My new rule is six months. I don’t consider buying cards for long-term growth until six months after release, and wouldn’t you know it, we’re at six months post-Commander Legends: Battle of Baldur’s Gate. I’ve learned through hard and expensive experience that I don’t want to buy cards until the floor, and it takes several months to find that floor now.

Let’s go over some cards from the set, and discuss how the price fell and fell and fell, and then decide which merit being a pick up from a vastly underpowered and poorly-selling set.

We need to start out with the obvious: This set was underpowered for Commander, and undersold. That doesn’t mean everything is cheap, though. Here’s the entire list of cards worth more than $10 right now in nonfoil:

Fourteen cards on this list, while Streets of New Capenna has nine cards, and even Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty has seven. Granted, Baldur’s Gate cards have the assorted variations of the same four Dragons as different entries here, but these are still valid hits on pack openings. 

What we are looking for is that mix of cards that are good in Commander, based on their EDHREC inclusion, aren’t too expensive, and perhaps have some Eternal applications. I don’t worry about Standard these days, and you shouldn’t spec based on that format either.

Remember that EDHREC data is useful but it is also flawed: There’s a bias towards preconstructed deck inclusions, and it only represents the people invested enough to list every single card of theirs. I haven’t listed any of my decks, for instance.

With all of this in mind, let’s look at cards, keeping in mind that for most of these, the Monster Manual Showcase versions are definitely cheaper. If you like those versions, you can stock up, but the prices speak to the average player having a disdain for that, even if it’s cheaper.

Decanter of Endless Water (a quarter to $2.50) – This is strange to me, and I’ve been having difficulty figuring out what is up with this card. The regular version sells 7-8 copies a day around $2, while the foil moves slower. This is clearly for everyone who loves drawing endless cards, but this wasn’t in the precon decks. It’s just popular. If it stays popular, this is probably a buylist play: buy 100 copies for around 30 cents, and when they hit $1.50, sell them all to a buylist for $1 each. Even better if you live near a store, save on shipping!

Jaheira, Friend of the Forest (30 cents to $2) – Giving all tokens this ability to tap for green mana is pretty outstanding, because it’s not just creature tokens, it’s everything. Jace, Mirror Mage tokens. Treasures, Food, Clues! All of them are now Mox Emeralds. There’s already a lot of combos here, and everything that makes tokens gets better with this. I love that sort of open-ended synergy, and I think that this is worth buying in on.

Astral Dragon ($4, no foils) – This set not only gave us the outstanding cycle of Ancient Dragons, but also a few accessory Dragons that I really like long-term. Being from the Commander deck, there’s no foils here or for Brainstealer, but this is another combo-centric card. I’ve already used this on a wide variety of board states, and been pleased at every turn. I fully expect this to be some weird combo in the future, as what it does is quite unique.

Brainstealer Dragon ($3, no foils) – Getting cards for free is exactly what you want from a seven-drop. Sure it’s already a big flyer, but at end of turn, you’re going to exile three cards and be able to play them whenever you want, using any color of mana, and dealing damage to its owner when you do. Winner all around, a cheap card and one I want to have in stock going forward.

Wrathful Red Dragon ($1.50 to $3) – Dragons don’t generally need ‘don’t mess with me’ cards but it’s always nice to have a card that says ‘Even if you block, you’re going to take a pile of damage.’ I also like how this breaks the mirror match for Dragon decks, or turns your Scourge of Kher Ridges into ‘target player takes a boatload of damage.’ For this card, we can get Extended Art foils for crazy cheap, and considering how popular Dragon decks are, this is one of the best to be playing.

Monster Manual ($1.50 to $3) – Quicksilver Amulet has been printed to dust, and will never recover. This is clearly an upgrade, and carries the downside of needing green mana. Still, green decks tend to be chock-full of giant creatures that want to be cheated into play, and this is a great way to do that. Again, we can get the premium foil version for cheap, and that’s where I want to be.

Gond Gate ($1) and Baldur’s Gate (50 cents to $2) – Gate decks will have their day in the sun again. Purchasing these is a gift to yourself when we get our next trip to Ravnica, where both shocklands and Gates will be present yet again. These two Gates are heavily synergistic, and the Gond Gate nullifying Gates’ disadvantage is a big big deal. These sell at a brisk pace now, so stock up while you can.

Nautiloid Ship ($4 to $8) – I know Jason’s mentioned this card once or twice, so let me just add my voice, that this is a phenomenal card and incredibly unfair. A 5/5 flyer with crew 3 is not difficult to get in a hit with, and you don’t even have to hit the player whose graveyard you exiled. Just a fantastic card and one that should be getting a lot more play.

Artificer Class ($5, no foils) – Granted, there’s a long long list of ‘blue cards that are auto-includes in artifact themed decks’ but this deserves to be on the list. It’s not as broken as Foundry Inspector at Level 1, but it gets so much better as you level up. Two mana to draw your next artifact is good, six mana to copy artifacts is outright broken.

Vexing Puzzlebox ($3 to $6) – We’ve gotten a lot of fun with d20 cards, and this one allows for an easy payoff. People aren’t quite as asleep on this mythic, since the FEA is $6, but it’s pretty easy to have this tap to search up an artifact every other turn or so, especially if one of your early finds is for Unwinding Clock or the like. Every dice-rolling card makes this better, so I want to have a few ready for our next set that features the ability.

I know that in the current environment, it’s tough to keep track of everything that’s coming out. We’re bombarded every other week or so with previews, leaks, and spoilers, for Secret Lairs, Jumpstarts, Remastered sets, you name it.

Even so, it is my honor to report that there’s a relatively straightforward reprint set coming out January 13, 2023. It’s got some hot reprints, the mythics of which I covered last week, but today I want to break down your odds of pulling the cards you want most. 

So let’s get into the math of the thing, and that’ll allow us to figure out if we want to buy Collector Boosters or singles.

This is the breakdown of what’s in a Collector Booster, and as a result, we can see that all the value is concentrated in the slot with the traditional foil retro frame cards or borderless versions. Lots of sets have variations, but this one is just retro and borderless and that’s it.

Let’s lay out which are which, in terms of rarity and frame.

Retro Frame Rare (60)	Retro Frame Mythic (20)	Borderless Rare (23)	Borderless Mythic (17)
Divine Sacrament Enlightened Tutor Glory Lieutenant Kirtar Sevinne’s Reclamation Windborn Muse Wrath of God Arcanis the Omnipotent Denizen of the Deep Mystic Remora Mystical Tutor Opposition Stroke of Genius Vexing Sphinx Body Snatcher Chainer, Dementia Master Entomb Mindslicer Nantuko Shade Oversold Cemetery Royal Assassin Gamble Grim Lavamancer Overmaster Pashalik Mons Shivan Dragon Siege-Gang Commander Sulfuric Vortex Arboria Birds of Paradise Exploration Forgotten Ancient Jolrael, Mwonvuli Recluse Saproling Symbiosis Worldly Tutor Absorb Arcades Sabboth Decimate Phantom Nishoba Pyre Zombie Rith, the Awakener Sol’kanar the Swamp King	Lyra Dawnbringer Serra Avatar Test of Endurance Force of Will Time Stretch Urza, Lord High Artificer No Mercy Vampiric Tutor Yawgmoth, Thran Physician Last Chance Sneak Attack Worldgorger Dragon Kamahl, Fist of Krosa Nut Collector Sylvan Library Hunting Grounds Gauntlet of Power Legacy Weapon Urza’s Incubator Dark Depths	Enlightened Tutor Windborn Muse Wrath of God Denizen of the Deep Mystic Remora Mystical Tutor Chainer, Dementia Master Entomb Oversold Cemetery Gamble Grim Lavamancer Siege-Gang Commander Arboria Birds of Paradise Worldly Tutor Absorb Decimate Helm of Awakening Jester’s Cap Lotus Blossom Triskelion Gemstone Mine Maze of Ith	Lyra Dawnbringer Test of Endurance Force of Will Time Stretch Urza, Lord High Artificer No Mercy Vampiric Tutor Yawgmoth, Thran Physician Last Chance Worldgorger Dragon Nut Collector Sylvan Library Hunting Grounds Gauntlet of Power Legacy Weapon Urza’s Incubator Dark Depths

Every rare and mythic has a retro version, and 1/3 of the rares also have a borderless. For the mythics, all of them have both a borderless and a retro, except for Serra Avatar, Sneak Attack, and Kamahl, Fist of Krosa.

Given that Wizards is making it easier and easier to build an all-retro-frame Commander deck or Cube, I’m not shocked that there’s a lot more retro than borderless here.

Usually, Wizards collates things so that all copies of a card’s variants total the same amount. That does not appear to be the case this time. When looking over mass cracking data from vendor partners, the variant ratio on non-foil Retro to Borderless, for cards that have both does not look to be equal. Rather, the split seems to be closer to 2 Borderless for every 1 Retro version of a card like Sylvan Library that has both. This effectively means that mythics with both retro and borderless are twice as populous and that the variants don’t split the drop rate as we typically see in CBs.

For example, in the # of CBs one vendor opened, they pulled:

12 Retro Sylvan Library
23 Borderless Sylvan Library
12 Retro Sneak Attack

This suggests that there are actually 3x as many of the mythics and rares that have 2 variants vs. the ones that only have a retro version.

I suspect this is a goof, rather than a change in policy, but as we work with incomplete information, we will update accordingly.

As always, we’re operating on the basic premise that the ratios for cards are the same as a Draft Booster: 10 commons, 3 uncommons, 1 rare or a 50% chance of being a mythic. That’s a 10:3:1:0.5 ratio, but to make things easy, I double it to 20:6:2:1. Translated, for every mythic, there’s 20 copies of a common, there’s 6 uncommons, and two rares.

We’ve got 60 retro rares, 23 borderless rares, 20 retro mythics and 17 borderless mythics, all of which are guaranteed to be foil in this slot. One thing to remember is that the total number of copies is the same for each card at each rarity, even if there’s less version. For example, If this set puts 300 of each mythic out there, that means there’s 150 of the Borderless Foil Lyra Dawnbringer, 150 of the Retro Foil Lyra Dawnbringer, and 300 Retro Foil Sneak Attack.

So when we’re calculating drop rates in this slot, we need to be cognizant of the different versions available.  We also know from vendor experience that the cards with one variant frame are appearing around half as often as the cards with both.

I have changed the table to reflect this.

	Chance for getting that card (any version)	Chance for getting a specific frame	Estimated number of Collector Booster boxes needed for specific frame
Rare with one frame	1/70	1/70	5.8
Rare with two frames	1/70	1/140	11.7
Mythic with one frame	1/280	1/280	23.4
Mythic with two frames	1/140	1/280	23.3

So with this trick of giving almost all the mythics a second frame, they halved the drop rate for each frame. It’s also a great way to keep the price high for the special versions of a card, even if the price for the regular frame drops precipitously. 

A drop rate of one every 280 packs for the rarest mythics is not far off from most of the other sets we’ve had recently, and this set is notably lacking in a subset or a super-mega-rare. There’s no serialized versions, no Lost Legends, no alt-art Japanese Mystical Archive. Let’s have a comparison with other recent sets:

Card/Set	Collector Boosters to open one (approx.)	Card/Set	Collector Boosters to open one (approx.)
Phyrexian Foil Vorinclex (KHM)	256	Foil Etched Food Chain (2X2)	280
Japanese- Language Alternate Art Time Warp Foil (STX:MA)	309	Red Soft Glow Hidetsugu (NEO)	1,828
Foil Extended Art The Meathook Massacre (MID)	151	Phyrexian Foil Sheoldred, the Apocalypse (DMU)	346
Foil Fang Frame Sorin, the Mirthless by Ayami Kojima (VOW)	171	Phyrexian Foil Ajani, Sleeper Agent (DMU)	692
Extended Art Foil Jeweled Lotus (CMR)	400	Foil Alternate-Art Teferi, Temporal Pilgrim (BRO)	299
Phyrexian Foil Urabrask, Heretic Praetor (SNC)	492	Retro Foil Sulfuric Vortex (DMR)	70
Borderless Foil Ancient Brass Dragon (CLB)	352	Retro Foil Sneak Attack (DMR)	140
Phyrexian foil (or foil-etched) Jin-Gitaxias (NEO)	544	Borderless Foil or Retro Foil Force of Will (DMR)	280

Things being not-quite-as-rare to pull from packs doesn’t mean they will be common, though. Remember that this is a reprint set, in between two major releases. I am not expecting this to be a hugely opened set right away, but the initial burst of product, plus the trickle of remaining boxes to open, should keep prices down for a while. As I said last week, I’m not expecting to buy any spec copies for several months, but feel free to grab all the personal copies you want right away.

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.