7 Thoughts About Hour of Devastation in EDH

July 4, 2017 Jason Alt

Hey, readers,

The Hour of Devastation is almost upon us and that means we get to wait around forever for EDH prices to move. The stuff that was going to move immediately already has – Solemnity was a massive earthquake that ripped through a swath of old Magic cards and made them suddenly valuable. Everything else could take a minute to move, which is probably a good thing because it gives us time to scoop cards up. Unlike previous sets, we’re not going to have to wait for card prices to plummet on our long-term holds because unlike with previous sets, this set isn’t worth jack and/or shit. Is redemption going to enforce a higher box price, forcing singles to take the hit? Are Masterpieces going to keep box prices low? Is this set just another Dragon’s Maze without the benefit of a Voice of Resurgence to keep the boxes at all worth buying? I don’t know how things will shake up, but what I do know is that it’s never been easier to buy our EDH cards right out of the gate. Let’s take a look at some thoughts I have had about this set and where it fits into EDH.

1)Solemnity isn’t done

Solemnity came along and made a bunch of prices go nuts. Lucky for you, I managed to predict a lot of them and if you read the article the same day it came out, you had a decent shot at getting some of the cards before they sold out and people started to cancel orders. Lucky for us, Solemnity interacts with a TON of cards and not all of them were mentioned or even all that obvious up front and there is still a chance to get in on a few of them.

Delaying Shield is like $0.70 currently and you straight don’t take damage with Shield and Solemnity out. This isn’t all that good without Solemity but it’s not all that bad, either. If you don’t draw your Solemnity, this is a card that lets you take damage as normal but also opt out of some of it if you choose to untap your mana and prevent some of it. Not only that, this prevents you from dying when everyone else dies so a lethal earthquake that would kill the table suddenly makes you the winner. Zedruu decks were running this already to take a ton of damage then donate the shield to let opponents deal with the consequences. This is fun in EDH, it’s cheap, it’s old so therefore scarce and it’s unfair with the most exciting card in the new set.

Solemnity decks are starting to shape up on EDHREC so take a look at the cards other people are running with it. While there’s not a ton populated yet, there’s stuff to learn. Zur is most likely the deck that benefits from this card. What other cards do Zur decks run? I don’t know, click on Zur and find out. EDHREC is still the best resource I have found for predicting price increases predicated on a card making another card better. And, before anyone accuses me of shilling super hard for EDHREC because I am employed by EDHREC, let me just say that it’s the other way around – I’m employed by EDHREC because of how hard I shilled for them before they even started paying me. If there were a better resource for what we do in this column, I’d use it. There isn’t. Go get the free money.

2)The Planeswalker decks are loaded

The set appears to be dumpster lasagna from a financial standpoint. The Masterpieces are hot and the set looks like it’s really balanced in terms of Limited (I have a feeling I’m going to take Deserts really hard in draft and ride that synergy wave) but that doesn’t really do much for the prices. Pre-sale data on TCGPlayer is super depressing.

Of the 14 cards pre-selling above $3, 3 of them (Nicol Bolas the Deceiver, Nissa, Genesis Mage and Visage of Bolas) are in the Planeswalker packs. Combined, the 3 cards total $21 in pre-sale value. The Planeswalker decks are available for $23 combined from Miniature Market. I’m not advocating buying at that price, but what I am saying is that there are 3 cards that people really like (or liked a few days to weeks ago when the Market Price was established – I bet those cards are cheaper now) and they don’t care that they’re not in boosters, they just want them to jam with. You think anyone is jamming an 8 mana Planeswalker in Standard? No chance. How about a bad mana rock that tutors for an 8 mana walker? No, this is casuals and EDH players establishing those pre-sale prices on those cards and making the rest of those planeswalker packs (each of which includes an Hour of Devastation booster pack) essentially free. People like Planeswalkers and this set has a lot of Planeswalkers and they aren’t all in boosters.

3)Obvious cards are too cheap

Mill is always a buy. Good mill even more-so. EDH players benefit from mill the least out of everyone (or so you’d think, but look at Phenax decks) but mill cards are always good financial decisions. This set has, basically, Mill Reflection and it’s like 30 cents.

This card is really good for taking out one player. Even if you play this in EDH, this makes it really easy to kill one person quickly so you can use your Traumatize on everyone else. Alternatively, curse yourself and fill your graveyard with cards to use to kill them. This is already a bulk rare and this will not be a bulk rare long-term. This is a sicko mill card and it’s very, very obvious as a pickup but people don’t seem to want to worry about that until much later. If you end up with someone who trades at TCG Player value, out a terrible card like Nimble Obstructionist for 10 copies of this and you’ll be very happy in a year or two. Is it still the dreaded “value trading!(cue Wilhelm scream)” if you’re doing it based on the values from two years from now? There are plenty of other obvious cards that are bulk already and which you should be targeting.

This one comes to mind, for example. Bulk is too cheap for this forever.

4)Gods could be too cheap

I have seen a lot of people excited about The Locust God and wheel effects. You may remember wheel effects from going up in price when Nekusar was spoiled and again when Leovold was spoiled. How many times am I going to be able to make money from Teferi’s Puzzle Box? Skullclamp, Windfall, Arjun, etc.

The Locust God is $6. Now I realize that in order to go up, this card will need to impact Standard, right? As much as it’s cool to Skullclamp your Locusts, or win with Purphoros, Skullclamp and Ashnod’s Altar (a pretty easy combo to assemble once you get Skullclamp going) we don’t have access to that in Standard. But do the guys truly need to be that good in Standard to maintain their current price? I only ask because this set seems like hot garbage, there are no cards over $20 and booster boxes are like $100 retail. If people stay away from the set because it’s hot garbage, scarcity will keep prices artificially medium. If they get high enough, it makes sense to buy boxes again and people will. But if people aren’t compelled by anything in the set, the value has to be somewhere and why not the Gods? $6 is already pretty reasonable and they could at the very least maintain some of their value if nothing else from the set jumps. I’m not saying invest, but I’m going to pay $6 for a copy of The Locust God now, build that hilarious deck and laugh at people and I doubt I’m going to look at the price of the God in 3 months and think I took a bath.

5)Read what EDH players are building

I was focused a lot on Solemnity shenanigans and brewing decks with lots of Gods in them for my Gathering Magic article so I didn’t really take a look at what people are doing with the rest of the set. Think about which cards will go into existing decks. Is there a card that’s going to go in Atraxa? There is?! Well that’s worth knowing.

I also recommend using EDHREC for a sort of reverse-engineering. Instead of typing in a God and seeing how to build it based on suggestions from the other decks in the database, start with a single card and see which generals want it. The cards in those decks are more and more attractive the better that commander is.

Swarm Intelligence is a new card and I think it has potential, but I don’t know where. What do other people think?

There isn’t much consensus, yet, but I didn’t think about Narset when I first read Swarm Intelligence, but it makes a lot of sense. And since The Locust God seems to be coming up a lot, it doesn’t hurt to see which cards are going in that deck because while some people may scrap their Nekusar deck for cards to put in the deck, some won’t and that means they’ll need to buy cards they already have. A lot of cards in the Locust God deck are creeping up lately and it pays to check that. Without looking, how much is Chasm Skulker worth, knowing it was first in M15 and was just reprinted in Commander 2016? Bet you were off. Bet you’re glad you looked because if you’re like me, you have a bunch of them shits in a box somewhere.

6)Bad Standard sets can be good for EDH

Not always, though. Let’s look at every card in Dragon’s Maze worth above $1.

Gross. Mirko Vosk is under $1. Where is this pressure on prices coming from? It’s not like boxes are flooding the market. Still, even this is less bleak than it looks at first. Voice and Progenitor Mimic are low due to reprinting. Deadbridge Chant is a solid EDH card, as is Savageborn Hydra. With strong, powerful Standard cards like Varolz and Aetherling worth diddly, it seems like EDH is the only thing making these cards worth anything. This is the worst case scenario for Hour of Devastation – no good cards and therefore no value no matter what set redemption has to say about it. Let’s look at a set that’s closer to Hour of Devastation in terms of being disappointing for Standard but giving us lots of EDH cards.

M15 is much closer, if you ask me. We had a lot of cards that were good in Standard like Hornet Queen and painlands fall off a bit and EDH cards came in and picked up the slack. Chasm Skulker is between $2.50 and $3.50 after a reprint and was a bulk rare when the set was Standard legal. I think Hour of Devastation will force the EDH cards to take up value in the coming years, which is perfect because I think there are cards like Neheb that are up to the challenge. They’ll be overlooked for a minute, but not forever.

7)Look for more Solemnities

Anything that is a good card could be worth some money and if it gets better as people discover how to use it properly, it could be worth even more money. That’s base tier. The we have cards that are good in one deck the way Abandoned Sarcophagus will be good in a cycling deck, and that deck’s increased popularity could drive up some of the prices of the other cards in the deck. That’s mid tier stuff. The truly worthwhile cards are ones that bring up multiple different decks, interact in a stupid way with a lot of other cards and in general are going to go ham with lots of prices. That’s Solemnity. Could we have missed another Solemnity in the set? It’s possible. If there are cards in the set that I think could be potential top tier finance cards, they’re these.

This not only could be the commander of his own deck, I think he goes in Athreos and Shirei-based Shadowborn Apostle decks and probably Kaalia decks. Are a bunch of people building Kaalia lately? I don’t know for sure, but I do know that Kaalia just became more affordable when it was jammed in the Commander Anthology set. Razaketh seems like it could make a bunch of other cards in other decks go up and I think it’s the closest thing we have to another Solemnity.

That’s all I have for you. 10 seconds before wrapping this up, I saw

so I bet you know what we’re going to talk about next week. Until then!

Watchtower

UNLOCKED: The Watchtower 7/3/17

July 3, 2017 Travis Allen

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. And if you enjoy playing Magic, make sure to visit https://scry.land to find PPTQs, SCG Opens, and more events on an interactive map with worldwide coverage. Find Magic near you today.

Starcitygame’s Invitational wrapped yesterday, and at the top of the pile stood…Modern Death and Taxes? Huh? It did well at Vegas not too long ago also. Is this deck…good? I refuse to believe it. There’s no way such a thing can possibly be a real strategy. It’s good against Death’s Shadow. That’s all I’m willing to accept. It’s been in the format forever, people have been trying to make it work for just as long, and the only reason it’s seeing any success now is because it’s a useful metagame predator.

There’s not a lot to work with there either, as best as I can tell. It’s not so much that the individual cards are basically bad (they are) or that there’s multiple printings of everything (there is), it’s that the cards don’t have any other homes, and their current home is not going to be a dominant force in the meta. Blade Splicer has never been less than a four-of in the deck, but where else are you seeing that card played? Leonin Arbiter, Mirran Crusader, Thalia — there’s nowhere else these are seeing play, which limits their desirability considerably.

Other than that, Hour of Devastation previews wrapped up last week. James and I covered most of it over on MTG Fast Finance; take a listen there for our full opinions. That will be hitting shelves shortly, just in time for everybody to stop playing Magic because the weather is nice.

Matter Reshaper (Foil)

Price Today: $8
Possible Price: $20

One of the takeaways from this SCG Invitational is that Eldrazi Tron is beyond a (death’s) shadow of a doubt a top-tier contender in Modern. It was everywhere, both in the Invitational lists as well as the Open lists. It’s unlikely the deck will get any new tools for awhile, but it doesn’t matter, because the ones it got in Oath of the Gatewatch are so potent to begin with.

Last week, Thought-Knot Seer and Reality Smasher foils jumped from $10 or so. They’re hanging around in the low $20s at the moment, and supply is quite low. I’m expecting these to pull to $30 soon. They’re the banner threats in the deck, and certainly the powerhouses of the strategy.

Thought TKS and Smasher are frequently the cards that get your opponent dead, Matter Reshaper is right behind them in a supporting role in virtually all successful lists. With an Eldrazi Temple he comes down on turn two, provides a respectable clock, and most importantly, there’s few clean ways to answer the card. A Path to Exile gets rid of Reshaper without providing additional advantage to your opponent, but Fatal Push, a major newcomer to Modern, still provides the trigger. This type of additional card resource in a deck that generally doesn’t play much in the way of raw card draw is remarkably useful, in the same way that similar effects in red decks are always put to good use.

With foils of both TKS and Smasher moving strong recently, and inventory of Reshaper thin as it is, this seems set up to cruise to $20 easily within the year.

Eldrazi Temple (Foil)

Price Today: $15
Possible Price: $30

Sorry to back-to-back Eldrazi specs, but what do you want from me. It’s been a consistently strong deck even after the bannings, and the prices aren’t yet reflective of its competency and power.

What makes Eldrazi Temple even more appealing than some of the other options therein is that it’s more flexible than, say, Reality Smasher. Nobody is ever going to play Reality Smasher without Temple, right? But you’ll certainly see Temple show up places without Smasher. Certain stripes of Death and Taxes that employed Wasteland Strangler ran it. Legacy Eldrazi decks have used it. It’s good in any wacky Eldazi deck that plays, you know, the real Eldrazi. Basically it’s the same concept as TKS and Smasher, except even more prevalent.

Without a doubt the largest knock against Temple is that it was reprinted in MM15, but that’s rapidly becoming less of an issue. It’s now been two years since that reprinting, and the excess supply has been absorbed by the market. Foil prices are shoring up and supply is dwindling, and after the egg-on-the-face moment that the most recent Eldrazi were, we’re unlikely to see Wizards eager to return to that particular tribe any time soon. There’s an ample supply of non-foil copies, so Wizards is probably safe to leave these alone for at least a year or two.

In that time, I fully expect foils to climb. It’s always a four-of, it’s a top-tier Modern deck, and there’s demand for Temple from all sorts of other places across the Magic spectrum.

Anointed Procession (Foil)

Price Today: $9
Possible Price: $20

Modern specs tend to draw my attention most frequently, since they often have the shortest time from purchase to liquidation, or at least, it feels that way. EDH hits are undeniably one of the best investment vehicles in the game though, and the rash of Inventions spiking is in no small part due to that. After all, Modern players aren’t the ones shelling out $200 for an Inventions Sol Ring.

Anointed Procession is the latest “duh” EDH card, as it’s the white Doubling Season. This means that A. GW decks get both cards, and B. decks without green (they exist, I swear) now have access to not quite a facsimile, but something close enough. If there’s one thing EDH players love — LOVE — to do, it’s poop out tokens. And double them. They even got a cool new tool in Hour of Devastation; God-Pharoah’s GIft. (Which could end up a Standard card itself, and my god, is it possible Anointed Procession could end up Standard playable in a deck piloted by someone other than Sam Black?)

Non-foil copies of Procession are in the $4+ range as it is, which amazingly enough, makes it the most valuable rare in Amonkhet! That’s nuts. With demand this high, there’s no way vendors can keep any copies in stock. Foil supply has got to be drying up rapidly.

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.

Casual Fridays

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Devastating Preorders

June 30, 2017 Cliff Daigle 1 Comment

Hopefully you’ve read enough of what we write here to know that pre-ordering cards is usually a bad idea. Cards are overhyped and usually very overpriced, but there’s something kind of unusual going on with Hour of Devastation: The preorder prices are remarkably…sane.

Today I want to look at a couple of the reasons why that might be, and if that means we’ve turned a corner as Magic vendors and players. We don’t want $40 Day’s Undoing, or $50 Chandra, Torch of Defiance.

Idea #1: We are more patient

We all know that a set’s value goes down over time as more and more packs are opened. That’s true of any set, for any of its time as the set that’s being opened at FNM and Grand Prix events. Even the Masters-level sets that are only reprints, those follow the same curve most of the time.

We’ve learned that unless you’re going to be using these cards the very very first weekend, you’ve got time. Even waiting a week or two can be worth a lot to someone who isn’t a pro player. Preordering cards is devastating from a feel-bad perspective, and hopefully people who have done that have learned their lesson.

Imagine being someone who looked at the Amonket previews, and saw Gideon of the Trials. You know he’s good with the Gideon, Ally of Zendikar deck you’re already playing. You think, “It must be worth this much or people wouldn’t be paying this much!” and you plunk down $160 for a playset.

That card, one of the banners of the set, a three-drop planeswalker, can be had for $40 a playset now. So that’s a painful lesson to learn.

Is this permanent: God, I hope so. I fervently want to believe that players will not break their bank trying to get out ahead of the new cards, but I doubt it in the long-term. New players might not listen to others who have learned, and new cards are always going to sucker us in.

Idea #2: We are stretching our Magic dollars

This is something that Wizards/Hasbro has been doing to us for a couple of years now: We are getting more and more Magic products each year, each designed to suck our wallets dry.

Have you seen this list? That’s a murderer’s row later this year, and that’s before you take into account all the stuff we’ve already had this past seven months, which includes a Masters set, three regular sets (I’m including Hour of Devastation) and two different Anthology releases.

I don’t think there’s a market for those who buy every single product released, but that’s a lot to spend money on.

Is this permanent: Unless the company decides to slow it down, apparently this is the world we live in. Let’s also not forget that the Magic Digital Next program is also coming, and that might be a whole new siphoning off of money. Heaven help us, they are going to keep making a zillion products a year. Budget accordingly.

Idea #3: The cards aren’t that powerful

I’m not saying that they aren’t good, but they sure aren’t backbreaking. The set (so far, the full set should drop the day this article is published) has a cycle of undercosted ‘exert sorceries’ where your lands don’t untap for a turn, but everything else looks to cost a little too much for that effect.

Perhaps this is the overcompensation of stuff like Smuggler’s Copter being two mana? Perhaps this was meant to be part of an 18-month Standard which was more midrange-focused? I don’t know the answer, or if from time to time, we just get a slightly clunkier set.

I want to reiterate that point, though: Just because we don’t have a ‘pushed’ card doesn’t mean these aren’t going to be players in formats going forward. Right now, though, only a few of the mythics and none of the rares are preordering for more than the retail price of a Fatal Push.

Is this permanent: Likely not. There will be undercosted, overpowered cards again. None of them have been shown in this set, though.

Idea #4: The cards are just worth less due to Masterpieces

This is an idea that’s been explored several times, and the summary is as follows: When Masterpieces are in a set, they account for some of the value of the set. If cards have a total value that’s higher than the cost of a box at the distributor’s price, then retailers will crack those packs themselves and sell the singles.

We saw this recently at work, with Battle for Zendikar block and Shadows over Innistrad block. The Expeditions helped push the prices of other cards down, except for Gideon and Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger. Basically, more packs of BfZ block got opened to find those lands, and that meant a lot more of the other cards were released into the world. When the Masterpieces weren’t present, we had a more even distribution of value.

Is this permanent: We already know it isn’t. While the Masterpieces are helping make Standard be the cheapest it’s been in a while, they are running out of cards quickly. There’s some real clunkers in the Invocation series. Divert? Super niche. Diabolic Edict? Who was clamoring for more copies of this? They have already announced that Masterpieces won’t be in every single set going forward, so this effect will certainly vanish.

Cliff is an avid player and frugal financier. His love of unusual Cubes and formats is resulting in some very interesting Magic experiences, and Grand Prix events have been offering him all sorts of new ways to play this amazing game.

Digging for Dollars, James Chillcott

PRO TRADER: Digging for Dollars: Amonkhet

June 27, 2017 James Chillcott 4 Comments

By: James Chillcott (@MTGCritic)

The release of Amonkhet this spring found Magic: The Gathering in a pretty strange place. After having committed to 8 ban announcements per year, WoTC declined to ban Felidar Guardian when the infinite combo was first discovered, citing lack of data. After it became clear the deck was narrowing the format and limiting player participation, the ban hammer still didn’t drop five weeks after Pro Tour Aether Revolt. This brought us to one fateful monday, when the company again declined to ban any cards in Standard, only to change their minds a couple of days later, completely outside the set schedule for such announcements, and ban Felidar Guardian after all. Fast forward a month or so and Aetherworks Marvel decks posted up as the new dominant archtype, leading to yet another ban.

Between this crazy sequence of events and the (at best) mixed reaction to the Amonkhet Masterpiece card frames, the very positive reactions to the limited format makes the debut of the set a tangled web indeed.

So now that the dust has settled and the set has reached something close to peak supply, how does one go about trying to make some money on Amonkhet cards?

Well, as per usual if you planned to crack cases and sell singles, you should already have done so, since just a couple of weeks after release you were already facing a saturated market and singles prices that fell to lows as much as 80% below starting prices. At present there are just three mythics over $10 (Gideon, Rhonas and Liliana) and just two rares over $4 (Anointed Procession & Glorybringer). In other words, the set is cheap and still getting cheaper as early hype fades into a more realistic picture of which cards are actually playable in the near term.

Secondly, as a large spring set with several unique cards, Amonkhet is likely to end up with a bunch of cards that don’t quite have the necessary pieces to make it in Standard, only to show up in other formats down the road as folks figure out the most efficient deck shells or new combo partners appear.

Finally, with the Masterpiece Innvocations present in Amonkhet, the Expected Value of the rest of the set is similarly impacted as it was with the Kaladesh and Zendikar blocks, though to a lesser extent since only Force of Will, Cryptic Command and Daze are holding over $50 thus far.

There are also several interesting cards in the set for Commander and a few for Modern, but it’s not certain which are traps and which aren’t.

Now, Digging for Dollars is about looking for opportunities that aren’t played out yet, not identifying the most powerful cards in the set, or the obvious cards most likely to see the biggest gains. Many of these picks need planets to align to earn you money, so make sure you’ve exhausted your best options before you go digging folks. Where a card has not yet found it’s bottom, or has been hyped above it’s value, I will try to identify the proper entry point.

For Amonkhet we’re going to break up our specs into three categories: Standard Breakout Targets, Potential Eternal Staples, Long Term Casual Targets, and the Invocations. The first group generally needs to find a home within the year in multiple standard decks to do well for you. The latter two groups are mid to long term holds that you should be aiming to acquire at their forthcoming peak supply lows for solid potential future gains.

FUTURE STANDARD STAPLES?

When considering potential standard staples, you first need to be cognizant that Standard has had a pretty rough year, lost a bunch of players and doesn’t yet show definitive signs of recovery. As such, I’ll be steering clear of Standard specs for a while, especially with such fertile ground in Modern, EDH and via European arbitrage, but if you’re aiming to accumulate some staples you might need later it can’t hurt to consider your options.

1. Bontu the Glorified

Now: $3.50 ($8 foil)
Target Buy Price: $3.00 ($8 foil)
Target Sell Price: $8 (+167%)/$20 foil (+150%)
Timeline: Short to Long Term (0-12+ months)

So a 4/6 indestructible creature with menace for 3cc is clearly a pretty good rate. Sure, you need to make sure one of your creatures dies this turn to get him into the red zone, but he does carry that on-board ability to make sure things will line up so long as you have some filling fodder on board. In Standard some of the Embalm creatures interact positively with this play pattern, and Sultai brews have been spotted, but I haven’t seen a truly great list yet.

In Modern, cards like Hangarback Walker, Walking Ballista, Kitchen Finks and Lingering Souls all set this up reasonably well, but it’s not clear that the payoff is worthwhile when Tarmogoyf and Death’s Shadow are setting the standard for creature rates in Modern. I am testing Bontu in B/W tokens for Modern as a 1/2 of instead of a planeswalker, and it’s possible he could be useful in some kind of Aristocrats style brew, but it’s pretty unlikely he becomes a real Modern staple. Most of the gods carry some casual and Commander appeal, so under $3 I’ll start picking up a few sets for the long haul, with an eye to getting out earlier if Standard gives him a quicker boost. Foils may turn out better down the road, especially if Meren EDH players catch on to the synergies.

2. Approach of the Second Sun

The question here is whether there is life for this card in Standard without Aetherworks Marvel. The odds are not good, but at $.50, it’s not going to make or break your bankroll either way. Mostly a personal play set option I think.

MODERN/ETERNAL PLAYABLE?

3. Harsh Mentor

When this was first revealed, people seemed pretty excited at the prospect of punishing their opponents in Modern and Legacy whenever they cracked a fetch land, spun their top, or activated their Arcbound Ravager, but the excitement seems to have cooled and many pros seem to have decided the card isn’t such a big deal after all. Mentor doesn’t punish planeswalker activations, and there aren’t any fetches in the format, so unless vehicles stays dominant I have a feeling we’re going to see the bottom drop out on this card by summer, opening the door for a decent buy-in price.

Personally I feel that Harsh Mentor is likely to see at least occasional play in Modern, with long term potential to break out as a staple in the right meta. I was considering testing the card alongside Eidolon of the Great Revel in a revised burn shell, perhaps something like Josh Silvestri recently wrote up over on Channel Fireball. Craig Wescoe, on the other hand, has been looking at Mentor in R/W Hatebears for Modern. Both of these concepts could end up as little more than thought experiments, so commit accordingly.

In Commander, this effects all opponents in a format with a ton of on board triggers, so foils may have some legs from that angle.

Now: $1.50 ($7 foil)
Target Buy Price: $1 ($5 foil)
Target Sell/Trade Price: $5 (400%+)/$20 foil (+300%)
Timeline: Long-Term (12-36 months+)

4. Glorious End

Now: $3 ($7 foil)
Target Buy Price: $2 ($4 foil)
Target Sell Price: $10 (+400%)/$10 foil (+150%)
Timeline: Mid to Long (12-24+ months)

Glorious End is a classic trap card. In the right circumstances it can be a time walk that cancels your opponent’s turn and and gives you the one extra casting or attack step you need to put the game away. If you can chain them, you can take multiple turns in a row without your opponent being able to do much. (You’d like to Snapcaster Mage this back to really get rolling, but you can’t because Glorious End exiles itself from the stack.) If you play cards like Gideon of the Trials, Platinum Angel or Angel’s Grace you can dodge your fate, but the question is whether someone will find the right shell to make all this durdling worthwhile.

I’d put the odds somewhere around 30/70 that this makes a splash in Modern somewhere down the line but I don’t think you need to rush into owning any, so feel free to keep an eye out for interesting deck lists and snap some up during a summer sale if you’re excited to try and break it.

5. Bone Picker

Now: $4 foil
Target Buy Price: ($3 foil)
Target Sell Price: $10 foil (+333%)
Timeline: Long Term (24 months+)

This guy doesn’t quite look like Delver of Secrets now that we’ve had some time to put him to the test, but there is still potential for him to slot into a very quick aggro strategy in Modern if the right combination of ways to activate him reliably appear. I’ve seen him tested in Legacy.

As an Uncommon, I’m not interested in non-foils, but a few sets of foils around $3 seem fine as a low priority target that may or may not get there in the next few years.

6. Shadow of the Grave

Now: $0.50 ($4 foil)
Target Buy Price: $4 foil
Target Sell Price: $10+ foil (+250%)
Timeline: Long Term (12+ months)

Here we have the poster child for open ended synergy, a card that works with both cycling and discard, both of which have plenty of support now, and will only gain additional options down the road. As a two-mana instant this has the potential to set up really nasty combo turns, and whether that ends up being with Seismic Assault, Dredge cards or Life from the Loam doesn’t matter much to me. I only care that this card is only going to gain momentum as time goes on and is unlikely to see frequent reprints given the mechanical focus. I love these foils at $4, and intend to stock up this summer and await the inevitable spike.

7. As Foretold

Now: $5 (Foils: $20)
Target Buy Price: $4 (Foils $20)
Target Sell Price: $10+ (+150%)/Foils: $40 (+100%)
Timeline: Long to Very Long Term (12-36 months+)

The As Foretold hype machine was running hot during spoiler season, with the card charging out of the gates close to $20. With no home in Standard and none of the Modern brews making major waves yet, the hype has cooled and I think there’s a good chance you can pick up a pile of these for $4 or so this summer and stock them away for down the road when someone outright breaks the card.

It’s important to keep in mind that despite the fact that this card does nothing when it hits the board, it immediately starts letting you cast up to two extra spells per turn cycle including Living Death (Living End), Wheel of Fortune (Wheel of Fate), Balance (Restore Balance) and Ancestral Recall (Ancestral Vision) effects. The card has open ended synergy with similar future cards that might appear, as well as with mana denial strategies, and in EDH it can potentially allow you to cast X spells per turn cycle, where X is the number of opponents, assuming you have a way of keeping your hand full. That’s enough for me to grab twenty to thirty copies.

Foil supply is already relatively low at $20, and as a mythic rare that is going to be played as a four-of if it’s played at all, I’m happy to pick up a dozen at that price as well.

8. Gideon of the Trials

The latest incarnation of the Gatewatch’s resident bruiser has been in steep decline since he was pre-ordering at $40. Now available for just $10, the card has shown up in a few Modern control lists including UW and RW strategies, usually as a 1 or 2 of. Those aren’t the kind of numbers that are likely to cause a major spike, but I’d keep your eye out for foils closer to $20 than $30, because foil supply is relatively modest and they could end up over $40 down the road.

I’ll be picking up a play set of non-foils this summer, but will mostly focus on getting six to eight copies of the foils as cheaply as possible as a longer term hold.

Now: $10 ($22 foil)
Target Buy Price: $6 ($20 foil)
Target Sell Price: $12 ($40 foil)
Timeline: Short to Very Long-Term (6-36+ months)

9. Hope of Ghirapur

Now: $3 (foil)
Target Buy Price: $2 (foil)
Target Sell Price: $10 (+400%)
Timeline: Long Term (24+ months)

It’s a total trap, so just ignore me. For this to ever be a thing, a few things need to line up. You need a meta where you can consistently get a 1/1 flyer in for damage and where stealing your opponents ability to cast non-creature spells is powerful. You’re really doing it if you figure out how to recurse this thing and give it Haste, perhaps via Thopter Engineer. Trinket Mage and Ranger of Eos can go find this card, and Leonin Squire can bring it back. Master Trinketeer makes it bigger, and Silence and Isochron Scepter could form the nucleus of a soft lock. I only listed the foil prices above because the formats I can see this being most useful are Legacy and Vintage, where Xantid Swarm has been useful out of the sideboard. This one is a definite long shot, but it sets off my spidey senses and I’ll likely pick a few up once they get cheap for a casual Thopters deck if nothing else.

Long Term Casual Targets

10. Cascading Cataracts

Now: $.75 ($5 foil)
Target Buy Price: $0.50 ($4 foil)
Target Sell Price: $4 (+700%)/$16 foil (+300%)
Timeline: Long Term (24+ months)

In a few months we’re getting at least one new five color Commander deck (Dragons), and possibly others as well. That aside, 5-color EDH decks are only going to get more robust as time goes on and this land is an auto include in all of them. Foils should be the play here, and they’re dead cheap if you’re comfortable with a longer hold. I already bought some experimental Japanese foils, and I’ll definitely be stashing some more of these away once I see a solid deal on English copies.

11. Rishkar, Peema Renegade

Rishkar has already seen plenty of play in Standard, but I’m more interested in his long term usefulness in EDH. The strong utility of both buffing creatures and turning them into Llanowar Elves is going to be popular in casual circles for years to come and being both an Elf and a Druid is a boon for Commander. Interactions with Atraxa, the other “cares about counters” commanders, and Hardened Scales/Doubling Season only bolster the appeal. I’d focus on foils here, since there are likely to be plenty of non-foils lying around once he wraps his tenure in Standard.

Now: $4 foil
Target Buy Price: $4 foil
Target Sell Price: $12 foil
Timeline: Long Term (24+ months)

12. Throne of the God Pharoah

Yeah, that says “each opponent” all right. Attack or tap your creatures in EDH to hit all your buddies at once. That’s enough to get me on board here, but I suspect this cheap and deadly artifact will find a home in Modern and/or Legacy at some point as a finisher that doesn’t have to attack through blockers to win. Legendary status holds it back some, so I’ll focus on foils here as well, expecting modest growth, but allowing for more exciting results if someone figures out how to break out of the pack on the back of this card. At just a quarter for regular copies, hard to go wrong with those either.

Now: $0.25 ($3.50 foil)
Target Buy Price: $0.25 ($3 foil)
Target Sell Price: $4 ($10 foil)
Timeline: Long Term (12+ months)

13. Pyramid of the Pantheon

Now: $0.25 ($2 foils)
Target Buy Price: $0.25 ($2 foils)
Target Sell Price: $3 (+1200%)/$8 foils (+300%)
Timeline: Long Term (24+ months)

No one seems very excited about this card, but in Atraxa EDH decks, this “Builded Lotus” can get rolling pretty quick and ramp you into more shenanigans. It’s unlikely to escape the range of mediocre to medium good in that format, and is likely unplayable everywhere else, but at $2 for foil rares, I’m willing to throw $20 at this and see where it lands in a few years.

So there you have it. Anything I missed that you’re on top of? Logic to kill one of the specs? Share your thoughts for the benefit of all in the comments.

James Chillcott is the CEO of ShelfLife.net, The Future of Collecting, Senior Partner at Advoca, a designer, adventurer, toy fanatic and an avid Magic player and collector since 1994.

MTGPrice Blog