than buylisting all of it.

Every time an older card pops and it’s in a commander deck, it’s time to re-do the math.

Do we like a deck with a $20 Xantcha, a $15 Nesting Dragon, a $7 Lord Windgrace and like 3 or 4 $5 cards? Maybe not. What would it take for $70 shipped to make sense? Will Avenger of Zendikar go from $5 to $10 in a year? Probably. Will people stop sleeping on Turntimber Sower? I doubt it. If Windgrace’s Judgment, Whiptongue Hydra and Loyal Apprentice hit $5, is this a buy? Will the deck be $100 by then? Sometimes you luck out and something really pops hard, and when it does, take a look at the deck it’s in.

With Hellkite Tyrant popping off, the number of Commander 2016 cards over $15 is now officially 10. Are Ravos and Thrasios on their way down? Will Conquerer’s Flail ever see a reprinting? Is there even a decent price on C16 decks? (no).

We can also look at decks that aren’t Commander precons for EDH cards. The Faerie Schemes Brawl deck has a $25 Smothering Tithe in it, but since those aren’t gettable at $25 anymore, it’s less appealing.

More than anything, this article was a reminder to check eBay and Amazon for sealed decks if you don’t have any whenever a card in one of them goes up. Hellkite Tyrant is up but there’s no opportunity to buy the Entropic Uprising deck for cheap since Thrasios and Vial-Smasher drove that price way up. However, Entropic Uprising made sense a year ago when Thrasios was on its way to peaking and the deck was much cheaper. Hellkite Tyrant was just gravy back then, and if you bought the decks a year ago to try and benefit from increased interest in Thrasios, you are likely sitting on some Tyrants, now. I’ll do an article like this periodically to remind everyone to check on this stuff, lest we write articles with a “should have done this thing no one recommended” tone, which I’d like to avoid.

Finally, I have a few Magda-based picks.

These are all pretty juicy, honestly. Valakut Awakening is a hot sleeper pick in a set everyone has already forgotten all about, Wheel of Misfortune in in the Top 10 cards from Commander Legends but no one knows that, War Room is the only way Boros decks can draw cards and Jeska’s Will has already gone up quite a bit but isn’t done. Shatterskull Smashing would have taken too much effort to crop out.

EDH alone isn’t enough to do anything with this, but when this does something in Modern, and it will, people will be buying 4 copies at a time. This doesn’t seem all that reprintable to me and it really seems like a card that will just be $8 one day and everyone will be surprised. This isn’t as safe as some of my other picks, but with higher risk comes higher reward.

That does it for me this week. I’ll be drilling down into some Kaldheim picks next week, so tune in early and if you’re not a Pro Trader, consider signing up so you don’t have to spend 48 hours letting people buy up the picks while you wait for the clock to run out. Until next time!

Watchtower

The Watchtower 01/04/21 – New Year, New Specs, Same me

This week marks a whole year of me writing for MTGPrice, and it’s been a great journey so far. Although 2020 seemed to last indefinitely, with a period of time that I even switched to writing solely about MTGO picks because of the uncertainty about the future of paper Magic, it still seems odd to think that I’ve written 52 articles since it began, with a lot of good calls, a few medium ones and a sprinkling of misfires along the way.

Despite the pandemic this has still been a good year for MTG Finance, and it’s clear that paper Magic is going to pick back up once the world opens back up again, and so I’ve no doubt that 2021 will be more of the same great content from me, and I hope that you’ll all stay along for the ride.

Deflecting Swat

Price in Europe: €15 ($18)
Price in US: $32
Possible price: $40

For my first trick pick I’m going somewhat back to my roots with a solid arbitrage pick. The Commander 2020 set brought us a suite of free spells that you can cast for no cost if you control your commander, and Fierce Guardianship was expensive pretty much right out of the gate. The others were less popular to start with, but have been gaining ground more recently, particularly Deflecting Swat.

Being able to change the target of a spell is a great ability for red to have when it doesn’t have access to counterspells and the like, especially when you can cast it for free, and the numbers are backing it up – Fierce Guardianship is around 20k EDH decks on EDHREC with Deflecting Swat catching up fast at a little over 13k.

Prices in the US are already over $32, but in Europe where (if you read my articles) you’ll know that EDH is far less popular, the card is only around $18. That’s some solid arbitrage as it stands, but without a reprint probable on the near horizon it looks like this could keep heading up towards $40. Only 17 listings on TCGPlayer a steep ramp has already formed, so I think that this is a great short-term opportunity to bring some over from Europe.

Zagoth Triome (Showcase Foil)

Price today: $28
Possible price: $50

The five Triomes are by far and away the most popular EDH cards from Ikoria, and rightly so. Three colour lands that cycle and have basic lands types (which means they’re fetchable) are a slam dunk auto-include in any 3+ colour EDH decks that’s not just running all original duals with shocks and fetches to boot (which isn’t many decks, really). I’ve talked about the Triomes before along with some other staff members here, but today I wanted to highlight one that I think is still undervalued.

Zagoth Triome ranks the highest out of the five on EDHREC by around 400 decks over Ketria Triome, and in terms of competitive play Ketria sees a little more play than Zagoth in Pioneer and Modern, but not by a lot. In terms of price, Ketria currently starts at $33 on TCGPlayer and Zagoth at $28, but what’s interesting is that Zagoth actually forms a steeper ramp with fewer listings, leading me to think that the cheaper copies are undervalued.

I do think that all of the showcase foil Triomes are still good pickups at the moment – they were better a few months ago but even now you can pick the cheaper ones around $20, which I think should have a good run up to $40 in the next 6-12 months. Supply is draining on all five Triomes and I don’t think we’ll see them printed like this again for a long time, so personal copies and specs are a must-buy soon if you want them at current prices.

Bane of Progress (CC1 Foil)

Price today: $14
Possible price: $30

Commander Collection Green was a bit of an odd product in that the premium versions were only available to WPN Premium stores, meaning that supply of them has been severely throttled compared to the regular versions. Preorders got crazy high, and once the foils got dumped onto the market prices did come down a reasonable amount but the low supply has meant that a lot of the cards have been snapped up pretty quickly.

Cards like Worldly Tutor and Bane of Progress have had first-time foil printings, and so EDH players that have been playing these cards for a long time and waiting for foils of them have jumped at the chance to get hold of them. Bane of Progress foils in particular got down below $10 and I called them out in the ProTrader Discord as a good buy, and they’re already back up to $14.

This is a card registered in 12k EDH decks on EDHREC and there are only 15 foil listings on TCGPlayer – this won’t be a $14 card for much longer. Over in Europe you can still get some copies around €7 which is honestly a steal, and I think that this will be $30 sooner rather than later. It doesn’t seem like there’s a restock of Commander Collection Green coming any time soon, so take a look at some of the other foil singles as well and see what you think!

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

My Year In Review

This is going to be very simple: I’ve had a whole year of assorted predictions, and I’m going to give you some of the best and the worst. Enjoy!

One big caveat before we begin: Standard, and paper play in general, has been very negatively impacted by the coronavirus, and the result has been that lots of cards didn’t move that should have. I’m not going to bother repeating ‘pandemic’ for picks that are both good and bad though.

The Best

Embercleave (EA Foil) – If you scroll waaaay back in my archives you’ll see that on 1/3/2020 I picked this as a buy at $45. It’s $90 today. Interesting that the other versions haven’t moved much since then. Embercleave is one of the top five in terms of price from Throne of Eldraine, and that’s unlikely to change. If you like Equipment-themed Commander decks, this is a must-have. I don’t think it’s going to grow too much farther, unless some ridiculous Commander comes along for it.

Shadowspear (all versions) – I picked this at $5.50/$7/$11/$36 and all of those have gained nicely. I fully expect Shadowspear to be one of the top EDH cards from Theros 2 when all is said and done. It’s a colorless staple, giving your creature two extremely relevant abilities and also taking two backbreakers away from your opponents’ creatures. 

Divine Visitation (foil and non) – Picked on 4/24 at $11/$16, it’s up to $13/$20 and climbing as one of the best things to do in a token strategy in Commander. It’s true that on MTG Fast Finance I didn’t think that the foils would ever be below $20 when it came out, and I was pretty wrong about it early on. I still think it’s an amazing card long-term, as a foil mythic from before they goosed the foil drop rates.

Omnath, Locus of the Roil – Picked on 4/24 at $4/$7, you had a chance to get out at $19 on regulars and the foils are currently $22. Nothing like making 3x or 4x your money! Note that this is not the banned Landfall-themed Omnath, but the Elemental-themed one that’s only three colors. It remains a very good card when it comes to that tribe, dealing damage and giving all of your lands a cantrip when you get to eight. 

Sell Breeding Pool at $27 – I gave this advice on 5/1, which was about top of the market. Down more than $10, and still declining. Getting less than you could have gotten doesn’t feel great, but it’s still a solid sell. The power of Uro in assorted formats is why this is still so expensive, even years after rotation. Only two others are above $10, but I’m still a seller, except for personal copies you might want in your Commander deck. 

Sell Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy at $18 – Written on 5/8, is now down to $6, exactly the $5-$7 range I predicted. For most mythics right out of the gate, you want to be a seller, but there was a rush of things that Kinnan caused a spike for. I can understand why, as Kinnan both gives you more mana and gives you something to do with that mana, but this card itself wasn’t going to be pricey. The foil EA at $40 is pretty appealing, though, for a set that wasn’t opened much in paper and this is the second-most popular Commander from Ikoria.

Rhythm of the Wild (foil) – I picked this at $9 on 7/3 and it’s about doubled to this point. It’s a fantastic card, just what assorted creature-based decks want to be doing. It’s both uncounterability and hasty goodness! The range of strategies this enables, and the even wider range of decks that it fits into, is a sign that this is here to stay. It’s in 25,000 decks on EDHREC too, a full quarter of all decks that can run it do run it. I don’t think that it’s going to be hitting $50 or something, but there’s only 8 NM foils on TCG, and eleven more copies that aren’t NM. That’s a pretty tiny supply, and I strongly urge you to get personal copies now.

Finale of Devastation (foil) – Picked the foil at $35 on 7/17 and it’s up to $50+ in just six months. It’s a big green finisher, plus a tutor. Gotta have something to do with all that Nyxbloom Ancient mana. There’s only three NM foils on TCG, and they ramp up to $90. That’s not enough data points for a strong correlation, but there is a real lack of these out there, as a foil mythic.

The Worst

Ashiok, Nightmare Muse (regular) – I said on 1/31 that this was a buy at $12. Currently at $4 and showing no signs of popping up before rotating in the fall. Doomed.

Arclight Phoenix (regular) – I said this was a pickup on 4/17 at $4, and it’s now down to $3. The foil is really what hurts: I traded for one at its peak of $50, and it’s now down to $12. Mega-ouch.

Box Toppers from Double Masters – I freely admit I way underestimated how much VIP product was going to be created and bought. Personally, I bought a set of foil BT Lightning Greaves at $100, and then saw those come down to their current price of around $15. I still believe in the card long term, given the cost of the Invention version, but the higher supply of these cards means I have to be a little more patient.

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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.

MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY