Readers!

I want to do a bit of a continuation of the energy of last week’s article without making it a strict continuation. The truth is, Baldur’s Gate is a set that everyone is dogging on twitter because everyone whose opinion you respect doesn’t respect EDH. That’s OK with me, I honestly like people underestimating a great set. AFR was full of weird cards and it sold well just because people who like D&D bought them, and maybe they’ll keep it up? Either way, Baldur’s Gate is doing a lot financially, and maybe ignoring the “face” commanders that are mostly cards from the precon and drilling down deeper will find more hidden gems. It worked last week, it can work now.

Let’s look at the distribution from last week.

We looked at a few, and we’ll look at the rest, now. Out of curiosity, has anything changed overall?

Here is the full top 16 from last week.

Here is the top 16 today.

It is safe to say the dust has settled quite a bit. Let’s look at the last few stragglers in the Top 16 before we call it a set, shall we?

Would it surprise you to learn that Neera’s High Synergy cards are not precon cards? It’s an actual interesting list!

Stealing their cards is the best way to play Magic the Gathering and there’s one card that hasn’t gotten a reprint for some reason.

This is in multiple decks based on Baldur’s Gate usage and it currently costs $10 on TCG Player and $15 on CK. I think reprint risk is non-trivial, but I also think this is powerful enough to hit $25 if it carries on its current trajectory for another year and I’m into it. I wish I’d had the foresight to scoop a ton when these were under $5 but I assumed it was a fringe kind of card only I liked. Helm of Possession wasn’t a $30 card so how could this even hit $10? Turns out people are more aware of cards that aren’t old enough to drink – who knew?

The precon gave us a very sexy reprint which cut the value of Jeska’s Will, a really ridiculous spell, from $28 to $14 overnight. It’s rebounding a bit on CK so if you think it’s done dropping or you can live with buying in at $12 on TCG Player knowing it probably makes out at $21 this time around, there is a lot of money to be made here. You know what didn’t get a reprint?

The version that’s $21 on TCG Player and $32 on CK.

$35 on EA foils looks pretty good in hindsight!

I have talked about some of these cards before, but sometimes it bears repeating.

Adeline is a good card with a very, very ugly EA version. Lacking a credible alternative, the regular version has to do all of the work.

The regular version maxed out a full dollar higher. Bad EA versions bode well for the regular versions, but eliminate some of that “even if this gets reprinted (something almost sure to happen to Adeline) the EA version can hold some value” safety you feel, so spec at your own risk. Still, this is a future $15 card that you can get on TCG for $4.86 and this isn’t the first or last time I’ll discuss this as a spec.

Someone has kept this at $5 on their buylist as it fell from $17 to $7 and I want to know who.

It isn’t who I thought it was – they are only paying $6.60 on the foil and not buying the non-foil at all. Curious.

Circle of Dreams Druid’s EA version is plummeting to the value of the non-EA and will almost certainly get a reprint as it’s an Elf and it’s a $5 Gaea’s Cradle for new players, so maybe those EA and EA foil copies are better – just make sure not to grab a falling knife.

This deck seems very narrow. It builds itself, basically, but no one is building it enough for these cards to matter, or using them anywhere else. I don’t love this as a source for specs.

I believe this graph, however, speaks for itself. This seems like a very good card that sometimes impacts other formats. I this $6 is a bargain for a card that was 3 times that at one point.

With so many decks, it’s hard to get to them all, but it’s also a lot of opportunities for old, weird cards to get a second look, or for one card that’s not really a staple but which interacts favorably with a lot of decks built around the same few core concepts. I think if we want to dig deep, we’ll continue to find gems, and we’ll find cards like Adeline whose names keep coming up. Both of those are good things. That does it for me this week, readers. Until next time!

Readers!

Last week I wrote about how the landscape has shifted a bit and as people actually got Baldur’s Gate cards in their hands, and I feel like I should admit that the landscape continues to shift and every article is merely a snapshot into a fluid situation, further compacted by the fact that Dominaria United previews will start any day, now. Fortunately, we still have some time to figure out some cards that have some velocity because they’re in decks that aren’t tearing up the charts but are still getting built quite a bit. Let’s look at the lesser known decks in Baldur’s Gate (I don’t remember the name of the set, go with it).

The obvious ones are still doing really well, but what about the ones that are not obvious are are not doing as well? Not exactly the dregs, but certainly not the decks ending up in the top-built decks from the last week. Compare Raggadragga’s 716 decks to some of the others.

The 347 Kadira decks aren’t exactly pulling the same weight, are they? That said, they are still pulling weight and we have ignored them for a few weeks. Let’s not do that anymore, shall we?

All precon cards. We talked about this last week – A ton of the high synergy cards are directly from the precon and I don’t know what to do about that. We could filter them out but then you’re getting some fairly low synergy scores and you might as well just look at top cards, which are likely Orzhov staples.

There aren’t enough Party-based decks in the world not to make Coveted Prize a perennial stinker, and going down below the “Top Cards” cutoff seems… fraught I guess is the word. Still, we should soldier on and see if we can find anything here.

This could take a minute, but every time I swing with this and activate it, someone asks “wait, does it really tutor when it swings?” Yes, this card is slept-on because Kaldheim is slept-on. This card, however, has solid fundamentals imo.

I don’t love looking at the raw number of inclusions as a substitute for analysis, but if this card is in this many decks and no one told the price, it’s a matter of time until this butts up against reality and becomes the price it’s supposed to be. Yeah, they’re printing everything into Bolivian right now but that doesn’t mean even the supply we got can keep up with this demand. A new card making this obsolete seems more likely than a reprint. Unfortunately, it seems more likely than a lot of things.

You can basically copy everything I said about Varragoth and apply it here. In fact,

This could take a minute, but every time I swing with [another creature] and activate it, someone asks “wait, does it really tutor when it swings?” and I say “no, you’re thinking of Varragoth.” Yes, this card is slept-on because Kaldheim is slept-on. This card, however, has solid fundamentals imo.

I don’t love looking at the raw number of inclusions as a substitute for analysis, but if this card is in this many decks and no one told the price, it’s a matter of time until this butts up against reality and becomes the price it’s supposed to be. Yeah, they’re printing everything into Bolivian right now but that doesn’t mean even the supply we got can keep up with this demand. A new card making this obsolete seems more likely than a reprint. Unfortunately, it seems more likely than a lot of things

Despite the enormous handicap of coming from Wisconsin and working in de lumberyard dere, this guy manages to craft some chaos wherever he goes. I can dig it. How much chaos?

Cards that aren’t included in the precon! What the WHAT?

I think this is likely to be a much more expensive foil soon. The set has been out a year and boxes are pretty expensive on this already. I’m confident we will see a lot of growth on this barring a reprint in foil.

We are currently at this point in the graph, if that makes this any clearer. I like foil Nightblade a LOT.

This is quite possibly the ugliest premium version I’ve ever seen.

And the foils are about to be dirt cheap.

That said,

Barring a reprint, this goes to $10. That said, a reprint seems kind of likely and there is no foil or premium version that can insulate this card from the shock of said reprint. This has the juice to hit $10, I just don’t know how much time we have. If you’re squeamish, put your dollahs elswur.

Well hot damn.

$10 on CK was the floor on these and CK is already asking $15. It’s not unreasonable to assume this can hit $20. A lot of Jumpstart was opened because the first print run was small, the prices were nuts and excitement was high. Then boxes came out and people bought then at $80 feverishly because they were so laden with value. Then the market realized a ton of singles were in it and supply was basically infinite and prices bottomed out. We’re for sure in an upswing, though, and this is on its way to, and I’m speculating, $20ish. Plan accordingly.

That does it for me this week. Next week we’ll dive even deeper unless another set has come out by then. Until next time!