Watchtower

The Watchtower 12/21/20 – It’s Snowing On Kaldheim

It’s long been theorised that Kaldheim will be a snowy plane (and I don’t just mean snowy, I mean snowy), given that it’s set inspired by Norse mythology and the Nordic landscapes, where it does tend to be a little chilly – especially around this time of the year. A couple of weeks ago we saw leaks from the Commander decks for the set, and it was incorrectly ‘spotted’ that one of the cards had a Snow mana symbol on it. Now that we’ve had the official preview for Rana the Ever-Watchful we’ve seen that it isn’t actually a Snow mana symbol – but that doesn’t mean that Snow won’t be in the set. If we take a look at the most recent updates to The List, it’s clear that we’ll be getting more Snow cards, with things like Into the North and Scrying Sheets being added.

As well as the Snow theme, it looks like we’re getting some more tribal synergies going with Dwarves and Giants abound – so where does that land us?

Ice-Fang Coatl (Foil)

Price today: $30
Possible price: $60

Ice-Fang Coatl has pretty much been a staple in Modern and Legacy since its debut in Modern Horizons back in the summer last year (gosh that seems like forever ago), and along with the gone-but-not-forgotten Arcum’s Astrolabe it effectively forced the majority of Modern players to start playing with Snow basic lands. With Kaldheim just around the corner we’re almost sure to be getting some more Snow cards to play with, which will drive demand for Snow cards that are already prevalent in eternal formats.

Ice-Fang foils hit a high of around $50 a few months ago, and since then – most likely due to a lack of paper demand for cards – we’ve seen it drop back down to around $30 again, but supply is still on the low side. There are 27 listings on TCGPlayer with a few copies around $30 but the rest form a nice ramp up towards $60. Ice-Fang has just been added to The List for printing in Set Boosters, but that (1) is a tiny number of cards in reality, and (2) doesn’t include foils anyway.

Now there are two sides to this coin – although I’m fairly sure most coins have at least two sides so I guess that’s a silly turn of phrase anyway – but I think we could see this go either of two ways. If we get some exciting Snow cards in Kaldheim that look like they could break into Modern, then I’m sure that people will hop aboard the hype train and start to snap up cards like Ice-Fang Coatl that seem like they’ll do well in the format. That would give you an earlier out for these. Otherwise, as paper play starts to return around the world (hopefully sooner rather than later), people are going to need Ice-Fangs for their Modern decks regardless, as I think it’s going to remain a staple of the format whatever happens – that’s a slightly longer horizon but the foils are fairly well drained already and it won’t take much to bump the card up in price.

Cavern of Souls (ZNR Expedition Foil)

Price today: $80
Possible price: $130

Another card that has just been added to The List is Cavern of Souls, and that along with a new Dwarven Lord and a new Elven Lord coming to us from Kaldheim previews signifies more tribal synergies to come with the new set. Cavern of Souls has seen a wide degree of variation in its competitive play over the years, depending on how good certain tribes are at different points. Merfolk had its day in Modern, Elves is still around here and there and Eldrazi has always been playing the card, with the current use mostly being a one or two-of in Heliod Company and Amulet Titan decks.

Over on the EDH side of things it’s a popular card in any and all tribal strategies, clocking in at over 22,000 decks registered on EDHREC. Albeit a higher price barrier than a lot of EDH cards, it’s still a favourite amongst players, and with a few different versions to choose from now it’s worth taking a look at the latest one. In terms of premium copies, the main contenders are the original Avacyn Restored foil, the Ultimate Masters Box Topper and now the Zendikar Rising Expedition foil. Although I’m not a huge fan of the ZNR Expedition frames in general, I think it actually works really well on a few of the cards, this being one of them.

Things get really interesting when we take a look at price. Avacyn Restored foils are around $120 and UMA Box Toppers start at $180, but the newest ZNR Expeditions are only $80 – and arguably with the best art yet. That’s mostly down to personal preference but I think I’m definitely safe in saying that it’s a stunner; ethereal rays of light penetrating the gloomy cavern. As supply from ZNR Collector Boosters starts to drain out, $80 won’t hold for much longer – that’s currently $10 than even the regular UMA foils. Give it 12 months or so and I can see these heading towards $120-130, so if you want personal copies or specs I’d grab them now.

Embercleave (FEA)

Price in Europe: €45 ($55)
Price in US: $75
Possible price: $100

With the return of Dwarves in Kaldheim we’re also seeing a bump in the number of equipment cards and synergies that we’re getting in the set. Now, Embercleave has been more of a Standard and Historic card than anything else but it does also show up here and there in Pioneer and Modern, as well as being in a little over 5000 EDH decks listed on EDHREC. That’s not a huge amount of demand, but aside from this being an immediate arbitrage win, the key here is that supply is very low. With only 14 FEA listings on TCGPlayer (and only 16 total copies), the ramp from $75 up towards $100 won’t be a very difficult one for the card to climb before too long.

You can pick these up in Europe for around €45 ($55), which is a win straight away if you’re moving them over to the US for sale. If you prefer to wait a little longer, the only way is up for this card, and so especially with more equipment synergies coming to us from Kaldheim I don’t think you can go wrong with it at all.

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.

Casual Fridays

The Twist on The List

So this week we had an update about The List. In total, 48 new cards were added and the same number taken out. The List has been in effect for all of Zendikar Rising, as something that could occur in 25% of Set Boosters, not Draft Boosters. I went over a lot of this information in September, with some data that seemed relevant.

Now that The List has been out for three months, and we’re seeing an update to it, it’s time to look at what’s changed and what the new additions should expect, price-wise.

First of all, let’s look at the prices on The List and see what is different. Sometimes, there can be a huge price gap between the copies with the little planeswalker symbol and those without. That’s very true with Mystery Booster and it’s held up in this setting too.

Some of the biggest price gaps include $7 for the full-art Imperious Perfect and $13 for Cruel Tutor, but generally speaking, the prices for The List and the non-List copies are about the same.

Weirdly, there’s a Krark’s Thumb from Mirrodin for $15 on TCG but The List versions are $24+. Have fun, early readers! Also of note: foil Panharmonicons are available on TCG for under $15, which is $10 less than it was just a few months ago.

So if The List copies are about the same price as the regular copies, have those prices fallen as a result of The List copies being around for the last three months? This is a little trickier to parse, as we’re looking for things that otherwise have the same frame, are nonfoil, and haven’t had a reprint lately.

Land Tax, for instance, was in Double Masters and that’s (presumably) had a much bigger effect on the price of the card: 

Let’s start with a card that was already under some pressure downwards, as no one is able to play Modern in person right now: Wrenn and Six.

If there were significant copies entering circulation, this graph ought to show some movement these past three months. Even a little trend towards being cheaper would help make the case for The List, but that doesn’t seem to be true at all. In fact, I’m surprised that the price is this stable, given the lack of paper tournaments that it’s played in. The card is present in enough decks online to warrant its price, but steady for the last six months? Commander uses it, but not enough to account for the expected dip.

That particular Constructed card didn’t show any movement due to The List, so let’s try a card that had only one printing before its inclusion, is a very niche Commander card, and already had a high price. Normally, reprinting such a card would torpedo the value, but is that what happened to Thrumming Stone?

It’s stayed flat as well. This is a rare from one of the shortest-printed sets in modern times, but a card that’s popular enough to get to nearly $40. It’s not a card that is easy to build around, finding a home in Relentless Rats/Persistent Petitioners type decks where one casting gets you a ton of copies.

If Wrenn and Six’s price staying flat put my eyebrows up, this one shoots them right off my head. Even a small number of copies entering the market should have lowered this price, but there we have the numbers. The two versions are priced about the same as well, there’s no shenanigans about The List versions dropping and regular ones staying where they are.

I went through most of The List and couldn’t find examples of NM copies lowering in price significantly these past three months. I found a couple of cases where the market price had lowered by a few dollars, but that wasn’t reflected in current inventory on TCG or eBay. I feel pretty safe saying that the quantities of cards released so far haven’t impacted card prices heavily. Are there a few with odd things going on? Most definitely, but I like looking for overall trends. In this case, if a card is announced to be on The List, or added to that group, I’m not going to panic-sell or FOMO-buy. 

There is an additional element going forward, something that promises to be true for the next few months: Set Boosters are outselling Draft Boosters at a steady pace. For a generation, the largest printings have been the regular boosters (now referred to as Draft Boosters) but for Kaldheim and presumably a set or two after that, local stores in North America are too impacted by the coronavirus to open and do business as usual.

Stores outside NA might be able to hold drafts as they did in 2019, but the focus is still on an area heavily impacted, and that impact has months to go before the vaccines can help. Right now, rumors are that distributors and vendors are getting a much higher allocation of Set Booster boxes than Draft Booster boxes, which makes sense if boxes are getting bought by individuals for cracking and not stores for drafting.

The Commander community has been focused on Extended Art and special frames, but the shift in production and distribution towards Collector Boosters and Set Boosters will also have an effect on cards. I can’t say that The List will have a greater effect as of Kaldheim than it did after Zendikar Rising, I’m comfortable staying with my position that The List is mostly stabilizing prices, instead of causing a drop in prices.

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: Based Speculation

We have done some baseless, semi-baseless and mostly baseless speculation on this column. Not everyone knows this, but in my day, I’ve even done some quiet speculation. I have largely gotten away from the uncertain where I can, preferring to look at solid data from EDHREC and base my picks on what people are actually playing rather than what I think they’ll play. Today, I am going to do a bit of a hybrid approach because I think what people are going to play soon will be very similar to something played already and I’m going to see if I can figure it out weeks before anyone brews a single deck.

My Thoughts On Leaks

Leaks suck. If you leak cards, I hope you get a splinter under your fingernail every day. I hope WotC sues you and turns your house into a camp where arsonists learn to paint minifigs and one of them burns it down with all of your stuff inside. Leaks are like telling a child Santa isn’t real, except in this scenario, Wizards of the Coast contacted me ahead of time and told me it was cool if I told everyone Santa wasn’t real and I worked for like 10 hours on a video about it and then you just blurted it out a week before I was allowed to post my video… ish. Like, in this scenario, I’d be a monster because I was about to tell everyone Santa wasn’t real… OK, this metaphor is off the rails. The point is, leakers are a combination of people who tell children Santa isn’t real but also someone who shouts out the punchline to a joke before a comic delivers it. Yeah, great, you’ve heard this one before, but the reason I’m telling the joke and not you is that I have something called

My Thoughts On Leaks Continued

timing.

That said, if the leaks are out, they’re out. I make lots of different kinds of content for a lot of different websites and they all have different philosophies about how to handle leaks. From a finance perspective, other people are acting on this information and we should, too. We’d be doing our readers a disservice if we didn’t provide the same analysis the competitors are providing. We can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube, so let’s look at the cards that leaked, namely the two face cards from the Commander decks.

Lathril, Blade of the Elves 2BG

Legendary Creature – Elf Noble

Menace

Whenever Lathril, Blade of the Elves deals combat damage to a player, create that many 1/1 green Elf Warrior creature tokens

T, tap 10 untapped Elves you control: Each opponent loses 10 life and you gain 10 life

2/3

Lathril is kind of spicy – having a win con in the command zone is useful. I played a different GB elf deck and it was tough to kill them without Craterhoof – I often found myself resorting to using Jarad (I went with Jarad) or Shaman of the Pack to kill them. I miss my Nath of the Gilt Leaf deck, but it gets to live on this week as the inspiration for basically the exact deck everyone is going to build around Lathril. It may have fewer discard effects, but it doesn’t have to considering Nath goes in the 99 and Discard effects are good.

This will be a bit of a Voltron deck as well, and I can tell you the kinds of cards people will likely include in a deck that wants to hit hard and will have lots of tokens.

This goes in the deck, but is it good? I don’t know. It’s crept up a bit from its floor of about $0.50 on CK but it’s not quite at the $3 it was flirting with, either. It might take more than Lathril to make this the $5 you’d want it to be if you’re buying in around $1.50, but you can make money here, albeit not easy money.

There is a heavy Discard component to Nath, so if we want to play this safe, we should ignore than stuff since it’s not guaranteed to be in Lathril. Instead, we can focus on on the common cards between the two likely decks.

You know how I feel about foils, but there are so many non-foil copies of this bulk card that the foils may be targeted. Again, I don’t personally like the foils of EDH cards but some people do, and you may just out these to greater fools if you sell online. I think this card and Pennon Blade deserve a look.

Unfortunately for Pennon Blade, it was just in Commander Legends and foils of this are everywhere due to the Collector Boosters. I think this cad is cooked, which is too bad because foils were flirting with $2 but most people had these in their foil bulk, which is almost always unsorted, meaning the market would be slow to replace the copies bought quickly. There’s no money here; thanks Commander Legends.

On the other hand, here’s a card with 2 foil printings (Legions and Eternal Masters) and whose foil flirted with $9 already. I like this for $4 if CK was getting $9 for these earlier, irrespective of if Lathril can replicate the demand that led to that earlier spike (it can’t).

Card Kingdom selling out of a card only played in EDH makes my speculator sense tingle. This won’t be $4 when CK restocks, which means it’s pretty likely their new buy price will be above what you can get these for on other sites right now. It won’t be enough to bother arbitraging, but it will be enough that the TCG Player price likely goes up to approach the new CK price, which means you profit.

One thing I will say for foils is that it insulates them from potentially being reprinted in the same deck that’s giving us Lathril, something I can’t say for non-foils. If they’re obvious enough for us to know to speculate on them, they’re obvious enough to go in the deck.

Let’s look at the other one.

Ranar the Ever-Watchful – 2WU

Legendary Creature – Spirit Warrior

Flying, vigilance The first card you foretell each turn costs Snow to foretell. Whenever you exile one or more cards from your hand, and/or permanents from the battlefield, create a 1/1 white Spirit creature token with flying.

I don’t know what the foretell ability is all about, but we can look at the rest of the deck and assume foretell is going to be fairly easy to pull off, otherwise there wouldn’t be much point putting it in a commander deck that’s likely to have some reprints.

That said, this is a blink deck that gives us value when we blink, and just like looking at Nath helped us with Latrhil, Brago can help us here. Also, don’t forget that it triggers when you exile their stuff. This could be fun.

This hit $4 once, it can do it again. If you can get these for half of that on TCG Player, I don’t hate it. Interlude and Ghostway are both in play, but I worry about them going in the deck, especially Interlude.

As much as the non-foil price is tanking a bit, CK has been sold out of the foil for a minute. I think paying $4 for the foil elsewhere for a card with (I think) high reprint risk when the non-foil was $4 on CK a while back is a good plan.

Wave and Tide are pretty old tech, but the more time that passes between today and the date Nemesis was released (February 2000), the more the trend in the price is upward. I think these will grow unbidden and a helping hand from people taking a second look at Brago tech next January will give these even more of a boost. I wouldn’t be surprised if this hits $10 for a bit.

Remember, Ranar says when you exile a permanent from the battlefield, not when you exile a creature of your own from your side of the battlefield, so this is even nastier than it was in Brago because you get value. You’ll want to blink this before the counters all fall off. They’ll get their lands back but you can rebuy a bunch of token creation. You can opt for the $15 foil, too, if you want.

That does it for me this week. I think that when we get a bit more info about the rest of the deck and what foretell is (I have to assume it involves exiling a card from your hand) w’ell know more. Until then, stay safe and if you must buy foils, remind yourself that we’re all making do in pandemic times. Until next time!

Watchtower

The Watchtower 12/14/20 – Going Rogue

The Rogues deck in Standard has been a mild point of contention recently, with wildly varied takes on how good it is due to the large disparity between how well it has been performing in the hands of the pros vs how well the average Arena ladder-grinder does with it. I’ve played a bit of it myself and had very mixed results, but it’s had me thinking about some Rogues that have applications outside of a Standard environment. There are some interesting ones flying around both in EDH and other competitive formats, and I think they’re worth taking a look at.

Opposition Agent (EA)

Price today: $19
Possible price: $35

Alongside Hullbreacher, Opposition Agent has been one of the biggest hits from Commander Legends, with the Rogue just falling short of first place in favour of the definitely-shouldn’t-be-blue Pirate here. EDHREC will show you the five dual lands as being in the top five spots for Commander Legends because of percentage inclusions, but in terms of raw numbers both Hullbreacher and Agent outstrip them by a mile (around a thousand decks to be a little more precise). These two are super-staples and should realistically be in most 60%+ power level decks that can play them, and you can kind of take them as a pair in terms of my pick logic. But my article isn’t titled “Going Pirate”, is it? So here we are.

Anyway, I’m looking specifically at the EA non-foils here, because they’re only a few bucks more than the regular non-foils at $15, and about the same price as regular foils. That small gap isn’t much when you’re already paying $15 for a card, and so I think that a lot of players will happily fork over the extra few dollars for the extended art versions over the regulars. With the lower supply of the EAs (only found in Collector Boosters), that means that the gap is going to widen, with the EAs increasing in price more quickly than the regular versions.

Now, this is the kind of card that seems like it should be fairly reprintable in Commander sets, but I think we can still get a good run out of it before we see it again. It’s difficult to predict Wizard’s logic on reprints sometimes; as Jason Alt mentioned in the Discord yesterday, Dockside Extortionist seems like a similarly reprintable card but we haven’t seen that one again in 18 months – but either way, the place that this is most likely to show up would be a Commander Precon, which means that it won’t be in extended art, so these versions are safe.

Thieves’ Guild Enforcer (FEA)

Price today: $5
Possible price: $15

Switching gears now, we’re looking at a card that’s geared more towards the competitive scene. Thieves’ Guild Enforcer has been putting some real work in for the Standard Rogues deck, and can looks fairly innocuous at first but plays multiples roles of milling your opponent, whilst also attacking and blocking excellently a bit later in the game when their graveyard is stocked full. To my mild surprise, it’s been doing exactly the same thing over in Modern, which is half the reason I’m writing about it today.

I’m sure we all predicted the Modern mill deck picking up Ruin Crab from Zendikar Rising, but a fair few of the decks have also been playing a suite of Thieves’ Guild Enforcers to help things along as well. There are a few different variations of the deck but it’s clear that the deck is much better than it used to be, and has been putting up results to prove it. Mill used to be a bit of a meme deck in the format, but has slowly been garnering new tools and is a real role-player in Modern now.

I know I said that this is more of a competitively slanted card, but it actually has some decent chops in EDH as well – at around 1000 decks it’s a big player in both mill decks and Rogue decks (and mixtures of the two), of course being very popular with Anowon, the Ruin Thief. At $5 these are pretty damn cheap for an extended art foil, and I don’t think you can really go wrong with these on a slightly longer horizon.

Puresteel Paladin (2XM Foil)

Price today: $6
Possible price: $15

“That’s not a Rogue!” I hear you say. Well, you’d be right. The eagle-eyed among you have probably spotted that this is, in fact, a Human Knight. So why am I talking about it in my Rogue article? Because there’s a new deck on the scene in Modern, and it’s a bit of a rogue one. Hah!

Affectionately named “Hammer Time” (according to MTGGoldfish at any rate), this is a deck that takes advantage of cards like Puresteel Paladin and Sigarda’s Aid to equip a Colossus Hammer for free and swing in for 10+ damage as early as turn two. Drop an Ornithopter or Memnite on turn one, then Sigarda’s Aid on turn 2 means that even if your opponent has a blocker you can fly over with your Thopter and drop in the Hammer after blocks, rendering the “loses flying” part of the card irrelevant for at least one bout of combat. As well as enabling the free equipping that the deck needs, Puresteel Paladin is a real engine in the deck, using all your cheap zero and one mana artifacts to draw into any combo pieces you’re missing – and it carries the hammer pretty well in a pinch too.

I knew I wanted to pick out something from this deck to talk about today, but foil Colossus Hammers have all but disappeared and Steelshaper’s Gift is well overdue a reprint. Puresteel Paladin, however, has just seen a reprint in Double Masters and the foils are looking real tasty. Original foils from New Phyrexia are up over $20, but the 2XM version is still down at $6 – and there aren’t actually many left sitting around. Only 19 listings on TCGPlayer (and almost all are single copies) means that I think this is due for a correction fairly soon, especially if the deck keeps picking up steam.

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.

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