Well, the next Secret Lair is out, and my goodness, it’s a banger. Eight iconic characters from Street Fighter II are going to be in the next drop, hitting the nostalgia button hard for those of us who put quarters into cabinets back in the day.
Let’s take a look at the eight cards, all fantastic Commanders, and a card or two that might be key for each one.
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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.
A new product means new cards. Am I talking about Kamigawa 2049 specifically? You’d think so, but no. Even though I don’t have any of my boxes yet, it still isn’t the newest product – the precons are.
Preliminarily, (I use that word a lot, I hope it’s a word and I don’t sound like an idiot) a lot of the data is tainted by cards that came in the precons. I won’t take up TOO much of your time up top, but I do have to write a little above the fold and this is something I should talk about because I work at EDHREC and know a little about how the site works. For example, I know that later this week, we’ll be adding the precon upgrade guides to the site and showing data regarding what people leave in and take out. Before we look at the new Commanders, let’s look at what a precon upgrade page looks like.
The “sets” dropdown at the top of every page brings up this menu, at the bottom of which is a link to the precon upgrades section.
It is sorted by deck, not by commander so it shows you the cards that synergize with the deck as a whole, which sometimes is impactful. A card in 250 Strefan decks and 250 Kamber and Laurine decks is in more decks than a card in 400 Leinore decks only, and it pays to have that information.
Clicking on one of these commanders takes you to the deck’s page.
What I wanted to point out was this menu on the left.
The “cards to add” and “cards to cut” section are a wealth of very specific information about how people are modifying the precons. It cuts a LOT of noise if you can see that 63% of players are adding one particular card to a precon and removing the other cards people are running in the deck can help you focus on the most impactful cards. I like showing people how to use the site for finance purposes, especially if I can contribute to how a new feature works since you’ll want to use that the same way I do.
We don’t have the full Kamigawa precon data now so we don’t have the section up, but make sure you check it out when it’s finished. Until then, though, I’ll do it manually. If you think it’s a typo when I say that the most popular precon commander isn’t in the precons, you don’t understand WotC. The most popular commander is only available in… I want to say set boosters? I don’t actually know, I didn’t order any set boosters. All I know is that a very narrow card that doesn’t do anything surprising is in the set.
Remember everyone built a Shrine deck when Sanctum of All was spoiled? Well those same cards that were in play then are in play now because we finally have a Sanctum of All commander.
I don’t think there is much here but I’m still going to delve into it.
Well, yeah.
Well, also yeah. Still. Paradox Haze gave me an idea.
This is at its historic low. If it goes any lower, buy in harder, but don’t not buy in now just because it could dip more. If Paradox Haze is a top card, Sphinx can fill a similar role, especially at half the price and double the utility. It’s clunky and people forget the turn ends because your post-combat main has to end before the additional turns start, but this is a solid way to give you a ton of Honden triggers. This and Paradox Haze gives you triple trouble, which is also the name of one of the worst Beastie Boys singles. And that music video with Bigfoot? Yikes.
I’m afraid to look, but I sure hope I said to buy these when CK had them for literally $7. I still like them at $18 since they seem poised to flirt with $30 on CK. Go Shintai is nominally a shrines deck, but you can play Enchantment reanimator with Omniscience and get a lot of work done. With more and more ways to cheat stuff into play or reduce costs as WotC rapidly runs out of design space because they print 40 Legendary creatures every 3 months, Omniscience will go up until it’s reprinted. If this does get reprinted, let’s remember the shape of this graph. Let’s buy the dumb things for $7.
This card doesn’t belong under $10.
CK doesn’t think so, either. That’s why they are paying an astounding $13.65 in credit. Figure it out. This isn’t as good as Estrid’s Invocation but there are probably a tenth as many copies of it out there.
Since the deck was Sissay Shrines before and now doesn’t have to be, a lot of people are throwing Sissay in the 99 but retaining the whole “Legendary matters” angle.
This isn’t the Sissay I was talking about above but it did make me think of what Maro said about “batching.” The context for this was that a lot of people liked batching Enchanted, Equipped and “has a counter on it” as “modified” the way they did with “Historic” in Dominaria. Legendary could be back as part of the “Historic” bath or Legendary could get batched with something else. Either way, if a large swath of cards become especially relevant, cards very specific to that type are in play and this is a $30 card in waiting. Don’t sell these.
I don’t know if Go-Shintai is the real deal or if the fact that they printed Farewell, a $0.25 card that makes this deck just automatically completely scoop, in the same set(ish) will be relevant. Only time will tell. Until then!
In this week’s article I wanted to take a little breather from the slew of Kamigawa-related news and hype, with the set having been released online at the end of last week and set for paper release this week. I’ll pay some more attention to the new cards next week, but today I’m venturing into the Modern lists that don’t quite make the top of the metagame share, but still have some serious potential in them.
Ignoble Hierarch (Retro Foil)
Price today: $12 Possible price: $25
Kicking things off with a big one, Ignoble Hierarch is the king of off-meta decks right now. Four copies in both the Goblins and Yawgmoth decks, it’s a fantastic mana dork for both archetypes as well as actually being a Goblin for the Goblins deck. The Exalted makes it a big step up from Birds of Paradise (although that doesn’t stop the Yawgmoth decks from running a playset of each), and it’s even seen some play in more classic Jund archetypes in the Modern format.
Ignoble Hierarch can also be found in over 13,000 EDH decks on EDHREC, which is quite impressive considering that the much older card Noble Hierarch is only in 20,000 decks in comparison. We do have quite a few versions of the Ignoble dork, but its ubiquity across formats and decks makes me think that the $12 retro foil copies are far too cheap.
94 listings on TCGPlayer certainly isn’t nothing, but the vast majority of those are single copies and if Modern players are picking up four at a time, it won’t take too long for those numbers to dwindle down. With that backed by EDH play, I expect to see Ignoble Hierarch retro foils over $20 by the end of this year, and without a good place to reprint those versions any time soon it’s likely to just keep going up even after that.
Abundant Harvest (JPN Mystical Archives)
Price today: $6 Possible price: $15
Something else that caught my eye browsing the Modern lists was the old Neobrand deck, which was very strong for a while but ultimately ended up being a little bit of a flash in the pan. It’s back with some new tools and a vengeance though, putting up some strong results in Modern leagues and preliminaries, and I think is definitely worth taking a look at.
Some of the new toys that have been added include Children of Korlis as an alternate wincon, and some old favourites reappearing in Neoform and Abundant Harvest. I want to focus on Abundant Harvest here because the Japanese art versions from the Mystical Archives look to be drying up quite quickly. We’re down to 69 NM foil listings on TCGPlayer and only a few more than that in Europe. Interestingly enough, the European copies are already a good deal more expensive than in North America, running around $8-9 for the cheapest copies.
Bear in mind that this is also a card used here and there in Amulet Titan lists, as well as being in around 4000 EDH decks listed on EDHREC, and as such can’t be dismissed as just being a card for an unpopular Modern deck. I expect to see copies under $10 disappear within a few months, and given 12-18months this should be a $15 or even $20 foil. The Japanese versions are gorgeous and far more desirable than the global art versions, as well as being in lesser supply in the first place.
Ingenious Smith (Foil)
Price today: $2.50 Possible price: $10
I’m cheating a little bit with this last one because it’s actually seeing more play in Hammer Time, one of the most popular archetypes in Modern right now, but the reason it caught my eye was actually from looking at the Thopter Sword combo decks that have been reappearing in the format. This is a deck that fell off a little bit along with the rest of the Urza decks after the banning of Arcum’s Astrolabe in Modern, but people have been trying new things with it recently and so here we are.
In both the decks it’s being used in, Ingenious Smith is another great tool for finding your combo pieces, be that a Colossus Hammer, Thopter Foundry or Sword of the Meek. You can even pick up a Kaldra Compleat with it, because it doesn’t have a mana restriction on it that we often see on these kinds of cards. The Smith can even work as an alternate win-con in a pinch, incidentally getting quite large as you play out the rest of your game plan.
Due to its play patterns in Modern, this uncommon is already a $2.50 foil – but with only the single printing and no other variants of the card, I’m quite optimistic about its future. I’m surprised that it’s only in around a thousand EDH decks listed on EDHREC, but that number will climb steadily over the coming months. Supply isn’t very high on these foils and if Modern players are grabbing them then they’ll likely be picking a playset up at a time, so I think we could see this as an $8-10 foil a year or so down the line.
David Sharman (@accidentprune on Twitter) has been playing Magic since 2013, dabbling in almost all formats but with a main focus on Modern, EDH and Pioneer. Based in the UK, he’s an active MTG finance speculator specialising in cross-border arbitrage.
Welcome to your regular installment of math, where I parse the articles and posts, leaving you with the welcome information of ‘just how rare is this card’ and ‘is it as rare as X card?’
Every time I think I have a handle on things, they make it worse on me. This time, we’ve got more repeats than ever, which really can swing the numbers. Let’s get into the weeds, and get some numbers going.
I want to preface everything with a caveat: I’m working from the best known information. Wizards is required by law to give some information about what’s possible in some booster packs, but they want to avoid giving specific numbers or techniques out whenever possible. As such, if now information becomes available, or if it turns out I made some mistakes, I’ll come back and edit this to the best information I can give you.
The first thing we have to establish is the basics: the set has a little less to chase than VOW and MID did. In Neon Dynasty, there’s only 59 rares and 18 mythics. I don’t know if there’s a protocol, or an explanation, but the less rares the better when it comes to getting the more chase cards.
Every rare and mythic has at least one alternate treatment, and some have two…up to some that have five versions, if you count the Buy-A-Box of Satoru Umezawa or the seven versions of Hidetsugu, Devouring Chaos, one of which is WPN only.
For the sake of this article, I’m only going to be talking about the things you can pull from a Collector Booster.
This is pretty straightforward stuff, with the sort of distribution we’re used to: guaranteed foils of the new sweet lands, guaranteed foils of commons and uncommons in the new frames, a guaranteed foil rare or mythic, an extended-art version of the Commander rares (nonfoil only, a choice I still don’t understand) and then the last slot, where the rarest, shiniest things live.
Before we get into that slot, we have to look at some numbers for how much of each card exists. Wizards has helpfully told us how many of each rarity are in each frame:
Type of frame
# of rares with this frame
# of mythics with this frame
Soft Glow
37
6
Ninja
6
2
Samurai
4
1
Borderless
6
9
Phyrexian
0
2
Foil Etched
3
9
Extended Art
59
14
Totals
115
43
There’s a special case in the rares, Hidetsugu, who I’ll get to in a moment.
When figuring the percentages of rares and mythics, remember that Wizards uses a 2:1 ratio for rares and mythics. So you take your total number of rares, double it, then add the number of mythics. In this case, with 59 rares and 18 mythics, the number is 136.
The number of cards with more than one treatment is higher than ever. As a result, when you get one of these cards, you then have a chance to get one of the different special frames/arts. (for my sake, I’m going to call these variants.) Every rare in this set, with three exceptions, has two variants.
So for almost any variant of a rare, you’re looking at a 2/136 chance of a card, reduced to 1/68, multiplied by the 1/2 chance of the two variants. This gives you a straightforward 1/136 chance of pulling the foil rare variant you’re hoping for.
Risona, Farewell and Satoru Umezawa each have a foil-etched variant, making your odds for a specific variant 1/204. This doesn’t count the Buy-A-Box variant of Satoru.
Now let’s talk about Hidetsugu. We are told the approximate ratios, in the form of an evil middle-school math problem: “There are about half as many neon green cards as neon blue cards, and about a quarter as many neon red cards as neon green cards.” I’ll spare you the equation and the fractions, but at those ratios, a sheet of 121 cards would have roughly 75 blue, 37 green, and 9 red versions. So if your pack would contain a Soft Glow foil Hidetsugu, you then get a subset of options, much like what happened with EA foils in Commander Legends. If you hit the 1 in 136 packs that has a Soft Glow Hidetsugu, you’re going to get a blue one about 62% of the time, a green one 31% of the time, and the red a mere 7%. The original ratios tell us that the numbers for this are pretty crazy: for every thirteen Hidetsugu you open in a Collector Booster, eight will be blue, four will be green, and one will be red.
The dozen foil-etched cards, plus the borderless variations, give us a peek at some of the rarest cards we’ll have a crack at.
Of the 18 mythics, nine of them have two variants, eight have three, and one has four variants, Jin-Gitaxias, Progress Tyrant. Now the math gets terrifying. You have a 1/136 chance of getting any one mythic, of any treatment. If there’s two variants, it’s 1/272 chance for a specific variant. If three, then 1/408. For Jin-Gitaxias, you’re looking at a whopping 1/544 to get a specific version! This is eased, somewhat, by the presence of the etched foil. So if you don’t care which foil Praetor you get, you’re all the way back to 1/272!
Going back to the original questions, how’s this compare to the chase cards of other recent sets?
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
It’s interesting that NEO has less rares than the sets before it, but because there’s so many extra frames, and so many rares with multiple treatments, getting the exact one you want is going to take some patience.
Let’s have a handy chart for some of the chase cards from this set and previous ones.
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
Yes, you’re reading that correctly. Foil red Soft Glow Hidetsugu, Devouring Chaos, being about one-eighth as common as the blue version, will require roughly 1,828 packs to show up. That is 4.5x as rare as FEA Jeweled Lotus, and easily the rarest pull from a booster that I can think of.
I think there’s enough collectors out there, people who love a thing just for being rare, that the price of Red Hidetsugu will be tremendously high. If you happen to beat the odds and crack one, don’t be afraid to ask for the moon.
I hope all of this is understandable and helpful. If you have found errors, or if you want to talk about my methods, please reach out in the comments or on the ProTrader Discord.
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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