Early New Capenna

April 25, 2022 David Sharman

You’ll be thankful to hear that I’m taking a week off from talking about Pioneer today – now that we’ve seen the full preview for Streets of New Capenna, I want to do what I usually do right before a new set comes out and have a look at what I think should be decent pickups when we hit peak supply in a few weeks.

New Triomes (All Versions, Probably)

I’m not going to spend too long talking about these, because it’s pretty clear from looking at the original Triomes that these are going to be a success on pretty much any timeline. With the original set of five printed in Ikoria, we just had regular versions and Showcase variants – now we’re getting both of those plus Borderless versions too. Just to make things confusing, it looks like the new Borderless versions are the same style as the old Showcase versions, and the new Showcase versions are a totally different style (and the regular versions are thankfully just normal). Keeping up? Good.

The regular versions of the Ikoria Triomes got down to around $4-5 after release, and the foil Showcases hit a low of around $15-$25, depending on which one you’re looking at (Savai lower, Ketria higher etc.). I’m hoping to see similar (or lower) prices from these ones as well a few weeks after release – you might think that prices will stay higher because people already know how good these lands are, but I’m pretty sure people knew that the Ikoria Triomes were very strong and they were available at fairly reasonable prices for a while anyway.

Regular Ikoria Triomes are now sitting at around $15, with foil Showcases up at $40 or so – I think that given a reasonable amount of time we should see those prices from the new ones as well (if you swap out old Showcases for new Borderless foils – the Borderless are more expensive than the new Showcases and I think they’re likely to stay that way).

Void Rend (Showcase & Gilded Foil)

Void Rend has caught my eye as possibly one of the best spot removal spells that you can put into an Esper+ EDH deck (i.e. anything that’s white, blue, black plus any other colours). Unconditional permanent destruction that can’t be countered is huge for three mana, and I think that this will (or at least should) be going into every EDH deck that can play it for the foreseeable future. It’s almost a shame this doesn’t hit lands too, but I think that it might be a little too good/oppressive if it didn’t have the “non-land” clause on it.

As well as being a future EDH powerhouse (I don’t think I can quite call it a staple because it’s three colours), I think that this card could have potential in more competitive formats as well. Pioneer control decks will definitely be trying this out, and Modern will more than likely give it a shot as well – if they’re playing Vindicate (which they are) then I think they’ll be happy with a little upgrade.

I’m looking for non-foils to get pretty low on this – I don’t think it’ll hit bulk, but $1-2 seems realistic. For the Showcase foils preorders are currently sitting around $12, and I think this should come down a bit in the coming weeks – I’m hoping that we’ll see something like $5-7 but this will be one to keep an eye on and watch out for the low. The Gilded foils are going to be even more difficult to predict, with no preorders on TCGPlayer but a few up on CardMarket for €22+. I think we could definitely see it come lower than that, but by how much I’m not sure – it’ll be a bit of a wait-and-see.

Professional Face-Breaker

Aside from the fact that I absolutely love the name of this card, I think it’s going to be a big player in EDH. EDHREC is already showing it as one of the top cards from New Capenna, and with Treasures now being evergreen in Magic there’s always going to be more support for the mechanic and new things to do with Treasure-related cards. It’ll be easy enough to amass a pile of treasures with Face-Breaker (and other cards), and then churn through your deck using your extra Treasures for mana to cast the cards you’re exiling to Face-Breaker’s ability.

This is a card that I’m going to look to be buying bricks of either in the US or Europe, hopefully at around $1-2 (or even lower if we’re lucky). It should be a great buylist target a year or two out, so be ready to sit back on this one and wait it out.

David Sharman (@accidentprune on Twitter) has been playing Magic since 2013, dabbling in almost all formats but with a main focus on Modern and EDH. Based in the UK, he’s an active MTG finance speculator specialising in cross-border arbitrage.

Casual Fridays

The Math of Streets of New Capenna – Collector Boosters

April 22, 2022 Cliff Daigle

Update 4/29/2022: I’ve edited this to include the drops of New Capenna Commander cards in the last slot of Collector Boosters. Everything should be in multiples of 82 now.

Every set, Wizards is obligated to release a certain amount of information about the drop rate in the different booster products. They don’t want to be specific about things, though, so every new set, I have to look at the changes they’ve announced and figure out the odds of getting the cards we want in a Collector Booster.

It hasn’t been the same formula twice, and we keep getting variations. This time, the big news is the confirmation of a two-step process when determining how rare specific versions are. All versions of a card are combined to be as numerous as the total copies of another card at the same rarity.

So the total number of Extended Art Foil Luxior, Giada’s Gift (a mythic) is equal to the combined total number of Art Deco Foil, Phyrexian Foil, and Art Deco Etched Foil Urabrask, Heretic Praetor. As a result, each of those versions is three times rarer than the FEA Topiary Stomper.

The shorthand version is that first you roll your odds of getting any version of a card, and then you have to figure how many versions are possible for that card. I’ve done it all for you!

The slightly longer version, ignoring individual variations: If you want any card in any foil, looking at the last slot of a Collector Booster, you’ve got a 1/82 chance of getting it in a CB if it’s rare and 1/164 if it’s a mythic. Traditionally speaking, there’s twice as many of a given rare as there is for a mythic, so with 60 rares and 20 mythics from the main set, plus six rares and twelve mythics from New Capenna Commander, the pool is 2/164 or 1/82 for a rare and 1/164 for a mythic.

The annoying hurdle to this set is that you have to figure out how many options there are for a special frame. For some cards, there is only an EA version for you to pull. For others, you might have a chance at Borderless Foil, Art Deco Foil, or Etched Foil Art Deco.

I’m a completionist by nature, a trait which helps and hinders me, so I’m going to lay out your options by number of variants, then card name, then rarity.

First of all, the cards that are available at rare with one variant frame, so you have a 1/82 chance to get these exact cards/versions when you open a Collector Booster:

Extended Art Foil (35)
Frequency: 1/82

Main Set:
Aven Heartstabber
Black Market Tycoon
Cemetery Tampering
Corpse Explosion
Cut of the Profits
Cut Your Losses
Depopulate
Devilish Valet
Evolving Door
Extraction Specialist
Fight Rigging
Getaway Car
Hoard Hauler
Jaxis, the Troublemaker
Ledger Shredder
Mysterious Limousine
Park Heights Pegasus
Professional Face-Breaker
Rabble Rousing
Reservoir Kraken
Sanguine Spy
Shakedown Heavy
Structural Assault
Undercover Operative
Unlicensed Hearse
Widespread Thieving
Wiretapping
Workshop Warchief

New Capenna Commander:
Boxing Ring
Mari, the Killing Quill
Spiteful Repossession
Swindler’s Scheme
Tenuous Truce
Vazi, Keen Negotiator

Borderless Foil (2)
Frequency: 1/82

Shadow of Mortality
Topiary Stomper

For reference, Jaxis, the Troublemaker also has a Buy-a-Box and Mysterious Limousine also has a Promo version from the Bundle, but those versions won’t pop up in the Collector Boosters.

Now, the list of mythics that have only one variation.

Extended Art Foil (18)
Frequency: 1/164

Main Set:
Angel of Suffering
Arcane Bombardment
Body Launderer
Even the Score
Luxior, Giada’s Gift
Meeting of the Five

New Capenna Commander:
Bennie Bracks, Zoologist
Threefold Signal
Anhelo, the Painter
Henzie “Toolbox” Torre
Kamiz, Obscura Oculus
Kitt Kanto, Mayhem Diva
Kros, Defense Contractor
Parnesse, the Subtle Brush
Perrie, the Pulverizer
Phabine, Boss’s Confidante
The Beamtown Bullies
Tivit, Seller of Secrets

Borderless Foil (4)
Frequency: 1/164

All-Seeing Arbiter
Bootleggers’ Stash
Halo Fountain
Titan of Industry

Just to be clear, there’s a Game Day Promo version of All-Seeing Arbiter, but we won’t see that in the Collector Boosters.

Now things get trickier. I’ve tried to break these rares into their combinations. I think I’ve got it right, but if you catch errors, please hop into our discord and let me know.

The frequency here is referring to any particular version. You still have a 1/82 chance to get any version of Brokers Ascendancy, but a 1/164 chance to get the Gilded Age foil.

Gilded Age Foil and Gilded Age Gilded Foil (20) Frequency: 1/164	Brokers Ascendancy Cabaretti Ascendancy Endless Detour Evelyn, the Covetous Fleetfoot Dancer Hostile Takeover Incandescent Aria Jinnie Fay, Jetmir’s Second Maestros Ascendancy Maestros Diabolist Obscura Ascendancy Obscura Interceptor Ognis, the Dragon’s Lash Rigo, Streetwise Mentor Riveteers Ascendancy Soul of Emancipation Toluz, Clever Conductor Unleash the Inferno Void Rend Ziatora’s Envoy
Art Deco Foil and Etched Foil Art Deco (4) Frequency: 1/164	Errant, Street Artist Giada, Font of Hope Scheming Fence Tenacious Underdog
Skyscraper Foil and Borderless Foil (5) Frequency: 1/164	Jetmir’s Garden Raffine’s Tower Spara’s Headquarters Xander’s Lounge Ziatora’s Proving Ground

Next, the list of mythics with two special frames.

Art Deco Foil and Art Deco Etched Foil (1) Frequency: 1/328	Sanctuary Warden
Golden Age Foil and Golden Age Gilded Foil (5) Frequency: 1/328	Falco Spara, Pactweaver Jetmir, Nexus of Revels Lord Xander, the Collector Raffine, Scheming Seer Ziatora, the Incinerator

Finally, the mythics that have three special frames. There’s no rares with this many, they max out at two.

Borderless Foil, Art Deco Foil, Art Deco Etched Foil (3) Frequency: 1/492	Elspeth Resplendent Ob Nixilis, the Adversary Vivien on the Hunt
Art Deco Foil, Art Deco Etched Foil, Phyrexian Foil (1) Frequency: 1/492	Urabrask, Heretic Praetor

We can compare this set’s rarest cards to the rarest cards of previous sets, because I get to do this every couple months:

set	Odds of a specific foil rare	Odds of a specific foil mythic
Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty	1/136	1/272 up to 1/544
Innistrad: Crimson Vow	1/74	1/171
Innistrad: Midnight Hunt	1/75.5	1/151
Forgotten Realms	1/63	1/126
Strixhaven	1/154.5	1/309
Kaldheim	1/64	1/128
Modern Horizons 2	1/126.5	1/253
Commander Legends EA Foils	1/204	1/400
Streets of New Capenna	1/82 to 1/164	1/164 to 1/492

That’s the general gist, but let’s talk about some card-to-card comparisons.

Card/Treatment	Set	Odds of pulling it from a Collector Booster (approx.)
Phyrexian Foil Vorinclex	Kaldheim	1/256
Japanese-Language Alternate Art Time Warp Foil	Strixhaven (Mystical Archive)	1/309
Foil Extended Art The Meathook Massacre	Innistrad: Midnight Hunt	1/151
Foil Fang Frame Sorin, the Mirthless by Ayami Kojima	Innistrad: Crimson Vow	1/171
Extended Art Foil Jeweled Lotus	Commander Legends	1/400
Phyrexian foil (or foil-etched) Jin-Gitaxias	Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty	1/544
Blue Soft Glow Hidetsugu	Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty	1/219
Green Soft Glow Hidetsugu	Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty	1/444
Red Soft Glow Hidetsugu	Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty	1/1828
Phyrexian Foil Urabrask, Heretic Praetor	Streets of New Capenna	1/492

Your eyes do not deceive you: The rarest mythics in SNC are more than twice as rare as a blue Hidetsugu, and slightly rarer than the green version. Additionally, they are slightly more rare than the FEA Jeweled Lotus, and the rarest cards from modern sets have that 1/400 target in mind for chase versions.

I hope that this breakdown of the math helps inform your buying, and if you have questions or caught errors, please let me know on Twitter or in the ProTrader Discord! I’m happy to discuss methods and results there.

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: Same as the Old Capenna

April 19, 2022 Jason Alt

Readers!

New Capenna is here and however you feel about this set and the staggering amount of Italian stereotypes everyone is super fond of, we’ll have new cards to worry about in a few weeks. We’re getting 19 new Legendary creatures in New Capenna plus a bunch more in the EDH decks, all of which adds up to a pretty full docket. I am not touching the EDH deck cards unless they end up in the decks of the cards in the set because I am barely hanging on, mentally. In 3 weeks there will be another 2,000 cards I’m expected to know, and not only is the pace of products increasing, they’re going to jack the cost of packs up 11%. The IPCC says the world is on pace to be unlivable for humans, I bought the max on Street Fighter and Dracula Secret Lairs and I’m worried I might not have the wherewithal to see them and I literally just did this a few weeks ago and here we are again. You in the mood to read some finance tips yet? If you’d really rather invest in cardboard than water filters and ammunition, I guess you’re in luck because I really only know how to do one thing, and that’s identify potential for cards to increase in value.

Realistically, only the top 5 here really matter. Do I think this top 5 will be the final top 5? I don’t, but I also think that the guilds are so narrow and focused that there is probably a lot of overlap and we likely just need to pick one commander from each wedge or famiglia or whatever they’re calling them, and try to extrapolate which cards will matter for each strategy. I’m not positive this will work, but we’ll have enough data next week to get super granular anyway and everything I said this week will be forgotten already. Let’s drill down into some of these sumbitches, shall we? No wrong answers, let’s just look at some Magic cards.

I feel like I call out all of these cards every couple of weeks. I could tell you to buy Tendershoot Drayd for the tenth time, or we could look at these cards as a whole. It seems like lately, going wide in Naya colors is something design is focusing on and if these cards dodge reprints like they should, we’re in good shape. One card in particular I like right now is Dragonlair Spider.

A few very small reprints have managed to keep this in the bulkish region, but I wonder if we could make the price graph look more enticing by giving it the Ronald Reagan graph treatment.

Booya. If we’re going to let people use graphs to lie about trickle-down economics, I’m going to use one to make you think Dragonlair Spider is on an upward trajectory because, guess what, it is. I play Arasta in my decks but this is perfect for Jetmir decks and it eats Angels all day. I love this card and under $2, this seems like an easy double-up.

This is obviously trending down long-term, but it seems to have bottomed out. Not convinced?

I can lie with graphs all day.

The thing is, the buylist value is trending up alongside retail, so this could be starting to finally climb after bottoming out. This was always a solid card with no deck, and with it being a Mythic, there is opportunity here. The other high synergy cards are obvious or cards I called before, but these 2 seem poised to me.

This is a frankly bonkers set of high synergy cards.

The real question here is whether Amonkhet was long ago enough that a bulk rare could pop.

2 printings at non-mythic? Looks bad.

Welp

WELP.

OK, but there has to be something else we can buy into.

I think rotation from Standard, a thing that shouldn’t affect prices since no one plays paper Standard but which serves as a psychological impetus to see your “rotated” cards as worthless likely makes this go down more. Is there ANYTHING in this deck that is a good buy?

This isn’t in the Esper precon and I’m pretty sure it’s not in the Bant one, either, in which case this seems very good under $5 and still probably fine in the $5-$7 range, though acting fast eliminates the need to pay that much.

Much better.

*prolonged cartoon fart noise*

Discard is really boring and super hard to do in Commander. A lot of decks play out of their ‘yard a ton and you’re helping them, and if you’re milling people, you need to do 300 damage and 20 cards for 2 mana doesn’t seem as cool anymore. Still, 63 card unsleeved casual decks love discard and any help from this just helps those cards fulfill their destiny of being cards people are glad to sell for a buck on a buylist.

This is on a great trajectory but it’s still gettable under $5 and you should do that. Literally, any time a card is $9 on Card Kingdom and $5 on TCG Player, Card Kingdom is screaming at you that the card sells for $9 on their platform and you should pay attention.

You shouldn’t grab a falling knife (or do what I did and “trap” it like a soccer ball as a reflex) but this likely bottoms out around $2 and it’s very good in a deck with a Commander you want to keep casting that is a whopping 7 mana the first cast and uncastable after that. Be aware, this card is only good if they ever print another Red Commander again that’s either a lot of mana or has a good ETB effect, something that isn’t guaranteed.

I have no idea how to evaluate this pile. The thing about reprint risk for these Angels is that they could all get reprinted in the same deck. I don’t know, are any of these good specs?

Buying in at $2 would have been obviously better, but $4 doesn’t suck, either. This has flirted with $8 in the past. Is this propped up by Standard? I don’t think that’s a thing, but maybe? Either way, this card is actually absurd when you read what it does and buying in under $4 seems advisable.

I’ll have more data next week, but for now, thanks for reading and be sure to argue with me in the comments section or in the Pro Trader Discord server you can access by becoming a Pro Trader. Until next time!

Watchtower

Pioneer Plus

April 18, 2022 David Sharman

I’m branching out from just talking about Pioneer this week, and whilst I’m still looking at the Pioneer metagame and how it’s evolving, I’m focusing on cards that are seeing cross-format play to back up their newly found (or already well-established) fame.

Dark Petition (Foil)

Price today: $10
Possible price: $30

As I alluded to a couple of weeks ago, it’s been hard to take down Hidden Strings as one of the top dogs in Pioneer. The new mono-red deck featuring Chandra, Dressed to Kill is doing its best to dominate the metagame right now and certainly doing a pretty good job of it, but after the past couple of weeks of people trying out different decks, Hidden Strings is still firmly one of the best decks in the format.

Dark Petition has long been a staple of this combo deck, not necessarily as a playset but almost always there as 1-3 copies, helping to find your combo pieces whilst generating mana to help you go off. This tutor is also (unsurprisingly) a very popular EDH card, in over 11,500 decks listed on EDHREC – tutors have always and will always be highly prevalent in that format, and the fact that Spell Mastery isn’t particularly difficult to achieve makes it that Dark Petition will effectively cost two mana the vast majority of the time.

What really makes this a great pick, though, is the fact that it’s never had a reprint outside of promo pack copies, which means it’s been nearly seven years since a proper print run of this card. Foils and even non-foils have been slowly drying up, and it’s getting to a point where there really aren’t many around any more. Foils are hard to get under or around $10, and will likely see $20 in the next couple of months – there are only nine listings for NM foils on TCGPlayer right now, and whilst there are a decent few more over in Europe I don’t think that will last too long. Non-foils are looking pretty ripe at around $5 too (more like $2.50 in Europe if you can get those), and should be headed for $10 pretty soon. Even though there aren’t a huge number of decks playing this card in competitive formats, the low supply combined with EDH popularity is definitely going to keep pushing Dark Petition upwards until we see a reprint. It might be something that we get in a Commander deck at some point, but likely not in foil so that’s a safer bet if you’re worried at all.

Stormwing Entity (FEA)

Price today: $2.50
Possible price: $10

Another deck that’s been putting up the numbers recently is Izzet Phoenix. Back in the very early stages of Pioneer, Arclight Phoenix decks were some of the best out there and dominated the top tables week after week – and the card hasn’t really gotten any weaker since then. If anything, it’s better than ever before due to the steady influx of new cantrips and cheap burn spells we get with every set. Stormwing Entity has seen some play across multiple formats in different variants of Arclight decks, and most recently has popped up in some of the Pioneer lists that have been doing well. Stormwing has seen a reasonable amount of price fluctuation over its time in Standard, Modern and Pioneer, but all versions are currently at a price floor and now is the perfect time to pick them up.

The best kind of setup with this card can look something like dropping it on turn three, and following up on turn four with one or more Arclight Phoenixes from the graveyard. That’s in Pioneer, mind you – in Modern you can do all that a turn earlier with free spells like Gutshot and Manamorphose.

With Stormwing as low as it is at the moment, I think it’s a great time to be grabbing some of these cheap. The deck is on the upswing in Pioneer and it’s sure to have some more time in the sun in Modern as well, so I think that this card should be primed for another spike soon enough. The FEAs have seen highs of around $30 before, and we could see that again with enough success from these styles of decks. Regular non-foils are very cheap right now, around $0.50-$1, so if you can pick up a brick of those at a decent price then that could also be a good option.

Knight of the White Orchid (Foil)

Price today: $5
Possible price: $20

Perhaps a slightly more under-the-radar card for my last pick today, I’m looking at Knight of the White Orchid and its use in a relatively new mono-white deck in Pioneer. There isn’t too much of this deck around at all, but it has put up some very strong finishes in recent Pioneer Challenges and I think is worth taking a look at.

Knight has never seen a huge amount of competitive play, but over on the EDH side of things it’s another story. Nearly 40,000 decks registered on EDHREC means that this is a very popular card in white decks, and we all know that EDH players love their foils, which is likely a big part of the reason supply is as low as it is.

Knight has had a lot of non-foil printings in Commander decks, but the foils are currently limited to the original Shards of Alara print, the Origins reprint and the Origins pre-release promo. That’s not a lot of supply with the last foil version already being nearly seven years old, and that’s reflected in the listings we can see across TCGPlayer and other vendors. Original Shards foils are practically non-existent if you want NM (although still a few around €6-7 in Europe if you’re quick…), whilst Origins foils can be had in a small amount for $5-10. These aren’t going to hang around much longer, but if you’re quick then I think you’ll be rewarded nicely for it.

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