Casual Fridays

Zendikar’s Presents To Me

Yes, I realize we’re two weeks away from Halloween but I have a whole bunch of things I can’t wait to buy from Zendikar Rising. I tend to think of this as presents to my future self, because past Cliff is a very thoughtful and value-conscious person.

Some of these cards have hit their bottom, and others have a little farther to fall. Let’s get into it, shall we?

Agadeem’s Awakening (Extended Art Foil) – Currently available at $30ish, this is my favorite pick of the set. I’ve already put one into every Commander deck with black cards, and I’m hoping to get a playset for $100 before Thanksgiving. Of all the mythic double-faced cards, I think this one is the best for Commander, because it’s exactly what that format craves: An early land when needed, and a huge ten-mana overwhelming card advantage play late in the game. 

These were preselling as high as $80, and while there’s janky ‘Oops! All Spells!’ decks in Modern/Historic/Pioneer, those are not going to drive the long-term growth of this card. I felt good about buying personal copies at $30, and I’d feel ecstatic if I could get in at $25 for this. Right now, there’s 43 vendors with NM copies on TCG, and only three of them have four or more. That’s not a lot of copies. 

Turntimber Symbiosis (EA Foil) – You can get this for $27 or so, and it’s splashier than the black version, but this is a ‘get one card off the top’ versus ‘get a bunch back’ and I know where I’d rather be. This is better than a forest, clearly, and a good Commander card, which is why you should play it. Again, there are fun decks that work like a glass cannon and play this (especially this one and the red one, which can start the party with Manamorphose and its friends) but Commander is where the demand is. On TCG, there’s only one person with 4+ copies, so there’s a similar demand profile. I want to get a few of these for decks, and a few more for down the road. 

Nahiri, Heir of the Ancients (Borderless Foil) – At about $8, I’m a pretty big fan of this. It’s the most chase version of a card that slots very easily into the R/W equipment decks out there. Doesn’t matter which Commander you have for the deck, it’s got red and white and therefore should have this card. You’re picking up a card that is awesome in a popular archetype for future gains in value. Thank me later.

Ruin Crab (Showcase Foil) – Right now, you can buy this for just under $2, and it won’t be that way forever. Mill cards are eternally popular, and luckily, this says ‘each opponent.’ Is it a tough sell in Commander to mill everyone out? Sure, but people are building Bruvac the Grandiloquent because we all have our dreams and we all have to chase them. This is a big big upgrade from Hedron Crab, and fits perfectly into the theme that people want to have. I’m hoping that these become cheaper by the end of the year, though I doubt they will fall as low as $1. At the first sign of an uptick in price, or when Zendikar Rising’s season ends, I’m jumping in.

Scute Swarm (Showcase Foil) – On TCG, these can be had in the $5 range, and for a card that grows at an exponential rate, that’s pretty sweet. There’s a lot of combos with a card like this, and while a horde of 1/1 creatures is pretty fragile, it’s also awesome. Commander is much more about the awesome than the effective, so i’m fully expecting these to start steady growth once they reach bottom. Five bucks seems like a good buy-in for a card that promises to be popular in decks that play lands.

Archon of Emeria (Extended Art Foil) – Also in the $5 range, this is more speculative. This is the card that control decks want to lay down, because that one-spell-per-person is a humdinger, letting you counter their single spell with a big grin. The nonbasic clause is a rough one in Commander, too. I can see this rising nicely over time, but this is one I am waiting patiently on. At five dollars this isn’t too appealing, but if it slides to $4 or even $3, I am much more interested.

Thieving Skydiver (Extended Art Foil) – For about $12, you can get the best thief of mana rocks since Thada Adel. Yes, you can steal a Mana Crypt, the kicker can’t be zero, not the artifact’s cost. It’s embarrassingly easy to snag an artifact in Commander with this. Feel free to yoink artifact lands, Signets, and any number of sweet artifact creatures. Do note that it only costs one mana to steal a Hangarback Walker or Walking Ballista either, and you’ll get a retweet from me if you show off that you stole a Colossus of some kind. 

This being $12 already indicates that people are clearly playing the card, preventing extras from going into circulation. Please note that it’s no good with flicker effects, but if you’re playing Crystal Shard or other self-bounce, you’ll be in heaven.

The Expeditions (foil and nonfoil) – I don’t think you should be buying these yet. They are cheaper than they were a month ago at premier and we haven’t gotten to max supply. If you want to get personal copies, I’m for that, but I think that just about all the Expeditions haven’t reached max supply. Wizards is behind on a lot of its orders, as we see with Commander Legends, and that tells me not to buy yet. 

The right time to buy in quantity is not quite yet. I would respect if you saw the downward line and decided to nab a playset or two, but recognize that you’re not at the bottom of the valley yet. There’s too much unopened product out there and too many other places for fetchland announcements.

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: Upgrade Your Gray Matter

Readers,

I’m a huge shill for EDHREC, a website you should and probably are using for MtG Finance research. I think I’ve spent the better part of a decade making the case for the site as a tool for financiers. It is not in my capacity as a shill that I come to you today with a technique you need to learn, however. No, I come to you today to help you get the most out of this tool by showing you something I do every time precons are released. We did technically get some new precons and while they’re Kirkland brand compared to the typical EDH precons we’re used to, they’re… kinda not that bad. They’re jammed with quality reprints that blew out some of my specs (who called Admonition Angel and Angry Omnath in a $20 deck? Not this guy…), Not only that, the commanders really aren’t that bad at all. This was a good way to make some commanders that work well with the set without having to worry if they were too good or too weird for Standard.

If you look at the page for Anowon, for example, you see the average list, which can be confusing. What on there was reprinted in the precon? How many of those cards are overrepresented due to the precon effect? It’s not super easy to figure that out, sometimes. Luckily, EDHREC doesn’t just scrape data, we analyze it a bit, and we compare the list of the precon to the average list after we have a few weeks of data and the cards that are missing from either list tells us a lot. If there are cards in the precon that are missing from a lot of the registered list, we can tell that people are cutting that card. If there are cards that show up in a lot of the finished decks that aren’t in the precon, we can tell people are adding the card. Like, this sounds obvious, but aren’t you glad someone is automating that process? When there is some data to look at, we generate a “Precon upgrade” page which says what people are adding and what people are cutting.

This page is full of useful information and while we might not have enough to do a full article treatment on, we can look at both decks to see if anything sticks out. Knowing that this tool is available is good for anyone who uses EDHREC data for speculating. Let’s take a look in depth.

It’s VERY basic. The categories are “Cards to Add,” “Lands to Add,” “Cards to Cut,” and “Lands to Cut”. It’s a lot to take in at a glance, but they did the favor of sorting it by the percentage of decks that either made the cut or addition. That means the top-left card, Reconnaissance Mission, was added the most. The first cards you see when you glance at the list are the most important and they get less so as you go on. That helps you figure out what matters quickly. If we’d done this sooner, we may have caught a few of these ships before they sailed.

The cards that were cut don’t matter a TON but they’re good to know. They’re not that relevant financially because “don’t buy this” isn’t as good advice as “buy this” and if you want advice, just buy the “buy this” stuff. If you have the stuff and want to get out because people aren’t playing it, well, it’s kind of too late because the card just got reprinted. I guess if you thought that it seeing play might bring the price back up, it’s good to be disabused of that notion (be kicked in the ribs as you cling to hope, the signature mood of 2020).

Let’s look at what’s getting added.

Not gonna lie, I missed this one and it stings. I touted this as a spec many, many moons ago and when it never went anywhere, I lost faith in my ability to assess Magic cards. What I should have done was reassess my ability to be patient and believe in myself. You’d think I’d learn that. If you listened to me when I said to buy these and didn’t sell them when you got bored of them doing nothing, congrats on the twelve-up. These are gone under $6 – don’t let Channel Fireball pretending to have them for $0.60 fool you – these are goneso.

Anowon and Zareth San both coming down at the same time gave a lot of people a lot of chances to play this and adding the Monarch to games of EDH is fun and a good thing. I liked a lot of the Monarch cards and it took them so long I figured I was just a Timmy and didn’t know anything anymore. Nope, just years ahead of the curve. Remember, there are no failed specs, merely longer-term specs. Ask Travis Allen about that one when he had to stop messaging me every 6 months to make fun of me for recommending people buy Clerics in like 2016.

We get to see what Thornbite Staff’s price would have done if it was a real card and not an illusory, obvious spec based on a Vannifar deck that never materialized. I suspect this hits $5.

Welp. Focused too much on the most-built EDH decks to catch this one before it was too late. I even wrote an article where I combined all of the Green decks into one deck. Should have combined all of the evasion creature Blue Black Rogues-matters decks into one. Congrats on the quadruple up if you caught this in time. I should really write an article every day for two weeks when a set comes out and then take 3 months off.

Ever wanted to watch a reprint get shaken off in real time? This returns to its former glory days of $5 and I was getting these in bulk from people who drafted Iconic Masters. Don’t sleep on Timmy cards, folks. Timmy has money and isn’t afraid to buy 4 copies of EDH staples for 63 card, unsleeved decks to play at a kitchen table. Timmy is my hero.

Got a feeling there will be some goodies in here, too. Green is an EDH staple color, so we may need to dig a bit deeper, but there are specs here, and maybe they didn’t all pop already like they did in Anowon.

This is a high price for a “secret reprint” card that was in the Dovin, Architect of Law Planeswalker deck. Yeah, bet you didn’t know about THAT! Try playing prereleases at a cool LGS who gives you Planeswalker decks as prize packs when you go 3-0. There are packs in those decks, you can sell the Planeswalker, you can sell the code so people can redeem the Planeswalker on Arena and you can get a free copy of this card and watch it creep up to $4 and stay there. A non-mythic rare with a reprint the same month it came out and it’s creeping up? This card is the truth.

Mystery Boosters did major harm to the perception of this card’s price but not to its demand. This will rebound and it will do so very precipitously and I will write in an article “This took so long I lost faith in my ability to judge when a reprint would be shaken off and I didn’t buy any of these” except I will probably buy some of these because this card is good as long as Green decks put extra lands into play, which is forever.

These are too cheap.

This card is insane and people are overlooking that fact. Anything that was considered for a ban in Standard can be $10 after a year or two of brisk EDH play, so sayeth 75% guy.

What do we think? Was it super useful to you to see cards people are jamming into the precons? A lot of them have started to go up already, making me think we’re onto something here. Join me next week where I’ll shill harder for a site I very publicly work for, which isn’t technically shilling since a shill is someone who pretends not to be affiliated and I’m not doing that but people used it wrong for so long that it just means whatever people want, like how the word literally can mean what figuratively means, also, because ultimately none of this matters, the sun is cooking our planet alive anyway good night. Until next time!

Watchtower

The Watchtower 10/12/20 – Dodging Commander Legends

In the never-ending onslaught of product being fed to us by WotC, Commander Legends previews start today. We already know that we’re getting a LOT of new legendary creatures and planeswalkers here (71 new ones, to be precise), along with a tonne of “oft-asked-for” reprints as well. I’ve no doubt that we’re going to see some big hitters reprinted here – things like Imperial Seal, Mana Vault, Cabal Coffers; as well as some slightly less pricey crowd favourites like Rhystic Study and Smothering Tithe.

Today I’m going to be taking a swing at some great EDH cards that I don’t think we’ll see reprinted in Commander Legends. We may have already seen some cards previewed by the time I publish this article, so let’s hope I don’t screw it up eh?

Narset’s Reversal (Foil)

Price today: $10
Possible price: $20

I don’t want to be too ‘safe’ with my picks today, but at the same time I don’t want to go off the rails and pick a bunch of cards that are highly likely to see a reprint in Commander Legends next month. Having said that, I think that Narset’s Reversal is a fairly safe bet here, and I also think that this is going to be your last chance to get foils under or around $10 for a fair while.

This is a Remand and Redirect rolled into one, all for the low cost of only two mana – efficient and powerful; something that EDH players (especially blue mages) can’t resist. The EDHREC numbers back that up, with it being the second most popular card from War of the Spark on raw numbers (just a touch behind Narset, Parter of Veils), and polling sixth on percentage inclusion. 

It’s worth noting here that WAR was the last set before WotC increased the foil drop rate in booster packs, so your foil Narset’s Reversals are going to be more rare than subsequent foil rares. TCGPlayer has some foils at $10, but not many copies before listings start hitting $15 and up. There are some cheaper copies if you take a look at the FNM promo pack foils, but supply on those is pretty low as well. Although it’s a popular card, I don’t think that this is enough of an EDH staple or household name yet to warrant a reprint in Commander Legends, and it’s not as if it’s a prohibitively expensive card, so it should be good for a little run yet. I can see foils hitting $20 within the 6 month mark, and could potentially go even higher than that before a reprint.

Morphic Pool (Foil EXP)

Price today: $37
Possible price: $60

Commander Legends is giving us the second half of the cycle of Battlebond Duals, which come into play untapped if you’re playing EDH you have two or more opponents. I feel fairly secure in saying that they’re close to auto-includes in any two-or-more-colour EDH deck (budget allowing of course), with the only downside being that they’re not fetchable. The non-green ones (Morphic Pool, Sea of Clouds, Luxury Suite) have always been more popular, as those colours don’t have as much access to the easy ramp and colour-fixing that green is allowed to play with. Morphic Pool is the clear winner though, included in four thousand more decks than the next best dual from the set.

Original Battlebond foils of Morphic Pool are around $50 now, but the new foil Expedition versions from Zendikar Rising are priced down at $37. The Expeditions are assuredly the ‘better’ version, so one of these prices is wrong – and I’m willing to bet it’s the Expeditions. Supply is very low on original foils which does help to keep the price high, but if someone’s choosing between the two for their deck then almost all of the time they’re going to go for the cheaper foil with better art and a cooler border.

People are selling these to try and recoup costs from cracking Collector Boosters, but that $37 price tag won’t last too long. Collector Boosters are the only place that you can find the foil Expeditions, and although it’s a higher print run than normal the market on them isn’t really that deep: 48 listings on TCGPlayer and almost all are singleton copies. It’s basically 100% that we won’t see these lands in Commander Legends due to the other half of the cycle being in there, let alone with the Expedition frame – and I bet it’s going to be quite a while before we see another similar premium version of these lands. Morphic Pool is my top pick here, but Sea of Clouds and Luxury Suite are good hits too around $24 and $22 respectively.

Drannith Magistrate (EA Foil)

Price today: $17
Possible price: $35

You’d think that the Triomes from Ikoria take the top five slots for the set on EDHREC, right? Well, going by percentage inclusion you’d be right. But on raw numbers, Drannith Magistrate actually beats out all but Ketria and Zagoth Triomes, coming in at 6282 decks listed. I was fairly surprised by this, but it makes sense the more you think about it. There aren’t a lot of white decks that don’t want to be playing this card in EDH – it does a whole lot for a little 2 mana creature.

Aside from stopping people from casting their commanders (ya know, the whole thing the format’s about?) Drannith Magistrate also stops any kind of shenanigans with casting cards from graveyards or from exile (looking at you, Narset). That’s a powerful effect to bring to the table, and it might just draw out a removal spell whenever it lands, but if you can protect it then it’s going to put a spanner in the works of a lot of peoples’ plans.

EA foils are starting to run thin on the ground, down to 27 listings on TCGPlayer starting from $17. Again it’s mostly singleton copies, and so won’t take much to move the price fairly rapidly. Over in Europe you can still grab copies around $14, but supply isn’t exactly deep there either. I think that this is going to end up a relative staple for a lot of white decks, so don’t hang around too long on these – and if you want any personal copies then now is the time to grab them!

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

Double The Floor, Double the Value!

Yes, we are neck-deep in Zendikar Rising (The Age of Omnath?) and we’re getting Commander Legends previews starting soon.

It’s crazy that we’re getting those previews even though the set itself is delayed a bit. It’s going to be a super frantic period, as all the legends cause all sorts of spikes and drops. Be prepared for that.

However, there’s a different set of opportunities available to us right now: Double Masters is probably near its bottom, now that we are two months past the release. A lot of the value is in the VIP boosters, the Box Toppers in foil and nonfoil. A lot of the future value is yet to be gained, though, and that’s because these are reprints of staples that will go back up.

It’s time to buy low, before we sell high.

Remember that this set has double the rares, two per pack, and two foils per regular pack. I’m going to focus on the nonfoils for a specific reason: I hate storing large quantities of foils due to curling. The prices of foils and nonfoils have become very close, thanks to the increased foil drop rate and the high-end focus on Extended Art and Box Toppers. If you’d prefer to focus on foils, I don’t think that’s wrong, I just have my preference. 

One more caveat that applies to all of these: Commander Legends is likely to have some of these as well. Since these are staples, there’s a chance to buy in when the price is even lower! The other case is, if it’s not printed, then it’s going to go up quickly as people build new decks.

Cyclonic Rift ($17) – This was $40 earlier in the year, and might hit $10 if it’s reprinted again this year. I hope it does, because that’s super easy money. This is as staple as staple gets, being in 40% of decks that can run it, 82,000 decks registered online. I don’t think I need to tell you how good it is. The card was $5ish for the longest time, thanks to regular reprints: Commander 2014, Modern Masters 2017, and now Double Masters. 

Cyclonic Rift is a very good Commander card that can’t be reprinted enough for the demand that exists. Just about every blue deck ought to run it, and most do. You have to decide what you’re going to do, though, before we find out about if it’s in Commander Legends or not: prepare to buy at this price, or prepare to buy in around the first of the year. Rift was never a mythic, always a rare, with regular supply injections. It’ll hit $40 again eventually.

Mana Reflection ($10) – First of all, there’s about a $10 gap between the Shadowmoor version and the 2XM version. It’s not the old frame, so that’s purely price memory. Secondly, there’s a big gap between cards that do the same thing when it comes to EDHREC: 

I’ll give you that the card draw is a big game when is comes to Zendikar Resurgent, and yes, Wake is one mana less, but for the longest time Mana Reflection just wasn’t available for under $30, and that put a damper in the number of people who added it to decks. Wake and Resurgent were very good and loads cheaper. Mana Reflection is a very good card, and one that people will start adding to decks now that it’s cheaper, but it won’t stay there for long. Remember that this doubles the output of all your permanents, where the other two enchantments are just one extra mana for lands only. A card that was this limited in supply is expected to take a dive, but once it’s featured someplace, it’ll at least climb to $20 and match the original printing.

Doubling Season ($40) – Let’s look at a graph, which shows how resilient this card is to reprints: 

Every time this has been printed, it’s made a comeback. I’d understand if you didn’t want to spec on the card, given that it’s a $40 buy-in, but what you should do, at the very least, is get the copies you’ll personally be using. Now is a good time to get in on the Box Topper in foil or nonfoil, if that’s an art/style you prefer. I like the regulars because it’s still a mythic and it’s the cheapest copy of an effect you can’t get anywhere else. Grab the ones you need, plus one or two, so that when you build a new deck you don’t feel dumb paying an extra $20.

Walking Ballista ($8) – Let’s see, I wonder if a Secret Lair printing and the 2XM printing at once affected the price:

Oh look, it’s a glorious buying opportunity for all of us. It’s up to you if you prefer the Secret Lair art (I gloriously do, but to each their own) but you can snag this for $8 when it was $25 at the beginning of the year. It’s an easy way to deal infinite damage off of infinite mana, but it’s also good with a lot of other synergies. Being in 14k Commander decks online helps a lot with that.

Again, I like picking up the cheapest versions, but you can raid TCG for the Secret Lair versions that are under $25. That seems quite solid to me as well, considering that the initial rush had these as high as $60. Patience, as always, pays off in Magic finance.

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.

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