Watchtower

Pioneer Innovation

The Pioneer meta has been changing from week to week and it’s quite exciting to see new decks popping up in each paper tournament, as well as in the online challenges and leagues. Although decks like Winota and Mono-Red are still the top dogs in the format, there’s a lot of innovation going on with the rest of the decks that people are playing, and that is making for some good spec opportunities.

Cavalier of Thorns

Price today: $10
Possible price: $25

Once upon a time, Cavalier of Thorns was a dominating force in multiple formats but has since fallen off a little – until now. There’s been a revival of the old mono-green deck that’s been doing well in Pioneer over the past couple of weeks; a classic ramp deck that can drop mana dorks on the first two turns into a turn three Cavalier, Nissa or Storm the Festival. Nykthos is still an incredibly powerful card in the format even since the banning of Leyline of Abundance, and can generate absurd amounts of mana very quickly when you’re churning out Elvish Mystics into Old-Growth Trolls.

Cavalier provides extra devotion for the deck as well as finding copies of Nykthos, Boseiju or Lair of the Hydra, and even gets you a card back from your graveyard when it dies – this card does it all, and if the mono-green deck stays around in Pioneer then I don’t think it will drop down to any less than four copies of the Elemental. Looking at EDH numbers it’s less popular than I thought it might be, but with us already being three years out from the card’s only printing, demand is outstripping supply without too much trouble.

Regular copies are already $10+ on TCGPlayer, and with only fourteen NM listings, supply is dwindling fast. There are still quite a few cheaper copies available in Europe if you have access to that market, which could make for some quick arbitrage over to the US as this deck picks up popularity, and it’s worth hunting around some of the smaller online retailers and LGSs for copies that haven’t had their prices raised yet. I don’t think it will be very long before this is a $20-25 card, so don’t hang around if you want any of these.

Mausoleum Wanderer

Price today: $2
Possible price: $5

Moving on from mono-green to mono-blue, the Spirits deck has evolved somewhat from previous iterations to a very aggressive deck that plays almost exclusively one- and two-drops, only stretching the curve out a little for a couple of copies of Brazen Borrower (I’m not counting Geistlight Snare as a three-drop because it should really always be costing one or two mana in this deck). This super-streamlined version of the archetype has been seeing a lot of recent success over its more midrange predecessor that plays Collected Company and a few more three-drops, but both decks share a card that is always played as a four-of in any Spirits deck: Mausoleum Wanderer.

This one mana 1/1 has quite a lot of text on it that makes it incredibly powerful – for starters it can often be swinging for three damage on turn two with a Supreme Phantom on the board, and on top of that it comes in clutch to counter removal spells or even boardwipes when you most need it to. I’ve played quite a lot of Spirits, both in Modern and Pioneer, and can safely say that Mausoleum Wanderer is one of, if not the best card in the deck.

Foil copies of this card are already very difficult to get hold of, but I think that non-foils are ripe for the picking right now. There are still quite a few hanging around, but at $2 I think they’re a safe bet; they’re generally going to be bought a playset at a time so don’t underestimate how quickly they could start to disappear. A very good sign for Wanderer is that CardKingdom are already paying $2.25 cash/$2.93 credit on them, so it’s obviously a popular card that they are willing to pay top dollar to keep in stock. Give it a few months or even less, and I can see this hitting $5 retail/$4 buylist for an easy double up. It’s not too exciting, but if you’re just buying a stack and then buylisting them, it’s easy money.

Mayhem Devil

Price in Europe: €0.10 ($0.10)
Price in US: $4
Possible price: $6? Does it matter?

There are a few different versions of Sacrifice decks going around in Pioneer at the moment, and whether they’re Jund or straight Rakdos, they’re all playing four copies of Mayhem Devil. It’s one of the best cards in the deck, and the damage output it can provide should never be underestimated. Even just cycling a Cauldron Familiar and a Food token each turn is two extra damage to kill off a creature or hit your opponent directly, and it can add up very quickly.

Mayhem Devil foils have been all but snatched up, and will set you back a crisp $20 if you really want one for your deck (and good luck justifying $80 on a playset of uncommons from three years ago). Non-foils are also in relatively short supply and have crept up to $4-5 over the past couple of months – in the US at least. Over in Europe you can still grab a load of copies for €0.10-0.20, and although it might mean grabbing a few playsets from a bunch of different vendors, it’ll still easily be worth it compared to the prices on the other side of the pond.

This is some easy straight arbitrage, with CardKingdom paying $2.25 cash/$2.93 credit if you’d rather do that than sell on TCGPlayer, but I think that if you wait a couple of months or so then you’ll be further rewarded. Demand for this card won’t be stopping any time soon, and with only a single printing there aren’t many copies to go around. I don’t think that it’s something primed for a reprint in any of the next sets, so you should be good to wait a little while if you want to squeeze as much value as you can out of this spec – but if you can sell at a tidy profit and move the money into the next spec then that’s generally going to be the correct play.

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 SNC – Set Boosters

Last week I wrote about the odds of putting the most sought-after cards from Collector Boosters, and had to update it with the presence of Foil Extended Art Commander cards. I’ve had a lot of requests for information about Set Boosters, and I’m glad to share that with you as well.

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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.

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Readers!

Ever feel like this?

This is how I feel every time Wizards announces a new product. The ink isn’t even dry on New Capenna and already we have 5 EDH decks and they have started spoiling Baldur’s Gate cards. It’s a real grind even though sometimes if there is too much time between sets I don’t know what to write about. No chance of that happening here – we have a bunch of Commanders coming out at the exact same time as a bunch of other commanders. I used to do the “quick hits” article just to get the obvious stuff out of the way while we waited for the new cards, but the new cards are here, literally the same week, and quick hits are all we have time for. It sucks that I feel a bit like I am being waterboarded and can’t quite devote the same granularity to my analysis that I’d like, but Hasbro has decided that we need to give them money twice every month so I guess we do what Hasbro says or I have to get a real job. I don’t want to get a real job, I want to talk about New Capenna EDH precon cards.

There is a clear winner, and while the EDHREC scraper is busy picking up more decks and will display them tomorrow, today we have enough to call a clear winner, and it’s the Jund Blitz commander. Blitz is cool as a mechanic since it’s basically unique but it can make a bunch of cards that weren’t all that important before suddenly way cooler.

I don’t know if this card is bound for $20 or not, but if Henzie is this year’s Prosper, it’s a safe bet that this at least triples. We have precedent.

You gotta get in and get out quick, but the potential is there. Myth Unbound is a card that never really saw the play some people expected it to and while Stolen Strategy is a better card, we don’t need Myth to hit $20, we just need it to move, and it will. It won’t even take that much of a push.

This wall is pretty low, I think we’re in for some movement here for sure.

While we’re at it, other Delver is on the move and we could see that crest the $5 mark soon as well. I think there are a lot of copies but I also think it’s never been better than it is in this deck, which might end up being a significant player in EDH moving forward.

This card has basically plateaued and if paper Standard picks up because everyone is bored of Covid (they are where I live) then getting a mythic dargon that makes token for $4 is going to be a story you tell your grandkids about. It’s also perfect in this deck, which is currently the second-most-popular, if that means anything to you. It does to me.

The rest of the deck is mostly goodstuff and while it might be the Chain of Smog, Professor Onyx deck we’ve been waiting for, who even cares anymore?

Hit counters? Where have I seen those before?

Blue pip. Dammit. Etrata would be great in a Mari deck but Mari would be bad in an Etrata deck and also, an Etrata deck would be very, very bad. If there are more hit counters in the future, which is a soft maybe, both of these cards could matter?

Out of all of the Royal Assassin type cards, Kiku is the worst card and the best spec. Everything else is basically a bulk rare and liable to stay that way, but Kiku is from a set where we’ve see bulk rares hit $20 because of EDH if only in the near term. I don’t think this hits $20, but if enough people build Mari decks, Kiku is a player.

The wall seems lower than most but since Kiku isn’t a High Synergy or Top card, it’s going to see less play than most other assassins and it could really struggle to get there.

This is seriously a good commander to play just because everyone makes so much treasure that you could… well, die to decking, probably. If anyone can generate enough treasure to deck you, though, they’re going to win anyway, so it seems like this just draws a ton of cards whether you give them treasures or not.

The data is telling me that the showcase is the better spec, but I would not be caught dead with an AFR showcase card in my deck. I own multiple D&D PHBs from the 2nd edition/AD&D era, I’m not a snob. I understand the reference but this is just too ugly for me to jam in a deck. Card Kingdom wants $5 for this garbage, and with treasure being hot now, I bet they get it.

My gut tells me the better-looking version is the play, maybe even the foil.

The graph of the foil version is very similar. I think if you can get foils for $2, you’ll be happy later. Even the non-foils, which don’t turn into hyperbolic parabaloid potato crisps (they’re not allowed to call them chips for some reason but they can call them crisps? I read the headline and skimmed the article, what do you want from me, it was about Pringles).

There is a lot to like here, honestly. I’ll go more into detail on some of these commanders soon, but for now, I think this set, while super unwelcome, has some unique abilities? I don’t know, I literally haven’t even finished constructing my Prosper deck and they hit us with this BS? It’s too much, too soon. I advise you to do what I don’t do and focus on one thing you feel strongly about and go deep. I try to find a ton of hits because I have to, but you don’t, so don’t or you’ll be miserable. On that cheerful note, Magic is supposed to be fun so go play the stock market already you rascals. Until next time!

Watchtower

Early New Capenna

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.

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