Readers!

Usually I take a look at a commander and drill down into their top cards, but a curious thing happened this week.

Between the usual suspects and a bunch of commanders we talked about months ago dominating the charts, as we’d expect at this point, I felt it was better to look at Throne as a set rather than an individual commander. There are likely to be some cards we want to look at for long-term, full-art and foils to think about and cross-format appeal to discuss. In short, let’s get super vague and talk about what “feels” “correct” because that’s what you pay us for. I’m good at this, I promise.

These are the top cards as commanders in the set, ranked. No surprises here, the top few sort of echo what we’ve seen in the top commanders overall with respect to the format as a whole. The new hotness is expected to make a splash and splash it did. The Top 5 here is all inside the Top 10 for the week. Eldraine is making an impact. However, the commanders aren’t really as interesting as the cards, but it was worth noting a few things.

Embry is nearly as popular here as it is in other formats. Kenrith and Embry have the most cross-format applicability, unless you count Brawl, which I don’t, because I don’t know how to count Brawl yet. But perhaps the commanders are only telling a small part of the story. In general, I tend to sort of gloss over commanders because unless they’re like, Atraxa, their price matters less than the cards they enable. We have spent a lot of time talking about the cards these commanders enable, but the rest of the stuff in the set seems to matter a lot.

Could EDH cards be underpriced because cards that don’t so much impact EDH especially are overpriced? Once Upon a Time and Oko are widely regarded as gigantic mistakes but they aren’t really that EDH-relevant, or are they?

Oko is the 24th-most-played card and Once Upon a Time is 101st – after Didn’t Say Please, Crashing Drawbridge and Revenge of Ravens. We can worry about cross-format applicability a bit, but clearly EDH has a few of its own ideas to an extent. Let’s look at a few.

Arcane Signet is #1, but with the card promised in draft packs of the new weird EDH draft set, the price is likely to plummet. We’re getting a re-supply of the Brawl decks these are exclusive to, so sell high while you still can. This is bound to be an EDH staple forever, but they’re already printing it way more than cards like Commander’s Sphere and Thought Vessel and if there is a Brawl deck every year or two, this will likely be in it. I say sell, this is hard to maintain value long-term with how aggressive they could be with printing it. I’m not saying they will, I’m saying nothing is stopping them and there are better places to park your money.

If you want somewhere to park money, look no farther than the #2 card. With a corollary in Bloom Tender, a $50 card, this seems slightly underpriced at $1. The reprint risk is medium, but I’d say the reprint risk is no higher than Bloom Tender, a card that has been shouting at the top of its lungs for a reprint for half a decade. This card would be a “wow, I can’t believe they printed this” card in any set but one where they printed a Green card that’s a better cantrip than Gitaxian Probe, a Green card that’s a better Planeswalker than anything named Jace or Teferi, a Snapcaster Mage that you can fetch with a Scalding Tarn and a Green creature with 17 abilities. This is pretty good and it’s not a $1 card in a just universe.

Why is this card still expensive? People are drafting this set every week and this card doesn’t seem to have much impact anywhere. Here’s a card I think is a decent corollary.

The Immortal Sun has an interesting price trajectory. The Immortal Sun also made a splash in Standard, something that seems less likely for The Great Henge. Best case scenario this is the trajectory. Worst case, you can buy in even cheaper and watch EDH buoy the price right back up.

I think Mirrors are slept on, historically.

See what I mean? I am not saying for sure that Mirrormade is as good as Mirage Mirror, but I bet a lot of you didn’t even know Mirrage Mirror was a $5 card if you don’t follow EDH. Are people sleeping on The Magic Mirror? It’s ranked 38th in the set, so, maybe, mayne not. Mirrormade is outperforming modest expectations, though, so maybe take notice.

This card seems like the case study of what a lot of play in literally just EDH can do for a strong, non-mythic rare. I think this is going to see a ton of play and really impact EDH and I also think it can’t impact price. You’ll want some cross-format play or increased scarcity to see the price make moves less modest than the modest moves I expect from this card. This will be our base-line and barring cross-format applicability, don’t expect anything played less than this to go anywhere in price.

I continue to like Faeburrow Elder and awful lot and think it’s a steal at $1 or under and think the foils and full-art copies are obvious money. I also think I’m looking forward to knowing more about some ancillary product so I have new things to discuss next week. That does it for me. Until next time!

Readers,

I alluded to Kenrith having some cards we cared about for Kenrith decks in an earlier article and if you want to refresh your memory, go for it, I’ll wait here. Kenrith looked a bit like a generic “WUBRG goodstuff deck” but if you monkey with the filters a bit, you can drill down a bit and see separate approaches begin to materialize and those different approaches are all individual axes that can all push growth while being under the umbrella of “Kenrith.” We can check what percentage of the total Kenrith decks are occupied by these side strategies and that’s good to know, especially if they could affect future cards.

Last article we talked about how Biomancer’s Familiar will never be able to grow just based on one EDH deck and how Training Grounds is likely to get a reprint and there isn’t much room for growth at its current price. There is another card I want to discuss, though, before we play with filters at all.

This is basically Heartstone’s time. It isn’t all Kenrith doing this, obviously, but the more commander cards they print with colorless activation costs, the better this card gets. The Premium fol version is pretty bad and while this is an uncommon, it’s an uncommon from Stronghold which means there are more copies of Throne of Eldraine borderless mythic rares than there are copies of this card. It’s up, you may even have these in bulk since they were $0.50 a year ago and this card isn’t getting worse. Kenrith could make this $5 and if not, some other card will very soon.

This is an ugly-ass foil but it’s worth noting that the price surge has been even more profound for the premium Slivers deck copies and they’re going to dry up faster since stock is lower. I think this could hit $10, especially if we all give it a little nudge. This may be the best money you can spend on the basis of Kenrith decks. I should have probably done this card last, you’re all going to just close this article and go buy out Coolstuff. Go read my articles while you’re over there.

Take My Picture Because I Won’t Remember

Still here? That’s great, thanks for sticking with it. I think there’s more than meets the eye to Kenrith decks and I want to show you how to navigate EDHREC a little bit to find more opportunities.

The top, left-hand portion of the page has this information and everything blue is clickable. We still have the same filters and those are all the way over on the right-hand side.

The advanced filter allows you to include or exclude certain cards or filter by price and that mostly isn’t necessary now that we include the “Cheap” and “Expensive” options in the “Budget” row on the left. Before, I would use the Advanced Filter to only pull up decks with Mana Crypt to see what the people for whom money is no object were up to, whether they were a baller or a theorycrafter. What’s more interesting than that, though, is using the tags. These tags are unique to each commander and they’re selected based on what people who submit decks consider their build to be.

Enough people are building Kenrith as a Wheels deck, which I might not have suspected (he’s a great reanimator, though) and a lot of people are using him as a 5 color Lands deck commander despite Golos, you know, existing. I guess people really like the idea of having Obelisk of Alara as their commander.

Group Hug and Politics decks are probably the same within like 5 or 7 cards but it’s worth looking at what those decks are. Kenrith is hardly the go-to when you think about Wheel decks, but Kenrith may be the best Group Hug Commander printed recently because unlike Kyanaios and Tiro, he’s 5 colors and his Black ability is very powerful. Kynaois and Tiro is likely better overall as a commander but that’s an old card, people like new cards. To see a completely new list of top cards, high synergy cards and category inclusions, just click either Group Hug or Politics and see what I saw.

Kynaois and Tiro is a really good inclusion in this deck and the rest of it looks like ways to make sure everyone can play lots of lands. Group Hug is a really weird way to play Magic and I don’t really understand the deck. One thing we can use EDHREC for in a case like this where the cards all baffle us is to check the synergy rating.

Want to know what Synergy is? Let’s take a sneak peek at a section of EDHREC’s EDH wiki that is coming soon.

What is “Synergy”? What is the “Signature Cards” section?

Many cards across EDHREC will have a rating of synergy that will show up as a percentage that either has a + or a – in front of it. For example, this Eldrazi Displacer has a +75% synergy rating on the Rasputin Dreamweaver [link] page. 

Synergy rating is intended to show cards that are particularly important to the commander or theme you are currently viewing. This is opposed to just cards that are generally played in most decks that are popular because they are individually strong. We did this because we wanted to show what cards were interesting to a commander in the Signature Cards section at the top of the page. It gives a quick look at what cards define a deck, as opposed to just showing a bunch of cards like Cyclonic Rift and Sol Ring that aren’t interesting because they are in a bunch of decks.

Synergy score is calculated as: [% decks this card is in for commander/theme] – [% decks this card is in for color identity]

In the Eldrazi Displacer and Rasputin example, a +75% synergy score means that it’s seen way more than in other U/W decks. It’s calculated by taking the 86% of Rasputin decks it is in, then subtracting the 11% of other U/W decks it is in. Leaving us +75% synergy score, making it pretty clear this card is not generally popular in most U/W decks but particularly popular in Rasputin decks.

A high synergy score is indicative of the card being mostly used in those particular decks much more than in the average deck in those colors. It’s not a percentage, it’s a differential, so don’t let the percent sign fool you. If you look outside the high synergy cards, the synergy score can tell you the extent to which this deck is solely responsible for putting pressure on the price, and this score can help you evaluate your picks in other categories. Here’s an example of what I mean by that.

Magus of the Vineyard doesn’t seem like the strongest card to me because while it’s in half of the decks tagged “Group Hug” it’s also got a very high synergy score which means it’s mostly in this small handful of niche decks. Is it a good pickup under $1? Maybe, but we don’t know that based on just this info, we should click on the card and go to the card’s page.

This is pretty clearly a Group Hug card and since that strategy almost always involves Green, it might not be that bad a choice.

Only 1% of the total Green decks seems low, and 911 raw decks total seems low, also, and I don’t like this as a spec, but I like it more than I did just seeing it on the Group Hug page, so it’s always worth clicking on the card and seeing its data with more context.

Looking at the Group Hug cards, it’s pretty clear that most of the cards are Group Hug deck staples. There isn’t much that’s unique to Kenrith – every non-black card in the high synergy and top cards section is in the same section for K&T. I’m glad we looked, but I’m moving on to “Politics.”

“Politics” appears to be code for “Cards from Conspiracy” from what I can tell.

A full half of these cards have “Will of the Council” or “Council’s Dilemma” abilities, which is very narrow. Those cards aren’t played enough elsewhere to soak up supply and Politics decks are 15 of the 346 Kenrith decks registered so far, so these are very fringe cards.

I didn’t find much I like drilling down into Kenrith but I wanted to show you my search technique in case you wanted to apply it to other commanders.

Here, briefly since this has been a long piece that’s fruitless so far, is what I think is actionable.

This gets printed every 3 years and it shrugged off its 2016 reprinting in a big way. Tempt with Discovery was in the K&T deck, which was the second-worst-selling, but people inclined to play Kenrith likely already have a K&T deck. That’s not to say I don’t love this card at its current price because I really do. This just got reprinted and some sites have it above $5 already.

Strike Zone wants to sell you 2 copies of this card for $4 when it’s $6 everywhere else. Oblige them.

Coolstuff wants to sell you 1 foil copy of this card where its $24 everywhere else. Oblige them.

This card doesn’t see enough play. I don’t know if the price is wrong but it’s climbing to $10 some places and staying flat others. That’s usually a sign of an upcoming correction.

It’s time for this to begin its long recovery. It will never be “Oh snap, they UNBANNED THAT?” $20 again, but it can be more than $5. I think it’s at its floor.

That does it for me this week. Join me next week where I stop putting off looking at the other Brawl decks. Join me, won’t you? Until next time!