Is it cool if I spend some of my opening paragraph talking about something that bothers me a little?
You got snakey boi over here, and he has flying, and that’s cool. He hangs out in a place called Bespin, which is a city that flies for some reason. There are a bunch of spires hanging down for people to pop out of if they happen to fall off of one Bespin’s many catwalks with no handrails and slide down a giant tube full of trap doors. That’s fine, but when your opponent draws extra cards, something that happens ALL THE TIME in commander, Xyris births a snake. This snake is Green, it’s 1/1 and it does NOT have flying. So Xyris farts the token out and I guess it falls out of the sky, accelerates at about 15 meters per second per second and impacts the earth? Kinda messed up. This is why I don’t get into Vorthos, there’s too much that’s implied by the art that I find disturbing. What I DON’T find disturbing is the amount of value this card generates.
Hitting them with a dragon is fairly easy to do since it costs 5 which is a turn 3 play in a Temur deck. You draw cards, make them draw cards, make snakes and make the snakes make mana. It’s dirty but that’s how the card is designed and I am not inclined to argue. Making them draw cards is also fairly easy, and Commander 2020 has a copy of Windfall (In the Jeskai deck) and The Locust God (In the Jeskai deck) and Magus of the Wheel (In the Mardu deck) so you can do really silly shenanigans right out of the box if the box is three boxes. I think people are going to quickly figure out how to make this deck brutal and since we already have EDHREC data, we don’t have to guess.
This deck is actually sort of boring to me already. I’m going to build it, but it’s so linear it’s going to bore me, so I might as well make it the deck I play when I want the pod to be miserable. We know how to make people miserable, so how do we make money?
FF over here dropped from about $20 to about $10 with no change in supply. This won’t be a second spike but it will be a case where there are no cheap, loose copies in LGS bargain binders – prior spikes concentrated copies in the hands of dealers. The supply is the same, the demand is back up and these $10 copies likely become $20 in the near term, letting you get out if you got in early enough. TCG Player is mostly shut down and everyone with these at $10 has 1 copy which means you pay a lot of shipping costs. I had to buy on Card Shark, that’s how few copies there are easily accessible with so many retailers shut down. Check Amazon, eBay and other, smaller stores for cheap copies and be ready to sell these when people finally get their hands on the precons. This is a slam dunk.
Now, will cards in Xyris be good at all? Last week Xyris was the most expensive card in the set and it’s currently on par with the other most popular commanders built on the sites we scrape.
Kalamax may be currently more popular but Xyris is more linear and it’s going to spike more cards that spiked before so it’s worth doing first since you have weeks to pick the stuff up.
In addition to Forced Fruition, which goes up often, here’s another card I used to pull out of bulk boxes and which keeps making me money like clockwork.
This was buylisting for $15 a year ago so enjoy the free value. This likely goes up again from Xyris, and if it doesn’t, it will again someday. There are just too many ways to make a card that makes everyone draw a ton of cards go up in price.
COVID sort of nerfed the effect they expected from Mystery Boosters since supply is out there but no one that didn’t buy packs can access it. It’s going to spread out the effect of the new supply, but the price is already down to $12. I don’t know if it will go much lower since people won’t be competing with each other that effectively to race to the bottom, so the price may settle around $12. If it goes even lower, just buy twice as many copies again to bring the average price down enough that you aren’t mad at me for saying to buy around $12 and watch it go back to $20+.
Are you into penny stocks? Here’s one for you. This has already flirted with $2, I think this could hit $3 fairly easily and is gettable for far less, although not every Xyris deck is about that snake life. I’ll probably play it in mine but I plan to use the snakes to make mana with Cryptolith Rite so this could dome people pretty good. Xyris is a snake, remember, so this could pretty quickly help deal 21 commander damage. This isn’t in every deck but it could be in enough.
This has gone about as low as it’s likely to, the buylist price is not decreasing and I think less Modern Horizons was purchased than people think. I don’t know if Xyris is enough to double this up, but I bet time, other formats, the copies starting to dry up on platforms where only a small portion of the usual sellers are operating and other factors can conspire to help this hit $10.
Barring a reprint, this is a $20 foil eventually. Yank the non-foils out of your bulk while you’re at it.
A second spike on this could potentially beat the previous high score of $12. This is in low supply, dealers have all of the copies, it’s sort of absurd in this deck especially, 6 mana isn’t a huge deal for Temur and this even pumps Xyris. Commanders that are encouraged to attack getting passive buffs is way more powerful than people imagine – this turns your 7 turn clock into a 5 turn clock on its own. Add Kaseto and it’s even faster.
The rest of the page is worth looking at, also, but these are the cards my gut tells me are the easiest to make money off of. If you’re interested, here is my list from Coolstuff this week which goes in depth into the cards I’d use to make the deck run. If you don’t have the time, I like using Earthcraft, Cryptolith Rite, Opposition and other enchantments to make the most of my snakes. Next week I’ll be back with specs from whichever deck is the most popular on EDHREC because boring works, turns out. Until next time!
I had a bit of a think yesterday about something different I could do for this week’s article, but seeing as Cliff and Jason are still writing about real cardboard I thought I should continue talking about imaginary cardboard for y’all to buy. The strain on the USPS is starting to show, with warnings coming that it could shut down by June without significant financial aid. Losses have been increasing, and this has meant that it’s a bad time for us to be buying and selling physical cards – and that’s not even taking into account the potential danger of transmitting Coronavirus via mail. So it’s more MTGO picks from me for the foreseeable future, with maybe the odd special article here and there in between.
Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
Price today: 11 tix Possible price: 20 tix
Classic Tron has long been an unwavering mainstay in the Modern metagame. It’s had its ups and downs, but I don’t think this deck can, or will, ever die as long as Karn and his Tron lands are legal in the format. Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger started to be played in the deck soon after its printing in Battle for Zendikar, and became more of a staple once Eye of Ugin was banned and Emrakul, the Aeons Torn got pushed out of the deck.
Albeit a pricier deck in paper (it’d run you around $600), Tron is much cheaper online. You can pick the deck up for as little as 200 tix, and that coupled with the fact that it can be a relatively straightforward deck to pilot to a reasonable proficiency makes it ideal for the players that are currently migrating to MTGO for their Magic fix. The deck has been sat in the top five for metagame share for the past few weeks, and I don’t think that’s going to dip down much.
Ulamog is a single print mythic from nearly five years ago, which means that supply online is on the low side. Until it sees another print or release online, I think that this is going to keep ticking upwards towards 20 tix again.
Fabled Passage
Price today: 9 tix Possible price: 15 tix
Fabled Passage is currently being played in pretty much every deck playing more than one colour in Standard. It fixes all your colours painlessly, as well as having extra utility like providing food to cast cards for their Escape cost in Uro decks and enabling triggers for Mayhem Devil in the Rakdos Aristocrats deck.
As we approach the release of Ikoria, I think that Fabled Passage is going to be more in demand for Standard decks. With the new tri-colour Legendaries, Ultimatums and Mythos(es?), colour fixing is going to be more important than ever. The new tricycle lands (yes, that’s what they’re called, don’t @ me) will help a lot with this, but you’re going to need fixing that comes into play untapped as well.
One of the decks I want to focus on here is the Rakdos Aristocrats deck – it looks like the addition of Luminous Broodmoth could be a big boon for the archetype, effectively giving all your creatures twice the number of sacrifice triggers. Fabled Passage is already a four-of in the deck, both for mana fixing and to trigger Mayhem Devil, and I think that this deck could rise even higher than it already is with the incoming new tech.
Fabled Passage saw a spike up to 18 tix a couple of weeks ago and has since retraced to 9, so I think this is a great spot to be picking them up. Throne of Eldraine grows older by the day, and I like buying these now to sell into Ikoria hype, or even to hold until rotation in the fall if you’re happier to sit back on these for a while.
Thassa, Deep-Dwelling
Price today: 1.3 tix Possible price: 5 tix+
This is by far my most speculative pick this week, but I think that Thassa, Deep-Dwelling is probably the most powerful of the Gods from Theros Beyond Death (if we set aside the Heliod/Ballista combo; Heliod isn’t great outside of that).
Thassa had quite the hype around her when THB was first released. Flickering your creatures with powerful enter-the-battlefield triggers is great, and if you can turn on Thassa’s devotion then even better. We initially saw her being used in UG ramp/ETB shells, flicking things like Risen Reef and Agent of Treachery. Since the first couple of weeks of new Theros Standard, however, she’s fallen off the radar a bit, other than seeing a smattering of play in less competitive Flicker or Elementals decks.
As we move into Ikoria, there are definitely some more interesting enter-the-battlefield triggers that we could be repeating with Thassa. There are quite a few Companions that could work really well with her too – Keruga, the Macrosage and Yorion, Sky Nomad both spring to mind as cards that could be great to build a Thassa deck around. The Ozolith also seems like a card that could be busted with Thassa. I’ll leave it to better deckbuilders than me to figure the details out, but I feel like Thassa is a strong enough card that should definitely be more than 1.3 tix. I’m honestly not sure on what the ceiling could be for this card, but it’s one of the lowest priced Mythics from THB so I think that the only way is up from here.
A note of advice to finish: if you’re missing the feel of playing Magic irl, take out a deck a couple of times a day and give it a shuffle. Feel the sleeves slip through your fingers…take a card out and smell the cardboard, fondle your favourite Commander…okay nah this got weird, we’re done. Bye!
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.
We don’t have the entire card list for Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths, but what we do have is most of the big hits.
And goodness me, there are some doozies. We need to talk about what price you’re going to buy these for, and how patient you need to be.
We have to start with the knowledge that this set is going to be opened at a different pace than every other set. Cards are going to be in hand in Asia before they are in the US. The stateside prerelease has been pushed back a month, meaning that there will be a time period where our only supply is international resellers.
That’s a huge disruption in the normal flow of things, which is to be expected in the time of COVID-19. It’s going to mean that prices are not going to drop in the usual way for some time (if they ever do!).
I fully expect that Ikoria will be opened in lesser amounts than the usual set would be. Last year at this time we were getting War of the Spark, which was later impacted by the awesome draft environment of Modern Horizons.
With the pandemic, I don’t have any idea how long it’ll take for us to open cards and have some sense of normalcy. Not many vendors are doing preorder sales, and at the same time, not a lot of players are eager to buy cards that they can’t use in person yet.
I wish I had some sense for how many players are buying right now, but it can’t be high. If you’re looking to spec on cards, I would strongly advise against that. Most things are overpriced right now, and will be until the set is more widely distributed.
For example:
These lands are instantly known as the tricycle lands, and as the rare cycle in the set should land somewhere in the $5 range.
Right now, on Star City Games:
They are listed as sold out. I don’t know who might have bought them immediately, but I’m sure there’s a few overeager folks out there. Please don’t buy the regular copies at $10.
That’s not to say I don’t love these for longer-term specs. I completely expect these to show up in assorted Modern lists as a one-of, because if you would have fetched for a shockland at the end of turn and not paid two life, you might as well give yourself this flexibility! Plus you can cycle it away late-game if a land isn’t what you need.
The showcase versions of these lands are GORGEOUS, and are instantly one of my favorite specs once we’re opening cards as we normally would. In terms of prices, I expect the normal versions to be $4-$5 (might spike after shocklands rotate from Standard) with the Showcase at $10+ and the foil Showcase a cool $30-$40.
As of Thursday night, we have four of the five Ultimatums (missing only the Temur one, I expect that to be revealed Friday morning) and they are SWEET. The first cycle of Ultimatums was designed before Commander became popular; these five are clearly made with the 100-card format in mind.
Again, I don’t think these are cards you should be rushing out to buy, but they are absolutely my favorite long-term hold in the set. These are purest gold in Commander, where three colors (or more) are all over the place. I know that my five-color The Ur-Dragon deck is going to need a close examination of the manabase and what spells it can support. I surely want to destroy all my opponents’ nonland permanents, or bring back EVERY PERMANENT IN MY GRAVEYARD.
Thank goodness this cycle is only rare and not mythic.
In terms of prices, I don’t think these will be $100 for the Extended Art foil, but $60 seems reasonable. Almost everyone who opens one of these will either put it in their deck or someone will trade it from them immediately. I’ll be surprised if the regular nonfoils get below $2.
There’s two mythics I especially want to address, which have a whole lot of buzz and excitement.
Luminous Broodmoth is good with a whole lot of cards that care about counters, but it’s also just good in a white deck that makes the rest of your creatures come back in case of a Time Wipe. Aggro decks didn’t really need the help, as they are a healthy part of the metagame, but the moth also enables blocks as trades but really aren’t trades. The combo potential is through the roof in Commander, and TCG has preorders for $14 or so. That’s a really tempting price, and very close to what the price will be in a few weeks. If you really want them, I’d say go ahead and get them, but I’m not sure why you have to have them in hand immediately. They definitely aren’t going to spike to $20+ right away, but I could see that happening in a few months.
Kinnan, Bonder Prodigy is a sign that someone at Wizards has an addiction to UG in Commander. There’s a whole series of cards in the last year or so that are truly, powerfully, broken-format-level overpowered. In Standard, there could have been decks with Once Upon a Time, Kinnan, Golden Goose, Oko, Thief of Crowns, Leyline of Abundance, Nissa, Who Shakes the World, and Hydroid Krasis. Toss in Nyxbloom Ancient if you’re feeling spicy. Who cares about a finisher, you’re tapping out and adding a couple hundred mana.
Kinnan doesn’t have any preorder prices up yet, but I fully expect this to be one of the Commanders that causes a whole genre of cards to spike. Sylvan Caryatid would be my first pick for this deck, but even basics like Llanowar Elder or Llanowar Tribe could go nuts. Keep in mind that this isn’t a doubler, just adding one more mana, so Arixmethes isn’t good for four, just three mana. You’re going to see a lot of cards jump, so be prepared to sell into some hype!
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.
Commander 2020 is fully spoiled and the search is on for this year’s “one card to bother speculating on” because the last two years of commander precons have been so bad, people just assume that’s how this works, now. People seem to have entirely lost confidence in WotC’s ability to make precons we care about, and based on the last two years, it’s sort of easy to see why.
Here is everything worth more than $2 from Commander 2019.
Here is the list from Commander 2018.
These are both pretty short lists. Both times, the second-most-expensive card is a generic Green staple with multiple other printings. Both times the list is roughly half reprints despite each deck containing 15 new cards. Obviously, the sets have been opened to death and they’re very available so it would be difficult to have another situation like in the past. Commander 2017 has 7 cards worth more than $10 and the Commander 2016 Atraxa precon sells for $150, even if it’s just the shrinkwrapped deck from the Commander Anthology set. Is it just a matter of time for Commander 2018 and 2019 or do those decks just suck so bad that no amount of waiting will improve things? I have a feeling that it’s more the latter than the former.
Let’s figure out if that hypothesis is correct before we move on to Commander 2020, though. We need to figure out if there is an appreciable supply difference between Commander 2017 and Commander 2018 that could explain the price discrepancies. One limitation to EDHREC in its current form is that we only go back 2 years in our data. The reason for this is to make it more useful as a deck recommendation website – if you don’t want every card in an Oloro or Meren deck (or Atraxa at this point) deck to throw off every metric and bury some useful signal in all the noise, it’s nice to chop off some of the older decks at a certain point. That reduces its usefulness in cases where I want to compare 2017 to 2018, but it does help me prove certain points very conclusively. If we’re getting more use of Commander 2017 cards, that means more people built with cards from Commander 2017 IN THE YEAR 2018 than they did with cards from Commander 2018. That’s pretty significant. Also, EDHREC goes back to April 2018 when Commander 2017 had only been out for 7 months, which means people were still building decks with the cards, especially since new, relevant cards were printed in sets that came out in early 2018 and that was the newest Commander set at that point (Commander 2018 didn’t come out until August of 2018). I guess what I’m saying is that we can’t compare apples to oranges, but if we go in expecting apples to be smaller because they’re a year older and they end up being the same size as the oranges, that means the apples are overperforming, and that’s all we really needed to know. We don’t have quantitative data but we do have qualitative data, in other words. That will do fine.
Just taking a rough look at usage metrics, we’re seeing the story of Dockside Extortionist pan out. Extortionist is played more than twice as much as the next-most-played card from Commander 2019 whereas the most expensive card from Commander 2018, Arixmethes, is the 14thj-most-played card. The most-played card is played twice as much as the second-most played deck, but it’s in 8% of decks rather than 17%. The distribution is much flatter – there are 5 cards in more than 2,000 decks in the Top 16 of Commander 2019 whereas there are 8 in Commander 2018 and 13 for Commander 2017. Commander 2017 had tribal staples that got played in following years, Commander 2018 had good removal, Planeswalkers and good cards like Estrid’s Invocation and Commander 2019 had creatures that were good in very specific archetypes built around bad abilities like Morph, generic Naya beaters and only 4 non-creatures in the Top 16, none of which were removal spells.
Commander 2017 cards are played more because they go in decks built in 2017, 2018, 2019 and probably 2020 (Teferi’s Protection, Herald’s Horn, Path of Ancestry, Kindred Dominance, Disrupt Decorum, Fractured Identity and even Mathas seem good with cards from Commander 2020) but also, they’re better cards.
The second thing we need to try and ferret out is whether the price is dilluted by a higher supply in Commander 2019. If a card in Commander 2018 has a relatively flat price graph over the last 2 years, is in as many decks as a card from Commander 2017 and costs a tenth as much, you can reasonably conclude there are just more copies of that card out there. Commander 2019 sold incredibly well despite being really bad, and so did Commander 2018 despite being better than 2019 but so much worse than 2017 that everyone complained and WotC vowed to make the decks better (then didn’t). I suspect the prices in Commander 2019 will be lower than 2018 for cards played a similar amount despite equal play and less time for the price to go up. Let’s compare some apples to some slightly older apples.
For the cards in the 3,000 or so deck range, we aren’t seeing a huge difference between Commander 2018 and Commander 2019. Compare that to a card in the same number of decks that’s more restricted due to color identity.
The only question is whether Fractured Identity was $2 in 2017, $3 in 2018 and $5 in 2019.
Basically, it was. It seems like cards just sort of trend up over time from these decks. How about cards in more decks?
It’s tough to find cards to compare because nothing from Commander 2018 was in 10,000 decks, nothing from Commander 2019 was in 10,000 decks and nothing from either was in 20,000 decks.
Here is one year from Commander 2017 to Commander 2018. Wrath of Goad was in most popular deck, which should bring its price down but didn’t. Estrid’s Invocation was in the deck with 2 of the most expensive cards but there is no clear “buy this” deck yet so it’s hard to tell which was the most popular. Could Estrid’s Invocation be $8 in a year? Are we seeing peculiarites associated with TCG Player taking their stores offline for the ‘Rona since these cards are basically the same price on Card Kingdom, the site where EDH player buy their cards? Hard to say. It sure makes me think Estrid’s Invocation could be a buy if you sell on TCG Player, though.
From what I have seen, it doesn’t appear that prices from 2019 are depressed due to a ton of supply but are likely subject to the same growth curve as older cards.
I even found some odd cases where the Commander 2019 cards was worth more than a Commander 2018 card played roughly as much.
Is it possible Commander 2020 will sell a ton more than Commander 2019 did because it’s much better? Maybe, but Commander 2019 mostly sucked and only had one card anyone cares about and it sold the most ever, so I think it’s more likely we’ll see depressed sales from the virus situation, people’s unstable financial situation and the coming recession about to slam into us than we’ll see lower prices from too much supply. This set is dropping at a terrible time for it to sell more than Commander 2019 did.
So, what’s this set’s Dockside Extortionist?
Well, if you ask me, there isn’t one.
This set is quite good and there are bound to be multiple cards that spread the love out. Furthermore, despite there being fairly strong themes like an entire deck devoted to cycling, we’re seeing a lot of cards that will be EDH staples for years to come rather than deck-specific cards. Compare an artifact from Commander 2019 to one from Commander 2020.
One of them is a durdle card for a durdle deck, the other is insanely powerful and is bound to get played forever. So what’s stopping Manascape Refractor, in all of its insane glory, from being the Dockside Extortionist of the set? Simple – the rest of the set.
This is too much money for all of these and none of them will be above $10 in a year.
This was barely $15 before the reprinting and as good as it is, and not just in Commander, it’s in a precon and it’s going to be one that is bought a lot, if you ask me. Xyris is nutty, the deck has a 0 mana Deflect, Etali, Lightning Greaves, Chaos Warp and Dualcaster Mage. It’s not the best deck in terms of reprint value but we won’t expect Locust God to soak up almost a third of the deck’s value on its own.
Xyris is nutty, but commanders don’t tend to stay above $10. Since 2017, only Edgar Markov has gone above $15 and that took a decent amount of time.
Signet seems good here. It’s going to be a Sol Ring or better card since it has fewer printings. Refractor at $8 is high but not overly high – I don’t expect it to end up in the $3, especially since it’s a card that goes in decks going forward but also retroactively goes in decks already built, meaning people need more than one copy. You only need your one Scroll of Fate to put in your own Kadena deck you’ll play 3 times and tear apart but every tribal deck you built before Commander 2017 needed a Path of Ancestry all of a sudden, and future ones would need one, too. Refractor and Signet aren’t tribal but they are that ubiquitous. Nothing in Commander 2019 compares to the utility of either one of these cards.
The only card that seems underpriced for the near- and medium-term is Fierce Guardianship. It’s getting a lot more hype than Deflecting Swat and it’s in the Jeskai deck with The Locust God and Trilobite which already has reasons to buy it. The cycling theme means that the cards in the deck are likely to be played with each other so people buying the deck to put the cards in other decks seems less likely which means the market will have fewer loose copies of Guardianship and it could be a situation where this is the most-bought precon at first. I don’t expect Atraxa-esque levels, though and the value seems spread better than last year.
The Top 10 most played cards in Commander 2019 not named Dockside Extortionist are Marisi, Chainer, Ohran Frostfang, Pramkikon, Eisha, Bone Miser, Atla Palani, K’rrik and Apex Altisaur. Verge Rangers is better than all 10 of those cards except maybe Frostfang. White desperately needs what Rangers does and it’s going to go in a lot of decks. Altar is pretty narrow but it lets people with dumb decks like Phage try to build that dumb deck again, which is fun. If this were Commander 2019, where the second-most-expensive card was a $6 reprinted Seedborn Muse, you might not think that any of these cards were worth preordering at $5, but I think we’ve established that this isn’t the case. I think even with as popular as each deck will be since they’re basically all better than all of the decks last year, we’ll still potentially see between 2 and 5 cards above $7 next year. Ruthless Regiment is basically DLC for the Mardu Knights Brawl deck but even it has Verge Rangers, Flawless Maneuver (underpriced at $0.50 presale, imo), Shared Animosity, Magus of the Wheel (not in the wheel deck why?) and a ton of cards that will go bulkish but bounce back like Knight of the White Orchid, Thalia’s Lieutenant, Zulaport Cutthroat and Crackling Doom. Oh, AND it has a Skullclamp? I’d say all of these decks have a lot of value spread out. Will it make every card $1 instead of $2 in a year? Hard to say.
I mentioned I thought as many as 5 cards could be above $5 in a year, which is ballsy when you look at even Commander 2018’s numbers – 2 years later, Commander 2018 has 4 and 1 year later Commander 2019 has 2. The cards that have a shot, though, are, in my view the following.
Verge Rangers. The deck has a lot of cards that are going to drop a lot due to their multiple printings and a lot of the cards are pretty cheap already. I think Verge Rangers could be the most expensive card in its deck. This is the least likely of my 5 picks but it’s a stupid good card.
Arcane Signet. I realize it’s in every deck and the Brawl decks, but people need these for every deck they’ve ever built, so unless they’re buying a Commander precon just for the Signet and not building a new deck with the cards in the precon, they didn’t actually help any of their old decks and will need to snag copies from elsewhere for their other decks.
The Locust God. I think this could halve in price, which is fine, and will likely recover some of its value.
Manascape Refractor. This card, if it’s as powerful as I think it is, will be pretty expensive. If it’s as durdly and situational as I fear it may be, we’re looking at the $2.50ish territory Treasure Nabber is at. Which red Goblin that gives you artifacts is this, Nabber or Extortionist? Or somewhere in between? We’ll see when people start to play with it. I’m not buying a ton at $8 since I think it’s a maybe whether it will be $8 in a year, but I like it.
Fierce Guardianship. This is basically a Force of Will for the important spells in Commander. Even not having your commander and paying 2U for Negate is fine, really. I think this could end up being pretty expensive and we could all be saying “Well duh” in hindsight.
Here are a few cards I really like but don’t know about whether they could hit $7.
Dismantling Wave. If you just play this as a 3 mana Sorcery, you basically Windgrace’s Judgment. You can’t get creatures, but you can’t get creatures with Return to Dust and that’s $2 after 5 printings.
Xyris. Arixmethes is like $8 right now, but Xyris is far from the only good Commander in this set. Commander 2018 was a mess and it’s really tough to try to figure out what any of its prices mean.
Slippery Bogbonder. People are really excited about this card. Granting Hexproof at instant speed and moving counters can make for some really dirty moves, and cards like Hardened Scales and Doubling Season love when you move counters because it grows the number again.
Cartographer’s Hawk. People are really polarized by this card. Some call it trash some are calling it a workhorse. I’m not sure which it is but anytime people argue this much, I take notice.
I think Commander 2020 is the best Commander set since Commander 2017 and the value will be spread out much more. I also think there will be more of it. I’ll be back with Xyris specs next week because I cannot WAIT to brew with this deck, but here’s a free one just for Pro Traders – Forced Fruition.
Until next time!
MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY
