Jason Alt, Unlocked ProTrader

Unlocked Pro Trader: Street Fighter

Readers!

I’m not going to beat around the bush here, this is an article about specs that I think could come out of people building with the Secret Lair Street Fighter cards. I usually like the have some more copy “above the fold” so to speak but there isn’t much to say here. They made a Secret Lair that has Street Fighter 2 characters and it’s going to be pretty popular and we should get the stuff that goes in the decks now. It’s going to be… I actually don’t know how long until we get our sets in the mail and people will wait until then to build. That said, we don’t have EDHREC data because no one has built yet but, and I don’t think I’m out of line saying this, as someone who has written a column about building EDH decks for 8 years, I think I understand how the format works to an extent and I’d be delighted to make some predictions based on the cards and how they work. I’m going to show each Street Fighter and a couple of cards I like in that deck and call it an article. This is for you, guy who always asks “Did this need to be a whole hour” in the comment section of every Brainstorm Brewery episode. It does NOT need to be an hour.

Zangief is a beast, as you might expect of a guy who wrestles bears. Unfortunately for spec purposes, a creature with Lure on it isn’t super new, but making them sac stuff when you kill a creature they were forced to block with is pretty new and I have some ideas about how I’d build.

This is basically the floor on Augmenter, a card with a very clear corollary.

I don’t think Augmenter hits the dizzying heights Protector got to, nor is Hexproof quite as good as Indestructible, but I think we are still good buying in at $2.

A lot of the other stuff I like for Zangief is uncommon – pull Nemesis Mask and Tempting Licid out of your bulk, I guess? I don’t know, we have spent too much time here.

The big butt Doran decks have a decent amount of tech for this, but Reach tribal is a new one.

This guy seems way too fair to me.

Of the 104 cards that reference Charge Counters, only Coretapper can put them on Guile and only if he’s an Artifact creature at the time. I bet this gets built like a really dumb “attack with creatures” deck. You can’t even combo off by removing a lot of charge counters at once – it’s only when they’re removed the slow, one-at-a-time way. I hate this card. That doesn’t mean one of the most popular Street Fighter 2 characters won’t get played at all.

TCG Market is literally half of what they’re charging on Card Kingdom, this is already a good spec.

Samesies.

Ryu seems really weak and being stuck in Boros is not ideal. That said, if you want a Training-based deck, there are ways to make it OK.

‘member these were $10 and I wondered what was taking so long for it to go up? It went up. It took 2 and a half years, but it got there.

Stacking a lot of counters on him is sort of boring, but the deck is sort of boring, honestly. They don’t all have to be gems, I’m sure someone will build a very good version of this despite my evaluation and I’m sure I am OK with that.

We have a second toughness-based deck. I think this goes in the 99 of Dhalsim, making it potentially a bit more playable but not much.

This card is worse than you think – all of the stuff from the Doran toughness deck like Assault Formation is Green and you can’t play it in a Honda deck. It also doesn’t let creatures with defender, your best big-butt creatures, attack, something a real toughness commander would do. This is just a really bad Arcades with less than 1/3 of the relevant cards. You don’t have to spec on this.

This card is money, but it also lends itself to a really generic goodcombostuff build. That’s fine, but it really makes it tough to narrow down what to speculate on. I also think Chun Li is likely… basically exactly the stock Taigam list.

When this is what the High Synergy section looks like, you know you’re in for a bad time. Dovescape and Seek the Truth are the only remotely synergistic cards and I don’t think they’re as good in Chun Li. Yikes. You’re not on your own, but you’re going to find it’s tough to spec on a card that is just basically “control deck.” The real question is do you play Snap alongside Frantic Search or just Frantic Search? Riveting stuff.

I’ll keep an eye on this because the most popular deck (and this will be) can drive stuff the lesser decks can’t, but I don’t see anything unique to Chun Li online yet and I can’t think of anything. Can you?

Ken is better than Ryu, I guess, but it’s also a Boros Commander and it doesn’t partner with Ryu which is basically the only way I’d play either. Ken is an extra turn spells commander that seems clunky to use until you realize he doesn’t need to hit the opponent, just deal damage. That’s pretty useful and the spell you cast for free may change depending on how they block. I’d build a Sunforger deck, personally, but I write articles rather than make YouTube videos so no one knows any of my opinions.

Other than extra turns cards, it’s all pretty standard stuff. Here is an example list. I don’t see much here, but you might.

Now THIS I can get into. Of the cards in the set, Blanka is the one I have the most potential specs for. “Target yourself tribal” is a mechanic that can give us a ton of cards from the old Infect days, starting with this one.

Lash got so cheap, most sites stopped tracking its price because it was bulk. Even Card Kingdom wants under 50 cents for it. The foils are spicier.

I am so ready for the bottom on this one, which might be now – stock is drying up.

The lack of a blue line means this has never been on a buylist ever. The red Wisps is $5, I’ll let you decide if these are worth pulling out of bulk. Check out Zada’s page for more ideas.

That does it for me, nerds. Thanks for reading and keep your eyes peeled for more Street Fighter tech weeks before the cards sell out. It may be too late for Will Byers (or Deb, yikes) but there is some M Bison money to be had for sure. Until next time!

Watchtower

Commander: Neon Dynasty

Last week I promised some talk on the new Kamigawa cards in this week’s article, and I’m keeping to my word on that. With the full card preview having been out for a few weeks now and paper cards in hands for a few days (other than cards from prereleases, that is), it’s time for me to take a look at what I want to be buying from the set, specifically for EDH. Some cards are yet to hit their lows and so we’ll need to keep that in mind, but it’ll be worth keeping an eye on a few of these to pick up when the time is right.

Takenuma, Abandoned Mire (Borderless Foil)

Price today: $16
Price I want to buy at: $10-15
Possible future price: $30

Eiganjo, Seat of the Empire is all the rage in Modern at the moment (by which I mean Hammer Time is trying out a copy or two), but I want to look at the black card from the cycle – Takenuma. It may be below the green, blue and white lands from the cycle in terms of numbers on EDHREC, but I think it’s actually second best only to Boseiju at the EDH table. Any lands-matters deck is definitely going to want this, be it Lord Windgrace or The Gitrog Monster or something else, and it’s going to be a great card in the majority of decks that have any graveyard interaction full stop.

If you’re building your deck around Legendaries with something like Kethis, the Hidden Hand, then you’ll likely only be paying one or two mana at the most for the ability on Takenuma, but even if you’re not and only have your commander out then three mana to stock up your graveyard and get something back is still a great deal when you consider that it’s effectively on a basic land. I reckon this card is more powerful than you think until you actually play with it – pair it with a Life from the Loam and things get pretty gross pretty fast.

At $16 for the borderless foils I think that they could come down a little more in the next couple of weeks, and I’d really like to see these at $10 to grab a bunch. I’ve picked the borderless foils over the FEAs because I think the art is better, and because borderless cards in NEO are more rare than they used to be. FEAs are already cheaper and more plentiful as it is, and although I hope to see borderless Takenumas come down a bit first, I think we’ll see them retain the higher price point overall.

Kodama of the West Tree

Price today: $5
Possible future price: $10-15

Onto a creature now that doesn’t really feel like it should be Legendary, but then again neither do any of the other Kodamas (in my opinion). Regardless, I think this one is an important one for a lot of EDH decks, and has more applications than it might seem at first glance. It can technically be played as your commander, but I think it will generally find a better home in the 99 of a few different types of decks.

Any auras or equipments decks in green are definitely going to want to be playing this; trample is a huge boon in EDH where there are often a tonne of chump blockers sitting around to stop your creatures from being effective in combat. On top of that, any counter-based deck – be it +1/+1 counters, ability counters or something else weird – loves this card, especially when you can use that trample damage to ramp out even more threats.

Preorders for this card were way up at $15-20, and thankfully it’s come down to a much more reasonable $5 now. I think this is probably as low as it might get; we could see $3-4 but for a relatively popular mythic I wouldn’t wait too long if you want to pick these up. I don’t mind the showcase foils at $13-14 (but would prefer them closer to $10), but my play would be the regular non-foils here – CK are currently pretty much paying retail on them which I hope is a good sign for their opinion on the future of the card.

Silver-Fur Master (Showcase)

Price today: $0.25
Possible price: $0.50-$1

Looking at more of a penny-stock for our final pick this week, I really like the look of Silver-Fur Master – and I mean the text on the card as well as the art and border. This is going in every Ninja and Rogue EDH deck ever built or to be built, and on top of that I suspect it’s set to be a casual favourite too. It doesn’t get much better than buffing all your creatures and reducing Ninjutsu costs all on a 2/2 for 2, so I can’t see any reason not to play this in those decks.

As I alluded to, the showcase versions of this card are gorgeous, and I’d be saving any and all of these from box openings and draft tables. This is also an opportunity for European speculators to get in on – you can grab stacks of these off MKM for 10¢ or so each, much less than you’ll likely be paying for them on TCGPlayer. It’ll probably be a bit of a longer hold on these, one to stash away in the cupboard for a bit, but I expect buylists to be paying $0.50-$1 each for these a year or so down the road.

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

Secret Lair: Street Fighter!

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.

Jason Alt, ProTrader

Pro Trader: Call Me Steve Precontaine

Readers!

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!

MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY