Are There Any Good White Cards?

September 6, 2021 David Sharman

White has pretty much always been the weakest colour in Magic, and although Wizards have said that they’ve been working on giving the colour some more power, it does seem to be coming in dribs and drabs. That being said, there are still some good cards to be had in white, and some of them even make good specs – so let’s see what we can find.

Ephemerate (Retro Foil)

Price today: $2.50
Possible price: $10

With the continued popularity of the Elementals deck in Modern, Ephemerate has become more and more popular in the format, almost always seen as a four-of in the tribal deck and sometimes played in Stoneblade decks too. I think that it’s the best blink effect we have in Magic now, and as such is also in nearly 13,000 EDH decks on EDHREC – not to mention its popularity in Pauper too. It’s a good card and it’s here to stay.

Even since its printing in MH1 a couple of years ago, we’ve had a few different versions presented to us since then: regular, Mystery Booster, Mystical Archive and now retro foil. That is quite a few different printings for a common, but really I think that we should only be looking at the two most premium versions – the retro foil and the JPN alt art Mystical Archive foils. Now the JPN Mystical Archive printings are already close to $25 (and rightly so; they’re gorgeous compared to their global art counterparts), but the retro foils are still somewhat languishing around the $2-3 mark.

I don’t think that price is correct in the mid to long term, both because of the wide playability and popularity of the card and the amount of supply there is. Some people will just prefer this version to others and some will be priced out of the Mystical Archive printings, but either way there are only 31 NM foil listings on TCGPlayer right now, and not many more over in Europe. This is prime time to pick up personal copies and a good opportunity to hunt for all the sub-$4 copies you can find – give it 6-12 months and I think this is easily a $10 card.

Teleportation Circle (FEA)

Price today: $4
Possible price: $15

On the theme of flickering things, Teleportation Circle has caught my eye as one of the best white cards for EDH out of Adventures in the Forgotten Realms. Enter-the-battlefield effects have always, and will always, be incredibly popular in EDH, both because you generally want your cards to do something immediately rather than give three players a chance at removing it before you might get to use it, and because cards like Brago, King Eternal and Yorion, Sky Nomad exist as commanders.

We’ve seen time and time again how popular Conjurer’s Closet is; every time it gets reprinted the price tanks and then creeps back up and up – and Circle is a whole mana cheaper! Even though it puts you into white, most of the decks that are doing that sort of thing put you into white anyway, and Teleportation Circle even hits artifacts as well as creatures, so it’s just an easy shoe-in.

There are around 30 FEA listings on TCGPlayer at the moment, which honestly isn’t a huge amount compared to some of the other rares from the set – even Circle of Dreams Druid has more listings than that. I think that this is going to be a popular card in any kinda of flicker/ETB deck going forwards, and any white deck that’s got Conjurer’s Closet in is going to be playing this one too.

Castle Ardenvale (FEA)

Price today: $20
Possible price: $50

Yes, I know, it’s technically not a white card…but it’s going in white decks and I think it’s a good buy, so I’m bending the rules for my last pick this week! We’ve already seen some of the other utility lands from Throne of Eldraine head moon-wards – Castle Garenbrig, Locthwain and Vantress are all $50+ FEAs, and I think that Ardenvale is going to be the next one to go. In nearly 15,000 EDH decks listed on EDHREC, it’s a little behind the 20k+ of the aforementioned lands, but nevertheless a very popular EDH card as well as being utilised in a variety of Modern and Pioneer decks.

Currently sat around $20, there are only 12 TCG listings for NM FEAs, with almost all of those just being single copies. It’s a similar story over in Europe, with no real arbitrage available here, which means that supply really is quite drained at this point. We’re almost two years out from the release of Eldraine (although it feels like five), and I don’t see any more FEA supply incoming any time soon for these cards, so I think that Castle Embereth is worth a look at too, and might be a decent pickup at $10 for a slightly longer hold.

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.

Casual Fridays

Core Set 2021 at Rotation

September 3, 2021 Cliff Daigle

The last set that rotates out in less than a month, Core 2021 offers a whole lot of cards we need to keep an eye on. Some of these I’ve already bought deep on, and others I’m debating when I want to start buying. Truth is, this set has a whole lot of goodies for Commander players, and that means we need to pay attention.

Keep in mind that while Commander demand makes us happiest, we also benefit from these being cards popular in Standard that people might be selling off as rotation hits, causing a further drop in prices.

Terror of the Peaks ($26 for the cheapest version to $80 for the Foil Extended Art) – As a card that sees play in a few different decks, though never a four-of, this is high on my radar. It’s got serious applications as a combo piece, is a very good Dragon to put in play before slamming down 6/6’s, and is going to get at least 3 life out of someone. It’s been on an upward trend lately, probably due to Tiamat/Ur-Dragon popularity:

So what I’m hoping for here is that people sell the copies they wanted to use in Standard decks, but this card’s price probably has more to do with the Commander demand than anything else. The ship has definitely sailed on its Foil Extended Art copies, but if this comes down below $20 for the regulars, I’ll probably be in for a few.

Garruk’s Uprising ($1 to $2.50) – Believe it or not, this is the most popular new card from Core 2021 on EDHREC, being registered in just under 21,000 decks. It’s not hard to see why: It gives a very relevant ability to green creature decks, it tends to cantrip, and it rewards you for doing what green wants to do: pump out big creatures!

The showcase version looks better, in my opinion, but the pack foils are slightly more expensive at this point. I don’t think that will hold, and I’m already 40 copies deep on showcase foils for about $2. I’m not expecting them to get cheaper from here, but I think these are an excellent candidate to gain a lot of value in the coming months.

Chromatic Orrey ($19 to $42) – I’m not sure what caused the spike a few months ago, but Orrey does what you need in a big-mana, multicolor Commander deck. It’s never seen Standard play, so it’s not going to have a price drop. Since the jump earlier this year, the price has been trending down, though:

I’m probably going to wait a bit longer for regular copies of Orrey to get cheaper before buying in. If you want to get your FEA copies for your decks, though, that’s a valid plan I can believe in.

Fabled Passage ($7 to $40) – This has been printed twice, and is the only fetchland legal in Pioneer. I’m looking extra hard at the WPN promos, the foils in a retro frame, because they are plentiful right now in the $7-$8 range and if that’s the price of the most basic ones, why not upgrade? This is in 75,000 Commander decks, so you don’t need to preach the virtues much farther than that. There was a chance to get in on the special foil for a little cheaper, but that’s in the past.

Given the popularity of the card, especially in Standard, I’m hoping that rotation hits this pretty hard and the regular nonfoils drop to under $5. They are a steal at that price, and your only concern going forward would be a reprint. Considering that they did this twice in a year, and made sure it would all rotate at once, I think you’re pretty safe. Given the popularity, and now easily it fits into a wide range of decks, being in a Commander precon wouldn’t damage the price very much, as anyone who bought the deck would have a place to put the card.

Azusa, Lost but Seeking ($7 to $111) – Azusa has really ridden a rollercoaster over the years:

The Masters 25 reprint brought her price low, and it recovered eventually, taking another hit when the Core 2021 reprint came around. She’s another card with a wide range of play: Popular in Commander and big in one of Modern’s top-tier decks, which has explained the ups and downs over the years. She’s at a low point now, and this is a good time to pick up copies.

Ugin, the Spirit Dragon ($26 to $147) – The reprint hit hard, yes, but this was a card pushing $90 at one point two years ago:

Now we get a chance to buy up cheap copies? Sign me up. Ugin is incredibly popular in Commander, mainly because he solves almost all of your problems. I’d prefer to get copies cheaper in about a month, but I don’t think he’ll ever spend long under $20.

Grim Tutor ($16 to $90) – Being $300 at one point, due to only being the 1999 Starter deck, means that this has a lot of price memory. People think it’s expensive because it was so expensive! It’s not useful to think of cards that way, because this is not a very good tutor. It’s better than no tutor, though. Surprisingly, this is in nearly 20k decks online. That’s only 20% of the numbers Demonic Tutor has. I’d be looking for this to get a LOT cheaper before I bought in, though.

Heroic Intervention ($9 to $21) – Just over 69,000 decks online, with all of the price being due to Commander. It’s been $20 in the past, and could be again if it’s not reprinted. The prices being so close together makes me nervous, meaning that there isn’t a premium for the most premium version.

Elder Gargaroth ($16 to $34) – This might not be the best green creature ever, but the efficiency is amazing. If it lives! It’s only in 6000 decks online, which is low for a card with this price tag. This should have its price drop after rotation, as it’s in some Standard decks, but if it’s this much now, I doubt enough copies will be sold to get it to $10 or less. A more reasonable target is $12.

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: Checking My Fuzzy Math

August 31, 2021 Jason Alt

Readers!
Last week I invented a new thing that was… well it was barely an invention, I literally just decided to compute some ratios, but since I haven’t seen anyone else doing it, I’m going to call it an innovation. Reaction to it has been generally positive but there was perhaps a flaw in my implementation if not the methodology. Applying this metric to prices that were still settling can introduce a lot of noise and it’s hard to determine whether any unexpected results are because the model is bad or because the price is in flux. I think taking the model for a spin with the data we looked at last week has some merit, but now that I have no immediately ruled out using the model again, why don’t we go back and look at some picks we made using our gut and check them out versus the numerical model?

Earlier, I looked at Theros Beyond Death as a set and made some selections. Can we find flaws with my picks, discover cards we might have missed or, potentially, discard the model in favor of continuning to use my gut? It doesn’t hurt and, besides, a reader suggested that set specifically, so who am I to argue? Let’s review my picks, shall we?

Thassa’s Oracle – Extended Art

Nyxbloom Ancient – Extended Art and Regular printing

Shadowspear – Extended Art and Regular printing

Underworld Breach – Extended Art and Regular Printing

Heliod’s Intervention – Regular Printing

Woe Strider – Extended Art

Thassa, Deep-Dwelling – Extended Art and Regular Printing

First up, let’s check these and see if any of them look really putrid on the basis of our new metric. To refresh our memories, we’re dividing the price on CK by the number of (thousand) inclusions on EDHREC to estimate the price per number of inclusions. The smaller the number, the better. Let’s check our work.

This card’s score is 0.54, which is pretty high based on other cards we’ve seen. Now, granted, those were cards whose prices haven’t fully developed yet, but isn’t that what we want? Cards whose prices haven’t matured can be wrong and we can buy them at an oppurtune time to make some money. I think 0.54 is high based on the standard set by cards like Harmonic Prodigy, but last week we like quite a few cards over 1.0. I’m going to call this a confirmation of our model since we liked this card and the model came along and gave it a score under 1.0. So far, so good.

We got a 1.68 for the extended art Nyxbloom (albeit a mythic, with a higher ceiling than a rare) and a 0.58 for the regular art, which I like a lot more. I think a 1.68 isn’t actually that bad for a mythic, and I love the very low value for the regular art. This is a mythic that’s played a ton (albeit not quite as much as Thassa’s Oracle which overcame being non-mythic no problem by being a cEDH staple). I still like Nyxbloom, and since it’s mythic, I like the non-extended art, too.

Our number for Shadowboi are 1.46 for the (holy crap $38) extended art version and 0.96 for the regualr art. These are not great numbers but they’re not terrible. The ship has mostly sailed – Shadowspear was gettable at $15 last July which sucks, but I think there’s still meat on the bone here. Besides, if you reread that article, I basically said as much then – it’s late to get spear but I wanted to use its price as a graphical endpoint.

We got 0.43 for the extended art and 0.32 for the regular. That tracks – the extent that Breach is played in EDH coupled with how explosive it is in other formats makes its low price puzzling. I think this is underpriced in all versions, and our data bears that out. It’s nice to have my suspicious confirmed by math, even if the math is still a little dubious because I made it up.

Theros Beyond Death: Heliod's Intervention

Intervention is a little different. I didn’t love the $8 price tag on the extended art but that is still a DPI of 0.5 for the extended art, which makes the $3 regular copies downright enticing at a DPI of 0.19. I don’t know why this card is lagging behind everything else in price when it’s in 16,000 decks on EDHREC but I’m not here to argue with data, I’m here to do mental and mathematical gymnastics until my numbers look like I’m smarter than I am.

0.48 DPi for the $5 extended art and a DPi of 0.14 for the regular art makes me think I am on to something. Remember, we’re not able to just target cards that are cheap because a $1 card that’s in 500 decks gives us a DPI of 2.0 which we’ve decided is too high – we need a card that’s in lots of decks, like the 10.4 thousand that Woe Strider is in. I love paying a buck for a card in over 10k decks and this is that card. Or, you know, one of them.

Theros Beyond Death Variants: Thassa, Deep-Dwelling (Showcase)

The crazy constelllation promo has a DPI of 1.3, which is lower than I expected at a buy-in of nearly $20, but it’s played in almost 15,000 decks so I could see it. The non-promo version is on a buck cheaper on Card Kingdom which makes it DPI a slightly better 1.23 which is still over 1.0, which I… guess is a good place to call it a threshold? For a mythic, maybe a DPI of 1.5 below is attractive and we set it at 1.0 for a non-mythic? I’m still working the kinks out, but so far we have identified pretty solid numberical support for cards we picked out on the basis of “I like these as specs” in a pre-DPI world. Just picking out some cards I didn’t like on the basis of my “gut test” from that set, we have cards like Klothys at 2.77. That said, we overlooked Setessan Champion with a DPI of 0.21 so who knows? Was I wrong to discount Setessan Champion? Perhaps – it’s a $2 card in almost 10,000 decks, and isn’t that the kind of thing we want?

I’m not sure if this DPI calculation is going to yield good results or not, still, but on the basis of using it to verify card I picked using other methods, it seems like we identified a lot of good candidates and none of our numbers were surprising, really. That makes sense – I wouldn’t have said a $40 card in 11 decks was a good spec nor would I have failed to pick out a $1.50 card in 20,000 decks. If nothing else, we’re going to be able to assign a value to every card that gives us another way for cards we may have overlooked to jump out at us, and even if the numbers are wrong, a rough first pass to catch anything that sticks out is just that and not the be-all end-all of spec identification.

That does it for me this week. Join me next week where we’ll really be getting deep into some numbers because we don’t have any Team Jacob spoilers yet. Until next time!

Watchtower

Treasure Hunting

August 30, 2021 David Sharman

Adventures in the Forgotten Realms gave us quite a few new toys to play with in terms of Treasure use and generation, and it’s started to become a more popular theme amongst the EDH crowd. I was going to just write about AFR cards today, but instead figured that there are some much better options in other recent sets as well, so we’ve got a good range of Treasure-related goodness for you to plunder today!

Xorn (Showcase Foil)

Price today: $3
Possible price: $10

I think that a lot of the Showcase cards from AFR are being undervalued at the moment, with a lot of the value from the set being stored in the Mythics and Borderless cards. Some of the most popular EDH cards (and cards in general) have Showcase versions as their premium printing though, and so I think that now is a good time to be looking at buying some of them.

We got a lot of new tech for Treasures in AFR, and have seen cards like Revel in Riches spike as a result. A lot of the time Xorn reads “double your Treasures”, which can turn into a lot of mana very quickly and/or make for nice interactions with ‘artifacts matter’ cards and the like. In fact we have enough cards that make and interact with Treasures now that you can build a whole EDH deck around them, and I can bet you that Xorn is going in every single one – it’s currently the top red card from the set at 1600 EDH decks on EDHREC, and the third most popular card overall.

There are only 30 listings for NM foils of the Showcase version on TCGPlayer at the moment, with almost all of them being under $5. I really don’t think that that price is going to be correct in 6-12 months, and $10+ is likely to happen sooner or later. I don’t see Wizards reprinting these DnD Showcase versions again any time soon, so you’ll be safe on that front for a while to come.

Academy Manufactor (EA Foil)

Price today: $10
Possible price: $25

Another of the best Treasure-generators that we’ve seen recently is Academy Manufactor, and this is one that also makes Clues and Food for you as well, meaning that your artifact count is going to go through the roof pretty quickly with anything that makes any of these tokens. Not really much of a Modern card out of Modern Horizons 2, but I guess not everything can find a place in that format. Not to worry though, Manufactor is one of the most popular EDH cards from the set, just missing out on a top 10 spot at number 11 on EDHREC (going by raw number inclusion rather than percentage).

EA foils are already running in lower supply; we’re over two months out from MH2’s release now and copies are starting to dwindle away. MKM does have some EA foils a good bit cheaper at around the $5 mark, but there aren’t many listings there either. I don’t know if we’re going to get another wave of MH2 product, but if we do then I’ll likely just be using it as another opportunity to buy these slightly cheaper again. Either way, I think the outlook on Manufactor is pretty strong, and 12 months out this should be a $25+ card.

Magda, Brazen Outlaw (Showcase Foil)

Price today: $7
Possible price: $20

For our last pick today, we’re going all the way back to Kaldheim – which was admittedly only six months ago, but we’ve had six different product releases since then along with a whole slew of new announcements, and so it does feel like it’s been quite a while. Magda, Brazen Outlaw has become quite popular both as a commander and part of the 99 in Treasure-themed decks as well as Dwarf tribal builds, and the Showcase foils have been creeping up in price.

You don’t even need to be doing Dwarf things to make Magda good – so long as you’re reliably generating treasures, you can go and search up dragons to your heart’s content and start swinging. She does quite a lot for two mana, and although can be quite a fragile creature, that hasn’t stopped her popularity. We’re down to just 22 listings for Showcase foils on TCGPlayer, and a similar number over on MKM albeit at slightly reduced prices.

I like snapping off a few copies here and looking to flip within the next few months or so – although I don’t think that we’ll see this Showcase version reprinted any time soon, this should be a relatively quick spec to mature and you can move your money on into other things.

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