Last week we looked at the MOM precons and I was a little surprised at how the top of the heap looked. For reference, the page for the precons last week looked like this.
We had a few commanders flip spots, but it wasn’t so much which moved as it is how much they moved. That makes sense to me but in case it doesn’t make sense to you, I’ll explain.
What I mean to say is that while it is cool that Sidar Jabari went from third to second place, Sidar Jabari went from 263 decks to 944 in the same time period Goro-Goro went from 700 to 955. Sure, it’s still number one, but one grew a lot, and one grew a little.
So do we talk about the top commander or the one that grew the most? Well, we didn’t talk about Sidar last week and this week we should, so let’s look at the 3 big growers because there is still time for these to matter.
Knights matter is sort of boring but this has a new twist in that he brings back dead knights. Not only that, he gives you access to Blue so you can play Knight of Mists and kill a Chameleon Colossus or whatever the hell. Kindred Discovery? The Blue we get may underwhelm.
This seems a bit boring. The precon is so well made that basically everyone who is building this commander didn’t remove any of these cards. And why would you? I am a player and financier and I feel like I am in a zero-sum game between the two halves. I always win because something either interests me as a player or financier, so I’m almost always happy when I see a Magic card. In theory.
We could ask what Blue gets us, but it’s not much interesting. In fact, there are very few interesting cards in these lists. The thing about precons being too good is that there isn’t much to add.
The graph on this looks pretty bad since it keeps getting reprinted and the regular foil turns into a hyperbolic parabaloid (Pringles shape, I know that and now you have to know it, too) once you open it. There is one version I don’t hate, however.
Worth almost $8 in foil, this version won’t be reprinted and they’re going to keep printing sets where Knights matter every couple of years. The Extended Art is a buy both foil and non foil.
Kindred Discovery under $8 feels like a buy right now. The reprint hurt it, but with them freshening things up by giving Blue to creature types unused to getting Blue, this card will matter.
This version of the card was only in collector boosters and it’s a $10 card. I don’t know what else to say about this $10 card. I think most dealers have it priced wrong, that’s the issue.
Seems like the only people who think this isn’t a $10 card are Card Kingdom. They think it’s a $12 card. When Card Kingdom speaks this loud, I listen. Buy this for half of what CK is charging, I guess.
If this catches in Modern, I think the increased demand from this sicko combo in EDH could drive this above $35, but even if it doesn’t, this is still a good buy at half of its peak price. They won’t stop accidentally printing cards that go infinite with this, so why would they reprint this? I think $20 or below is a snap buy on these.
Sometimes just looking at the price graph of the oldest version of a card tells the whole story. Based on this graph alone, this is a superlative pickup.
Next week I will be wrapping up these precon decks that have a surprising amount of depth to them! Thanks for reading. Until next time!
The set is officially released next Friday, and there’s a lot of amazing things going on. A Multiverse Legends sheets playing merry hell with the draft/sealed format, previews for the doesn’t-have-commons Aftermath set, and serialized cards setting all sorts of records. Wild times!
One other wild thing going on is that rares in this set are vastly overpriced for cards who are about to flood the market. Traditionally, preordering is only for those who must have the newest thing now, either for Commander or Constructed play. About once every other set, a rare climbs from its low price to be a multi-format staple, destined to be expensive until its inevitable reprint. Examples include Ledger Shredder and Fable of the Mirror-Breaker.
So let’s get into March of the Machine’s rares, looking at current prices, where I think those prices will go, and if there’s anything worth buying right now.
All prices are for the regular nonfoil, and are accurate as of Friday morning, 4/14, but prices are about to be very volatile.
City on Fire ($8.50 preorder) – We’ve seen that a very similar card at mythic can do some amazing growth. Behold, Fiery Emancipation:
Big caveat, though, is the rare vs mythic and the idea that MOM is going to sell a lot more booster packs than M21 did. The serialized chase is going to crater the prices of a lot of cards, and while I am looking forward to buying a big stack of City on Fire, I’m going to be patient about it. Hopefully this gets down to the $2-$3 range, a much safer starting point for the journey.
Faerie Mastermind ($6) – I know that Invitational cards are rarely bad, and this one especially hits hard. In Commander, it’s not hard to make this do a lot of work for you, and it’s going to be adopted very quickly into a wide range of decks. It’s got applications in lots and lots of deck types, and is aggressively costed for Standard appeal. I like the long-term potential of this card, I’m just unwilling to get in this early when there’s so many copies left to open.
Invasion of Ikoria ($6) – Finale of Devastation and Green Sun’s Zenith are similar cards, and this is now a card that can be played alongside the Finale. The main issue is that Invasion can’t go get Vizier of Remedies in Devoted Druid combo decks, as that’s a deck which would likely play a copy or two of the tutor. Rare in MOM is a whole different animal than mythic in WAR, and this is not going to give you $40 pricing ever. It’ll be lucky to be a $10 card in one year’s time, and in the short term, it going to fall to a dollar or less.
Tribute to the World Tree ($3) – Again, we have similar cards out there that haven’t taken off financially, and none of them had the hardcore mana cost that makes this mostly an option for decks that are mono-green or heavy in that color. It’s a fantastic card in Devotion decks, but in almost all ways, The Great Henge is better. I’m always a fan of adding the peanut butter and jelly together, though!
Chrome Host Seedshark ($2) – Of all the cards on this list, this is the one I’m most favorable towards. This effect is quite amazing, but we have a warning card in Metallic Summonings, which was mythic, it is an enchantment that is a lot harder to get rid of, and nonfoils are just over a buck. The Shark triggers on all noncreature spells, which is good, but it’s a creature and easy to kill. There’s tradeoffs, certainly.
Summonings dropped in price when it was in the Commander 2021 decks, but foils haven’t budged at all. I’m going to be waiting on buying the Shark for a bit, but if you asked me which rare from MOM might get there, this would be the one. If it gets to a nicely low price, especially FEA versions, I’m very likely to buy a brick.
Etali, Primal Conqueror ($4.50) – I love that we get the top of the deck effect right away, but then that’s it. Getting this effect as an attack trigger would be ideal, but honestly, the giant 7/7 trampler will be pretty good along with the four free spells you just cast. Shouldn’t be a huge problem.
Plus, you can flip it into a Blightsteel Colossus for just a little more mana and life! There’s no way Etali holds its price, not even a little bit. This will end up as close to bulk, even as it kicks butt all over Commander tables.
Invasion of Alara ($1) – I adore WUBRG cards. I’m pretty close to making a Commander deck with that as the theme. I only have one 5-color deck right now, and it’s the Ur-Dragon. I tried The Kami War in there, and found it mediocre, but I think this Invasion is one of the best even if you don’t flip it. You’re getting your five mana back, statistically speaking, and then there’s an enormous payoff for dealing the 7 damage. Given that this is already so cheap, I’m hesitant to say it’ll go up, especially when looking at the graphs for things like The Kami War. It’ll be bulk, and it’ll likely stay there.
Rampaging Raptor ($0.75) – Questing Beast was a mythic, and just couldn’t be blocked by small things. This is clearly worst than the Beast, but not by much. The problem is, what deck does this go into? There’s barely a market for it in Standard, unless a deck takes off that is hyper-focused on battles. Still, if this is the top end for a super-aggressive red deck, it has great potential to climb out of its trench. If it starts moving, be prepared to move with it.
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.
We have to talk about the cards from the Mother of Machines preconstructed decks. If I am being honest, most likely the most difficult part of this article will have been the first paragraph. It serves two purposes -it engages people who are going to read the article and it engages the people who are going to read the article on Thursday because they didn’t know they weren’t going to read it today when they clicked on the link. I am not sure I am doing a great job of that right now. If you’re about to move on to the next paragraph, I am going to highlight a bunch of specs based on the MOM preconstructed decks and you can skip right to it if you want. If you’re going to read this Thursday, I am going to unlock the secrets of Mtg Finance and demystify the process of selecting good specs and the next 48 hours will be a free-for-all with readers who read on Tuesday running roughshod over store inventories. If you don’t want to fight for table scraps with all the other slowpokes, consider a membership which also gives you access to the discord server and exclusive group buys.
It might not seem like it, but all of that was sort of an apology that lately my articles have begun to blur together a bit. Even the names aren’t particularly memorable. I am not creating evergreen content here, unfortunately, I am generating a list of specs for my friends and loyal customers so that they don’t have to think about finance if they just like EDH and EDH if they just like finance. If you like both, perhaps you would like my podcast. This is going to be kind of dry despite my best efforts to make it…. juicy? I don’t know what the opposite of “dry” is in this context. You want-a the juice? You like-a the juice? It’s-a time for the juice (but read this in a Greek accent because it’s that SNL sketch, not like a Mario thing). Juice time.
The Juice
I will be honest, the hype around the combo potential with Shalai and Hallar sort of made me think the deck would be more popular since it’s so easy to build. I didn’t count on that having to compete with the popularity of a Ninja deck with Red in it. Let’s take a look.
There isn’t a ton to do here since the good ninjas mostly are reprinted, but there are some interesting things going on here, regardless.
This is a foil that didn’t start out expensive, rather it grew as ninja fever was at its pitch and cooled off as they started giving us 50 new Legendary creatures every month. The sheer number of decks people have distracting them has made it very tough for any deck to receive enough of a consensus to move the needle which is why I have begun to focus on the weekly leaders. Could another ninja deck make this go back to $10 on its own? Perhaps not, but Infiltrator might dodge a reprint in a set and if it does, the foils will be even better. This seems like a chance to buy a future $11 for like $5 now and I don’t hate it despite not feeling all that confident talking about foils.
It sounds ridiculous, but Gingerbrute is an unblockable haste creature for 1 colorless mana and it turns out lots of formats want that and this only has 1 foil printing.
Baldur’s Gate is the best MTG set in a decade and we are going to find cards that are $2 now that will randomly hit $10 years from now. Look at this graph – this card tripled in price in under a year. I would say there aren’t too many mythics from Baldur’s Gate that don’t have insane growth potential. Also, the showcase version is that awful PHB page effect meaning this is the only copy anyone is going to play with.
I don’t know if you ever noticed this dropdown before, but when there are very distinct and obvious ways the deck is getting built, we’ll start to separate them by theme. Looking through by theme is very instructive and I recommend you do it, but just looking at what the themes are is, too. You’ll pick a bunch of different specs if you grok that people are building extra turns decks with these cards even if you got a sense that people were playing that theme when you saw Karlach. You’ll also notice ninjitsu is ten times more popular than Extra turns, in case you wanted to ignore cards like Karlach. I would caution against ignoring top and high synergy cards, however. I realize that putting them on EDHREC means the cards will end up in more decks which will push them higher. That doesn’t mean EDHREC isn’t useful here, in fact, it accidentally works very nicely for our purposes. If we can guess the high synergy cards early enough, we’ll have our prices correct when the time comes.
Saprolings + Red is something I love to see, and if you play EDH, your brain immediately started firing off “Goblin Bombardment, Impact Tremors, Parallel Lives” and yeah, the obvious cards are good to have, but maybe not great specs. To me, great specs are old, cheap, specific, not obsolete, the less redundant the better, obscure, possibly a second spike, and featured on the EDHREC page for the commander. Cards like
The one issue we have? The wall.
Now, with over 600 lists registered in the last week, this wall can be overcome, but people will just root out more copies from binders and boxes. This has all the hallmarks of a good spec except for the new reality in speccing that TCG Player direct has made it worthwhile to list a $0.15 rare and it’s hard to chew through 458 instances of 2 copies per vendor which means you pay $3 for shipping like 250 times. You have to acknowledge reality sometimes, as much as I wanted to be the genius who picked this at bulk.
Here is some more fun – The card on the right is newer, has more copies out there, is worse in basically every way in a deck with a lot of small creautres and the card on the right is worth twice as much as the card on the left. Thanks, Dominaria Remastered. The thing about old cards that people discover when they build a very specific deck like this is that WotC has a long memory, too, and you could get pantsed by a reprint. Symbiosis was a solid $4 card when Slimefoot was peaking and how obvious it was as a spec didn’t matter due to how obvious it was as a reprint.
And then sometimes they don’t reprint something and you get to buy at $10 and sell at $20 like 3 or 4 times and it feels so good it should be considered cheating.
Looking at the themes dropdown page can help you figure out which cards are going to be played across commanders from multiple precons and identify cards that would have gotten lost in the noise generated by Magic players running the same staples in every Jund deck, for example. Also, I looked at a Jund deck and saw Ignoble Hierarch still isn’t done dropping in price and it’s made me realize nothing I used to know matters anymore. What does matter is making the most of your data sources and I hope you’ll consider this source a good one and come back next week so we can finish the rest of these off. Until next time!
Ah, here we are, the dawn of a new set and a whole lot of numbers for me to crunch. Wizards has given us some information, and I can make some good estimates based on research, that combine to paint a pretty good picture of what we should expect in terms of how often the rarest cards drop.
A gentle reminder that this is statistics, not certainties. You might open two serialized cards in the same box, beating the odds. You might open two hundred CBS and not see a single serialized card.
Serialized cards: There’s 65 Multiverse Legends, 500 of each. In the next slot, there’s a spot for the five Praetor-Sagas to show up serialized. Then after that, a slot which could contain a serialized Uncommon from the set of 65. For any serialized card, you’re estimated to get one every 142.8 packs.
The serialized cards overrule whatever else you were going to open in that slot. We know that you’re less than 1% to open one, even with it being in three slots. There will be a total of 35,000 serialized cards to open, and given all the data we have, I’m estimating that it’s more like 0.07%, or one in 143, to open any serialized card of any rarity. Uncommon or Mythic, that’s your odds. If you want a specific card, you’re looking at 70x as many packs, or 10,010. Good luck!
Theoretically, you could open a pack with two serialized cards (one ML and one PS) but that’s something like .7% times .7%, which would be one in 20,408 packs. I would expect to see that a couple of times if I were watching every CB be opened. Three in a row? Sure, that’s only 1 in 2,915,452 packs. Possible, but incredibly unlikely. We estimate that there’s around 5 million Collector Booster packs printed per Standard set. If you get better information, please, reach out to me in the comments, on Discord, or Twitter.
I also want to talk about your odds of pulling a MUL card in Draft Boosters. Every Draft Booster gets a card from that subset. The ratio has traditionally been three uncommons for every one rare and for every .5 mythic rares. Means now it’s 6:2:1, and given the number we have at each rarity level, the pool you pull from for a MUL card is 15 mythics (1 of each), 60 rares, (2 of each), and 120 uncommons (6 of each). Total of 195, and that’s how many packs you’ll need to open to get a nonfoil Ragavan. Only six boxes!
We have a handy graphic for what’s in a Collector Booster, thank you Wizards:
Let’s work from the top of the image downwards (This would also be from the last card in the pack forward, whichever terminology works for you.)
We are given this ratio in the Collecting article for Collector Boosters, and each version has its own collector number:
Traditional foil in 75% of boosters
Foil etched in 14% of boosters
Halo foil in 10% of boosters
Serialized double rainbow in < 1% of boosters
This first (last) slot is only rares and mythics, and we’re also told that there are 20 uncommons, 30 rares, and 15 mythic rares. The uncommons will be in a different slot, so we get to focus on the rares and mythics. Wizards likes a 2:1 ratio for rares and mythics, so the pool of available cards will be 75 cards deep. Your chances of getting a specific rare are 2/75, or 1/37.5. Specific mythics are 1/75.
However, that’s for any version. We have no less than three foil treatments to choose from here. Given the ratios, we can figure out that for every Halo Foil Ragavan, we’ll get 1.4 Etched Foil and 7.5 Traditional Foil versions of the same card. In execution, this means we have to roll for a card and then roll for the version, not counting serialized versions because those are just miracle pulls. Let’s have a table for this slot only, so no uncommons:
Rarity of card
CBs to get any version of a specific card
CBs to get a specific Traditional Foil
CBs to get a specific Etched Foil
CBs to get a specific Halo Foil
Rare
37.5
50
267.9
375
Mythic
75
100
535.7
750
This is a clever trick by Wizards to make new rarities of a card without extra frames or art direction. It will add both a lot of traditional foil copies for those who like shiny things and at the same time, give high-end collectors something to chase that isn’t the serialized version.
The next slot is more of ‘everything else jammed in here’ feeling from the main set. This has all of the following, all rares and mythics in traditional foil. We’ve established that Praetors are around every 142.8 packs, but let’s count up what numbers we’re looking at for these cards.
# of rares
# of mythics
Planar Booster Fun from March of the Machine
18
10
Extended art from March of the Machine
31
2
Extended art from March of the Machine Jumpstart
5
Borderless art from March of the Machine
3
Extended art from March of the Machine Commander
42
12
96
27
Important to note that these are foil pulls, and so there will be FEA versions of all the Commander cards. Other sets, there have been occasional foils, or EA only with no foils, and here we get the full FEA.
Our pool in this slot is 219 cards, which is lower than a lot of other sets have been if you compare them. ONE was every 326 for Phyrexian planeswalkers, and BRO was every 299 packs for FEA mythics. The big difference in MOM is that we don’t have multiple versions of the same card, aside from the Praetors.
I’m expecting a LOT of these cards to be out there, given the chase for serialized cards and the way players go after lotto tickets like this.
Rarity
Percent chance for any card of that category
Percent chance for a specific card of that category
# of CBs to open one specific card from that category
Planar Booster Fun from March of the Machine
Rare
16.4%
0.9%
109.5
Mythic
9.1%
0.45%
219
Extended art from March of the Machine
Rare
28.3%
0.9%
109.5
Mythic
0.9%
0.45%
219
Extended art from March of the Machine Jumpstart
Rare
4.6%
0.9%
109.5
Borderless art from March of the Machine
Mythic
1.4%
0.45%
219
Extended art from March of the Machine Commander
Rare
38.4%
0.9%
109.5
Mythic
5.5%
0.45%
219
The MUL uncommons get two whole slots to themselves: one for Halo and Etched foils, plus the serialized versions, and then a slot dedicated to traditional foils alone. With 20 uncommons in that subset, you’ve got this set of odds over those two slots:
Rarity
Percent chance for any card of that category
Percent chance for a specific card of that category
# of CBs to open one specific card from that category
Halo Foil Uncommon from MUL subset
Uncommon
25%
1.25%
80
Etched Foil Uncommon from MUL subset
Uncommon
75%
3.75%
26.7
Traditional Foil Uncommon from MUL subset
Uncommon
100%
5%
20
With all this in mind, let’s put the data together and get some outcomes for different cards we might be after:
Rarity
Percent chance for any card of that category
Percent chance for a specific card of that category
# of CBs to open one specific card from that category
MUL Traditional Foil
Uncommon
100%
5%
20
MUL Traditional Foil
Rare
50%
2%
50
MUL Traditional Foil
Mythic
25%
1%
100
MUL Etched Foil
Uncommon
75%
3.75%
26.7
MUL Etched Foil
Rare
9.3%
0.3%
267.9
MUL Etched Foil
Mythic
4.6%
0.18%
535.7
MUL Halo Foil
Uncommon
25%
1.25%
80
MUL Halo Foil
Rare
6.6%
2.6%
375
MUL Halo Foil
Mythic
3.3%
0.13%
750
MUL or MOM Serialized
Any
0.7%
0.0001%
10,010
MOM Planar Frame
Rare
16.4%
0.9%
109.5
MOM Planar Frame
Mythic
9.1%
0.45%
219
MOM Foil Extended Art
Rare
28.3%
0.9%
109.5
MOM Foil Extended Art
Mythic
0.9%
0.45%
219
MOM Jumpstart FEA
Rare
4.6%
0.9%
109.5
MOM Foil Borderless
Mythic
1.4%
0.45%
219
MOC Foil Extended Art
Rare
38.4%
0.9%
109.5
MOC Foil Extended Art
Mythic
5.5%
0.45%
219
And finally, let’s look at examples of the rarest cards:
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
There’s a lot of numbers here, and I’ve tried to clarify what is going on in each, as well as explain my math. If you want to discuss this, or point out my mistakes, please reach out on Twitter, in the Discord, or the comments below!
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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.
MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY