Jason Alt, ProTrader

Pro Trader: Minor Players

Readers,

Last week, whether because I went with the Top 4 commanders from the EDH decks or because I picked the face commanders, the result was the same. We looked at Prosper, Galea and Wulfgar and wanted to find cards and couldn’t from Sefris. We may have missed some good picks from the non-face commanders and we’ll get into that today, although the face commanders are still considerably more popular. Now, those cards have been known for longer, but they’re also still being built the most. Let’s look at where things were last week.

Prosper is the top, followed by Sefris, then Galea then Wulfgar. You can read, I know. Since you’re over here knowing stuff, do you think the Top 5 will be the same today as it was a week ago?

It’s close, but a few things happened. Prosper shot up to number 1, which means we’ll want to comb through for Prosper to see if we missed anything. Xanathar tanked, which feels bad to me personally because he’s my favorite commander in the set, but I get it. Vrondiss, a pretty medium-looking commander supplanted Minsc and Boo, a popular (I want to say Baldur’s Gate?) D&D character with a loveable pet, which is a great meme commander but maybe not the most playable? Finally, Klauth moved way up to the second row, which is positive. I don’t know if there is anything new there, but it’s worth a look. The docket for today is Prosper, Vrondiss, Klauth and if there is time, a few others. I have a feeling there is a lot to discuss, however.

First up, we have some news.

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ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.

Casual Fridays

How Cheap Can These Cards Get?

Adventures in the Forgotten Realms is officially released today, so we’re able to buy those cards from vendors. As always, I’m expecting most cards to take a tumble as they become widely available, especially because they seem underpowered compared to other sets currently in Standard.

Underpowered usually means cheap, and AFR has one of the lowest aggregate values I’ve seen at release. As a result, people are expecting less of this set to be opened, and that makes sense, especially with Modern Horizons 2 right there, pouring value into your wallet if you’re buying as a distributor. 

So if a set is under-opened…that means it’s likely under-valued! Time to look at AFR from a long-term perspective, looking for cards that will likely have some casual appeal. What can we get cheaply now, and if stores are reopening and events are happening in paper, what might be good in a few months when Standard rotates?

Tasha’s Hideous Laughter ($10) – Modern Mill is a real thing, and this is a four-of in that deck. It’s not a great card for Commander, as that’s a land where lots of big-mana spells are at, but mill cards have always had their fans. It’s both severely irritating and glorious fun! This is a card that I’m hoping will fall to the $1-2 range, but that’s likely too much hope. Casual and Modern demand will likely keep this close to $5, and that’s more than I want to pay. In three months, when the set is at maximum supply and we’re all drooling over the first of two Innistrad sets, perhaps it’ll be $3, and that’s when I’d like to acquire a lot of this card. I’m going for the basic versions, mind you; a card bought four at a time asks for the regular nonfoils.

Old Gnawbone ($21) – I get why people think this card is awesome. When you hit someone for some damage, you get a bunch of Treasures! What’s not to love? The problem is, if you are hitting someone for a bunch, you’re already winning, you’re already ahead. I don’t need more mana when I’m already getting in for damage! This is very much a win-more card, and Commander is a format that loves to win more. The price on this will drop by at least half, and likely farther for the basic editions. It’s a big green flyer, and there aren’t a lot of those, but the ability is not as good as it seems. I’m expecting this to really fall over the long term, probably to $5 or less.

Circle of Dreams Druid ($9) – This is already great, though the mana cost is a big deal. It’s a fixed Gaea’s Cradle, and the last fixed version of that, Growing Rites of Itlimoc, has a curve that we would do well to anticipate: 

I’m not saying this is a $20 card right now, especially in the basic nonfoil, but it is a card that when it’s cheap (Not if, when!) we want to stock up on. I’m hoping it drops to under $2, but casual demand might keep it higher than that. There’s a chance it shows up in Modern and Legacy Elves, but those decks already have access to Elvish Archdruid, a strictly better card in 100% Elves decks. Not sure how many more they’d want to run, but the kitchen table crowd will keep this from being bulk.

Tiamat ($19) – This is a fantastic card, and one I can’t wait to play with. However, it’s a very specific tribal card (albeit one of the best tribes) and works best as a Commander, or as a member of the 99. The most important detail though is that the basic version has fallen in price, and Thursday night a copy was sold on TCG for $17.50. The fall is real, and ongoing. The borderless foil copies are going to fall some too, there was a copy that sold on Facebook during the prerelease for $150 but there’s copies on TCG right now for $50 or less. That’s the trajectory it’s on, and it will bottom out like every other card, probably at $7-$10 for the basic and $30 for the borderless foil.

Demilich ($18) – The good news is that this is going to be in some of the most popular decks around, the assorted UR spells/blitz/burn lists that are lighting it up in Legacy and Modern. There have been some lists that use this as a four-of, which is the kick a card like this needs, but at least it isn’t legendary. Please keep in mind that its attack trigger isn’t a free cast, you still need to pay the mana. I think there will be enough builders to keep this near $10, but it’s already sliding and it might well end up closer to $5. Arclight Phoenix took a long while to claw back up to $10, and this is nicely analogous.

Teleportation Circle ($1) – This will be a bulk rare, but it’s one that I’m going to go in on once it’s officially bulk. Conjurer’s Closet was $7 before the Double Masters reprint:

Yes, this is not an artifact but it costs one less. Flickering things is already a big thing in white decks, and there will be a time where this card buylists for decent money. I’m not too proud to buy at a dime and sell for a dollar.

Treasure Vault ($8) – I’ve got my eye on this as an untapped artifact land. There’s only two legal in Modern right now, this and Darksteel Citadel. It’s not making waves in decks with Arcbound Ravager yet, but if this gets cheap and then a real affinity deck takes off, this will have a chance to shine very very brightly. 

Granted, I don’t think that happens anytime soon, but I think the Vault will be down to a couple of bucks and at that point, I want to have some copies in reserve.

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: Dungeons And Drags

Readers!

Whoever gave this set the three letter Code AFR rather than DND did us all a real disservice if you ask me. How I feel about AFR being the code is about how I feel about AFR as a set and let me make one thing perfectly clear – I couldn’t be happier to be able to take a set off. I didn’t buy any sealed product, I need like 3 copies of Grazilaxx and that’s basically all I need for decks and I couldn’t be happier. Taking a set off as a builder and collector has been great, and not caring about ANY of these cards has made it so easy to look at data and not have that internal moment of struggle where the data is showing a card I like is under-performing and simply accepting that fact means accepting I evaluated a card wrong, then you have that Seymour Skinner moment.

Anyway, none of that this time. Just cold, hard data. And wouldn’t you know it, EDHREC got the EDH deck commanders added in with the rest of the set in a move I actually prefer to giving it its own page. I like to see how the DNDDH precon decks stack up against the rest of the set. While the full amount of data we’re going to get isn’t in yet which means the precon commanders could still improve relative to the non-precon commanders spoiled earlier, we are seeing trends at least right now. Let’s look at how the sets look next to one another.

Prosper has rocketed to an impressive second overall, Sefris, Galea and Wulfgar are jockeying for a Top-5 spot and Kalain, an uncommon, is already beating D and D fan favorites like Bruenor and Drizzt. If that sounds like complete nonsense to you, it does to me, too. Like, looking at the pictures helps, but every time I go on a podcast, I am very aware that I am just saying a bunch of names that I myself will forget in a few minutes. 42 new legendary creatures every couple of weeks is too much. Give EDH a break, seriously.

The huge dump of commanders sort of dilutes the impact of tier 2 commanders in my opinion, unless they’re putting pressure on the same cards as a tier 1 commander might, in which case they can’t hurt and can only help. Accordingly, I won’t spend too much time looking at commanders registered in 16 decks across 5 websites and will look at the stuff that really matters. Let’s look at the heavy hitters from D&DDH, shall we?

Live Short and Prosper

This is my exact $%^&. Of the high synergy cards in Prosper, 8 of them are in my Valki deck already. Am I making a new deck to run all of these cards again? Maybe not, but nothing is impossible. What IS possible is that Prosper being in a precon will encourage WAY more people to build with these kinds of cards than Valki being in a regular set and everyone hating it immediately because it ruined a bunch of formats its first week did. I still like Valki but people who never gave Valki a chance (or read all 98 lines of text on the front and back) will like Prosper more, I bet.

Last week I got a rare comment on an article, which was nice. I get more feedback about my writing in the Pro Trader Discord, a Discord community I can’t recommend enough. Phitt correctly identified Stolen Strategy as a card Prosper decks could get a lot of use out of and I want to frame this next paragraph as me agreeing with Phitt super hard rather than trying to call this one of my picks. I think it would have been a card I talked about this week when I saw the High Synergy (the ratio of how much the card is played in this one deck to how much it’s played in the format in general) cards in Prosper. Let’s talk about why Stolen Strategy rules.

There aren’t too many cards in Battlebond that are above $5 and Stolen Strategy is much harder to reprint, specifically in a future Commander product, than any of them. It’s already over-achieving for a non-Mythic, but there is more future upside for this card, I think. $10 before anything happens to knock it off of its current trajectory is a bet I’m willing to make. If you can scoop sub-$5 copies of Stolen Strategy, I would.

Back in February there was practically an arbitrage opportunity on this card, maybe due to Valki? Whatever it was, this card is basically always $3 buylist which means if you can get it for under $5, you’re buying below what the dealers who were paying $3 when this sold for $3 thought this would be selling for at retail at this point.

I was thinking about how many times Etali has been reprinted lately, and it made me reconsider my position on how reprintable Stolen Strategy is, but the conclusion that I came to ultimately was a little more nuanced. I don’t think Etali’s repeated reprinting is a signal that Stolen Strategy could get reprinted but rather it is a sign that Etali is how they prefer people do the kinds of things that Stolen Strategy does and not only will there not be a likely reprint, there will be increased future demand based on how well Stolen Strategy performs in a deck that already has Etali. Printing Prosper indicates they like this kind of effect so if decks like this proliferate, Stolen Strategy has a lot of chances to get noticed. Normally I don’t love recommending a $5 buy-in for a card that likely tops out at $10, but I think you can get them cheaper than $5 and they could go beyond $10. It’s only been a few years and they’re in vogue now more than ever.

Maybe the Pirate ship has sailed on copies of Revel in Riches, but I still think it goes up and the Mystery Booster printing didn’t do much to address price, merely supply, which I hope they think is sufficient. The reprint risk on this is medium but I do love this card and wish I’d bought in deeper around $1 like I considered doing.

Galea

This costs half on TCG Player what it does on CK. Historically, CK has had a good instinct for what will go up based on EDH and this card seems like no exception.

Two reprints in quick succession have taken this from a $12 card to a $4 one. Does this hit $12 again? Unmolested, I think it does. Despite high supply, there is also a ton of demand with more every day. As long as it’s cheaper than Stoneforge Mystic, also, EDH players see this as a Stoneforge they can realistically afford, which helps demand, also. All in all, I think this is a good buy below $4, which is attainable currently.

Wulfgar

Lannery storm is only going to get better with the concession by Wizards that treasure is here to stay as a mechanic. This is a $5 Ixalan foil and I like both the foil and non-foil right now.

Najeela made this card pop from like 50 pennies to 50 dimes in a short time, a second spike would be even better, especially if you can get in around a dollar. This card is too powerful in the right deck to not be a long-term gainer, especially if another deck like Najeela comes along.

I think it’s possible that the “face” commanders in the decks are over-represented a bit because people had more time to brew with them, but until we get data that proves that hypothesis, I’m going to stick to covering the most impactful commanders for now. The next week will answer some of our questions, so, until next time!

Watchtower

The Moving Modern Meta

The Modern metagame is still looking pretty diverse right now, which gives us some great opportunities for specs to pick up. There are a huge number of different decks vying for the top spot in the format, and what’s more is that there’s a lot of crossover into EDH with those cards, which makes for some even juicier targets.

Thought Monitor (Showcase Foil)

Price today: $7
Possible price: $15

Since its recent printing in Modern Horizons 2, Thought Monitor has been incorporated into multiple high tier Modern decks and stuck around as part of them. Both the updated Affinity lists and the Urza’s Kitchen decks have been using Monitor as a cheap cantrip that puts a body into play – we’re back in the Frogmite era of Affinity, and although it’s not the most popular deck right now it is still putting up good results.

It’s reasonably popular in EDH as well, with 500 inclusions on EDHREC to date – which doesn’t sound like a huge amount but bear in mind the set hasn’t been out very long and there are actually only a handful of cards with more than that from the set. Any artifact-based EDH deck should probably consider playing it; it might not be super powerful but it’s just good value all around.

This is one of the few cards from MH2 that I actually like the showcase versions of – I think that they were very hit-or-miss in general, with some of the sketch arts missing the mark but a few being spot on. There are a reasonable number of the showcase foils around but not loads – 76 listings on TCGPlayer with no big walls, mostly just single copies. They’re a little cheaper in Europe at around $5-6 but so huge margins there, but still a good option if you have access. I think that this is going to be a role-player in lots of Modern artifact decks for a while to come, and should be a solid hold to out in 12 months or so.

Flamekin Harbinger (MB Foil)

Price today: $3
Possible price: $10

I talked about the Elemental tribal deck in Modern a couple of weeks ago, and since then the deck has been putting up more top finishes and generally performing well. Flamekin Harbinger is an integral part of the deck, searching up any Elemental you need when you need it – be it an Omnath, Fury or Solitude. Flamekin Harbinger is an unassuming 1-drop that helps smooth out your hand and keep the Elementals flowing.

There are three printings of this but only two foils – the non-foil-only one being the Planechase printing – and original Lorwyn foils are basically non-existent; only three NM foils on TCGPlayer and only a few more on MKM. That leaves us with the Mystery Booster foils, which are much lower at $3 and in greater supply, with 40 NM foil listings on TCGPlayer. If people want these for Modern though, they’re going to disappear a playlist at a time and so that supply won’t last long at all.

Bear in mind this is also a fairly popular EDH card, listed in nearly 2500 decks on EDHREC and a must-have if you’re playing anything close to Elemental tribal. I think these MB foils are primed to jump soon, and if you can out them in playsets when they’re ready to sell then that just makes life all the easier.

Sanctifier en-Vec (OBF)

Price today: $4
Possible price: $20

Sanctifier en-Vec is another one of those cards that has found its home in the sideboard of many Modern decks – we’ve seen it before with the likes of Burrenton Forge-Tender, Auriok Champion etc., but it looks like Sanctifier might be replacing those as just a better option. It has the classic protection from Black and Red, and on top of that adds a huge graveyard interaction that can shut down or seriously hamper graveyard strategies.

Auriok Champion had a huge spike a little while back, which shows what even just a sideboard card can do in Modern when it’s played across so many different decks. I think that this is going to be a staple in sideboards and possibly even some mainboards of Humans, Death & Taxes and Collected Company decks moving forwards, so if you’re looking for any personal copies then don’t hang around too long.

There are a few different versions of Sanctifier, but I like the retro-frame foils the best here. They’re the lowest supply and most premium version of the card, but can still be had for just $4 at the moment. The art fits super well with the old frame and I think they look great; if I wanted these for my Modern deck then I’d definitely be buying OBFs. There are only 31 listings for NM foils on TCGPlayer at the moment and so I think that the sub $5 copies are a steal right now. Even anything under $10 is probably a safe bet on a 6-12 month horizon, and I expect this to be a part of the format for a long time to come.

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.

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