Watchtower

Commander Legends Draining

It’s already been four months since Commander Legends was released, and supply is continuing to run thinner and thinner. Despite a couple of restocks of Collector Boosters here and there we haven’t seen a lot of those singles injected into the market, meaning that prices are only going up on the most sought-after EDH cards.

Cards like Jeweled Lotus and Hullbreacher are already very expensive in EA and FEA, but there are still some good deals to be had on a lot of the ‘tier two’ cards from the set, that I think will be the next ones to pop.

Akroma’s Will (EA/FEA)

Price today: $7/$18
Possible price: $15/$35

I’ve talked before about white needing as much help as it can get in EDH, and this is a card that really pulls its weight. It’s the second most popular card from Commander Legends, and fits into just about any white deck you’d like to put it in. The flexibility and power level it provides means that it can boost your creatures and really go over the top to launch your opponents into the sun on a final attack, as well as being able to protect them from pretty much anything – or both!

EA copies are currently around $7 on TCGPlayer and €4 on MKM, whilst foils will run you $18 or €18. I’m actually more of a proponent of the regular EA copies here, because I think that they have the potential for a higher multiplier than the FEA version. I could see the $7 copies being $15-20 in 6-12 months, whilst the FEAs will probably land somewhere between $30-40 in the same timeframe.

The supply is lower on the FEAs, but not by as much as you’d expect – there are 33 non-foil listings and 27 foil listings. I think this likely has to do with the bad curling issues on CMR foils, causing a lot of players to opt for the non-foils instead (but if you want to uncurl your foils, check out our article on it here).

Apex Devastator (EA/FEA)

Price today: $15/$55
Possible price: $30/$100

I’m honestly not sure how good Apex Devastator is in EDH, but I don’t think that it being really good is quite the point of playing the card. “Cascade, cascade, cascade, cascade” is quite the text to stick on a card, and it’s definitely something that is a lot of fun to play with. One of the best things about Cascade is that even if your 10-drop gets countered, you’re still going to get all of those triggers regardless. I’m also a huge fan of the clean textbox on the EA and FEA versions, just having those four words with nothing else to distract.

At just over 2000 EDH decks it’s not the most popular card, but its Mythic rarity means that there are much fewer copies around than any rares, and so the price is going to jump a lot faster than it might do otherwise. Calling the FEA from $55 to $100 here might be a slightly bold claim, but honestly I think that it’s going to get there at some point in the not-too-distant future.

There are a total of twenty copies on TCGPlayer, and only seven of those are under $60 – I think that those ones are ripe for the picking, and should head up towards $100 within the next 6-12months. That will in turn push the regular EA copies up along with them, heading for $30 or more in the same timeframe.

Commander’s Plate (FEA)

Price today: $40
Possible price: $80

Rounding things off with another Mythic FEA today, you have to scroll down the EDHREC page a little bit to find this one because it’s an artifact and the cards are sorted by inclusion percentage rather than raw numbers. Despite that, it’s in almost 3000 decks listed, which puts it right up there with some of the most popular cards from the set. Costing only one mana to play and three to equip to your commander is pretty cheap for such a strong effect, especially if you’re jamming it onto a mono-coloured or colourless Legend.

My comments about Apex Devastator’s rarity ring just as true for Commander’s Plate, and with only 19 FEA listings on TCGPlayer I expect to see the price pushing up and up over the next few months. This is actually one of the few CMR FEAs that have some slightly cheaper copies in Europe, with a few available around €30-35 (~$35-40). There aren’t a lot so you’ll have to be quick, but I think that it’s a decent arbitrage opportunity to squeeze some extra dollars out of your spec if you’re able to leverage it.

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 and a new writer for MTGPrice in 2020, he’s an active MTG finance speculator specialising in cross-border arbitrage.

Casual Fridays

There’s Other Cards?

While a lot of the attention is rightfully on the old border cards, and the foil versions thereof, we’ve got other cards in the packs of Time Spiral Remastered, a lot of which are relevant cards and needed a fresh injection of copies. Given the focus on the old border cards, and the money being thrown at them, we need to be disciplined and remember that every reprint set offers an opportunity to pick up cards that needed a reprint at their lowest possible prices.

A caveat here about when to buy these cards: By all indications, this is a short-run set. Vendors are selling as of today, and individuals who like to open boxes are getting their product this coming week, exactly when Strixhaven previews begin. I do expect that most of these prices fall further, which makes buying in that much more attractive.

Interestingly, a lot of these cards are reprints of reprints, meaning that the supply has already been increased once or more since original Time Spiral. If it’s been reprinted before, and the price recovered, that makes these solid buys for the most part. We know for sure that demand is high enough to make the price higher eventually, and a low cost plus patience will often lead to value. Buying in at the low point is a core mechanic for what we do.

Venser, Shaper Savant ($6) – This is one of the top non-OB cards in the set, going by EDH inclusion rates. Ten thousand players have registered this online, and countless cubes carry this mega-bouncer as well. This is a pet card for a lot of players, because while some spells can’t be countered, this is just returning to hand, buying you some needed tempo. His price has been as high as $20, and weirdly had a spike to nearly $30 for the original Future Sight version just a few weeks ago. The Modern Masters 2017 reprint never made it above $11, and that is our ceiling. Venser is a rare in this set, and I’m looking for this to drop another couple of dollars before moving in. 

Prismatic Lens (Foil) (75 cents) – You might be wondering why I’m talking about an uncommon here, but the foil from original Time Spiral is $6, the better-art foil from Ultimate Masters is $3, and the reprint in Eternal Masters is $2. I don’t want to buy in before it hits 50 cents, or preferably a quarter, but the value will be there if you like growth. At the least, grab copies for your Commander decks while the card is at its low point. More than 20k decks have done the same online, and that’s why this foil tends to recover its value over time.

Magus of the Moon ($8) – The Iconic Masters version had crept up to nearly $20 when this reprint arrived. Picking this up is a testament to how much paper play you think will happen in the next year or two, as this is a popular Modern sideboard card, with a smattering of Legacy play included. Given that paper play is nonexistent at the moment, I’m really hoping this falls even farther, ideally to under $5. 

Pact of Negation ($18) – Worthwhile to note that there’s already a couple of people on TCG putting this as low as $15, so let’s watch this angle downwards a bit more before diving in. On EDHREC, 10% of all decks that can run this do, more than 25,000 people want a free counterspell in Commander to go with the Modern players who can win this turn and don’t care about five mana next turn. Bonuses to the ones playing Hive Mind! This was available as low at $10 when the first Modern Masters came out, and if this got as low as $10 it would be an excellent pickup going forward. We know it’s got the chops to be a $30 card, and all it’s going to take is a little patience to recover in value.

Akroma’s Memorial ($14 vs $36) – The reprints have been as you’d expect with this card. 

The M13 version was available very cheaply, and while I don’t think it’ll get down to $5 again, it’s easy to see this as being $10 in a couple of weeks. Given that it’s only registered in about 6,000 decks, I’m not expecting to see this grow quickly. Picking up cheap cards and being patient feels good, but I’m not waiting seven years to cash this in. This has a while to fall on TCG, as Card Kingdom has it for much much less right now. Be patient, and pick your spots.

I also want to take a moment and talk about some other cards that are not good pickups, even though the reprint is quite attractively priced compared to the original.

Reiterate (TSR is $6, TSP is $15) – Only in 3,000 Commander decks online, the original price is simply a relic of the tiny supply. This will be nearly bulk relatively quickly.

Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir ($4 vs. $7) – the Iconic Masters and FTV reprints have kept the price low on this, and while it is a mythic, I’d need it to hit bulk status before I moved in. There’s a whole lot of copies out there and the Commander demand isn’t what you might expect.

Wheel of Fate ($1 vs $4) – Mystery Booster had this, there’s Commander copies out there too. Bulk and never to recover.

Coalition Relic ($2 vs $3) – Once the gold standard for mana rocks, the Relic has just been middling these last few years. There are 10,000 decks online that have it registered and likely a lot more that just play it because it’s good, but this is another card where the reprints have been a touch too frequent to let the price recover. If I knew they weren’t going to reprint this for another five years, this would be a solid buy.

Jason Alt, Unlocked ProTrader

Unlocked Pro Trader: What’s On The Horizon?

Readers!

With the announcement of Modern Horizons 2 and my decision to abandon my tried-and-true method of not having to guess ever and delving into the uncharted waters of guessing like a COMPLETE IDIOT WHAT AM I DOING I decided to look at Modern Horizons 1 to tell us if we’re going to want to care about Modern Horizons 2. Will there be any relevant reprints? Will prices be impacted if there are? Will the splashy mythics matter in EDH or are those there to sell packs to Modern players? Will there be Modern played when this set comes out (no)? Let’s look at an old set and make pronouncements about a set that probably isn’t even done being printed, so I can get a bunch of stuff wrong and you can all go back to seeing me as human.

Let’s look at Modern Horizons and how much it actually mattered in EDH!

I am not so much astounded that there were only 8 commanders in the set as I am astounded that they would waste a slot in the set on a complete meme card like Ayula, and I’m more astounded that people are building it more than Hogaak. Hogaak is kind of a non-EDH commander but people still seem to be into it. I’m also astounded that people would rather do completely stupid, fun stuff with Siasy and especially Morophon than do dumb cEDH stuff with Urza. Urza was obvious, powerful, and led the way very early but it’s been overtaken by Sisay and Morophon. Why? Versatility. Urza was obvious and that spikes stuff in the near term, but the top commanders are the least obvious and those can be a double-edged sword. What’s going to spike more copies of a given card, 62 out of a possible 3,495 Sisay decks being built as Gods tribal or 2,614 Urza decks all being built as “Lol I win on turn 2” decks? If a deck has a lot of different builds that don’t have a ton of cards in common, it could end up that they’re less impactful than a streamlined commander. Yawgmoth is pushing way more copies of Nest of Scarabs than Sisay is pushing copies of Honden of Night’s Reach despite being built half as much. Very versatile commanders are always the ones that top the lists, but the less versatile, more focused commanders really push “staples” and that’s better in the long-run. I’d focus more on commanders like The First Sliver in the future than open-ended ones like Morophon. I mean, I will. I mean “I’d” as in “I would” as in “I would if I were you” as in “you should” but also know that I will, in case you don’t want to think about cards made for a format you don’t play released in a set for a format no one can play right now.

Despite boasting EDH cred, the cards that most impacted the format are largely what we’re seeing in most sets – lands and mana rocks. EDH doesn’t need the wheel reinvented with respect to our manabases every single set, but lately that seems to be mostly what people latch onto. I don’t see Good-Fortune Unicorn, Unsettled Mariner, Unbound Flourishing or the card they expected to really sell boosters, Serra the Benevolent, anywhere near the Top 25. The Talismans were long overdue, and Hall of Heliod’s Generosity had a ton of decks ready to slide right into, but the 15th-most-played card is a tryhard Legacy and Modern free counterspell that only hit EDH incidentally. They can design cards for the format, but they can’t make people care past a certain point, especially if they’re very narrow. Why does it matter if the cards are narrow or not, though? If they get played in 90% of the decks that can run them, aren’t they basically a staple, and isn’t that great? Well, yes and no.

Hall of Heliod’s Generosity is played in a staggering 10% of all decks that contain and can run White. If you look at Enchantment-heavy decks specifically, the number is much higher.

19,000 decks, and in nearly half of the registered Enchantment-heavy decks, even the ones that were printed before Hall was.

Those are really strong metrics. Sure, Hall is going to grow until it does something or gets another reprint, but the amount of supply out there loose butting up against with how much of the paper market is dominated by the format where Hall is king has made the graph look pretty disappointing. If Hall can’t do much in a year, we either have to wait much longer, which will really increase the reprint risk since it’s a longer hold, or it will never get there. The other rares above Hall on the list, Nurturing Peatland and Waterlogged Grove, are a similar sad story.

Maybe you see opportunity with a graph this shape, but all I see is a falling knife that I don’t want to grab. Grove and Peatland have the potential to get some help from other formats, a statement much less likely to apply to Hall of Heliod’s Generosity. Something tells me that Modern Horizons two is going to be a pretty bad set for EDH investing if these numbers are true.

Do I think anything from Modern Horizons One can get there given enough time, and if I do, which cards other than Hall can do it? If Hall can’t, nothing can, but if Hall can, what else could? … Just word salad with my prose today, get it together Jason.

This is a bulk rare that plays a lot better than people seem to want to give it credit for. I use this to rebuy Thieving Skydiver and Sower of Temptation, but this is just a really hard hitter that plays well outside of ninjitsu decks as well as it plays inside of them. This is a nice bulk to bucks pick and I know those are tough, and this has moderate reprint risk, but overall I think there’s money to be made here and so do dealers given the (slight) increase in buylist price.

This has flirted with $2 on CK and I think it can get there again. This is played almost exclusively in EDH to great effect and I think it’s a hidden gem. I think reprint risk is lowish and I think it’s another good bulk pick.

This is a very, very, very, very narrow card. People compared it to Doubling Season when it first came out but I think it’s not a card you compare to Doubling Season, I think it’s a card you compare unfavorably to Second Harvest. That said, the right deck coming along could pluck this from its relative obscurity. I think it’s basically at its floor, is nowhere close to begging for a reprint and is good in the right deck. Does that deck exist? Nah, but when it does, people who have copies of this will be in a position to make some quick cash and if you’re the person who likes to be holding things when they pop, this is the card for you. I don’t like this kind of spec, but I know some of you do.

The foil BARELY costs more than the non-foil, so if you’re betting on the non-foil to go up a little, you could be betting on the foil to go up 2 or 3 times a little if you’re really that confident. This went down to $12 and up to $35, and that’s worth noting, especially with Card Kingdom selling out of it.

All in all, I’m a little more bearish on Modern Horizons 2, a set that has had 0 cards printed so far and which we know nothing about. Is that wise? There are other places to invest, and we also know that anything EDH-relevant will spend a year declining in price before it shows any signs of life, so either bet on cards with cross-format applicability or wait for the cat to bounce. Next week I hope I have spoilers to look at, something. Save me from having to speculate on tribal decks based on that William Gibson’s Neuromancer Kamigawa set you know they’re making. Until next time!

Watchtower

Modern Problems Require Modern Solutions

Due to the current global pandemic I’ve generally stayed away from talking about cards for competitive formats, other than cards that I like for longer holds and big potential gains. With vaccinations being rolled out worldwide though, we may start to get in-store play and maybe even some smaller tournaments by the end of the year.

With this in mind, I think that it’s a good time to start taking a look at some of the cards that are going to be in high demand, short supply or both when players are wanting to buy new decks or change and upgrade old ones. Modern is going to be the main format affecting card prices here, but Pioneer is a consideration to bear in mind as well.

Monastery Swiftspear (Foil)

Price in Europe: €6/8 ($7/$9.50)
Price in US: $11/$16
Possible price: $20

Monastery Swiftspear has pretty much been a Modern staple since its first printing in Khans of Tarkir, all the way back in 2014. Since then we’ve seen it utilised in all sorts of different aggressive decks, from Burn to Death’s Shadow to Prowess Blitz, and as such it’s been the number one most popular creature in Modern for a while now. A hasty one drop that stays relevant even late in the game and is pretty much always a good top-deck is very strong indeed, and I find it hard to imagine a Modern metagame where this isn’t at the forefront of the format.

Since the first printing we’ve only had one other foil in IMA until very recently, where we’ve got the new Secret Lair printing (with new art) and the old-border foil that’s coming in Time Spiral Remastered. However, despite there now being four different foils, there are caveats that need discussing. The TSR old border foils are going to be incredibly hard to come by and very expensive because of that, and so acquiring the playset that you need for Modern is going to set you back a fair bit, and isn’t going to be a viable option for a lot of people. The Secret Lair copies are the only ones with a different art, and will definitely be attractive to some people but others won’t like the style so much.

That leaves a lot of people choosing between the KTK and IMA foils, both of which are in rather low supply. If we look at TCG there are only ten listings total across both versions, with IMA lowest at $10 and KTK lowest at $16. Over in Europe supply is a little bit deeper and prices a bit lower, so I think that this is a great arbitrage opportunity for a short-term flip. Bear in mind that if someone wants foils of these for Modern (or Pioneer) then they’re going to be buying four at a time, so supply will disappear in chunks when it does. Pick up a playset or two in Europe for under $40 and you should easily be able to get $70-80 for them in the US.

Collected Company (Foil)

Price today: $20
Possible price: $40

It took a few months after its release for people to realise how good Collected Company was and start playing it in both Standard and eternal formats, but since then it’s been another staple in Modern that hasn’t left the format. It’s also been a large part of Pioneer since the format was created, but due to the lack of paper play over the last year we’ve seen Collected Company drift downwards in price a fair bit.

Once a $50 foil, you can now get original KTK foils for as little as $20 on TCGPlayer. There aren’t many around that price though, and with only 25 listings there’s a steep ramp towards $40. The only competition for these is the Secret Lair versions, but I don’t think that those are really going to hinder the price of the original foils too much. Original set foils always have a premium attached to them, and will command higher prices than subsequent copies.

These aren’t any cheaper in Europe, but if you can pick some $20 copies up in the US then I think you’ll be doing just fine in 6-12months. Collected Company decks should remain a good part of both Modern and Pioneer for the foreseeable future, and if Historic ever emerges as a paper format then that’s yet another swathe of decks that will be using the card.

Supreme Verdict (Foil)

Price today: $9/$13
Possible price: $25+

UW control decks have been doing quite well for a little while in Modern now, consistently posting strong finishes in Modern challenges and leagues and generally sitting in the top 5 decks of a very diverse metagame. Supreme Verdict has pretty much always been a staple in this deck, with the uncounterable aspect of it being much more important than the anti-regeneration of Wrath of God.

The Buy-a-Box foils have a worse art and foiling than either the original RTR or the reprint IMA foils, and so I think that the latter two will be the most desirable versions by far.. There are 29 IMA foil listings on TCGPlayer and half that for the RTR version, with both printings forming nice ramps up to and over $20. They’re around the same price in Europe so no big bonus there, but I think both markets are going to be moving upwards before long.

Don’t forget – this is also a card in nearly 23,000 EDH decks listed on EDHREC, quite a sizeable number for the few foils left on the market here. With Modern most likely picking back up a bit later this year combined with the strong EDH backing, I think that this is easily a $20+ card in 6-12 months.

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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