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!

So I heard you like to speculate. You’re all a bunch of speculators and you love to speculate on Magic cards. You love to play your little games where you speculate on card prices like a bunch of speculators. Well speculate about THIS.

This meaning the information that leaked this week that seems fairly credible, coupled with what Maro said this week. If I can think of anything that could go up as a result, I’ll talk about it here. If you’re not happy with that, go buy basically anything on the Reserved List because enough people are doing it that it will probably work out. Who am I to judge people for doing literally the laziest thing possible?

I’m going to talk about the leaks first and then finish with Maro’s stuff. The leaks are less certain but Maro’s stuff is more vague. I can sense you pulling away. What would you have me talk about this week? Just go with it.

If this is all true, it could be pretty spectacular.

Lotus Cobra being reprinted would be sort of meh, the price wasn’t super high on it but when it bottoms out, it’s a buy-in opportunity. However, if Lotus Cobra is in the set, and it’s looking like it could be since this source is fairly credible, it confirms landfall as a mechanic. Any landfall enabler currently in an Omnath deck is in play. I suspect the new Omnath will be one of the more exciting decks to build since it will likely be 4 colors. Landfall has always been good and now we get to play with cards like Admonition Angel and Ruin Ghost, both of which I like at their current price.

Looks like Card Kingdom got the memo but other sites like CFB seem to be lagging behind a bit.

There were more of these and they were cheaper the first time I wrote about these but you can buy the last few copies under a buck. I think this is quite good in landfall decks and it goes infinite with Retreat to Coralhelm.

When people were playing Knightfall in Modern a million (or 4) years ago, this was the belle of the ball. Now it’s fallen significantly, but a card that flirted with $10 can get above it’s current “not even $2” can’t it? It’s good in landfall decks and we’re likely to get some of those.

Shadowborn Apostle seems like a trap. If it’s reprinted the price tanks and anyone buying Demons to pair with them doesn’t really understand how the deck works. You can look at how the deck is being built right now if you want but I don’t think it suddenly becomes hot again. I could be wrong, so by all means poke around the Athreos, Shirei and Razaketh (my preview card!) lists on EDHREC if you want. If you’re quick, you could end up being able to sell out to people having these same thoughts we’re having now but 2 weeks from now when something is confirmed and not holding the bag even if you’re wrong. You don’t have to be right all the time if you’re quick enough.

The Legendary Demon in the set could be a build-around or it could just make decks like Kaalia and Razaketh better. You could make money on Thrumming Stone again. I’m not personally trifling with any of it but there are plays here if you want.

I have made the mistake of thinking people were going to build tribal clerics but if the demon benefits from people saccing Clerics, they could be in play again. Edgewalker, Starlit Sanctum, all of it.

It’s sort of hard to tell if Apostle is being reprinted or if he’s speculating that they would be good in the set because of the Demon. I am not saying buy them in case they’re not reprinted, because I don’t think he’s saying that. If you had a card like the one he described, and you assumed it was Black, how would you build the deck? What if he was White and Black? I am not sure how tasty any of those pickups are and we’ll likely have some time. A demon like this seems more like a Vannifar than a Teysa, but I hope I’m wrong. I think we can safely wait and see what the deck looks like, but if you want to have the cards to sell to people when that happens, there’s a lot of info about this demon.

I kind of love that the new Avenger of Zendikar thing is Legendary since it will give me something good to write about on Coolstuff Inc. Do you see how I always build crap like that? Cryptolith Rite and Goblin Bombardment and Craterhoof and Purphoros and like, if this description is accurate, I’ve already built the deck. It’s boring how built the deck is. Here is what you probably don’t have enough copies of and I would buy for this deck.

If this is indeed not in the set, it’s going to be in about half of the new decks built with Legendary creatures from the set. I think it’s probably in Commander Legends but I also think sometimes WotC doesn’t know what they’re doing. Training Grounds is like $40, do you think they read my tweets? I don’t think I would do a better job than they are, per se, but when something is obvious to me and all of you and they don’t do it, you have to wonder if it’s because they know way more than us or way less.

$2 on Coolstuff? No way that’s correct.

Finally this popped. I’ve been waiting forever with a box of these. They’re still too cheap.

Look at what goes in Red Omnath decks, while you’re at it. This new Avenger of Zendikar wannabe will be linear and obvious and that means everyone will build the same basic way with the same basic cards. We know what all of the cards that will go in the deck that already exist are because they’re in like a half dozen identical decks. Mina and Denn, Radha, Omnath, Omnath, to an extent, Omnath, etc. Those decks always have Cobra, Avenger, Oracle of Mul Daya, Exploration, Ramunap Excavator, Azusa (cheap as hell right now), Wayward Swordtooth, Tireless Tracker, etc. It’s boring but that kind of deck is fun and I have multiple decks with those exact cards. Why take one apart just to build a new one?

I don’t care about the angel at all, but considering I’ve written like 10,000 words about everything else, who cares?

Maro’s list is way more vague but I think we can still pick out some tidbits.

Let’s go point by point and see if any of it matters in the complete abstract to the extent that we can figure out what to buy.

A white creature that can make an opponent lose the game simply by attacking them no matter how much life they have

I don’t know the victory condition so it’s impossible to say. I think it probably has to do with life totals. Check out decks on EDHREC that play cards like Serra Ascendant and Felidar Sovereign, maybe? I’m guessing.

 A multicolor creature that lets you repeatedly reanimate permanents out of your opponent’s graveyard for no mana

I don’t know what this is, maybe like a reverse Muldrotha? I don’t know, it seems sweet but since I don’t know what you need to do to activate or trigger it, it’s hard to know what to buy. I bet it’s Sultai colors but that’s a guess. Seems awesome, frankly, can’t wait to build the deck. If you read my 75% column on Coolstuff, you know it’s exactly in my wheelhouse.

Three creatures with five creature types

This all but confirms allies. They nerfed Coat of Arms so it would no longer give each of these creatures +5/+5 for each other creature they shared 5 types with. 5 types means they’re probably short so they can fit on one line, so I’m guessing 2 of them are Kor and Ally, but that’s a guess. This sucks, I thought I’d have more hits.

An artifact granting +2/+2 to a subset of creatures that first appeared in Alpha

I assume this is a tribe but I can’t be sure. Alpha’s tribes were pretty boring. I don’t want to devote too much thought to this.

X being used for a variable it’s never been used for before

Neat.

a 6/6 artifact creature that costs 3 and a 7/5 artifact creature that can cost 3

Neat.

The return of four mana symbols that have each only ever been used on two cards before

I assume it’s the 2R on Flame Javelin and Reaper King but I’m guessing.

Lands that come with a choice you’ve never had before

Neat.

Targeted enchantment removal in black

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

A red/white creature with a line of rules text that starts with “Whenever” and ends with “draw a card”

I bet this sees play in EDH unless the condition is silly. Mangara is already making an impact.

A card with three different activated abilities that all copy something

Sweet. I don’t know what to buy but I assume this is Temur colors and Kalamax and Riku players already want this without knowing what it is or what it does. It could be a slightly better Mirrorpool after all.

“don’t lose unspent red mana”

This is the only rules snippet beside “Twice the number of equipment” that caught my eye. I hope it’s not an ability on the Omnath because Red is easily the worst color in the Temur Omnath deck and I generate as little Red as I can get away with. Still, this could make Braid of Fire go nuts.

This is all complete and total speculation, but if you can keep Red mana phase to phase like with Green Omnath, Braid of Fire goes right back t o $30 again. It flirted with $30 already which made all of the $10 copies at every LGS disappear. If it spikes again, it will be harder and faster. If you are feeling ballsy, buy a stack. If you think you will play this ever and don’t want to pay $30, buy 2 copies and when it goes to $30, sell your spare, play with your free copy and pocket $18 for your trouble. Sound good?

Finally, the leaker also said the Legendary crab is a 0/17 that gets +X/-X for each Island you control when you activate it. People are hoping it has Defender because that would be sick in Arcades, but it doesn’t sound like it has Defender, although some crabs do. However, here’s exhibit A in my argument against Defender.

Hedron Crab has 0 power and can still attack. I think instead of looking at Arcades, there’s another commander we should be looking at.

Tap a crab to mill someone for 17, which grows your Wight of Precinct 6 and your Consuming Abberation. It’s stupid and terrible to try and mill people, but doing it for 17 cards at a time in a deck that, if I were building it, runs Intruder Alarm, it seems like it would get there. I think the crab is probably a bad, meme card, but it turns out those sell. They made fake My Little Pony cards and they sold out in minutes.

This is a lot to think about, but I for one think the leaks are credible. I was hoping landfall would be back as a mechanic and I’m glad to see it is. The more we get revealed coming up in the next few weeks, the more we’ll be able to get a bit more granular on our picks but for now, plan for mechanics and decks built around the cards we (assume we) know. That does it for me. Until next time!