Readers,

There were a ton of potential good specs for like half of these decks and all of them got reprinted. Instead of being good $3 cards that could get to $5 or $8 on the basis of adoption in the decks, they’re trash, bulky, bulky trash. Forever, probably. All of this made me wonder – are there any cases of cards that were good in the EDH deck they got reprinted in that went back to their pre-reprint price after a year or two? If so, could we make a case for anything in the Commander 2020 decks that look like trash now?

Sorry about the hard cut, but I don’t want to take up too much time here. Let’s just talk about some cards.

Ghostly Prison appeared in Modern sideboards and went nuts . Despite a few extra copies floating around from the Planechase 2012 reprintings, Prison was mostly really scarce really fast. The $18 was never going to hold but the Commander 2016 printing tanked the price and shattered the brief illusion of flirting with $20 it had enjoyed. Still, it went from $2.50 in April of 2017 to $8 in October of 2018. Was the same Modern usage that spiked it in the first place still a factor as it climbed back? Not really. Over the period of January 2016 to January 2018, it barely featured in a now-defunct Modern deck’s sideboard and didn’t really appear anywhere else, so its EDH play was the most likely factor for the climb. It’s since gotten a reprint in Conspiracy, take the Crown and the price is down a bit lately, but this did experience an 18 month period of solid growth despite a reprinting that wasn’t even its first. Can we find some examples of cards that weren’t helped by Modern? I’m sure we can.

Crusade hasn’t experienced a meaningful (read not in a Commander Anthology) reprinting since 2016 and it has grown precipitously. It looked bad when it got a reprint in 2014 and in 2016 but Commander is much more of a format than it was back then and this is a $10 card waiting to happen, barring a reprint. When Commander 2016 came out, Crusade was $1.50. A year later it was $3.50. A year later it was $6. A year hasn’t happened yet but it’s on its way to $10, but who knows what Covid does? The point is, if something can impact EDH but dodge a reprint, it has upside.

Eviction is an EDH powerhouse, sweeping away entire decks sometimes. The name is a little redundant since all evictions are merciless but this one is especially Merciless. Printings in Commander 2016 and Commander 2017 kicked the card in the ribs hard as it was getting to its feet but nothing since then has allowed it to grow mostly unbidden. The 2016 printing took it to bulk status – around $0.60. In a year, it was $2.50, then it was reprinted again. Since then, it has climbed to nearly $4.50. If a card that just got smashed by a reprinting ends up as ubiquitous as does Merciless Eviction, we could see it shrug off not only this reprinting, but another one.

There’s a problem, however.

The Commander 2020 decks, like the Commander 2019 decks, are built around mechanics. The cards that are good in those decks have a high inclusion score but also a high synergy score. A high synergy score means it’s more likely to just be good in that deck. Every Black and White EDH deck build since 2017 has to look at Merciless Eviction and either say “Yes” or “No” but I’m not going to build a deck ever that’s going to need to rule on Fluctuator or New Perspectives. High-inclusion, low-synergy cards are what we should be targeting and while everything that would be a good spec based on the Temur and Jeskai decks (they overlap so much, it’s nuts) was basically reprinted or spiked already, none of it is that applicable outside the context of decks built with the rest of those cards. It’s good that every Gavi deck will want a Drake Haven but no one else will and the price will stay bulk forever.

It’s clear there are cards that can shrug off reprints, but we will have to select them fairly carefully. Here’s what I think could be in play.

The research, by the way, was pretty painless because EDHREC put all of C2020’s reprints in their own section on the page for C2020 and sorted by amount they’re played. You’ll need to click on the individual card, select a commander for it and go to that commander’s page then find that card to find the synergy score for that deck, but something tells me there aren’t a ton of high-inclusion, high-synergy cards, it’s likely one or the other.

Windfall is both used in a lot of decks in the past and it’s also likely to be in play in the future. Wheel effects, forced draw and other cards keep popping up – the number of times I have made money on Puzzle Box astound even me. Windfall likely stays good, pops again on the basis of a new commander and it’s likely going to go down from where it is now once people integrate new supply from C2020 and stores open back up, but who knows when that is? I think when this bottoms out, scoop a bunch. It’s hard to reprint outside of a Commander deck and it’s unlikely they’ll make a set of commanders that wants it in the next 2 years, leaving us free to make our money back and then some.

This has shrugged off a Masters set reprinting and kept on ticking. I would say the reprint risk is more significant than a typical Commander deck card, but I think they’ll likely reprint Blood Artist before they reprint Zulaport Cutthroat again.

If you’re noticing that I like a lot of the Uncommons more than a lot of the rares, it’s likely because the uncommons tend to be less specialized than the rares and able to go in more decks.

That said, here is a rare I like when its price bottoms out.

Here’s one that got a new, better-looking border.

And here is a great longer-term spec/grim reminder that Covid-19 is the least of our worries.

I think you should be able to find a few more cards that aren’t just good in one deck that are likely to rebound in price and you should be able to pick them up, especially locally in trade from people who busted the decks and don’t want most of the cards, if that’s ever a thing again.

That does it for me. Really study the set lists from this year as well as years past to see what cards have managed to recover and I’ll be back with more next week. Until next time!

Readers!

Last week, I said I was going to spend this week talking about specs from Gavi. It seemed like a no-brainer.

Zaxama was Number 1 but didn’t have a ton by way of solid specs, so moving on to Gavi seemed like the play.

Seemed.

Gavi has plummeted all the way to 5th place and all of the shiny, new Commander 2020 commanders have been supplanted by a generic “best commander of the month” pick in Golos. A cursory glance at Golos’ page tells me that this is likely people updating their lists.

I don’t think a Triome is a reason to build a Golos deck you didn’t have before, but a Gold Commander who ramps mana getting access to 5 new Ultimatums, sick new lands and the Mythos cycle and we may have a reason to at least pop over to archidekt and register a new list.

I think Golos is just as popular as it was last week, but it seems like Gavi isn’t. The question is whether I stick to my guns or whether I take a look at Kalamax instead. How about I take a look to see if it’s worth taking an actual look?

You can take a look for yourself, but it seems like Kalamax is about as unexciting as Zaxara was last week. Also, can we talk about these names? They’re killing me. I got Lurrus and Lutri mixed up last week and now I’m expected to differentiate Kalamax and Zaxara? Who named these characters, George RR Martin? I guess that would explain why he still hasn’t finished The Winds of Winter 2 years after the show went off the air. You know what? I’m just going to give all of these stupid commanders nicknames to make my articles easier to read. OK, we did Hydraboi last week and we can either do Doublesaurus Rex or Mac and Me, so let’s look at old Dubby bones first and see if it’s worth exploring, shall we?

Dinosauriku is kind of a fun-looking commander and while a little linear, he may stay more popular than Dragonsnake due to a larger volume of cards that feel necessary in Dragonsnake. I think Terrible Double Lizard could be fun, but looking at the page, every card is like $0.25 or it’s already played so much in other formats that this shouldn’t make a difference. This deck can’t make Manamorphose go back to where it was or make Comet Storm erase a few of its 8-too-many printings, but perhaps it CAN make people finally realize Thousand-Year Storm is an absurd Magic card. I think Storm is about to go, personally.

Not every site was as hip to its absurdity as Card Kingdom who keeps raising their buylist price accordingly, but other sites will catch up. If you have a way to scoop these from MKM, they’re like a solitary Euro and if this hits $10 USD on Card Kingdom, maybe you figure out how to arb that. We’re already at $3 cash on Card Kingdom’s bulisyt, you can basically buy $4 in credit per Euro right now, but that buylist price won’t stay where it is for long. Get on it! The rest of that deck, though, I’m not too enthusiastic about.

With that said, let’s look at ET and Elliot over here and see if we can snag anything before everyone gets wise.

Most of the Cycling payoffs like Drake Haven, Astral Drift, New Perspective and Lightning Rift (WE DIDN’T START THE FIRE!) are reprinted in the deck, but there are some cards with cycling on them that are interesting.

Decree of Silence, which already popped when Solemnity was printed and is experiencing one of those second spikes we all know and love and profit from, is through the roof. It’s not a $20 card, but with the markets effectively shut down due to Covid, no one is racing to the bottom so copies are hard to come by. I have a ton left over from last time and I’m happy to sell these for $15 on Facebook and if you find these around their pre-spike price, scoop them because they’ll settle higher than that. With shops shut down, no one is trolling through the smaller stores with a few copies or snapping everything up on Crystal Commerce so it’s possible there are random copies on “Hobby Monkey” on the 7th page of google or something. If Decree of Silence was obvious, here’s one that wasn’t.

Decree of Annihilation is drying up a little bit but you should still be able to find some copies. Here is a way to get $60 worth of cards provided Decree never goes above $10, and more than $60 if it does. The Decree in there is foil, but nobody’s perfect.

Solemnity is a card that’s currently on a huge upward track as well given the combination with Decree of Silence and, I’m assuming, cards with Cumulative Upkeep? I’ll be honest, I’m not sure why it’s showing up in the Gavi deck so much, but it is, and it’s getting expensive so yank these out of bulk if you have bulk to yank from.

This deck is so narrow that they basically reprinted anything that could go with it and still needed to cough up 15 new cards to fill out a deck. Cycling is really fair, slow without Gavi and Fluctuator, a terrible way to make tokens with Gavi and The Locust God and if you don’t draw a payoff spell, you’re literally spinning your wheels. I think other decks are more exciting and I’ll find a more exciting one to get into next week, with cards that haven’t all started to go up, if we’re lucky. Until then, stay safe, stay healthy and remember we have so much time to buy these cards that Commander 2021 may be out before anyone even gets to play these cards. Until next time!