Casual Fridays

Leaving Kaladesh

Hello everyone! We are likely two weeks away from previews for Guilds of Ravnica, and while I enjoy the experience of ‘will they really do a Ravnica sans shocklands?’ threads, that’s not the main thing on my mind.

Today, I’m thinking about the things that are about to rotate out of Standard, and I’m looking for the cards which have appeal in Modern, Legacy, Commander or Cube.

There’s no shortage of these cards, and that bodes quite well for opportunities. Some cards are already pretty high, due to extensive use (Fatal Push, for example) and while there might be some money made there it’ll either be too slow or too small.

Let’s talk about some cards!

Kaladesh

Spirebluff Canal ($7 regular/$15 foil)

Trending down, until it’ll begin trending up again!

The enemy fastlands are a terrific investment, but I’m only going to mention the top two. Spirebluff is the #33 most played land in Modern, appearing in about 8% of decks. It’s popular in explosive decks who need two colors right away, like Storm, and this price is low for both versions. I can easily see this being $10/$30, or even higher depending. I hope the price drops down a little, as people liquidate their current Standard decks, but this one and Blooming Marsh (#41 on that list, in roughly 5% of decks) are the ones I really want to stock up on. I prefer foils too, but given how common this can be, nonfoils appeal too. I find it unlikely we will get this in a booster pack again for a while–we haven’t gotten a reprint of the allied fastlands, and that was in late 2010!

Metallurgic Summonings ($1.30/$4)

Ponder with a 1/1 attached is just absurd right?

This seems woefully underpriced for a mythic, but it’s seen so little play. Considering how common ‘no creature’ decks are in Commander, this card is ridiculous. One of my other favorite interactions is that this plays extremely well with the new Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer, making artifact tokens that can be copied into other things, or be the source for other token copies. It’s in 5000 decks on EDHREC, so it’s not like this card is a secret. It’s going to be super solid for growth going forward.

Ceremonious Rejection (50¢/$5)

This is currently one of the most popular sideboard cards in Modern, given the utility against Tron, Affinity, KCI, and Eldrazi. If you play Modern, get your playset now of nonfoils, and feel free to get some foils when you can. There’s only about 100 on TCG right now, and given the large number of decks that are playing this as at least a two-of, I won’t be shocked when they jump to at least $15, uncommon or not.

Paradoxical Outcome (50¢/$6!)

It’s been a while since I saw a foil multiplier at 12, and this is due to the popularity of this card in Vintage. As you can imagine, this card plus a Mox or two, perhaps a Grim Monolith, means you draw a lot of cards very very fast. I was surprised to find that the foils are this cheap, considering that this deck has quickly become one of the most commonly played decks in that format.

I’ll give you that Vintage isn’t a big scene in paper, at least as compared to online, but when there’s only 32 copies on TCG and a handful on other big sites, it feels like a solid choice for a future buyout.

Dubious Challenge (bulk/$1)

The last card I’m targeting from Kaladesh is this crappy, terrible, no-good card. You don’t have to tell me that it’s not great. It’s actively bad, but there’s a deck waiting to break out. We already have Flickerwisp and Glimmerpoint Stag to flicker the Griselbrand or Emrakul, so there’s a base. One more flickering creature might put this over the top, though it’s a four-mana sorcery that is easily countered. The price for getting in is so low, though, that I don’t mind picking up a few foils and just being patient. I don’t know when it’ll blow up, but it’s unique and has great potential.

Aether Revolt

Paradox Engine ($17/$34/$120 for the Masterpiece Invention)

This card of a thousand combos is the perfect mythic, in that you don’t ever want to open it in Limited events. It’s a super-popular card in Commander: in print for about 20 months, already listed in more than 11,000 decks. That’s a lot of combos and shenanigans, and it’s why the Invention is so pricey.

Oh it stings, I knew better, why didn’t I buy any?

I can’t advocate picking up these Inventions as a value investment. They’re going to go up, but they’ve already spiked pretty hard and any further growth is going to be quite slow. Pack foils are a super-tasty target, as they ought to be about $45, considering the usual foil multiplier. The Invention presents a price ceiling, but know that the pack foil is below where it’s expected to be, and that means it’ll correct itself by $15-$20 before too long.

Mechanized Production ($3/$6)

Alternate win conditions are already something I pay attention to, but the assortment of cards that can make this amazing really put this over the top. Yes, it’s another awesome Brudiclad card, but it’s also great with other artifacts you’d be playing anyway. Churn out some mana rocks, or if you really want to get wild, Coveted Jewel. This is a small-set mythic that is niche so far but it’s got great potential to blow up in the right setting.

Planar Bridge ($3/$6/$60)

That’s not a typo. The Invention version is 20x the regular, and 10x the pack foil price. I love inventions, I do, but this is out of alignment. There’s 4500 people who’ve already put this into decks online, and the best thing about seeing this card on the other side of the table in a Commander game is the sure and certain knowledge that my suffering won’t last long. Hopefully.

Foil Scrap Trawler ($2-$4)

First of all, this was the Buy-a-Box card for Aether Revolt. There’s a lot of extra foils out there, so be aware that this might not hit the heights you’re hoping for.

That being said, this card enables all sorts of silly and grindy and annoying decks. It’s a staple of the Krark-Clan Ironworks deck, and there’s also an incredible Grinding Station deck (found here if you want) that abuses the interactions in order to win with Sword/Thopter, because dumping cards into the yard in such a deck is basically drawing them.

Cliff has been writing for MTGPrice for five years now, 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: Windgrace, Lord of…. Look, Here’s Some Specs, OK?

4 Comments

Readers,

You want specs, right? That’s why you read this column. So why don’t I just trust you understand that I understand my methods by now and just give you what you want? Specs.

If you’re a new reader, welcome. I’ve been writing this column for like 5 years and it’s a work in progress. Every once in a while I’ll tweak my methodology but for the most part, I’m going to use EDHREC data to see what people are playing and then I’m going to use my expertise in both MTG Finance and EDH to determine if anything used a lot will be worth more money later by virtue of that playability. That’s it. I don’t know what I try to make it sound more complicated than it is. It’s not like I’m afraid of one of you taking my job and if someone told me “I don’t need you anymore because I learned all I can from you and now I’m going to be the best EDH Finance writer ever!” good, but also I don’t believe you. If you really want to write an EDH finance column I’ll hire you to do it on EDHREC. I mean, maybe.

Anyway, I said no preamble and there I go writing a whole paragraph of it. That was your fault. What happens next? That’s all me, baby.

SPECS!

Lord Windgrace, maybe not to anyone’s shock, is the second-most popular deck on EDHREC out of all of the new commanders. Aminatou to no one’s surprise is number one, possibly Yuriko at #3 is a surprise, maybe not. But as much as Lord Windgrace’s “Lands matter” deck with barely any cards that care about lands was maligned by people during prerelease season, this isn’t prerelease season, this is “I bought the deck, now what?” season and I think “now what” for quite a few people is “Take Lord Windgrace, Windgrace’s Judgment, Turntimber Sower and Nesting Dragon out of a box and throw the rest of the junk away” and that’s fine. The thing is, the deck you can build with Lord Windgrace’s precon minus all of the cards in Lord Windgrace’s precon that aren’t Lord Windgrace is a pretty good one. Lands matter, and people have been waiting for a commander that recognizes that for quite a while. Now they have it and first off, they spiked two cards that really should have been in the precon.

The Gitrog Monster flirting with $9 on Card Kingdom makes people think they have found the next The Gitrog Monster.

It’s possible. There is a lot of Dominaria out there and this will take a while to quadruple but it doesn’t hurt to stock up on these IF you think this could go up. I’m not 100% convinced, but I think if you can get these under $2, maybe on TCG Player or by trading for them, you could sock enough of these away to make some scratch on a double up in 2 years.

Back to Windgrace!

Sorry. Anyway, lands have mattered for a while and with Thrasios and Tatyova making lands matter cards in green matter for a while, we’re looking at stuff that was teetering on the brink of going up getting another push but we’re mostly looking at chasing stuff we should have bought when it was cheaper. I don’t hate Splendid Reclamation around $2 currently, but I liked it a lot more when it was much cheaper a long time ago .

It’s already quadrupled, so getting in late obviously feels bad. However, it’s not done going up, mostly likely, due to every deck that comes out seeming to want to dump stuff in the yard and how many times I have killed someone with this card with Avenger of Zendikar in play.  Amulet of Vigor is pretty good, too.

I still think there is meat on the bone here and I think there will be more “lands matter” cards to come later. I might get out of mine in a year, though, before the next Commander decks come out, but then again, what are the odds they make another deck where lands matter so soon?

Here’s a little snakeyboi that I think, unlike most snakes, has legs. As a spec. Like, the spec has legs which is incongruous since it’s a snake and that’s funny. Look, I don’t have to impress you. I do have to convince you that Iconic Masters stuff is still nearish its floor and with a Lands Matter deck being super popular, why not play the snake? It’s in half of the 133 decks on EDHREC this week and that’s a good indication that people are aware of it, the Iconic Masters printing has enfranchised some people and we’re going to sell a ton of these at like $13 in a year or two. It has Lotus in the name – this seems like a winner to me.

Speaking of cards from Iconic Masters that were originally in Zendikar as mythics and are in a lot of Lord Windgrace decks and will likely go up in price because they were going to anyway but the new demand from a popular archetype doesn’t hurt, I present this. Ob Nixilis basically follows what Cobra does since the cards are very similar in a lot of respects. Total demand for Ob is less, and it’s less likely to break in Modern and therefore it has less upside potential but if nothing explosive happens with Cobra, this is as safe a bet. I like Cobra better, though, because of Modern and how playable it is there.

 

If you look at the robust recovery of Exploration, Burgeoning seems like a great buy. Conspiracy packs are radioactive and supply is peaked so with demand growing every time they print another Thrasios, Muldrotha, Tatyova or Lord Windgrace, even people who bought Burgeoning already will need to buy it again. This is a $15 card, it just doesn’t know it yet.

Crucible’s price is pretty established at this point. It’s in a set that doesn’t have very many great cards and we’re getting close to starting to spoil cards from Guilds of Ravnica so at this point, we’re basically at peak supply of M19. A lot of people aren’t as bullish on Crucible but I think at $20, it has some discovered demand. A lot of people cited low EDH inclusion numbers as a reason for being hesitant to take a look at this card, but at $20, it’s much more affordable and it’s pricing itself into decks. It’s also in more EDH decks than Coat of Arms, Illusionists’ Bracers, Paradox Engine and Aetherflux Reservoir and a lot of those decks were registered before Crucible was affordable.

An artifact in 12,000 decks is nothing to sneeze at. If it doesn’t go below $20, it will likely start climbing north of $30 if it isn’t reprinted again. I realize that’s not the sexy “$0.50 into $5” like we saw with Realms Uncharted when The Gitrog Monster was spoiled (or $0.50 into $22 like with Squandered Resources, a Reserved List card that was allowed to be $0.50 because it was 2016) but it’s still a pretty solid card with growth potential and they’re in trade binders right now, more importantly.

Remember, this card has 3 foils versions (Set, prerelease and game day) and one regular version and they’re all about the same price. I would go for set foil since that’s likely to diverge the most from the non-foil, but it’s hard to go wrong with any version of this. It’s a Crucible, but it’s also a Crucible that can go in a deck that already has Crucible AND you can Green Sun’s Zenith or Wordly Tutor for it. Sounds like a winner to me.

That’s all the news that’s fit to print about our Lord Windy, here. A lot of this stuff went up already by virtue of decks like Tatyova, Muldrotha and Thrasios but there is still money to be made and some of these cards have a lot of potential. Ulvenwald Hydra, Bobo Enraged, Ghost Town, Dust Bowl and a ton of other cards are getting twice the play they were a year ago, so make sure you check prices on stuff you speculated on already.

Thanks for reading, readers. I’ll be back next week, likely to talk about why Brudiclad is so much more fun than Saheeli. Until next time!

Watchtower

The Watchtower 8/20/18 for ProTraders – Plan Your Specs

By: Travis Allen
@wizardbumpin

Don’t miss this week’s installment of the MTG Fast Finance podcast, an on-topic, no-nonsense tour through the week’s most important changes in the Magic economy.

Am I the only one that feels like we just had a Banned and Restricted announcement? Apparently the last one was July 2nd, so it’s been a month and a half at least. Still. Feels like it was like two weeks ago.

Anyways, it came up blank. Mox Opal, Krark-Clan Ironworks, Nexus of Fate, Alex Bertoncini — absolutely nothing that we thought may get banned has found itself on the way out. Overall it’s not surprising. Krark-Clan certainly has the makings of a problem deck, but it’s hard to argue that it’s there already. One player spiking two GPs and mild assorted success elsewhere is hardly enough reason to pull that trigger. That’s not to say we won’t get there eventually. We’re just not there today.

Krark-Clan Ironworks

Price Today: $18
Possible Price: $40

Shortly after the B&R announcement went live, my lightly played Krark-Clan Ironworks (KCI) set that’s been for on TCG for a few weeks sold. I suspect that there were a fair number of players waiting a few weeks to see if KCI would get the axe. When it didn’t, they’re realizing they’ve got at least two months to jam the deck, and that’s worst case scenario. It could easily be several B&R rotations, if ever. If a chunk of players start going in on these, supply will evaporate rapidly. There’s 11 English NM playsets on TCG right now. If one player from each state decides to buy a set of KCI, the market will run dry.

Of course we’re also still talking about a single-printed uncommon from Fifth Dawn, the spring set from 2004. That’s 14 years ago, mind you. That’s older than several percentage points of players that showed up to GP LA this weekend, I’d imagine. What do you suppose overall supply looked like back then, in the midst of Affinity and a decrease in player count so significant that Wizards still looks back on it as one of the darkest periods of the game?

Modern has shown us time and time again that key components of combo decks can hit wild highs. This isn’t Standard. I wouldn’t bat an eye at $35 – $50 KCIs, and that’s without the deck becoming a tier one pillar.

Skyshroud Claim (Foil)

Price Today: $7
Possible Price: $15

Commander 2018’s release pulled everyone’s attention away from what was the hot topic prior to that, Battlebond. That’s good for us, since now the “hard work” of just letting Battlebond be what it is — scarce — can progress quietly, driving prices on singles up across the board. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect that Battlebond will end up having seen massive gains by this time next year.

Skyshroud Claim is probably the best ramp spell in EDH. It’s not the most played — there are about five ahead of it — and I chalk that up to availability. Cultivate and Rampant Growth have been printed a zillion times and show up in precons everywhere. Prior to Battlebond, Skyshroud Claim had never been reprinted, so it rarely made it into the “stuff that’s currently on my table” decks. With Battlebond, there may be a relative uptick in popularity.

Regardless, it’s the best ramp spell, and players that know EDH know that. Prophecy foils have been expensive for a long while for that reason. You can find played copies around $25 to $30 right now. Good luck with NM though. Battlebond copies are where many players will turn to for their foil fix, naturally, and turn they will. I’d estimate a huge percentage of players with Skyshroud Claims have non-foil copies, because the foil ones were too expensive, and they knew foils would come along eventually. Now anyone that’s been waiting for the reprint has finally gotten it. There’s even plenty of weird people that prefer the modern border to the original.

Foils at $7 are definitely going to climb. Long-time players are going to be picking up copies to replace their older, non-foil Nemesis copies, and new players getting turned on to Skyshroud claim are going to be grabbing them too. Without reprint, we’ll see Battlebond foils easily break $15.


Utvara Hellkite(Foil)

Price Today: $10
Possible Price: $25

One of the cooler looking commanders from this year’s product that hasn’t gotten nearly as much air time as the others is Brudiclad. His ability is a bit difficult to parse at first, but once you do, you can see how awesome he is. He turns all your tokens — not just token creatures, tokens — into one type of token you already control. What’s that mean? Well, if you have a pile of treasure and clue tokens, then make a token copy of Massacre Wurm, you suddenly have an army of Massacre Wurms. Cast that wrath!

Brudiclad decks are going to be looking for two engine pieces: cards that generate a lot of tokens of any sort, and cards that generate awesome tokens. Utvara Hellkite is the latter. Attacking with Utvara makes a 6/6 dragon token. Now you’ve got an awesome token to clone. Turn your 10 treasure tokens into 6/6 dragons. Good start. Now attack with all 10, making 10 more 6/6 dragons. That’s getting the hang of it!

Utvara was reprinted in Commander last year, but we’re not talking non-foils. Foils are around $10 or $11, and I imagine nearly every Brudiclad player is going to be slotting Utvara into their deck. Scroll through the EDHREC page for him and you’ll see that there’s a surprising dearth of excellent token generators. Utvara should become a lock for the strategy.

Supply is quite low, and with newfound Brudiclad demand on an already-taxed tribal card, I suspect the dominos will fall and we’ll see $30 Utvara’s before long.

Travis Allen has  been playing Magic: The Gathering since 1994, mostly in upstate New York. Ever since his first FNM he’s been trying to make playing Magic cheaper, and he first brought his perspective to MTGPrice in 2012. You can find his articles there weekly, as well as on the podcast MTG Fast Finance

 
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Casual Fridays

Commander Flashbacks

One of the best investments I ever made, I made scared. I bought the original set of 5 Commander decks in 2011, without knowing a single card that was in them. Star City had a promotion where if you bought four of the decks, you got the fifth one free.

I’d only recently gotten into Commander, and it was exactly what I wanted when I got back into Magic: a way to use my old cards, and a reason to go spelunking through the boxes I still had.

The original cards, I’ve long since traded and/or sold off. We’ve gotten to the point that now we’ve had two Commander Anthology sets released, proving that Wizards knows full well what a gold mine they have on their hands.

Today, I want to look back at the earliest Commander sets, and see if there’s lessons to be learned. The cards that spiked, did they hold a price? What about the new decks and the allure of building something new?

Commander 2013

True-Name Nemesis (max price $40 in early 2014, now $17, reprint is $11/$220 foil)

This is a card and a lesson all at once. Wizards figured that laking these cards only legal in Legacy was a safety valve, so even if they made a mistake, the most powerful format would likely be able to solve the issue.

The card had trickled downward slowly since release, stabilizing in the $30-$35 range, because while supply was small, so was demand. No one was playing four of this, and those who wanted it did finally get the few they wanted. Thankfully, no one besides Legacy players and Cubers wanted this card.

Reprinting it in Battlebond flooded the market. Between the two versions, there’s now 500 copies on TCG, roughly half and half. A lot of people must have had spare copies, and I can see that it’s a tempting spec, but that’s a rough hit. Foil prices from Battlebond are on the way down too. I knew a guy at GP Vegas willing to spend $250 on a foil, and now there’s 20 foils starting at $200. If I had one, would I be patient? Probably. I’d rather sell it for $175 now than wait two years to get $250.

Primal Vigor (was bulk, slowly grown to $20 after a few small bumps)

You get tokens! You get tokens! etc.

Fixing Doubling Season seems like a slam dunk. The card is very easy to abuse, and super fun to abuse at the same time. Commander players, we love doing something twice as much. This hasn’t been reprinted, and that makes it a terrible spec target. The price on this is mostly due to low supply, it’s only in 5k decks on EDHREC despite its age. We’ve got a lot of options for doubling counters and tokens, but this doesn’t work with planeswalkers or other permanents the way Season does.

Bane of Progress ($2 at its cheapest, now up to $4) I want, very badly, to pick up a million of these as a strong spec target. It just dodged another round of reprints, and while it was in Commander Anthology #1 it is in 10,000 decks on EDHREC. Sure, it’s going to kill your own stuff, but this card is awesome. There’s only 21 on TCG right now, and that’s really got me thinking. It would not be hard to imagine this as a $10 card.

Problem is, it’s super-reprintable. Having a bunch of these will make me nervous, and in addition, we haven’t had a foil version yet. Wizards knows we like shiny things, and will eventually give us a shiny copy. Spec if you want to–I’m staying away but I understand the appeal.

Commander 2014

Containment Priest (was $30 at the start, down to $7, back up to $25, Invocation is $70)

This is why I’m scared of the Bane of Progress reprint. Containment Priest was being bought its first weekend by vendors for $50 on the floor of GP New Jersey in November of 2014, scarcely a week after it had been released. It’s a popular sideboard choice in Legacy, too, because it’s strong against some unfair decks (Show and Tell, Reanimator, etc.) and is immune to Spell Pierce. I really like picking these up now, as it’s seeing just enough play to make it worthwhile and got its foil relatively recently. Earlier this year, it sat at $35, but I think it’s still got room to grow, given the small supply and the demand.

Song of the Dryads ($2 for the longest, then spiked to $20, now $8)

I have to imagine it’s a lullaby, or maybe classical.

A one-of in Lands as a sideboard card, this is pretty amazing. It’s gotten one Anthology reprint, so be aware of that risk, but this is a card that you’re not playing enough in Commander. Players are going to adapt to you destroying their permanents. Instead, turn them off and keep them on the field, useless. It’s in 9,000 decks online and there’s less than 60 on TCG between the two versions. Ripe for the picking.

Ghoulcaller Gisa (started at $2, steady rise to $15)

Without a reprint, she’s just going to keep climbing. She’s a lot better than Stitcher Geralf, and their relative prices reflect that. Amazingly, she’s only in 700 decks online, which feels wrong. She’s not just a Zombie maker; anything with a sacrifice theme wants her too. If I knew she was safe from reprints for another couple years I’d be all-in, but a reprint will tank her hard and I doubt her price would recover.

 

Cliff has been writing for MTGPrice for five years now, 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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