Kaldheim is available to be bought today, and while people are going to get their preorder product and crack it in a fervor of foil and new-card smell, I want to look at the most expensive stuff that’s been printed since War of the Spark gave us the Amano Liliana: Commander Legends. Jeweled Lotus has all the attention, but there’s a lot of very good cards in the set that you should stock up on before it becomes too expensive.

First of all, I want to talk a little about the composition of the Collector Boosters. The main thing is that there are dedicated slots for the uncommon etched foils and the rare/mythic etched foils. These aren’t commonplace exactly, but they don’t have the 30% chance of upgrading that the Extended Art cards had. That means it’ll take that much longer for the etched foils to take off, generally speaking. Some of them are already pricey, but it’s important to know that there’s a lot more etched foils in circulation than there are Extended Art/Foil Extended Art. 

Thrasios, Triton Hero (etched foil) – $26 – This price comes after a high of $80 during 2020, the reprint couldn’t have come along better for the little merfolk who makes you want to flip the table:

There’s nothing that UG decks love more than ramping and drawing, and Thrasios gives you the chance to do both at once. When he’s on the table, you know it requires an answer, but next thing you know, there’s a Training Grounds and a Heartstone out and you watch this player get six more lands into play before untapping and doing irritating things. Thrasios made a lot of sense as an expensive card because it was featured in the Commander 2016 set, no one had extras. We’re at maximum supply for Thrasios, and the really powerful thing is the Partner mechanic. Add whatever colors you’d like to this card and the deck you’re building, just go to town. 

We know how expensive Thrasios can be, and this remains one of the most deceptively powerful Simic Commanders, not least because dying once or twice doesn’t affect the mana too terribly. It’ll start rising soon, and before summer 2022, it’ll be $50 again.

Yuriko, the Tiger’s Shadow (etched foil) – $11 – What’s really appealing here is that the etched foil is competing with the Judge foil. That has fallen to about $14, down nearly $10 since the reprint. There aren’t quite enough Ninjas for an all-Ninja deck, but you can build a sweet deck and there is always the chance of more Ninjas (like in Modern Horizons) or a return to Kamigawa. When that happens, supply on this will vanish, and I would want to have a few of these ready to go.

Reliquary Tower (FEA) – $6 – The pack foil from Conflux is two bucks more, and the FNM is slightly more than that, but this has a huge Commander demand baked in, though there’s a whole lot of foil versions to choose from. This is the only special frame, and I want the foil version to make the shiny-hunters happy. I can’t predict when this will be the most expensive one, but that’s only a matter of time.

Seraphic Greatsword (FEA)/Profane Transfusion(FEA)/Soulfire Eruption(FEA) – $7 – These are the three cheapest FEA mythics from the set, and this would be pure speculation. We know how expensive these FEA mythics can be, thanks to Jeweled Lotus, which makes these a fascinating pick. The red and black ones have much lower stock on TCG, but the Greatsword has a ton of very optimistic listings on TCGplayer. If you pick these up, you’re doing so out of pure hope and recognizing the scarcity of these cards. 

Phyrexian Triniform (FEA) – $15 – So far, only about 1000 people have listed this in their Commander decks on EDHREC, but I’m looking at things like Darksteel Colossus and artifact-based decks, because this enables a lot of fun combos or represents enormous value with the 3/3 creatures that get left behind. Again, FEA mythics from this set are crazy rare, getting one of a particular mythic about every 400 packs. If you might want one, it’s time to hurry up and get it. The high casting cost doesn’t faze me, there’s a ten-mana card that’s already jumped $20 since the set came out:

So yeah, get your Triniform whilst you can.

Arcane Signet (FEA) – $26 – As much of a staple as staples can be, I like this card but I’m very certain it gets a reprint in FEA at some point. Will it have the same art? If it’s the same art, it’ll fall pretty far, like what happened to FEA Fabled Passage. Nearly $100 when the reprint hit in Core 2021, now reduced to $25. If the art is different, it’ll be a decision between preferences, and then who knows? Again, I think you get your personal copies now while they are cheap, but don’t try to stock up too hard on these.

Return to Dust (FEA) – $1.50 – Finally, let’s look at a card which is in 28,000 decks online, has only two foils, and this is the only special frame. A buck and a half is a crazy low price for this, given that only one out of every 2.5 packs had any of the FEA uncommons, but here we are. It’s not the cheapest, that honor goes to Humble Defector and likely always will, but this is the best version of this staple. Time Spiral is the original foil, that’s $10, but that’s also a set with a tiny supply and so many years of copies being lost/damaged. This is the first foil since then, and copies aren’t yet being snapped up but time will tell on this. Picking up a brick of these now is a no-brainer, in anticipation of the inevitable rise up towards the price of the original foil.

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.

So the set is out on Arena and MTGO, and won’t be available on paper for another week. If you preordered, it’ll ship out on February 5, when the set is officially released in paper. We’ve still got a little time for prices to go nuts, but we’ve also got some preliminary data on what’s selling and what isn’t. Let’s take a look, shall we?

Reflections of Littjara (Currently $3) – First of all, this is available as an alt-art foil promo for those who purchase the Kaldheim bundle. I am very likely to take a stab at picking up a lot of those versions, as well as some number of regulars and FEA versions. This is an excellent payoff for tribal decks of just about any flavor, and the only problem here is that Legendary creatures are not always great to make copies of, depending on the enters-the-battlefield effects. This has trended down from a high of about $5 so far, and I completely expect it to approach bulk status. It’s not going to do much in Standard, and buying large amounts of awesome Commander cards is exactly where I want to be.

Cosmos Elixir ($4) – What’s notable about this is that it isn’t legendary. If you wanted to build a control deck and put three copies into play, you’d get three triggers. Lifegain is a popular theme in Commander games, and this does what you want, giving you the lifegain trigger or a card. I expect this to be an easy slot into whatever the next good lifegain Commander is, as Oloro is a bit too old to gain attention this way, even though it’s on The List. To be clear, I’m not buying these until they come way down in price.

The World Tree ($12) – It takes a lot to have a rare land hold a price higher than a booster pack. It’s got to have enormous appeal across several formats, and while I love what this offers to five-color Commander players, that’s pretty much it in terms of the potential market. The activated ability means that you can’t add this as free fixing in anything less than fully prismatic decks. As a counterpoint, EDHREC has more than 30,000 five-color decks in its database, and this is remarkably easy to slot into such a deck and feel pretty good. Still, this won’t hold $12 and will be lucky to hold $5. 

Esika, God of the Tree ($14) – Another card that’s five colors or bust, the attention is mostly on the flip side, The Prismatic Bridge. Every turn you get the first creature or planeswalker out of your deck, but the extras are sent to the bottom. No Polymorph-style tricks here. This is a mythic, so the price will stay higher for longer. I’m hoping that it gets down to the $5 range as no one plays it outside Commander, but being the new awesome card will probably mean $10 is a more realistic price point.

Mystic Reflection ($13) – There is a graph via Frank Karsten that shows the interaction between this card and Master of Waves. Do keep in mind that this reflects the total power on the field, not the number of creatures. 

Kooky stuff, and yes, it combos very well with a range of token makers, but the memes are not enough to keep the price this high. It’s possible to use this offensively, to turn their cool thing into some lame thing that’s already on the field, but really, wouldn’t you rather have a counterspell or an Ixidron to deal with that problem? This is going to drop like a rock, and if I could short sell a card this is the prime candidate. I have trouble imagining that it’ll hold a price above $3.

Koma, Cosmos Serpent ($8) – Again, this is a mythic so it’s got that many less copies out there, but this is a card that MIGHT be a singleton as a finisher in some Simic deck and that’s about it. There’s not a huge amount of Serpent synergies to exploit, whereas if this was a Hydra it would at least have those decks going. This is going crash hard, being bulk or nearly so in a couple of months.

Tibalt’s Trickery ($7) – Another meme card, but one with potential and it’s showing up with Violent Outburst and Emrakul, the Aeons Torn to work together and get the spaghetti monster on the field on turn 3. Basically, cast the cascade spell, and the only hit is a single Trickery. Then the Trickery starts flipping cards, and the only legal hit is Emrakul. It’s a glass cannon, but so are the new versions of Oops! All Spells and Charbelcher, so let’s not go throwing too many stones. If people want to play instant-win combos in Modern that require aggressive mulliganing and folds to hand disruption or a Censor. This will also be bulk status in a few weeks.

In Search of Greatness ($6) – This is a bad version of cards we already have. Hibernation’s End is the most reliable of these, as you pay the upkeep cost and then get something that size, no matter what you have in play. ISoG requires you to have something on the board, and then have something else exactly one mana more. The fail-case plan of scry 1 is a pretty lame gift, but at least we have that going. This can only ever cheat you ahead to something that you would have been able to play if you had drawn another land, and for this to be good, you’re going to need quite a string of fortunate events. Bulk rare incoming.

Alrund’s Epiphany ($3) – Finally, a card I’m planning to stock up on. Extra turns cards are generally very good, and some decks want to play every single one they can. Part the Waterveil comes with a 6/6 if you get it going, and two 1/1s is also nice for speeding up the process. This has alternate art as a Showcase, and when this is cheap (and it’s going to be quite cheap) I’ll be happy to pick up a couple playsets for very little down. 

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.