Jason Alt, Unlocked ProTrader

Unlocked Pro Trader: Brother Vs Brother 2: The Rebrothering

Readers!

I hope I did a good job conveying that this week’s article has something to do with last week’s article, which you have of course read. If not, do read it because the tips in there will apply a ton still and some of the lessons in there are ones I’d prefer not to have to repeat. If you read last week’s article, perhaps you know that last week I discussed Urza and Mishra decks as potential sources for specs. I want to make sure you read last week’s article, because this week I am going to discuss Urza and Mishra decks are potential sources for specs and I want to make it clear that last week I was discussing Urza and Mishra cards that are different from the Urza and Mishra cards I’m discussing today and I’m just so, so tired. Over at EDHREC, somehow in our set review we remembered the main set, the EDH decks, but forgot the EDH-only cards in Set and Collector Boosters. Like, I get that it was my job to check that, and I shouldn’t be copping to it publicly but yeah, I didn’t remember to tell every single one of my writers they needed to check 5 different spoilers to make sure they reviewed every “White” card in the set, I guess I must be the one who’s doing it wrong. So yeah, I have amped up my griping about how many new products there are, but you can’t tell me this is healthy or sustainable.

EDHREC decided to make a change to the dropdown on the site.

Going to only 5 sets didn’t, and I am not making this up, give people a chance to see the set on the list of newest sets after the product was released. The schedule is a lot. I’m not talking about this because it makes me feel a tremendous amount of stress and anxiety about the future of the game that has been my entire career focus for a decade. That’s all true, but that’s not why I mention it. I mention it because I have to type something before I show you data so I can cut it off at the paywall until Thursday and I thought what better than to show off the new site dropdown and remind people that, yes, I did talk about Urza and Mishra last week, but it’s cool that I’m going to talk about Urza and Mishra this week because they’re completely different Urza and Mishra and I guess I wanted to let everyone know I thought that sentence could serve as a punchline if you’re properly primed. Are you good and ready to get some finance advice? I’m about to shut the curtain to first class if anyone wants to become a Pro Trader real quick so they don’t have to wait 48 hours for all of this hot finance info in a world where in 48 hours from now Warhamer 40K might get bumped off our “new sets” dropdown. Commander 2023 will be spoiled 48 hours from now, get with it.

OK, now that I’ve said both that all of my finance info from last week is still good and actionable and also that you can’t wait 48 hours for the tips in this article, it’s time to give you some data so you don’t send me dog shit in the mail because I made you read the last 2 paragraphs and your time is more valuable than mine is. I already knew that, I was just talking about how I don’t think I will have a job in a year.

You know who WILL have a job in a year? Whoever designed this Urza.

My thought process when I saw Sai, Master Thopterist and its price was “Man, would Sai be $5 if it hadn’t gotten reprinted? I should check that other guy…. what’s his name? You know, from Kaladesh? Padma something? You know what, I wouldn’t even know what to google, I’ll just look at the rest of the annnnnd there he is.”

I said “he” in the last paragraph but I actually have no idea what Padeem’s deal is, but it’s a good Magic card to have, I think. And yes, the answer to my Sai question is “maybe it would have hit $5 and maybe stayed there” based on Padeem’s graph.

These cards are nearly identical in how much they are played. If you look at Sai, you can either say “Well, I guess Padeem is an identical spec so instead of being sad Sai got a reprint, I have a spec to buy still” or say “So I could lose half my money overnight if this gets reprinted?” I think Padeem isn’t getting reprinted soon and I think it’s going to be a $5 card minimum when we get like 40 Artifact sets next year. Padeem only has to dodge reprints in the first half of the year for you to cash out until your spec was free and you doubled your investment and you can play Powerball with the rest of those Kadeems that won’t even be worthless but will apparently be $1.50.

The reprinting of Archmage in Jumpstart made the graph do this. It seems to me like the price reacted like it was predicated on scarcity-based demand, not demand-based scarcity like we like. But, like, if this hit $15 based on demand from basically just Breya for a while, a Jumpstart-worth of new copies can keep it from hitting $20 ever but I don’t know if you can’t triple up at a $2.50 buy-in on TCG Player right now. This could eat a reprint, though, because they love to forget about a card for like a decade, realize it’s expensive and then print it like 5 times. I hope that doesn’t happen here, this card sees some play.

I think these inclusion numbers are a little skewed and when Breya fever was at its pitch, these were played more than they are now, the tail-end of Emry and Urza, Grand Artificer decks being in the EDHREC database. I am pitching “all of EDHREC data ever” as a perk for people who subscribe to the EDHREC patreon and if that can happen, the value of the site for finance goes up even more. But I suspect that if you read my articles, you’re just listening to a butcher tell you about his special signature sausage spice blend and you literally couldn’t care less about how much star anise I use (just a leeeeeetle smidgen) and you want to just buy a sausage and get out of here. If you dabble in sausagenanigans (my Mom is a chef and that’s literally what it’s called I think), though, seeing cards trend in usage over time would be very valuable.

If I had a sweet tweet or excerpt from an article where I said to get this when it was a buck, I’d post it right here but I don’t have one. This is a $7 card masquerading as a nearly bulk rare because the set it was in was unhinged. This is much better than the other Sieges but people who don’t play a ton of EDH and some people who do play a ton of EDH don’t know this at a glance from the others. This is a buy imo.

I meant it, different Urza and Mishra. I feel like I’m trapped under an avalanche of cardboard.

I am so charmed by this card that I hadn’t read before just now because I literally just can’t keep up, that maybe I’m overvaluing how good it will be based on just this one deck, but I think that most Red-based Artifact decks make tokens and getting free value every turn seems really solid for a buck for a good-looking Extended Art card. I like this and I don’t want to say “I wish I had said to buy this at a buck and didn’t” because I’m saying it now, which means…I am probably wrong about this card… I don’t think I am, if you do, buy accordingly.

I forgot to tell you to buy the dip, but it seems like there was no dip to buy. This is a $10 card if it’s not reprinted.

I usually do 5 picks but then it will be uneven between Urza and Mishra and also this article was a lot of non-finance so I’ll give you a bonus pic but I’m not going to talk about it, I’m going to end the article here and just like post a pic of the graph of a card I like. Or do I dislike it? No lol, it would be messed up to do that. Here’s a spec based on Mishra I like. Probably.

The Collector

5 Premium Magic Cards Every Commander Player Should Own Under $20

Bolas’s Citadel Old Border Promo Foil – $5

Bolas’s Citadel is in 105k decks on EDHREC, and 12% of all black decks, marking it as a super staple of the format. As a WPN wide distribution promo this version of Bolas’s Citadel has plenty of copies lingering in the secondary market, which is doing a great job of keeping it’s price in check . The old border treatment is very interesting when paired with a colored casting cost artifact and the mystical art of the citadel looks good in the frame. Add in the classic foil WoTC swoosh and you’ve got a solid version of one of the most powerful black cards in the format. 

Double Masters 2×2 Borderless Foil Bounce Lands – $15/set of 10

Providing ramp in multi color EDH decks and the ability to trigger Landfall or abuse CIP effects on your lands, the gorgeous new borderless bounce lands from Double Masters 2022 are super cheap at $2 or less per foil copy and a great edition to any Commander collection with full sets running for just $15. 


MSCHF x Secret Lair Swords to Plowshares – $16

Despite Swords to Plowshares being the 3rd most popular EDH card of the last 2 years according to EDHREC, it hasn’t received that many premium versions that really draw the eye. The MSCHF x Secret Lair may push the definition of budget given a 5x multiplier vs. regular copies, but it is very unlikely to catch a reprint and should age well as copies steadily drain out of the resale market. If you’re playing white in Commander, you are playing this card, so you’ll never be without a place to rock this unique treatment as your deck collection grows.

Arcane Signet Dan Frazier x Secret Lair: $18

There have been plenty of Arcane Signets printed over the last few years, and there will be plenty more in years to come, but the Dan Frazier x Secret Lair version stands head and shoulders above the rest. During the inventory rush when this drop arrived in vendor hands months ago copies could be had for $10-14, but this retro art style by the artist who handled the P9 Moxen is still a solid deal at $18 for the regular version and even $30 for the foil etched. As the second most played card in the format this will be a coveted collectible for years to come.

Secret Lair Blasphemous Act Borderless: $15



The most played sweeper in Commander is easily Blasphemous Act with the card appearing in 30% of all red decks. By far the coolest version of this perennial red staple is the Secret Lair borderless version featuring a homage to horror exploitation films of the 1970s. With massive eye appeal and ultra low chance of reprint, this sexy sweeper wil draw comments at every table you wipe with it.

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Casual Fridays

The Mythics of The Brothers’ War

The Brothers’ War has been completely previewed, and this looks like another awesome set, with themes and toys for Commander and Constructed alike. Next week I’ll be able to tell you the exact math for the most chase cards, but this week I just want to focus on some of the mythics and their preorder prices.

For each of these cards, I’m giving you the preorder price, but I want to be clear that 99% of preorder prices are a mistake and you should avoid them. For every Ledger Shredder that went from super cheap to super pricey, there’s fifty cards that start super high and drop like a rock. Even the ones that I think will eventually be good, I’m hesitant to order now because of the odds that it drops.

Arcane Proxy – $7 – I think that people are too in love with the Snapcaster comparisons. Snapcaster is a busted card, far too good and flexible. Proxy (what a time for a card with the name Proxy to come along!) allows you to cast the spell without paying, and that’s a fair trade to give up Flash for. 

The interaction I’m most excited for is putting this into the Crashing Footfalls decks in Modern. Arcane Proxy allows you to cast spells with no mana cost, rebuying the Footfalls and importantly, won’t interfere with the Cascade chain that got you the first casting. That’s an exciting interaction, but not one that will go too far. Standard is going to be pretty sick of this card, paying 1UU for a 2/1 and getting a second bite at a removal spell or some card advantage. I don’t think the price is going to rise right away, but instead drop down at first, then start climbing slowly. The Esper decks all over Worlds would definitely play 1-2 of these.

Awaken the Woods – $30 – This price is far too high, though you can name your busted combo with it. Clearly everything Landfall wants this card, big mana decks are happy to cast this at X = 4 just to start jamming ten-drops, and this card invariably warps future discussion over lands all entering the battlefield at once. That said, I adore this, I have at least two Commander decks that will want copies, but there’s no way on earth I’m paying $30 per copy. We are going to be patient on this card, let its price head downward, and then grab a stack in about six months when it’ll be at or near its lowest point. 

To be clear, I think this is a Commander/Cube card all the way. Standard has too many counterspells to make this work the risk, and other formats are just going to laugh.

Cityscape Leveler – $7

The first of many Powerstone payoffs we’re going to see in the next year or so, this card can get you value even if it’s countered or killed. Sure, eight mana to destroy a permanent and give a Powerstone is not a great deal, but you’re going to unearth it for value. I both hate and appreciate that this says ‘nonland’ permanent. I don’t want this blowing up lands when reanimation tricks have this attacking super early, but I also don’t like missing with such a trigger.

It’s starting out at a not-expensive price, and I fully expect it to go lower. Eight mana cards are rarely worth a lot of money.

Phyrexian Fleshgorger – $20

With the prevalence of Infernal Grasp, killing this and being down 5 life is an intimidating thought. I like that this ward ability scales if you change its power, but the three-mana version is just about the perfect aggro card: wins races, needs more than one answer, and is good both early and late. This is another fun reanimation target, as well as something that Powerstones jump for. 

This would need to be a playset in a whole lot of Standard decks to keep a $20 price tag, though. I expect it’ll have a decent price, just not this high.

Portal to Phyrexia – $17

I can’t wait to see the decks playing this alongside Goblin Engineer and Daretti, Scrap Savant. There’s all sorts of good payoffs for artifacts, but this will catch you up like nothing else. Not only does it immediately even the playing field when you cheat it back into play, it’ll steal their stuff and reanimate it all for you. If you can consistently cycle artifacts back and forth from the graveyard to play, this is among the best things you can be doing. 

Still, the pool of decks that can use this is a small one. Yes, it’s a Powerstone payoff but those decks aren’t going to want a ton of these either. I will be shocked if this stays over $10.

Gix, Yawgmoth Praetor – $17 – Super overpriced right now, but has good applications in an aggressive deck, as this effect snowballs quickly. One drop, two drop, this, trade one and draw a card…you’re going to get ahead quickly if they don’t have a good answer.

This is an adorable effect in Commander too, actively encouraging your tablemates to attack each other and get some cards. The seven-mana ability takes a lot to trigger but it’s nice to have such an effect if you find you’ve been drawing too many cards. 

All told, this is a good card, but not $17 good. More like $5-$10 good, tops.

Clay Champion – $5 – this might be the most underpriced choice right now, as Mono-Green is in a good position for Standard and a very good position in Pioneer. This is an 8/8 for 4 mana if you spend GGGG, a feat only really possible in the Forest-only decks. If you’re activating Castle Garenbrig, this will be an 11/11 using that six mana.

The white mana ability is interesting but not going to move the needle. I think this has a chance to go up, because the mono-green decks will play a LOT of this card, and that might be enough to bump it up a few dollars.

Teferi, Temporal Pilgrim – $15 – What I like about this card is how well it plays with a blue deck’s philosophy. It’s quite simple to imagine a blue deck that plays a couple of these, just to churn out a token per turn. Every card drawn gets you a counter, and with your natural draw, that means one spell per cycle for an extra card. The tokens get counters, which get out of hand FAST if you’ve ever played with Lorescale Coatl and the like. 

I like this version of Teferi a lot, but at five mana he’ll need some help in Standard and I’m not sure this is good enough for most superfriends decks. I expect his price to tumble by at least half.

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.

Jason Alt, Unlocked ProTrader

Unlocked Pro Trader: Brother Vs. Brother

Readers!

There are (slightly) more Brother’s War previews. More importantly, there is significantly more data for cards we already knew about, which is upon what I’d like to focus tonight. I’ll be honest, I’d love to be able to focus at all. I yelled myself hoarse for 8 hours watching Battlebots on Friday, got 8 hours sleep total the whole time I was there and ate sushi that was under a heat lamp in a 7/11. I’m not feeling my absolute best but if you think for a second our Pro Traders aren’t getting both barrels of the MTG Finance cannon this week just because I’m feeling a little like I was in the desert where drugs and alcohol are thank you gifts for losing money at craps and a Gatorade is $6.59 in the hotel, you’re sorely mistaken. Not as sore as the left side of my neck for some reason, but sore all the same. Let’s get this preamble paragraph wrapped up in a bow so I can dump a bunch of high quality picks on you then got to bed before midnight like a cartoon mouse who was turned into a stagecoach for the night or something. I don’t know. That movie came out before I was born I think. I’m not going to look that up because as we said, I’m not at my best. Remember Doc Ellis pitching a no-hitter on LSD? Well I’m not on LSD. This is going to be a many-hitter, and not just because the cards I pick are going to be hits, either. Also the reason you thought of first. Let’s do something data before I write a 2,000 word opening paragraph and go eat handfuls of shredded fiesta blend cheese and stare at the label on the apple cider.

An Old Dog Learns New Tricks

Just kidding, I just wanted a paragraph heading to break up the text. There is literally nothing new here despite a few more decks being added. I think the deck will be good, and popular, but it won’t be the most popular in a world where there is a card bearing the name “Urza.” Why am I giving you a whole paragraph on a card I don’t want to talk about again? I already told you, to break up the wall of text.

Pro tip – trying to pad a long essay? A few graphics go a long way. Next time the teacher should assign a word count and not a page count. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to set my font to 37 and increase the margins to 9 inches.

While this card isn’t giving us anything new, really, the old stuff is quite good and I think you should go back to last week where I talked about it. Don’t fear, there is plenty of gas in the other two commanders we have decks for.

Urza is Next

I’m bad at using the subheading tool, I literally have no idea what I should write there. Urza is next, but you could have figured that out using your peripheral vision. This isn’t going great, I can feel people looking at that red X in the corner. Don’t do that, I’ll give you specs, I promise. Just give me like 10 second to see if burping makes this stomach ache go away.

Yeah, it’s Urza. Yeah, it’s artifacty. This is going to make some old cards go up a lot and after it happens, everyone will be like “Well, yeah, artifact set, what did you THINK was going to happen?” but I don’t see any of those people actually saying now what they think is going to happen, so I will. I think Artifacts are going to be big business next year. Let’s look at Urza for guidance on which ones.

There is a very good case for a few of these, not the least of which is

Could this hit $10? I mean, maybe. It has a very robust play profile on EDHREC (34-35k decks – not too shabby) and it’s cheap and it’s half of its historic high. These are literally all of the things I want one or two of in a spec and this has all of them. Seems like a slam dunk, provided this isn’t reprinted. If it is, it may take some time but it will shrug the printing off. Cards with Improvise in Brother’s War would really surprise me, though- I’m betting against it happening.

This was $30 for an entire day – what if that day could be some time in November or December and this time you’re a seller at $30 and not a buyer at $15? It’s just a thought. I can’t guarantee this will go nuts, but if you bought everything I said about Whir of Invention, I don’t know why you’d start nitpicking when it came to a card with an identical case made for it. These spiked and went right back down which means dealers are stuck with these. When you buy before the spike, you’ll sneakily get a lot of copies. When you sell into the hype, the dealers you got these from for $3 will buy them from you and the cycle will feel complete. Why pick a side between Mishra and Urza when you can be the one selling weapons to both sides? Which would make you the CIA….

This will absolutely shrug off this recent printing as surely as I was right about this hitting $10. I was wrong, though – it went to $12 before it was reprinted, not $10. I feel more shame about that than you could possibly ever make me feel, so don’t even bother trying.

Mishra is doing artifacty stuff, too, you know.

Tell Me About That Artifacty Stuff

Woof, I will literally pay someone from the community to write headlines for me. That did not feel good at all.

Mishra is a deck I would build Goblin tribal, personally. You need a wide swath of expendable bodies and you want to be doing artifact stuff to tutor for Phyrexian Dragon Engine; this is a very goblin deck. Still, you don’t want to know how I’d build it, do you, or you’d read my article series every Thursday on Coolstuff Inc.com your source for cool stuff and hot other stuff. It’s free to read my articles over there. I’m not saying I don’t get enough readers over there. I actually have no idea, they won’t tell me. Could be a lot. Could be I should be telling those people to come here. Right, you want to know what people are playing.

I see a bit of a Goblin theme here. If Krenko is getting played, what about Krenko?

If the only thing you did in MTG Finance was ride the waves of $5 buy-ins and $10 cash-outs Krenko gets you, you would make a few bucks per copy per year, seems like. This still shrugs off printings, and since it rarely gets below $5, I like it at $5 and I’m not going to apologize for it.

If this spikes again, it will be to $12 and it will stay there, mostly. I think we missed the biggest opportunity to get these for $1 and sell them to a buylist for $2.25, but the buylist on these has never bee higher. $3 for these on CK with the buylist at $2.50 and a new excuse to play Goblins, plus the possibility of the non-EDH interaction that made it spike in 2021 re-occuring makes this a slam dunk imo.

Sets are all busted, now. Green is getting a card that turns Rampant Growth into a better Sylvan Scrying among other bonkers cards. Once people start to brew, next week’s article is going to be wall-to-wall gas, Until then, check out the Brother’s War stuff on EDHREC – there are more picks than the ones I wrote about. Until next time!

MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY