Commander Masters has been live for a week, and there’s some oddities going on, which you might expect from a reprint set with a high price point. Collector Boosters have taken a nosedive to the $175 range, which is really close to distributor pricing. As a result, I’m being cautious about any spec purchases for a while, especially with most of these prices being on a downward trend.

Not everything has gotten cheaper, though. Some of these prices are trending upwards for this first week, and we ought to think about if they are going to hold those prices, at least for those versions. So let’s get into some cards, specific versions of those cards, and what the long-term plan should be for these.

Rise of the Eldrazi (Foil Extended Art) – Up to $45 from $20

This spell has two awesome flavor wins: It’s one of the cards that has the same name as a set, and the three effects you get for your TWELVE mana are what you’d get from casting each of the original three titans. There’s not going to be shenanigans with recurring this spell, as it exiles itself, but there are plenty of decks that would love to abuse extra turn-destroy a permanent-draw four cards. 

Regular and EA versions of the card have trickled down in price this week, but the FEA versions started low and have shot up. The price gap feels about right, but as a rare, this shows up in Collector Boosters only once every 157 packs or so. This promises to be a popular card in colorless strategies, so I like it long-term. I’ll be more interested in picking up any of the three other versions when they get under $10.

Cyclonic Rift (Foil Etched) – Up to $47 from $25

I’m generally going to shy away from ‘staples that get cheap’ as a buying strategy, but clearly, there’s some interest in this particular card at under $30, so much so that it’s bounced back up. There’s a terrible term, the ‘dead cat bounce,’ that gets used frequently to describe the phenomenon of people thinking that something has gotten too cheap and they need to get it now. This causes an upward bump in pricing even as the overall price heads downwards.

Other foil versions were $50, and this etched version being under $30 does seem tempting, but it’s the first week and foil etched has its own slot in Collector Boosters. It’s still just over 150 CBs to get any one etched foil rare, though, so there will be copies available. I expect this to trend back downwards some more, and get close to $20 for the most basic versions.

Fierce Guardianship (Borderless) – Foil and nonfoil each up $20 or $25 – 

The ‘free spells’ cycle was given the framebreak treatment, which is different from the textured foil treatment. These spells are awesome, and worth thinking about in any color, but especially in white, red, or blue decks, where these spells can keep your commander alive and in play. As a cycle, these were only in the one set of Commander decks, with no List or Secret Lair printing. With this being the first major injection of new copies, I see the bounce they are currently experiencing and I don’t think it can last for the non-premium versions.

Foil borderless copies are unlikely to go much lower, if they go lower at all. Fierce Guardianship especially tends to be a cEDH staple, and those folks do have a magpie’s eye for the most collectible versions of cards. I wouldn’t be shocked to see that at $120 in a month or two, but I also wouldn’t be surprised at $75. 

I need to highlight something from my article on the Math of Commander Masters: The slot with Borderless foils is only 4% to be textured, and with the ratio of rares to mythics for Borderless cards, you’ll get a foil Borderless Fierce Guardianship (or any of the other four) about every 28.5 Collector Boosters. Granted, a whole lot of those copies that get opened will get put right into the owner’s Commander deck of choice, but still, that’s a lot of copies and my hunch is that the price has farther to fall for all versions.

Smothering Tithe (Foil Etched) – (Up to $17 from $15, 2X2 etched foil down to $20 from $35 a month ago) – Now to be fair, Tithe (as well as Doubling Season) is getting a second printing right away as part of the Enchanting Tales subset for Wilds of Eldraine. That sort of one-two punch is going to hit any card deep in the value, and even a card as popular as Tithe is will show a loss. 

Etched foils having a dedicated slot in the Collector Boosters means that there will not be a real shortage of those cards, but the drop rate still isn’t amazing. Two in a row this way is probably going to mean that the regular versions of Tithe drop pretty low, and with several to choose from, the more premium versions might take a while to get expensive again.

Spellseeker (regular nonfoil) – Up to $13 from $8, other versions dropping – It’s always interesting to see when a card creeps up in price after a reprint. Clearly vendors underpriced it by a couple of dollars out of the gate, and with the other versions taking a tumble, it’s the rare case when preordering would have saved you money.

Spellseeker hasn’t ever had a wide release, though. It was rare in Battlebond, a niche set, the nit got a Judge version in 2020 and a Secret Lair not long ago. Now as a mythic, plus the casual demand of more than 60,000 decks on EDHREC, that’s a formula for surprising results. The borderless version is cool, yes, but I doubt people are upgrading to that over the Judge version or the trippy Secret Lair.

The Great Henge (Foil-Etched) – Up to $52 from $36

I can understand why this would drop early, given that it was just in Lord of the Rings’ bonus sheet and now we’re getting a regular/foil/foil-etched set of copies, but this is a very big bounce, one I’m not convinced will go back down. The Great Henge is as staple as cards get, interacting with a range of strategies and making everything better. Mana, lifegain, counters and card draw. This does everything you could hope for, being listed in 130,000 decks online as a result. 

That being said, I’m not expecting it to go a lot higher. We’ve got two sets putting more copies into circulation, and while casual demand soaks a whole lot of that up, the rise ought to be slower from here. If not reprinted, regular copies could get to $60 again by the end of 2024, but there’s no guarantee they won’t print it a third time.

Cliff (@WordOfCommander at Twitter and BlueSky) 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.

The new Commander Masters set has dropped, and prices are rocketing to the bottom. I don’t see anything worth buying at the moment, unless you’re hellbent on some personal copies, and in that case, go for it.

However, I’ve been reminded that The Brothers’ War (BRO) and its artifact reprint sheet (BRR) are perfectly timed for a check-in, to see what’s worth picking up now that those prices are at what’s likely to be their lowest. So let’s dive in, shall we?

The rest of this content is only visible to ProTrader members.

To learn how ProTrader can benefit YOU, click here to watch our short video.

ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.

Cliff (@WordOfCommander at Twitter and BlueSky) 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.

Another set, another set of calculations. Thankfully, this is a bit easier than some other sets have been. No super-mega-rare serialized cards, no funky subsets or weird collations. Commander Masters has extra-expensive booster packs, though, so let’s get into the types, the frames, the foiling, and what your chances are when you crack open a fresh pack.

Please keep in mind that I’m working with the best data possible. I’m confident in this set of outcomes, given what I have, but if they change things or have big mistakes, I’ll update this as best I can when I can.

This may seem overly obvious, but more expensive packs means more expensive singles. These Collector Boosters have trickled down in price, and are now around $50 each, and the variance on these can be very swingy indeed. It’s pretty amazing that you’re guaranteed very little for the cost of your Collector Booster, it’s even just one of the retro frame lands in foil! 

Most of my information comes from the Collecting Commander Masters article, and let’s start with the two small variants we get in this set: Textured Foils and Borderless Framebreak. The Framebreak is part of being Borderless, so don’t be surprised when Framebreak is left out of the posts.

	Textured Foil (Profiles + Lotus)	Traditional Foil Framebreaks
Uncommon	–	Sol Ring
Rare	–	Fierce Guardianship Deflecting Swat Deadly Rollick Obscuring Haze Flawless Maneuver
Mythic	The Ur-Dragon Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger Kozilek, the Great Distortion  Morophon, the Boundless Urza, Lord High Artificer Mikaeus the Unhallowed Neheb, the Eternal Omnath, Locus of Mana Selvala, Heart of the Wilds Jeweled Lotus	Balefire Dragon Insurrection Demonic Tutor Finale of Devastation Smothering Tithe Jeweled Lotus

Note that Lotus can show up in the final slot twice. Once as a trad foil framebreak, and once as a textured foil framebreak. Usually, Wizards alters numbers in circulation so that no one card is more numerous than others, total copies should be the same from mythic to mythic. A few less traditional foil, but that many textured foil added in. Also worthwhile to note that the foil Framebreak Sol Ring will pop up in one of the middle slots, about every 38 packs. That won’t be a super-rare pull.

Here’s the official list of what’s in a Collector Booster, with the top line being the last card in the pack.

One thing that I’ve learned over the years of calculations is that Wizards is generally going to put two rares out there for every one mythic. So when I’m calculating how many options there are in a given slot, I take the number of rares times two and then add the number of mythics. For example, in the Foil-Etched slot, there’s 135 rares, times two is 270. Plus the 35 mythics and that’s my pool of 305 cards. For any specific mythic, you have a 1/305 chance, and a 2/305 for any particular rare.

There are two additional pieces of data in the article that have direct bearing on the math I’m doing. First is that the textured foils are only 4% of pulls from that last slot. With ten options, we know that any given textured foil card is therefore 0.4%, or if you take the reciprocal, one out of 250 packs.

The other important piece of information is that for the third slot, with the EA and FEA cards, we’re outright told that you’ve got a 20% chance of pulling a foil card from that slot, and I’ve built those numbers into the table below. Feel free to check my math and reach out in the Discord or on Twitter.

Here’s the table with the odds for each of the last three slots in a Collector Booster, where the bigger money cards should be.

Type of Card (number of possible cards)	Rarity	Percent chance for any card of that category	Percent chance for a specific card of that category	# of Collector Boosters needed to open for that card
Textured foil (10)	Mythic	4%	0.4%	250
Borderless traditional foil (9)	Mythic	15.7%	1.7%	57.2
Borderless traditional foil (23)	Rare	80.3%	3.5%	28.6
Foil etched (35)	Mythic	11.4%	0.33%	305
Foil etched (135)	Rare	88.6%	0.66%	152.5
Extended-art nonfoil (7)	Mythic	8.89%	1.27%	78.75
Extended-art nonfoil (28)	Rare	71.1%	2.54%	39.375
Foil Extended Art (7)	Mythic	2.2%	0.32%	315
Foil Extended Art (28)	Rare	17.78%	0.63%	157.5

That’s some impressive numbers, especially as you consider that the retail price for a single Collector Booster is around 2-3x the price of regular Standard sets. One Textured Foil Jeweled Lotus represents about $12,000 in product. 

It’s worth noting that the rarest pulls are not the textured foils, but are instead the FEA mythics. It’s good to know what’s hard to pull, but we also need to know what’s going to show up a lot, and in this case, it’s the borderless rares, including the free spells. I wouldn’t buy any of these early, because we’re about to get a surprising number of these. Opening these packs means hitting any borderless rare in just under 8 of 10 packs, and getting one of the five ‘Commander = free’ spells every 8th pack or so. If you only care about Fierce Guardianship, that’s about every 29 packs.

Some cards needing 250 or even 315 packs sounds like a lot until you take a look at how the books were cooked in previous sets. Keep in mind the much higher price point for Commander Masters, though: 

Card/treatment/set	Approx. number of CBs needed to find one copy
Elven Sol Ring (Serialized xxx/300) (LTR)	11,111
Dwarven Sol Ring (xxx/700) (LTR)	4,762
Human Sol Ring (xxx/900) (LTR)	3,704
Surge Foil The Party Tree (The Great Henge) (LTR)	3,846
Ring Frame Foil Tom Bombadil (LTR)	120
Borderless Scene Foil The One Ring  (LTR)	103.45
Halo Foil Planar Frame Sigarda, Font of Blessings (Rare) (MAT)	180
Halo Foil Planar Frame Sarkhan, Soul Aflame (Mythic Rare) (MAT)	360
Serialized Foil Double Rainbow Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer (MUL)	10,010
Traditional Foil Planar Frame Sheoldred, Whispering One (MUL)	100
Etched Planar Foil Atraxa, Praetors’ Voice (MUL)	535.7
Halo Foil Niv-Mizzet Reborn (MUL)	750
Traditional Foil Borderless Wrenn and Realmbreaker (MOM)	219
Traditional Foil Extended Art Guardian Scalelord (MOC)	109.5

And with that in mind, let’s look at some example cards from Commander Masters:

Card/treatment/set	Approx. number of CBs needed to find one copy
Textured Foil Jeweled Lotus (CMM)	250
Borderless Traditional Foil Grave Pact (CMM)	57.2
Borderless Traditional Foil Fierce Guardianship (CMM)	28.6
Foil Etched Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger (CMM)	305
Foil Etched Flawless Maneuver (CMM)	152.5
Extended-Art Nonfoil Narci, Fable Singer (CMM)	78.75
Extended-Art Nonfoil Rise of the Eldrazi (CMM)	39.375
Foil Extended Art Sliver Gravemother (CMM)	315
Foil Extended Art Ondu Spiritdancer (CMM)	157.5

If you have further questions about these results or my methods, please feel free to hit me up on Twitter or in the ProTrader Discord. Good luck with your packs!

Cliff (@WordOfCommander at Twitter and BlueSky) 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.

Ever since we knew Commander Masters was coming, we’ve known the themes of the four Commander decks that are being sold alongside the set. After this week’s previews, we know what’s in the preconstructed decks, and it’s time to review what they left out. Some of these were a big surprise, and others were at least a little defensible. For some of these cards, there’s already been a run on the card, and that’ll be addressed too.

Please keep in mind for all of these cards, they dodged a reprint in Commander Masters but that doesn’t mean they won’t get tagged again in an upcoming Secret Lair or special set or who the hell knows. All bets are off, considering how cards can be reprinted twice in an eight-week period. (The Great Henge and Sword of the Animist come to mind!)

There’s also a chance that these don’t spike until players get the Commander decks in hand. Hard to tell what’ll happen, but if these are getting bought, built, and played, at least some of these will rise in value.

Eye of Ugin ($35 for the currently cheapest version ranging to $100 for the current most expensive) – I called this on the MTG Fast Finance podcast in late March, at least Expedition versions, to hit $100 because people would want to upgrade their copies. I didn’t even consider the idea that they would leave this card out entirely, which is why every version has gone up. I’d be selling into this hype.

Emrakul, the Promised End ($50 to $130) – There’s ways to abuse this card, but I’m really surprised that they left this out of the deck. It’s gone up twenty bucks since the deck was previewed, and it might not be done rising. Again, with that kind of increase, I’m keeping one personal copy and selling all the rest.

Sanctum of Ugin ($1.50 to $8) – There hasn’t been a run on this yet, and there will be. Getting nonfoils now is good, especially if you’re hoping for a brick/buylist exit. It won’t be hard to lock in gains once people start moving on to the new targets.

Conduit of Ruin ($2 to $10) – Two really good abilities, and they left the card out of the deck. Tough choices to be made, I know, but damn. Stock up while you can.

Ugin, the Spirit Dragon ($16 to $80) – Ugin is a tremendously unfair card in colorless decks. There are few feelings in Magic like exiling all the annoying stuff on the board but keeping every single one of your precious cards. He’s been printed a whole bunch, but Mythic Edition being down to $75 after being sold for $200 on release is hard to argue with, at least for personal copies. One vendor has a wall of 73 copies at $75, so this price might stick for a while. Note that this was the eBay snafu Mythic Edition, with the War of the Spark uncut sheets going out to folks.

Sliver Hive ($25 to $250) – One of the most egregious omissions from all four decks, what the hell were they thinking? It’s a perfect five-color land, for fixing and for Sliver multiplication. 

Sliver Overlord ($55 to $275) – They couldn’t reprint all the five-color Slivers, so the ones that got left out are climbing. Overlord is traditionally the Commander for the deck, due to fun interactions with Amoeboid Changeling (make their creature a Sliver, then perma-steal it) and the ability to go find the Sliver you need.

The First Sliver ($40 to $50) – Available as low as $25 just in February, it’s about doubled because the cascading goodness is super fun. Only thing better than getting a Sliver is getting one of its friends.

Root Sliver ($3 to $30) – This missed a reprint, but if you hate getting your Slivers countered, as most players do, this is your guy. Original foils and SL foils still available, though the Legions foil from 20 years ago has that OG frame that boomers like me love.

Shadow Sliver ($1 to $10) – Is this bad if you want to block? Yes. Does it evade every damn thing they want to do? Also yes. Bounce or sacrifice it as needed, thank me later.

Kindred Summons ($6) – I adore this card in swarm decks. You need a real critical mass to do this right, and that’s what Slivers excel at. Do you have five Slivers in play? Well now you’ve got five more and five new abilities! Important to note that the tokens you have totally count, so go to town with this card.

Coat of Arms ($16 to $100) – This is another card that hearkens back to the era of ‘It’s good for everyone at the table, but REALLY good for me.’ Yes, other typal decks will love you, but the buff your little chitterers get is second to none.

Idyllic Tutor ($5 to $60) – A cheap tutor for the deck and they didn’t want to reprint it. Weird.

Weaver of Harmony (75¢ to $2) – A buff and a copy ability? Get in cheap while you can. I advocate for the Neon frame, because it looks so much cooler.

Argothian Enchantress ($25 to $250) – Last seen in Eternal Masters, this would have been a great way to goose the value in the deck, but now you can go grab copies while they are relatively cheap. There’s been a lot of sales under $30 lately, so watch out for further movement.

Karametra, God of Harvests ($2 to $12) – I’d go for the Secret Lair copies here. If you’ve never played with repeated land-finding this way, I strongly suggest you do so. Enchantments are hungry for mana, and you’ll have enough creatures to make this worthwhile.

Inexorable Tide ($12 to $25) – One of our mods described a different card as ‘dodging reprints like it’s Neo in the Matrix dodging bullets’ and given that we just had a proliferate mechanic in a set, plus this planeswalker deck, it’s pretty amazing. There’s a lot of copies out there, but when regular copies are pushing $20 in two weeks, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Farewell ($10 to $25) – Bonus points if you play a different-language version, because they are all amazing to shout as you exile everything but your totally-not-going-to-take-over-now planeswalkers. We’re far enough past NEO that this is a good spec, but a very reprintable one. Tread carefully.

All Will Be One ($11 to $30) – Now it’s possible that the designers of the deck just didn’t have access to this card, but I don’t care. It’s one of the most disgusting things you can do in superfriends/proliferate, tossing damage around in big and small chunks. I’d suggest Oil-Slick first.

Arena Rector ($13 to $50) – Again, they didn’t want to include a tutor for this card type? Bless their hearts. All versions are up a little since the preview, but there’s still plenty of meat on this bone.

Ascend from Avernus (50¢ to $2) – There aren’t a lot of ways to mass reanimate planeswalkers, and this one is going to need lots of mana, but it’s very much worth it. Remember, you get them ALL back. Go get your FEA copies now. 

Comeuppance ($8) – A niche card, yes, but one dear to my heart. Teferi’s Protection is more versatile, I agree, but this one is a fog plus a reverse damage plus a damn sweet name. Just try it out, you’ll see what I mean. Especially when people look at your open mana, some of it blue, and think you’re holding up countermagic so they go to attack, and BOOM, you got them.

Heart of Kiran (50¢ to $6) – Once upon a time, it was $25 when it ruled Standard. Now it can be yours for less than bubble gum. Very useful card in the deck.

Whirlwind of Thought (25¢ to $4) – You’re playing a lot of noncreature spells. Make them all cantrip. Important to note that this was in March of the Machine’s precons, so focus on the FEA versions from Ikoria in the $4 range.

Cliff (@WordOfCommander at Twitter and BlueSky) 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.