Readers!

We are in a weird limbo period where we have only had like 5 spoilers from the Hogwart’s set and it’s too late to do anything about the one relevant spec that has come from those spoilers.

It’s too long since Kaldheim, basically, there is nothing EDH-specific to say about Time Spiral Remastered and we don’t know enough about fantastic specs and where to buy them. I’m sure in the next few weeks will be full of specs that make you say “10 points to Hufflepuff Lorehold,” but until then, let’s look at something else.

The EDHREC programmers are very busy right now and when they’re not busy, they’re not super inclined to implement my proposed feature for a toggle between sorting by percentage inclusion and by absolute number of inclusions. I think that’s good and bad. It’s good-ish because it tends to weed lazy people out and buries decent specs, it’s bad because if you want to be not lazy, you have to do some digging. Well, you don’t have to do digging. I have to. Me. So I guess I’ll do it, then. Today, I want to get really granular to overexplain why I think some cards that have none of the things I like to look for in a spec could be good specs in the very long term.

Define “Very Long Term”

I was gonna, jeez. Literally don’t even give me time to hit the enter key to start a new paragraph and you’re already all over me.

I think some of the cards in Kaldheim are somewhat insulated from reprints. Set-specific keyword abilities are usually considered too confusing for inclusion in EDH precons, cards that start at a buck and go to $7 rarely end up on “the list” and is there even a third way to print cards? Kaldheim has some cards that I think are potentially hidden gems, and it has to do with the lack of sources for information. People are still making finance decisions based on their own flawed perceptions in year of our lord two thousand and twenty one and if someone like me who makes almost all of his decisions based on data can screw things up, imagine how bad people who don’t do that are doing.

I think there are a few cards from Kaldheim that are probably going to make some moves long-term, and I’m going to try and find historical corollaries to prove it lest I look like I’m guessing. This will be fun, promise.

This is what the top 90 cards in the set look like represented as posters for ants. I’m not trying to show you a specific card, I’m trying to prove a point about scale. Specifically, I am trying to prove a point about where Reflections of Litjara is in the Top 90. It’s here.

Middle of the pack when sorted by % inclusion. Hypothetically sorting by number of total decks doesn’t do it as many favors as that sorting would do for other cards, either – it’s hovering around 669 (nice) decks or 6% of the last 11k decks registered. However, I don’t think this is going to be “OMG hidden gem, overnight $10 card” spec, but rather a “crazy I still get these in bulk after it’s crept up to $1/$2/$3 “card. It’s a bulk rare version of Kindred Discovery and while Kindred Discovery is much better, that “much better” comes with a hefty $40 price tag. Not only that, I am not 100% convinced that people with the scratch to pony up forty bones for an EDH card won’t play Reflections in the same deck. We’re looking at a card that’s potentially going to see some use the next time a tribal set comes out and people go back through old cards to see what could go in their deck. I don’t know if you buy these now, but they’re going to bottom out and I like it, especially the extended border versions, at bulk-ish because they’re going to creep up.

As far as historical cards go, I’d compare this to something like Icon of Ancestry, not in terms of its price, but in terms of its trajectory.

Icon goes in a lot more decks than a Blue Enchantment does, obviously, but I think the trajectory should be similar. Besides, you’re not turning a $3 card into a $5 one, you’re turning bulk into better than bulk, and that’s very doable. Look at a card that is printed less but is also narrower.

Besides, even if you’re not convinced about Reflections, I have good news, I was just buttering you up for the grand finale.

See this bad boy? What if I told you that if we sorted by # of inclusions, he’s actually the 10th-most-played card in the set? When you open up EDHREC, it places him in the 3d or 4th row depending on your monitor, and that’s not generally where people go for the “top” cards in the set. 10th-most-played card and it’s a tutor on a stick? Granted, it’s tougher to use than some tutors, but if he lives, it’s reusable. You can also force someone else to tutor, making him a nice pairing with Opposition Agent.

I don’t have a great 1 to 1 comparison, but I would like you to peep this graph in particular.

Again, let’s not get too caught up in the numbers, but let’s take a look at the trend. Sidisi caught on after it went out of print and it’s been on a steady climb ever since. I don’t know if Varragoth can be equally ubiquitous, but I also don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility that Varragoth will do some work.

It’s not quite a 1 to 1 comparison, again, but of the roughly 12,000 decks registered since Varragoth entered the system, Varragoth has been used in 6% of the Black-containing ones, the same percentage of total decks ever including Sidisi. I don’t know if we’ll be paying $13 at Card Kingdom for Varragoth ever, but I do think Varragoth is a very interesting card and I think it’s gone largely unnoticed.

And then there’s the thing that Sidisi doesn’t have – a super metal stylized version that costs basically the same as the set version. I think the foils and non-foils of this card will diverge from the regular version, making the showcase version a nice happy medium for people who don’t want to play the boring set version and don’t like foils. I expect an exponential price diversion, and the existence of the showcase version as a spec further insulates us from reprint risk given that the regular version, as tough to reprint as it may be with its Boast ability, is even tougher to reprint. These are all causes for celebration.

I spent a lot of time on two cards, but I wanted to prove I actually thought a lot about this. It’s weird speculating on in-print, non-mythic cards only played in one format, but if Sidisi can flirt with $15 on Card Kingdom, I don’t think it sucks to not dismiss Varragoth at 3, especially in a world where Opposition Agent and Rogue’s Passage exist.

That does it for me, folks. Join me next week where we’ll be talking about “totally not Harry Potter, you guys” the set. Be there. Until next time!

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!