It’s rare that I don’t wait for an entire set to be spoiled before I start talking about how a deck is going to be built, but I’m going to talk about how a deck is going to be built because, great googily moogily.

Now, I usually don’t like to do what I’m about to do and that’s speculate with no data. I got into EDH finance because I like to make my plays based on what people have been doing for 6 months because it used to take a year for stuff to move. Life is coming at as a lot faster than it used to and I think getting ahead of some price increases is prudent the second we recognize interactions because cards are beginning to go up the second they are identified as a potential combo irrespective of whether people actually play them.

Sub 1,000 decks and holding steady at just below $10? K.

It wasn’t EDH players who got excited about Wanderwine Prophets in Inalla decks, it was speculators and that’s because Commander 2017 being tribal made it so even people who have no idea what EDH is about could speculate on EDH cards. I don’t know if a merfolk commander from Rivals of Ixalan is inclined to make a Lorwyn Merfolk hit $10 the way this did. I’m inclined to say no for a few reasons.

1. A random creature out of rivals is less of an impetus to build a new deck than is a precon. A precon is a deck ready to be modified, a new card is a card. You need a lot of other things and that costs money and is more difficult than buying a precon.
2. People who don’t play EDH won’t speculate on random merfolk based on this. Only I and my readers do that.
3. We’re not talking about an infinite turn combo, something which is overrated at first if Sage of Hours is any indication.

So while realizing 1,000 growth is unlikely, we’re still likely to see some growth and that’s all we need. I think there are plenty of bulk uncommons that go up based on this new printing as well, and those are practically free to pick up right now. You have a few weeks before people even start building, so let’s try and anticipate what could matter and get ahead of the curve.

 

The Card

So this is a card. There are a few ways to build this deck, ranging from Voltron to Merfolk tribal and all seem pretty good. Tishana was pretty disappointing and the EDHREC metrics bear that out – there’s no good reason to play Tishana when Zegana exists.

However, I think Kumena is a card worth trifling with and I think it has the capacity to push some prices around. Let’s look at what likely goes in a majority of Kumena decks, which could be a decent amount and therefore impact prices.

The Rest of the Deck

Surgespanner

This is my pick #1 with a bullet. It’s trending up a little bit but with the ability to tap it at will with your commander, this goes up for sure. We’ve seen the ceiling on a Lorwyn rare merfolk that gets used just in EDH at $10 and while I don’t think this will hit that just because it’s me telling you it’s good instead of someone on reddit, I think it still goes up. $7.50 isn’t out of the question, and $5 seems all but guaranteed. If you don’t think that’s spicy enough, check out the foil.

That’s a mere 2x multiplier, which is common for non-played cards. The great thing about a foil mutliplier on a non-played card is you make a ton of money when it goes to a played card. The multiplier for a played card isn’t unreasonable at 4x so if the price of the non-foil doubles as people begin to play with it, the multiplier should also double meaning you get a huge price correction. The $2 non-foil shoots up to $5 and the multiplier doubles to 4x and all of a sudden your $4 foil is $20. I’m not saying necessarily buy this card in foil, but I’m not saying necessarily don’t, either. The foils are way easier to trigger the market so if anyone buys, everyone notices and that’s the unfortunate nature of MTG Finance these days. I can’t sanction that kind of BS but I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out it can happen and if we can be poised to take advantage of someone else’s buffoonery, then we’re doing it right.

Wake Thrasher

Goblins versus Merfolk hasn’t quite caught up to this guy but it will, likely pulling the price down to around $0.50 retail. I don’t know if I love that as a point of entry but I will say that Wake Thrasher is very good in a deck where you’re rewarded for tapping your Merfolk. I think the deck benefits a ton from ways to untap your Merfolk and tap them again and growing Wake Thrasher as you do it is solid. Pre-combat you grow all of your merfolk, make your commander unblockable and grow your Thrasher, making it possible to threaten multiple players with lethal damage at once. You need a big board for that, but I think blue and green can handle that if any color combination can.

The 3x multiplier on the foil and stagnant growth chart seem to indicate this a card people know is a card but which hasn’t taken off yet. I think there’s opportunity here, but less so than with  Surgespanner. Still, I showed you the foil copy and you can make up your own mind.

Grimoire Thief

Around $2 for a merfolk that does something when it becomes tapped? You’re going to do some work with this card in that deck. Also, you’re going to randomly pants someone when you counter a spell that you exiled from one player’s deck. No one expects that second ability in a 1-of format and it’s going to be hilarious when you get someone with it. This card goes in the deck for sure – it’s too obvious not to. A 4x foil multiplier tells me we could see some gains, but again, returns diminish the higher a multiplier is to begin with.

Thada Adel, Acquisitor

This doesn’t specifically interact with the commander but it almost certainly goes in the deck. If you’re playing Merfolk, you’re making their lands into Islands and therefore helping this card get even better. I think this is pretty reprintable but I’m not sure where they’d do it exactly, so maybe I’m being paranoid somewhat. I do know I like this card a ton and I put it in most of the 75% decks I brew on Gathering Magic and people have to eventually notice.

And speaking of turning their lands into Islands

This card does some serious work.

BULK

I promised there were a few bulk picks I liked, so here we are.

 

Also, check out my Gathering Magic article a week from this Thursday. I’m going to be brewing a deck with this card and the cards that make the cut are all probably worth looking at. There are too many to name here- Benefactor’s Draught, Thrasios, Paradox Engine, Umbral Mantle, Vitalize – a lot can go in the deck as well as the new Merfolk we’ll be spoiling the rest of the week, some of which are already spoiled and are fantastic.

Hope you enjoyed this read. Until next time!

 

Readers,

Today I was supposed to try and predict some more of what was going to be in Masters 25 so we can dump those cards because it didn’t feel like there was any sense of immediacy to buy anything (except stupid cryptocurrency, I guess) but looking at card prices of good EDH cards has made me marvel at how well some of them shrugged off Modern Masters printings. Iconic Masters seems to be printed more than we’d anticipated but people also seem to have moved on to draft Unstable because it’s a third of the cost and way more fun. With Iconic Masters prices near their bottom, maybe we should look at how long we expect it to be before prices recover, how much of their pre-reprinting value we expect them to recover and which cards we think are the best targets. I’ll try and find analogous cards in previous Masters sets so we can try and predict the future based on past price graphs. We can talk about Masters 25 some other time. Let’s get right into it.

 

Icons of Mythic Proportions

Iconic Masters has given us some terrible cards that aren’t really that good in any formats because they are “iconic” but for the most part, the set is loaded with good EDH cards, as are most Masters sets. There are plenty of really good EDH cards, so let’s take a look.

Consecrated Sphinx

EDHREC deck inclusion – 13,677

Current Price – $12ish

Older analog

Craterhoof was reprinted in Modern Masters 2017 but it’s already recovering nicely, especially if you look at the buylist price. Craterhoof lost quite a bit of value but it’s climbing right back up. We’re basically seeing 6 months into the future rather than 2 or 4 years like we could be with older Modern Masters sets, but Craterhoof nicely matches the ubiquity of Sphinx with both cards being in over 13,000 decks. If anything, this is a nice reminder that there is still kind of time to buy Craterhoof. The Masterpiece printing shows that Wizards has identified Sphinx as something of an EDH staple and another reprinting is possible, but that’s likely to take two years at least and we’ll recover quite a lot of our value by then. I am going to try and avoid using Modern Masters 2017 cards as analogs for the rest of this piece if I can since we’re only a few months ahead, but with both cards being printed twice at Mythic and having the same inclusion in EDH, it was too perfect to ignore.

Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger

EDH deck inclusion – 8219 decks

Current Price – $10.50

Older analog

With relatively the same EDH inclusion and two mythic printings each, I expect these two cards to share roughly the same trajectory. Eldrazi had a slightly inflated pre-reprinting price for reasons I don’t fully remember, but Kozilek has regained 50% of its post-reprinting value and if all of my investements could gain 50%, I’d be super happy. Unlikely to be in Commander precons or future Masters sets, I think Vorinclex is bound to grow and if we can get 50% more in a year or two, that seems pretty good to me. I think with more Iconic Masters copies running around, though, it may take more than two years. If you want a Vorniclex, though, buy now because it’s never getting cheaper and the card is stupid good.

Angels, all of them

If we were going to continue looking at Modern Masters 2017, I might say let’s look at Archangel of Thune, Linvala and Avacyn. I think there is a case to be made for growth for all of those cards. Avacyn is in twice as many decks as the others, so the growth potential is greater for that than those other cards (Linvala isn’t played as much outside of EDH as it used to be). I think we’ll be able to see some growth in Archangel of Thune and I think Linvala is probably a pretty good analog but the releases are as close together as Craterhoof and Sphinx so it’s possible we’ll see the same budding growth potential. If there is anything we can try and learn, let’s look at Avacyn.

EDH deck inclusion – 11,725 decks

Current price – $13

Older analog

This is basically a worst case scenario. Iona is in half as many decks as Avacyn (I know, I had a hard time believing it, too) but both were in a set, have this printing and are in FTV Angels. We see some budding recovery from Iona with the buy price converging very nicely with the retail price which indicates future growth potential in both. I think with Iona turning around a bit, unless Iconic Masters is printed entirely into dirt, Avacyn should grow even better than Iona, which is growing.

Non-Mythics

I think there are a few non-Mythics worth discussing quickly because even with them bring printed into powder at non-mythic in Iconic Masters, a set that apparently they’re selling at Walmart and Target like crazy, I still expect recovery.

Austere Command

EDH deck inclusion – 13676

Current price – $3

Older analog

Tooth and Nail took a long time to bottom out but when it did, it didn’t stay cheap long. If you told the average person that Tooth and Nail was briefly gettable for $6 retail ($4 buylist!) they would probably laugh. I feel the same way about $3 Austere Command.

Austere Command was in a Commander deck (it dodged the Commander Anthology bullet) and still went from $4 at the time of that reprinting to $14 before a reprint caught up with it. Buying these at $3 is cheating.

Rune-Scarred Demon

EDH Deck inclusion – 13,670

Current Price – Literally $1

Older analog

Does the price chart of Stonehewer look good to you? If I told you that Rune-Scarred Demon was in the same number of decks as Stonehewer, would you think that Rune-Scarred at $1 was way too cheap?

Well, I can’t tell you that. Rune-Scarred Demon actually isn’t in the same number of decks as Stonehewer. It’s actually in twice as many.

I think 5 examples is enough to digest for now. I can do a second installment next week because I think there are several more good buys. I also think there are good buys not predicated on EDH such as Glimpse the Unthinkable, but since I don’t really have the data infrastructure to prove it, I’m going to leave that up to someone else. I think we’re going to pinch it off here for this week. I’d like to thank everyone for sticking with MTG Price this year. We have had a few setbacks in 2017 but my articles are still fun to write, I think they’re still valuable and they’re still free eventually so as long as you keep reading them, I’ll keep writing them. 2018 is going to be an even better year for both MTG Price and EDHREC so you know I’ll let you know what is happening, what it means and how you can make some money. Buy those cheap Demons and Commands and always buy bulk rares – you never know what someone else is going to consider bulk and how much it will grow in a year or two.

That’s it for me this week. Until next year!