One of the things I try to keep an eye on is when we get cards that do something new. We’re getting a whole lot of Clue goodness and investigation, but one of the rares in Murders at Karlov Manor does something we really haven’t seen before:

This is Judith’s second card, the first being the Scourge Diva, definitely not someone to mess with. This time, she costs more mana but brings a truly gamebreaking set of abilities. Giving any instant or sorcery both deathtouch and lifelink is busted right in half, and whenever we get a new legendary creature like this, I think, “Would I build this deck? Would it be fun?”

My answer: Heck yes.

So today I want to go through a first pass of things that might take off if Judith gets her 15 minutes of fame. We’re going to have to be quick here: the set drops February 8, and the first decks should be getting built not long after. If she gets popular, it won’t last very long, and I’ll want to move these out quickly. I’m imaging that this will be a fad, not a long-term crazy popular Commander.

Let’s talk cards!

For each card, I’ve listed the current lowest price and the current highest price. 

First of all, there are around a dozen spells that cost from one to four mana that will deal one damage to each creature you don’t control, and I would start with every single one of those. Some are rares, like Impending Flux and might really take off. Most are commons and cheap, and it’s hard to predict which common foils could jump in price. I’m expecting small movements there, nothing huge, but I think we’ll see a lot of common foils go from ten cents to a dollar.

Disaster Radius (Bulk to 75¢) is another card with uneven applications. It’s tougher to use, given the mana cost and the creature requirement, but I’ve no doubt of its potential. Plus, it’s a single printing foil released in 2010. 

Volcanic Vision (Bulk to $2.50) – There’s not a lof of ‘get the instant or sorcery back’ in mono-red, but we get that regrowth effect on top of damaging everyone else’s stuff! Again, only one foil for the perfect card means there’s value to be gained.

Searing Touch (50¢) and Fanning the Flames (50¢) – These two are the star of the show. Buyback is exactly what Judith wants anyway, being able to recast spells over and over again. Slaughter and Evincar’s Justice, plus Lab Rats, should all bump a little but these two that deal damage are going to be tremendously flexible, dealing lifelink/deathtouch damage or giving you a 2/2 to go with the damage. 

Blasphemous Act ($2 to $22) and Chain Reaction (50¢ to $10) – Both of these will end up killing Judith because they damage all creatures, but since the spells gain lifelink, it’s reasonable to think that you’re going to gain a boatload of life as a result. Sometimes you need a grand finale, baby!

Chain Reaction has been printed a bunch of times, but its only foil is from Worldwake, a small set in 2011. The supply is miniscule and I won’t be shocked to see $20 or $25 for the foils. Blasphemous Act is a card with a boatload of printings, and the Secret Lair version is just awesome in the horror movie-esque frame. 

If you want to play more ‘damage all creature’ spells, you’ll need a little protection for Judith:

Mithril Coat ($9 to $60) – The fancy versions of this are under a lot of pressure, because the Coat is so so good at protecting any Commander who needs to stay in play. That’s most decks, so get your personal copies now.

Darksteel Plate ($7 to $14) and Hammer of Nazhan ($8 to $10) – Plate has seen a few printings, but these are close to the same card, and considering how much mana you need for Judith and how the deck needs her to be in play, a little insurance goes a long way.

Once you’ve gained a bunch of life, now what?

Well of Lost Dreams (50¢ to $120) – This is a great way to pay off the big lifegain into some extra cards, and we might even see some serialized cards get bought.

Aetherflux Reservoir ($10 to $300) – What to do when you’re at 94 life? FIRE THE SPACE LASER!!

Solphim, Mayhem Dominus ($10 to $32) – A lot of your spells will deal one damage, and while it doesn’t matter much if that’s got deathtouch, it’s also got lifelink. So you really want to gain that extra life and deal that extra damage to players. We’ve got a few ways to do that, and Solphim can get indestructible pretty easily here. Oil-Slick versions would be my first stop.

Torbran, Thane of Red Fell ($2 to $17) – If damage is good, more damage is better. We ought to see bumps in Fiery Emancipation and City on Fire as well.

Toralf, God of Fury ($3 to $6) – This will be terribly fun with spells that deal more than one damage.

Brash Taunter ($3 to $6) – I will enjoy ending a game with this card. Only one fancy foil version to target!

Stuffy Doll ($1 to $11) – The only problem here is, there’s more than one foil and so it’ll be hard to know which to target.

Fire Servant (50¢ to $8) – An uncommon from 14 years ago, there’s a deeper stock on the Premium Deck Series but those foils are kinda slick and ugly. I’m surprised that there’s never been additional copies printed.

Neheb, the Eternal ($7 to $32) – If you’ve dealt a lot of damage in the first main, would you like a boatload of mana in the second main?

Blood for the Blood God! ($3 to $8) – Surge foils from 40K are getting targeted intermittently, but really, there’s no card more perfect for this deck. Lots of things have to die, but you’re built to do that. Then this will dome your opponents and refill your hand.

I’m already at my word count, and over by a fair margin, so here’s a group of cards that reward you for making sure there’s no other creatures in play, or for doing lots of killing. I don’t think these are must-includes, but they are high on the list of cards I’d put into the first draft of the deck. We’ll see what EDHREC says in a few weeks.

Painful Quandary ($1 to $10)

Mogis, God of Slaughter ($7 to $18) – SL copies are likely the winner here

Kaervek the Merciless (bulk to $2.50) – foil-etched are your best bet

Tergrid, God of Fright ($7 to $14)

Kroxa, Titan of Death’s Hunger ($2 to $140)

Massacre Wurm ($2 to $14)

Crimson Honor Guard (under 25¢) – no foils available

If you build a Judith deck, reach out to me on Twitter or in the ProTrader Discord, let me know how it plays!

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.

Sometimes, you just can’t help a title. Alliteration is just so much fun!

Ravnica Remastered is official today, and while the preordering has been fun, it’s also emblematic of the clobbering that prices are about to take. This is a reprint set, so everything exists already and the goal/expectation is that regular copies are going to end up notably cheaper than they were.

This reprint set is made up of lots of special versions too! Borderless, Anime, Retro-Frame, and even Serialized versions will be available too! In previous reprint sets like this, there tends to be a spread of prices for the different versions, with the more basic ones getting to a low price indeed.

The good news is, we can get those basic copies super cheap once these cards hit their lows. So today, I want to look at my favorite targets to drop low before reaching new highs in a few months. I don’t think the rebound will be faster than six months, and I also wouldn’t be shocked when it takes a couple of years.

These are mythics and rares, and as an additional complication, there might be a quick turnaround for profit on these if it looks like extra product is being destroyed rather than letting the set undersell.

Guardian Project (137k EDHREC decks)

As always, EDHREC is not the only data source we should refer to, but it’s very helpful data to have. It’s only the most online of Magic players, the most invested in the game, the ones who are eager to list a deck online. I still haven’t put even one on there. 

Still, Guardian Project is a card that basically cantrips every creature spell. There’s some spells like Garruk’s Uprising that will allow you to draw a card for big tokens, but GP giving you a card no matter what in the Commander format is big game. It’s a staple now and will be a staple going forward. 

It’s already down to the $8 range and $5 is in play. My usual habit is to wait a couple months, but this is one of the cards that I’ll be watching to see how cheap it is in a month, looking for the price to start rising.

Teferi, Time Raveler (46k decks)

Tef3ri (as he’s commonly labeled) was once a Modern staple, a key component to making sure that what you want to do, you get to do. Decks have moved away from the card, and being banned in Pioneer hasn’t helped his cause either.

Planeswalkers aren’t less good in Commander exactly, it’s just that you have to manage three people trying to kill it instead of just the one opponent. I would like to believe that he can make another comeback, but it’ll take a big shift in the metagame to pull that off. Those who like special versions have retro frames, stained glass, and the alternate anime art to choose from, so I don’t see myself getting in on this again unless some new combo shows up.

Bruvac the Grandiloquent (16k decks plus 3500 more as Commander)

Bruvac is about to be a case study in ‘why does low supply for a card result in a high price’ or what could also be called ‘how low can this go?’ Originally in the first Jumpstart set, and then given an appearance on The List, Bruvac has never had a large quantity of copies available, and the price shows that.

Copies are on TCG for preorder at $24 and that price is going to drop hard. Mill decks are neat in Commander, and even have a home in Modern for those who love their Crabs, but it’s hard to do consistently. The demand just isn’t there, and if it weren’t for some cards who were sub-$5 before RVR’s printing, I would expect this to be near the bottom. I suspect this will be available near $10 for a very long time.

Cyclonic Rift (registered in 500,000 EDHREC decks!!)

I probably don’t need to sell you on this card. It’s a poster child for a reason, the Gold-Chocobo-better-than-S-Rank staple. It’s cast, recast, copied, all in the name of being unfairly broken. Over the years, the regular version has made it to $40 at least once, because it’s just one of the best things you can do in blue.

Amazingly, we haven’t had a lot of special versions here. Double Masters had a borderless version in the VIP packs, and Commander Masters gave us a foil-etched a year ago. For one of the iconic spells of Magic’s premier format…that’s not a lot. Of course, now in RVR we get a Retro, and an Anime Borderless, and a serialized version if you want to have the rarest version of the most popular card.

I’m expecting regular copies to drift down a little, but the truth is, there’s a lot of regular copies out there and patience pays off very well. There won’t be a lot of undercutting, as you don’t need to be in a hurry to sell. This weathered the CMM printing quite well, the etched foils look especially tempting, and RVR should lower prices a little before they begin recovering. Should be $35 again before Christmas.

Crypt Ghast (84k decks) – Finally, let’s talk about a card that just doesn’t get played enough. So many decks are running Urborg and Coffers, why aren’t they using the third leg of the tripod? I think there’s some factors working against the card: people think Extort’s reminder text requires black and white in the identity, or they think only basic Swamps are eligible. 

Happily, neither of those things is true, but this card is falling fast. Retro copies are down to $5 already, and strangely, that’s less expensive than the regular nonfoils are. That’s a reversal I don’t expect to stay true for long, but I also thing it will take people a while to change their prices on the older versions of the card. 

There’s also never been a special printing, and with both a retro frame and an anime borderless coming out, these regulars are really going to take a dive. Be patient before buying, even when it comes to personal copies. There’s going to be a lot left over here, so don’t get in anytime soon.

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.

Welcome to a new year, and with Ravnica Remastered arriving in a week, Murders at Karlov Manor on February 8, then Universes Beyond: Fallout exactly one month after that on March 8! Yes, the timeline is jam-packed full of releases, but there is helpful information in each release that’s coming up this year.

We can do a lot, even with limited information, and one example is Doubling Season. With Ravnica Remastered on the horizon, I stayed the heck away from Doubling Season and other Ravnica-themed cards. Doubling Season ended up being printed twice in a row in other bonus sheets, but it worked anyway.

So with that in mind, let’s go through the calendar, and see what we should do or not do coming into the coming year.

First off, let’s get the layout for the year, and if you want to watch the whole Wizards panel with the teasers, here’s the link: 

One caveat about the whole dang thing: There’s a lot of places for reprints to happen outside of the themes of a set. We know that Special Guests are now a thing in Play Boosters, which will premier in Murders at Karlov Manor, and the List will now be 40 cards plus the ten Guests. No more Draft Boosters, which means that more of these packs are opened and a List inclusion will probably mean the price takes a hit.

Special Guests are supposed to be “highly desired reprints with creative that adapts it to the world,” according to Mark Rosewater. We will see about the first WTF inclusions as the year goes on.

Plus, Secret Lairs are still a thing, and the recent announcement regarding the print runs and faster shipping won’t make much of a difference if your spec gets caught in the web of reprints.  So there’s a lot of potholes that are invisible by nature, and best of luck to us all in avoiding those.

Right now, we have the whole list for Ravnica Remastered, and that topic is now blessedly done. All that remains is to see how much a couple of Serialized Foil Dragons are going to cost me, since it takes 6400 packs to get one specific Dragon. I’m also interested to see how under-opened the set is, as we know demand is soft but they printed 3.2 million of the Collector Boosters, and that could lead to either fire-sale distributor pricing or just massive amounts of product being destroyed.

Murders at Karlov Manor is about to get previews, and while we’re told that the set won’t be guild-themed or -focused as a regular Ravnica set would be, one of the banner mythics is an Azorius investigator and one of the Clue special cards is a Boros Soldier commander. I have my doubts about the color pairs not mattering too much, but with the set so close, I’d prefer to hold back on anything related to that theme anyway.

Fallout being a set of Commander decks in the style of Warhammer 40K means that I’m not super-worried about reprints, since those decks were mostly new cards mixed with known lands. We know some of the Commanders for the set, and those point at themes that encourage speculative buying. I promise, I’ll have more for you on that topic before long, I already wrote about (and built!) Mr. House’s deck.

Outlaws of Thunder Junction is confirmed to be about villains from Magic worlds coming together to do bad things. From this key art, a whole lot of crazy theories have popped up:

Depending on who you believe, and if you think dead means dead or ‘mostly dead’ in previous sets, those characters can be a lot of different folks. Big baddie with wings and horns? Rakdos and Ob Nixilis come to mind. Half-sized? Could be Squee, Tinybones, Krenko, or someone else. The medusa is heavily favored to be Vraska, but my favorite speculation is that Oko makes a triumphant return to the stage. We’ll see.

The year’s biggest release will come around the start of summer: Modern Horizons 3. 

I expect great things from this set, and I’ll likely write a couple of different times about what to do when we get a little information, but I feel confident about a couple of big points for this set.

First, I think we get the original Eldrazi Titans. The prices for Ulamog and Kozilek are above $35 even for the basic versions, and Emrakul would be up there if not for the Commander ban. (I’m not advocating for the unban, just saying why she’s $15.) It’s possible that they mix-and-match, and give us Emrakul, the Promised End, which has a bigger price tag, but I think that it’s been so long since Double Masters 2022 that people are ready for more. 

Second, allied fetchlands are in MH3. MH2 gave us the enemy shocks, which hadn’t had an appearance at regular rare since Modern Masters 2017. The allied lands were last in Khans of Tarkir, ten years ago! Polluted Delta is roughly twice the price of Scalding Tarn. Wooded Foothills is too! 

I expect these lands to be in the set and I expect their price to go very, very low. There will be a lot of these packs out there, just as with Modern Horizons 2, and so the time will be right to load up your decks with cheap fetches.

I used to be certain that we’d get the cycle of pitch Elementals as reprints here, as having the cycle all be at least $20 would be good anchors for the mythics, but I’m not sure what the banning of Fury means for all this. It’s possible that the set hadn’t gone to print when the card was banned, and perhaps we get a ‘fixed’ Fury who does 3 damage and doesn’t have double strike. It’s hard to predict or foresee given these conditions.

The other sets this year are pretty damn nebulous, but keep in mind that details are inevitably going to leak and we’ll do our best to keep you informed.

Innistrad Remastered is due the very beginning of 2025, and that’s a very important detail. That could be where we get the Emrakul, the Promised End reprint, as well as one for Edgar Markov. Snapcaster Mage and Parallel Lives should be on the agenda, in addition to Cryptolith Rite, Meathook Massacre, Toxrill, the Corrosive, and the slowlands of both Midnight Hunt and Crimson Vow. Anything associated with Innistrad should be viewed as untouchable until that set arrives.

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.

It’s the New Year, people! Time for reflecting on how the year went, what worked and what didn’t work. For me, in this space, that means it’s time for a dose of honesty, for soothing my ego and for teaching me humility.

I’ve written about how I want to change how I choose my specs, for reasons that will be reinforced today. I want to buy cards with a reason beyond ‘It’s a staple that got cheap.’ I want to anticipate moves, commanders, new decks. So let’s dive into cards I said were worth some of your money, and what I was right about, and what I was wrong about.

On MTG Fast Finance, we do a review of our picks, and I do that here as well. Today, we’re looking just at cards I called out in the first half of this year, as the more recent things haven’t had time to shine up yet. 

On February 10, I said you should sell the hell out of Mercurial Spelldancer, as it was going for $11 early based on some great Legacy interactions.

It doesn’t take a galaxy brain to sell cards early, but holding too long is an extremely common error in this realm. When the price is hot, get out. This is also an excellent demonstration of how most rares go, even new ones. If it’s not picked up by multiple formats quickly, then it’s headed to the bulk bin.

A week later, I looked at the Pro Tour that was coming up and told you to be ready on Indomitable Creatvitiy, at the time $15 or so for the nonfoils. Within a month, thanks to the PT, it had doubled to $30. I told you to sell into the coming hype, and I hope you did, because you needed to be out before the end of summer:

Currently $6, and still no reprints! It’s a great graph that shows yet again why you need to sell right away and not get too greedy. If you bought at $15, and it hits $30, you should be listing the card because metagames shift or reprints come along. It was a small-set mythic, and I understand why you’d want to hold out, but this is why we say to sell into hype: when the hype goes away, so does the value.

I also would not be in a rush to stock up on these. The combo has fallen out of favor in the current meta, and I’d be fine seeing the deck do well and buying up some $10 copies at that point. 

When we found out that The Ur-Dragon would be in Commander Masters, there were a couple of cards I called out on 2/26. I’ve been right that with new copies of His Eminence running around, there would be a lot more people building the deck and EDHREC bears that out, with The Ur-Dragon being a top 5 Commander for most weeks since its new printing.

In that same article, I said to buy Hellkite Courser at $40 in FEA and it is still $40. I think this is an attention problem, because there’s no Commander that the Courser fits better. I feel like a Secret Lair printing is due for this card, but we’ll see. 

In that same article, I pointed out Urza’s Incubator (Borderless foil) got as low as $15 nonfoil/$20 foil and is now trending upwards. If you bought at those lows, I would start to sell the copies you picked up, as we are now up to $30 for nonfoil and $40 for the foils. This is a premium card in typal decks and more copies are inevitably coming down the pipeline.Take your profits and get out.

On March 3rd, I told you to be aware of All Will Be One. I said it would fall a little further from its then price of $11 on 3/3, and it did, down to the $7 range before spiking hard in May. I hope you sold into that spike, when it hit $20, because now it’s available for around $11 again, but creeping upwards.

A week later, I wrote about Oil-Slick foils and had one of my biggest misses: Ichormoon Gauntlet was $35 and is currently just under $20. Ouch. Most of the others have gone down or stayed flat, but Solphim has gone up $10.

A case study followed after that on March 17, when I gave a series of picks about Tom Bombadil, who I felt was going to set some Sagas and Saga accessories into the stratosphere. Here’s the summary: 

Kiora bests the Sea God picked at $3 or $6 in foil, hit $17/$22 in July

Historian’s Boon was available for fifty cents in nonfoil EA, got up to $3 in July

Hex Parasite was called at $4 regular and $15 foil, went up to $9/$22 but didn’t get the predicted double up on the foil.

Resourceful Defense went $3 to $6, handy double up.

However, I was wrong about Hall of Heliod’s Generosity. It was $12 then, and with Tom’s release it perked up a little but is now $6. It’s still an extremely busted card for Tom, and I’m surprised the inclusion rate isn’t a lot higher.

After the first wave of March of the Machine previews, I made some predictions: 

I said wait on Faerie Mastermind when it was at $8, got down to $4, now $9.

I told you to buy Tribute of the World Tree at $3, it’s also now $9.

However, I must confront two very incorrect calls as well: Invasion of Ikoria, I said it would be $1 and it never went under $5. I also missed badly on Etali, Primal Conqueror, I didn’t see his Commander popularity or the combo/reanimator decks coming at all. Big ouchies.

With Aftermath, I looked at the Halo foils on 5/19, and my mistakes are best summarized as being too early:

Sarkhan Soul Aflame did indeed go under $50, can now be had for $25. Mega-oopsies.

Ob Nixilis at least went up by $10, but Training Grounds went down to $8 from $24.

Coppercoat Vanguard is indeed seeing some play, but every version is cheaper now than it was then. I just needed to be more patient.

Finally, on 5/26 I peeked back at Dominaria United. Sheoldred, the Apocalypse hasn’t caught a reprint or a ban yet, so all versions keep climbing and they aren’t going to stop until the reprint or the ban happens. It’s in lots of formats, though rotation in late 2025 might affect the price a little, that’s 18 months away!

I’m surprised that Leyline Binding has gone down in price, though it’s all over the place. If Up the Beanstalk had not been banned, perhaps it would have had a chance but the graph says that’s unlikely.

I hope this look back helped you as much as it did me. We’ve got to be honest and empirical, looking for trends and rules, so stay tuned for the next one of these!

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.