You may or may not have noticed that a certain subset of Phyrexia: All Will Be One cards has been lighting it up lately: the Oil-Slick foils, available only in the special boosters found in the Compleat Edition Bundle.

That bundle came with one special pack, along with 12 Set Boosters. That special pack is what I’m focused on right now, and let me explain why I’m starting to buy cards much earlier in the ONE cycle than I would have otherwise.

Let’s start out with some math. There’s one booster, which has ten foil lands and two foils mythics. Twenty mythics are possible, so there’s a ten percent chance of getting a specific mythic in your pack, and a 1 in 400 chance of getting a double-up. In terms of collation errors if someone landed a god pack of all mythics but no lands, that image would have been all over Twitter.

With ten percent odds, you’d think these oil-slick cards would be crazy common. After all, looking at the C2R2, no mythic with special treatment is at even one percent odds to come out of a Collector Booster. These special Bundles are, well, special. Special expensive and special rare. Vendors report that they haven’t been able to get all they wanted, and the bundles are reselling nicely on all the platforms. Oil-Slick foils are rarer than the special variants, and rarer than the step-and-compleat foils as well, just due to the lack of bundles out there. 

Getting 12 Set Boosters is good, but a pack of 10 lands that are going for at least $4 each is a great bit of value, on top of the two mythics. 

Oil-Slick has a big advantage over the variants from the CBs: the Collector Boosters are going to be available for quite a while yet. Months, perhaps years, at a very reasonable price. The Compleat bundles are getting a big markup and lots of these cards are disappearing into collections, which will eventually lead to prices going up.

I don’t think we’ll ever see any of the big cracking operations pop up with a couple hundred copies of any Oil-Slick mythic, and once the current wave of bundles is gone, that’s probably most of the inventory that will ever be available. So right now, I think prices are at their lowest, and it’s time to get some copies. Definitely personal-use copies for any of your decks, plus a couple of extras for later growth.

There’s only 20 to choose from, so this isn’t a comprehensive list, but here’s the stars I see:

Sword of Forge and Frontier ($45 right now on TCGPlayer) – If you haven’t played with this card yet, it’s pretty bonkers. It’s hard to argue with the simplicity of just ‘draw a card’ but this is potentially better in Commander. I’m a huge fan of Sword of the Animist, and the 9th entry in the Sword cycle is a very elegant design. It’ll be rare in a pod for there to be no one you can hit, and once the hits start, they will keep coming. 

My biggest concern is that there will inevitably be a retro foil version of this at some point, but that’s probably a ways off. For now, you’re going to see copies soaked up relatively fast, and this version will be $60 before the end of April.

Ichormoon Gauntlet ($35) – You will be hard-pressed to find a more auto-include card for planeswalker superfriends decks. This is the best version of a very good card, before the ‘add a counter’ ability is overlooked. It doesn’t take much for this to get out of hand quickly. I fully expect to see the supply on these dwindle fast, and the price to go up accordingly.

All Will Be One ($19) – I’ve said before that this is a card I want to have when the combos pop up. There’s a LOT of amazing things you can do with this card, and no wrong way to play it. Sure there’s instant win combos, such as Quest for Pure Flame, but there’s also fun with planeswalkers, proliferate, or cards that put counters everywhere.

AWBO will be a cheaper pickup in nonfoil, if you want to wait, but since supply is near maximum right now I strongly advocate grabbing a few copies for the inevitable rise. When this hits, it’ll hit big, easily doubling in price.

Solphim, Mayhem Dominus ($20) – Finally, while all of the Dominus cards are good in their respective decks, the red one begs to be built around, and is in the best color to do it. There will be combos with this card, my favorite being Heartless Hidetsugu and my second favorite is Toralf, God of Fury. (Honorable mention: Manabarbs. stings) Wonderfully, though, you don’t need to work too hard at this. Anything that deals damage is going to be a winner, with the added bonus that every new set will give new ways to abuse the card. I’m looking forward to watching this grow over time.

[/hide]

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.

Every set, there’s a couple of cards that end up being gainers in the long term. Ledger Shredder and Fable of the Mirror-Breaker are two examples of this from recent sets, cards that were available dirt cheap early on but became multi-format all-stars.

We also get examples of cards that show promise early, but whose prices trail ever farther downward until the early buyers have no choice but to be very very sad. 

Phyrexia: All Will Be One has a few cards who are up since the set’s release, and I want to highlight some of them and see if they can keep growing, or if they are destined to fall back down to earth. We’re going to be looking at the formats it’s played in, as well as if it’s got Commander chops, and go from there.

I won’t be posting the EDHREC numbers here because these are very new cards and while there’s something to be said for being an early adopter, I don’t want to lean too hard on such a small sample size. I’m not an expert on the format, just a rabid enthusiast.

Also, these prices might be outdated in a day or two as people go nuts for buying, especially with the oil-slick versions hitting the streets. Get what you can for yours!

Venerated Rotpriest ($10 for the cheapest version, $15 for the most expensive) – The Rotpriest decks aren’t winning big events yet, but they are fun to play and operate on an axis that many other decks can’t hang with. They might get an early hit in, but the counters will come when you try to deal with the card and they protect it in response. It adds up FAST, especially in multiples. March of Burgeoning Light is currently a bulk rare but if you have a Rotpriest in play, for two mana you get to find a second copy and slam it down. 

The deck is real enough to have caused other spikes, notably Ground Rift in Modern: 

Rotpriest itself has fallen by half from its preorder price, and I’m expecting it to fall just a little further, but I doubt it’ll make it all the way down to $5 for the base versions. Every one-mana protection spell makes the deck better, and heaven help us if they print another Standard-legal round of free spells.

Skrelv, Defector Mite ($8 to $10) – The mono-white decks are for real in Standard, and Skrelv is a Pioneer-legal version of Mother/Giver of Runes. The ability isn’t precisely protection, but it’s about 90% of what you wanted protection for in an aggressive deck: hexproof from kill spells and taking away their ability to block. Clearly worse on defense, and costs you mana or life, but still good enough that it is getting play in high numbers in a deck that has good versions across Standard and Pioneer.

I thought this price would have fallen a lot farther by now, and while more packs are being opened, the deck is good and the mite is a big reason why. Your opponent will need two kill spells early on, and especially if you’re following Skrelva with Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, their plan is doomed.

All Will Be One ($11 to $22) – Another card that’s fallen by half, I don’t think this will go much further because it’s got a LOT of amazing interactions. I have seen people kill a table with this plus Black Sun’s Zenith. Any planeswalker you care to name is suddenly a violent death engine. This should be an auto-include with any non-token deck that plays Doubling Season. It’s a shame this doesn’t work with Suspend and time counters, but you can’t have everything.

What do you have is some really ridiculous combos. Quest for Pure Flame has attention as a Modern-legal two-card combo. The Red Terror is a Commander who can insta-win with the card, much like Ayara, First of Locthwain and Plague of Vermin. I think AWBO has great long-term potential, because it’s so open ended and every card that interacts with counters in some way can really abuse the enchantment.

Tyvar, Jubilant Brawler ($4 to $6) – The different versions are really close in price, which traditionally has been an indicator that a card is more popular in Constructed formats than Commander. In this case, Tyvar is seeing play with Devoted Druid combos, as the minus ability gets back either piece of the combo, in addition to allowing the druid to be played and used the same turn. 

The card was never going to be terribly expensive, but the amount of play and attention means that it’s only sunk to $4 as a rare, as opposed to something like Lukka, who’s $2 as a mythic.

Jace, the Perfected Mind ($8 to $29) – I’ve said before that I like Jace long-term if there’s a control deck in Standard. He’s already gone down to $7, up to $10, and is back to $8. Once we’re moved on to March of the Machine, I’m expecting his price to go back up, especially because he’s showing up in Modern mill decks as a three-mana, two-life way to draw three cards.

I’m hoping Jace gets a little cheaper, but I’m doubtful. We’re also in an awkward position in terms of rotation, as Jace, and the rest of ONE, will hit the one-year mark, usually where a Standard card gets most expensive, right about the time that its price starts to trickle down due to impending rotation. A careful line to balance on.

Sword of Forge and Frontier ($29 to $60) – This Sword is bonkers good in Commander, but not seeing much play outside 100-card formats. The cheapest versions should come down in price, but keep in mind that a Retro frame version is inevitable. There will be a complete set of Retro Swords available for all the completionists out there, especially since we’ve only got one Sword left to go.

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.