Watchtower

The Watchtower 09/14/20 – Looking For Lows

Zendikar Rising release is just around the corner, and now that we’ve had the full set spoiled – sorry, previewed – I want to take a look at some of the best cards from the set that I want to be finding low points to buy in at. Because of the fact that we have non-foil Expeditions as box toppers in every box, that’s going to suck up a decent amount of EV and push regular card prices down, and as with Battle for Zendikar I expect that this is going to be a highly opened set, crushing prices even further – but that just means better opportunities to buy cards.

I think there are going to be a load of good targets here and I’m itching to spend money on this set, but need to be patient for the most part and wait for peak supply on the big hits. I’m going to focus on just a few of (what I think are) the best ones here and set my entry targets, but will be keeping a close eye on prices so that I can start buying when things bottom out.

I’m not going to waste your time here talking about the super-obvious targets from Zendikar Rising like the Pathway duals and Lithoform Engine, but instead I’ll go the next level down and talk about some of the best cards you might have missed. There are plenty more that I don’t have the space to write about here, but I’m sure I’ll hit on a few in the future. Oh, and for context, I’m talking about all these cards from an EDH standpoint.

Thieving Skydiver

Target buy price: $1
Possible future price: $4

This isn’t one of the big splashy mythics, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m quite excited about this card. There are very few blue EDH decks that I can’t see this having a place in, because low cost mana rocks are perhaps the cornerstone that most EDH decks are built on. Being able to steal a Sol Ring, Mana Crypt or Mana Vault for only three mana and getting a semi-relevant body alongside that is just so much value – and the best part? You don’t even lose the artifact when Skydiver dies. You just get to keep it. You could even steal a Skullclamp and kill your Skydiver straight away just to make a point. It’s the perfect way to punish that player that seems to always have the turn one Sol Ring and turn that to your advantage, whilst hopefully not painting too big a target on your own head.

Currently preordering for around $3 on TCG and €2 on MKM, I think that this has the chance to get down close to $1. I doubt that many people are going to be picking this up for competitive play, and at a rare I don’t think it’ll quite hit bulk status but it should get lower than its current price at peak supply. I’m looking to pick a stack of these up and find a buylist exit in 12-24 months, and will probably grab some of the EA foils when they bottom out too (hoping for around $10 or lower on those but really can’t say for sure right now).

Ashaya, Soul of the Wild

Target buy price: $5
Possible future price: $10

Now this one is much closer to a big splashy mythic than Skydiver, and has an interesting new effect on it. We’ve had plenty of cards in the past that turn Forests (or other lands) into creatures, but the closest we’ve got to turning your creatures into lands before now was Life and Limb, which only worked for Saprolings (and turned your lands into creatures too which is always a very dangerous thing to do in EDH). Effectively tacking a Llanowar Elves onto all your non-token creatures makes for a serious amount of ramp, and as well as that Ashaya is probably going to be a 6/6 or bigger most of the time. I think that this is a powerful card that’s going to slot into a lot of green decks, and EDHREC is already backing that up, showing it as 2nd most popular card from the set so far.

TCG preorders for Ashaya are silly high and spread thin right now, but over in Europe these are going for €4 already. I don’t know if it gets lower than that really, especially in the US where EDH demand is much higher than in Europe, so I’m quite happy to pick these up around that mark and just buy more if they go any lower. I’d be a little less excited about this if it were a rare, but at mythic I feel like demand is going to be strong enough to push this card up towards $10 in around 12 months, maybe less.

Moraug, Fury of Akoum (Showcase Foil)

Target buy price: $15
Possible future price: $30

We’re definitely into splashy mythic territory now, and WOW is this card good. Reasonable stats as a 6 mana 6/6, but the Landfall ability on Moraug is pretty wild. Whenever you trigger Landfall you get an extra combat step, and your creatures all untap and get buffed for each extra one. So play a fetchland, and you get 3 total combat steps. Got something that lets you play extra lands? There’s a good chance that everyone else at the table is going to be dead by the end of your turn.

I don’t think that this is going to be hugely built as a commander because all the extra land effects you really want to be playing are in green, but I do think that this is going to end up in a lot of RG+ decks as a really strong finisher. Imagine dropping this with an extra land or two the turn after you play an Avenger of Zendikar!

I’m specifically calling out the showcase foils here because the showcase art is honestly stunning, and so I think a lot of players will be drawn to it over the normal version, but I like picking regular copies up if they fall to around $5 as well. As with all my picks today, these are already available way cheaper in Europe if you have access to that market – and if you don’t, then watch out for one of the group buys coming soon in the MTGPrice Protrader Discord…

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 Mythics of Zendikar Rising (part 2)

Last week I got into the mythics some, and we’ve gotten the whole set revealed now, including the eleven mythics we didn’t know about last week. So let’s see what’s worth a preorder!

Please keep in mind that I’m talking about the regular nonfoils here, not the Showcase versions or the foils.

Tazri, Beacon of Unity ($3) – Ouch. I think this Tazri is overshadowed as a Commander by the original, which let you go find the Ally you needed most, rather than needing mana to look at the top cards and hope there’s two Allies in there. The ability is good, but $3 in preorder season is a pretty clear indicator that this will be bulk pretty quick, barring some amazing synergies that sets will bring in the next two years.

Ancient Greenwarden ($24) – Currently the most expensive Z3 card, because players are going absolutely bonkers to acquire this for whatever Landfall shenanigans they want. Double Field of the Dead triggers? Don’t mind if I do. Twice the Valakut damage? Seems legit. I don’t think this will hold as the most expensive card long-term, but the combination of value engines that this offers is hard to ignore in Commander.

Forsaken Monument ($12) – This is a Caged Sun for colorless decks, and those are the decks capabel of some truly degenerate things. It’s yet another combo card for Basalt Monolith to generate infinite mana, but mostly this will get used to empower mana rocks all over the place. Please don’t overlook that this card is likely to bump Honor-Worn Shaku again, making that card tap for two colorless per legendary permanent–and this one is legendary! I think $12 is an almost-decent get-in price, but again, I’m being patient and letting the early adopters spend the big money first. I’d prefer to get copies between $8 and $10.

Leyline Tyrant ($14) – It’s a 4/4 flyer for four that’s got two different upsides. Neither is easy to exploit on its own, but the two abilities synergize really well. If they kill the dragon, then they suffer the death trigger for whatever mana you were building up. There’s some neat things to do with this, and I’ll enjoy seeing people try to build around Irencrag Feat, but this is a middling mythic at best and the price will fall by about half. Stay away for a while.

Lithoform Engine ($23) – We know that Rings of Brighthearth has quite a history: 

That history is buoyed by there only being one printing in Lorwyn, and then an Invention. Yes, the engine is restricted to one use a turn (unless there’s an untap trigger being copied) but the flexibility is truly impressive here, even down to copying permanent spells. Those are creatures, enchantments, artifacts, you name it. Don’t go copying legendary things, though. This flexibility is powerful but still requires a focus, and a tax of two extra mana. I wouldn’t be shocked if this was $20 around Valentine’s Day, but I’m expecting it to fall to $15 after the initial rush cools off.

Moraug, Fury of Akoum ($19) – Using a fetchland to get two extra attacks is good, there’s a whole lot of combos you can work out to get a landfall trigger in each main phase you get and I’m expecting a whole lot of Moraug builds to show up on EDHREC soon. That’s not going to be enough to keep this price this high, and a drop to $12 or less is coming.

Scourge of the Skyclaves ($10) – Don’t look at this as a Death’s Shadow that’s been both fixed and upgraded. Think of this instead as an enabler for Nethroi, Apex of Death decks: because this has a negative power, you can use it to bring back a whole lot more with Nethroi’s Mutate trigger. That’s a niche case, but it’s a cool niche case, and Commander players are addicted to such things. This about the right price, given the assorted use-cases, which includes the kicker as a one-shot kill with other ‘half your life’ effects.

Agadeem’s Awakening // Agadeem, the Undercrypt ($8 or so from what I see) – I mentioned last week that I love these modal spell/land cards. It’s hard for me to imagine a card I want more in Commander: It’s either a land early, which Commander decks can never have enough of, or it’s an eleven-mana, reanimate-five-giant-beasts spell. That’s the best kind of modal spell, something that’s good early (the land, can even be untapped if needed) or good as a late topdeck. I’m pretty convinced that these mythic lands have a long-term home in Commander, as they are generally too expensive a spell to be good in Standard, but I’d want the prices to come down a little before I buy in. I’m hoping this falls as far as $5 so I can purchase a large amount.

Sea Gate Restoration // Sea Gate, Reborn ($9) – The modes are pretty far apart, but I’d prefer if the spell side was just ‘draw four cards’ or something. As a topdeck, it’s pretty lame, but this is still an improvement over your ordinary Island. This is too high a price, and I expect it to drop to $5 or less, and I’ll have to do a lot of thinking then about buying in.

Shatterskull Smashing // Shatterskull, the Hammer Pass ($6) – If this could hit players, this would be one of the greatest cards ever. As it is now, it’s decent to fair, which isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement. I’d be happy with this card if the spell side was a five-mana Lightning Bolt, but this X spell is a good grab off the top to deal with several problems on the board. Six bucks feels about right.

Turntimber Symbiosis // Turntimber, Serpentine Wood ($15) – This is instantly a staple in Green Commander decks. You up your land count by one when needed or have a big spell to slam down. The top seven should be good to you, and even if your only hit is a small one, you get an upgrade! There’s almost no feel-bads with this card, which is a rare thing. I won’t be shocked if this starts to go up immediately and keeps climbing from there. I can’t wait to stock up on assorted versions of this card.

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: Stapling 3 Decks Together

Readers!

I’m going to do that thing where I compare 3 decklists to see if anything pops out. If you’re new to the series, I’ll explain later. If you’re old to the series, you’ll be happy to know that article you all try to make fun of me for is like 10/10 this week. There are no misses, only longer-term specs. Enjoy buylisting foil Edgewalker for $30 in a week.

EDHREC has some preliminary data from early birds making decks on Archidekt and Moxfield and not TappedOut. If you’re still using TappedOut, stop. Switch to Archidekt or Moxfield or Deckstats or Aetherhub. This data is early, but it does counter a pervasive (unsubstantiated) opinion among finance people who may or may not play EDH that “no one is excited about Omnath and it’s the Cleric card that’s exciting,” something I’ve seen more than once and I’m paraphrasing here. That might be the case later, but for right now, I don’t see much evidence that Omnath is unpopular. In fact,

It would appear that Omnath has some serious juice at the moment. He was anticipated and spoiled a little ahead of some of the rest but he’s being built 28 times as often as Taborax at the moment.

The thing is, it’s somewhat irrelevant whether Omnath is built more than Taborax or any other commander over the next few months. What IS relevant is whether the cards in Omnath go up as a result of how much it is built. cEDH players are somewhat interested in Omnath as they are in any commander that says “When [name] enters the battlefield, draw a card” because they can build Food Chain, which is one of three things they like to do. Looking into cEDH builds seems irrelevant because every card in those decks is already expensive and every deck in those colors is the same. If they have a 5 color Food Chain deck, they don’t get to play Demonic Tutor. If they had a 3 color Food Chain deck, now they get to play Enlightened Tutor. I’m not saying cEDH isn’t fun or valid, but I am saying everything financially relevant is already expensive and won’t go up on the basis of a new commander.

Great, you devoted a whole paragraph to what not to buy. Super great advice, Jason.

Hang on, nerds, I never said I wasn’t going to tell you what to buy, damn. The thing is, I think we’re forgetting something fairly major here, and that is that most of the Green commanders in this set are really samey. There’s a landfall one, a landfall one and a lands one. Will Taborax or Orah or Linvala even get played more than Omnath? Maybe. Will any one commander be built more than the total number of Omnath, Ashaya and Phylath decks? Not likely. That means anything in all 3 decks is bound to matter.

I outlined a process in a previous article a process where I use a list comparison tool to look at 3 lists of cards and spit out which cards are in 2 of the lists or all 3. I think Yasharn is dissimilar enough from the other 3 Green commanders to exclude it for now but boy, the other 3 don’t have a ton of daylight between them beyond differing color identities. I think the best specs will be in all 3 decks because that is bound to be very significant and we might find some cards that aren’t already expensive.

Ashaya looks like it has a bit more consensus on what to include, but if you’ll notice, the more colors, the more cards in the lists. That makes sense, if 84 people are building a 4 color deck, there’s no way there will be as much consensus as with 13 people building a 1-color deck. This will weight the Ashaya cards fairly heavily, but with more Omnath decks, we can sort of call it a wash. Remember, we’re not looking at how much each card is played, merely at which cards are in all 3 decks.

Avenger of Zendikar
Azusa
Beast Within
Crop Rotation
Crucible of Worlds
Cultivate
Eternal Witness
Exploration
Field of the Dead
Finale of Devastation
Gaea’s Cradle
Genesis Wave
Green Sun’s Zenith
Heroic Intervention
Kodama’s Reach
Krosan Grip
Lightning Greaves
Lost but Seeking
Lotus Cobra
Misty Rainforest
Myriad Landscape
Nature’s Claim
Nature’s Lore
Nissa
Oakhame Adversary
Overwhelming Stampede
Prismatic Vista
Rampaging Baloths
Ramunap Excavator
Regrowth
Return of the Wildspeaker
Sakura-Tribe Elder
Skyshroud Claim
Snow-Covered Forest
Sol Ring
Springbloom Druid
Sylvan Library
Tireless Tracker
Veil of Summer
Verdant Catacombs
Wayward Swordtooth
Who Shakes the World
Windswept Heath
Wooded Foothills
Worldly Tutor
Zendikar Resurgent
Zendikar’s Roil

Check your findings! This should go without saying, but when you’re doing analysis like this and ESPECIALLY when you’re doing analysis using tools that weren’t designed for Magic cards specifically, you’ll have some quirks. The list says “Nissa” is in all 3 decks, but if you go back to the pages for each commander, Ashaya uses Nissa, Worldwaker, Phylath uses Nissa, Voice of Zendikar and Nissa, Who Shakes the World and Omnath uses Nissa, Vital Force, Nissa, Who Shakes the World and Nissa, Steward of Elements. So much for a consensus! “Nissa” doesn’t belong on the list, although Nissa, Who Shakes the World is in 2 of the decks.

This card is very good and it’s going to be in a lot of good decks going forward, it’s not super likely to get reprinted per se and it keeps getting cheaper. If you’ve played with this walker, you know how absurd it is. I use it in 3 color Omnath and it does work. That emblem wins the game if you get it and tapping Forests for double is absurd. If there were more Ashaya decks, surely Nissa, Who Shakes the World would be in the mix. I like this when it finishes getting cheap, although close to $3 for a useful ‘walker has to be close to the floor if it’s not reprinted.

Card Kingdom wants almost $6 for this card and they’ll get it, trust me, which means that $3.75 on Channel Fireball, a site where their subscribers are given store credit every month and encouraged to use it, won’t last long. It doesn’t take much to clean out their inventory.

So even though this isn’t on all 3 lists, it’s only missing from the deck where it’s the best and I don’t expect it to not start showing up in a mono-Green deck. I like this under $4 a lot and I think it could hit $10 but it definitely hits $8.

This isn’t a good spec, now, I just want you to see how adept Lotus Cobra is at shaking off reprints. It’s never been reprinted in a set with a ton of good cards and Expedition box-topppers, though, but when this price craters, and believe me, it’s going to crater, there might be some money to be made. Cobra is good in a lot of EDH decks and if it’s like a buck, there’s no question there’s upside. It being reprinted at non-mythic rare is a blow, but if you’re not holding any copies, who cares how cheap it gets? Just buy in and you’ll probably be able to buylist them for like $5 in two years.

This card reminds me of another card that never got above $1 for this first year and I was buying copies at the LGS because they were 2 for $1 there and I had store credit. The card never broke $1 on any site and I just sat there waiting and waiting, wondering if I even understood mtg finance anymore. I came up with all sorts of reasons why the price was stagnant and when it finally hit $2, I sold a lot of them for a mere double-up, keeping fewer than $20 copies. Here’s a graph of that card.

Return of the Wildspeaker is doing the same thing Rishkar’s Expertise did and this time I know better than to doubt myself.

Rishkar’s Expertise has been out 3 times as long as Return of the Wildspeaker and is in two times as many decks. Does it logically follow that Return is therefore currently overachieving? No, but it’s worth thinking about in those terms. Can you see Return’s graph doing what Expertise’s graph did? Imagine Throne of Eldraine as a set once it rotates out of Standard. The value has to go somewhere and I think it’s super reasonable to picture a scenario where a version of Return of the Wildspeaker is $9 on Card Kingdom. What can we expect to buylist it for in that case?

Hot damn.

It’s hard for me to picture a scenario where Wayward Swordtooth isn’t in Commander Legends. If it’s not, this is a $20 card before there’s even a chance to reprint it. I don’t like paying $15 for a $20 card, so if you can snag those 4 Euro copies on Card Market, go for it.

$4 HAS to be the floor on this formerly $15 card. This can very easily hit $10.

This was all mono-Green stuff, obviously. Would you like some homework? Read over the list of common cards between Phylath and Omnath and post your favorite spec in the comments section here or in the MTG Price Discord.

Arcane Signet
Arid Mesa
Ashaya
Blasphemous Act
Blighted Woodland
Bloodstained Mire
Broken Bond
Budoka Gardener
Burgeoning
Chaos Warp
Command Tower
Constant Mists
Courser of Kruphix
Dryad of the Ilysian Grove
Escape to the Wilds
Evolving Wilds
Explosive Vegetation
Fabled Passage
Farseek
Fury of Akoum
Gamble
Garruk’s Uprising
Gruul Turf
Harrow
Heart of Keld
Horn of Greed
Khalni Heart Expedition
Life from the Loam
Locus of Rage
Migration Path
Mina and Denn
Moraug
Noxious Revival
Omnath
Oracle of Mul Daya
Radha
Rampant Growth
Rhythm of the Wild
Sakura-Tribe Scout
Scalding Tarn
Scapeshift
Seer’s Sundial
Snow-Covered Mountain
Soul of the Wild
Spitfire Lagac
Splendid Reclamation
Stomping Ground
Strip Mine
Swiftfoot Boots
Sylvan Awakening
Taiga
Temur Sabertooth
Terramorphic Expanse
Tunneling Geopede
Valakut
Valakut Exploration
Wildborn
Wrenn and Six
the Molten Pinnacle

That does it for me, everyone. Thanks so much for reading. Until next time!

Watchtower

The Watchtower 09/07/20 – The List That Must Not Be Named

2 Comments

Over the past couple of months we’ve been seeing another wave of Reserved List spikes, and although some of them make sense due to demand, mostly from EDH, (Mox Diamond, Gaea’s Cradle etc.), a lot more have just been pure speculation and targeting (Radiant, Archangel, Singing Tree etc.). I’m not here to advocate Reserved List buyouts, and I’m definitely not here to talk about whether or not the Reserved List should exist. What I am here to do is talk about which cards on the List are mostly likely to spike next due to EDH demand coupled with the ongoing Reserved List targeting, so that you can pick up anything you might want to play with before it gets really expensive, and make some money on the way up.

CE and IE Dual Lands

Prices today: $130-360
Possible price: $200-500

Collectors’ Edition and International Edition cards are a bit of an odd one. For those that don’t know, they are square-bordered cards with gold borders on the back (this is different to the gold-bordered World Championship Deck cards), printed as a Collectors’ Edition Set and not intended for tournament play. Around 10,000 Collectors’ Editions were distributed in the US and Canada, and around 5000 International Editions were distributed in Europe. They’re technically not legal anywhere, so why are CE Underground Seas $360?

There are two main factors here: these are cards for collectors; and a lot of people don’t mind you playing them in EDH and casual formats. I’ve played with an IE Scrubland in an EDH deck for a couple of years now, and nobody in any of the playgroups I’ve played with has minded me using it – anecdotal evidence, I know, but I’ve heard similar things from a lot of EDH players. They’re still official Magic cards, and so people tend to take quite a different view of them than they do with proxies. It’s also worth pointing out that in black sleeves, they’re very comparable to Beta cards because you can’t really see the square borders, and other than that they look the same, giving the Beta look whilst costing less than Revised.

As ABUR duals push upwards, these CE and IE duals remain a more affordable option for those looking to upgrade their EDH manabases, and are going to be dragged up the curve alongside their round-cornered counterparts. This is potentially an interesting arbitrage opportunity, as IE supply is very scarce in the US due to the cards never being distributed there, whereas IE and CE cards have relatively similar amounts of supply to each other in Europe. I doubt that many players in the US will pay the premium for IE over CE, but collectors looking to complete sets might.

Volrath’s Stronghold

Price today: $80
Possible price: $150

I was actually a little surprised when I checked the EDHREC numbers for Volrath’s Stronghold, and found that this was only in 8000 decks, because the power level of the card is definitely way above that. Being able to recur multiple threats from your graveyard, controlling your draw step and maybe pairing it with something like Shriekmaw makes for some real shenanigans, and definitely paints a target on you in a game of EDH.

Stronghold was a $40-50 card until this summer, and looking at a card that’s recently gone from $40 to $80 can definitely make you not want to buy it. But realistically, along with most cards like this, Volrath’s Stronghold is far from being done. There are only 13 NM listings on TCGPlayer for the card, and NM copies of the older cards are becoming more and more scarce as they’re absorbed by players, collectors and speculators alike. LP copies aren’t actually a lot cheaper at $70, so I’d definitely be buying the NM ones here.

MKM has NM copies from €55, but supply isn’t particularly deep there either. I don’t think it’ll be very long at all before we see this card over $100, and given it 6-12 months I think we’ll see $150+. After that, who knows?

Yavimaya Hollow

Price today: $80
Possible price: $150

I’m sure that Yavimaya Hollow has been talked about on the podcast and/or in articles multiple times before now, but even at $80 it’s still got room to grow. A lot of my discussion here would be similar to what I’ve just said about Volrath’s Stronghold, so I won’t spend too long on it. It’s a great utility land that should probably be in all mono-green EDH decks, and quite a lot more beyond that. Providing protection for any of your creatures from a good chunk of the removal going around in EDH is strong, and having that attached to a land and cost only 2 mana is even better.

NM copies start at $80, with LP going from $65 – looking quite similar to Volrath’s Stronghold again. MKM is actually more expensive for this one, starting at €80 for NM, but has a lot of cheaper EX copies (LP in US = EX in EU). Notably, Yavimaya Hollow does also have foil versions, being from Urza’s Destiny – the second Magic set to contain foils. Foils are super scarce, especially in decent condition, but if you can get any LP or better around $350 then I think you’re looking pretty good to ride that to $500+.

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.

MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY