Tag Archives: Commander

PROTRADER: A Cheapskate Casual’s Guide to Return to Ravnica Block

February 16, 2016 Danny Brown 7 Comments

I performed a similar breakdown to what you are about to read here, but for Battle for Zendikar, Khans of Tarkir, and Theros blocks. I ended that article with the idea that I would cover more blocks the following week, but as it turned out, there were other things to discuss, so this article has been delayed.

But no more! Let’s tackle the entirety of Return to Ravnica block today. Remember, I’m approaching this from the standpoint of a cube owner looking to make the sweetest cube possible but at the lowest possible price. We’ll be going through most cards that are both financially relevant and Cube-playable, though playability in other formats, possibility to make money, likelihood of impending reprints, and and all other relevant factors will be mentioned, as well.

Enough intro. Let’s get to the cards.

Return to Ravnica

A fairly juicy one to start. This is basically a must-include in the Golgari section of most cubes, and with the recent WMC promo revealed, the card has taken a hit of about a third of its all-time high of $20. Remember, though, that WMC promos won’t flood the market in the same way as a printing in an expansion, supplementary product, or preconstructed deck. Barring a reprint that actually puts a large number of cards on the market, Abrupt Decay really seems to have nowhere to go but up. If you don’t have all the copies you need, I’d prioritize picking them up over the next few months.

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After briefly hitting $25 shortly after its printing in Standard, this plummeted, and then the final kill shot was applied when it was reprinted in Commander 2015. With a Fair Trade Price of $1.62 as of this writing, I can’t imagine a world in which this nutso reanimator target is ever goes lower. And while I’m certainly not expecting a sudden or pronounced spike,if this can avoid another reprint, I think this is a great target for slow, steady, long-term growth.

You don’t see this in a ton of cubes these days, which I think is a shame. It’s a solid beater in RDW with a sometimes-relevant graveyard hate clause. A decent beater with a decent hate clause is pretty good, in my opinion. It’s basically bulk, so there’s no reason not to own as many copies as you want.

This might be wishful thinking on my part, but I feel like the shock lands can’t possibly go spike-free for much longer. It’s been more than three years since their reprint, Modern gets more popular by the minute, and the playerbase has grown since Return to Ravnica. You probably have all the shock lands you need by this point, but if not, don’t take their sub-$10 prices for granted.

An EDH staple, yes, but I don’t run this in my cube. In general, three-mana ramp spells in Cube need to provide two mana (think Worn Powerstone or Coalition Relic). So don’t feel like you need a copy for your list. If you really want one, this will keep going up until it’s reprinted, which is likely to happen eventually.

Similarly, this one is up to $8 (!!!), and will likely continue to go up until it is reprinted. This is one that I actually like in Cube, so if you need a copy, but it right away or resign yourself to waiting for the next reprint (or EDH banning).

With Legacy on the downswing and this banned in Modern, it seems like a fine time to pick these up. With a Fair Trade Price of $6.73, the card is at an all-time low. I must admit, though, that given how little play the card is seeing, I’m surprised it’s not below $5. I don’t see what would facilitate a price spike here other than a Modern unbanning or a major increase in Legacy events, both of which seem unlikely. You’re probably fine to wait on this one for these reasons, but again: all-time low.

Price memory based on this card’s Standard glory days are keeping this above $1, but there’s not really much we can do about that. I suspect only a reprint or ten years of better creatures get this below this price point.

This is less than $1, which is probably because singleton formats don’t really think this is much better than Oblivion Ring. It does kill multiple tokens and clones, though, so it is a little better. I cut this from my cube recently, as it was on the bubble and I have lots of this style of effect. Still, if you want a copy, you can’t do better than this price.

This has a Fair Trade Price of $2.49, which is silly given that Hero’s Downfall is $1.67, but probably has more to do with age than anything. The price isn’t going down without a reprint, and the card is certainly one of the better choices for your Rakdos section, so buy ’em if you want ’em.

At $3.47 for a planeswalker that sees occasional Modern play, this is one of the better buys in Magic, in my opinion. An eventual double-up seems inevitable, if not better.

This is the kind of card that could be the engine for a combo deck down the line. At less than $1, I don’t want to discount that. It’s definitely a bubble card in Cube, switching in and out of Golgari as needed. It’s a decent engine for GB reanimator, if you’re trying to support that archetype.

This has gone from $1 to $2 in the last year. It could certainly be playable in Modern in the right metagame and deck, so it’s worth keeping an eye on. Selesnya is really deep in Cube, so while the power level is here on this one, the space often isn’t. Still, that on-deck copy might be worth picking up before this becomes a $5 card.

For how good this was in Limited and even Standard, it’s kind of iffy in Cube. I see it in most lists, but not being able to go to the face really hurts eats utility in RDW-style decks. Red control, rare as it may be, loves this card, though, so it’s well worth including if you’re trying to keep red from being an aggro-only kind of color. A Commander 2015 reprint pushed this down to essentially bulk status, so now is a fine time to pick up any copies you may want.

See what I said about Desecration Demon (with the added factor of a contingent of casual players who love rats).

I don’t play this in my cube, but it’s like $1.14. For a mythic with an effect this powerful, I figured it was worth mentioning.

This has been a pretty solid $6 since it rotated. Barring a reprint or a marked increase in Modern play, I see no reason why it won’t stay there for at least a couple years.

The card’s price chart is showing a slow-but-steady increase, and it’s almost up to $5. That was close to its ceiling while in Standard, so I’m not particularly worried about this spiking any time soon. Still, at its current rate, it will be $6 before too long, so don’t wait if you need a copy.

It’s no Phyrexian Arena, but it’s still playable if you want to push the control aspect of black in your list. With three printings and the existence of Arena,you should be able to pick this card up at bulk pricing for some time to come.

Vraska kind of sucks, but she is also kind of okay as a five-mana Vindicate that gains you some life. The card recently went from $3.50 to $7, which blows my mind, because I think of it as a card that sucks. I was all about to tell you to buy copies for $3.50, but then I saw it was $7 and now I think you should not buy copies. This is a bad planeswalker from a highly opened, extremely popular set, with a Duel Deck printing to boot. For every one of these you would have bought, go buy two Jace, Architect of Thoughts instead.

Gatecrash

I could have sworn this was in this year’s Boros Commander deck, but I guess not. I think this is better in EDH than in Cube, but at a Fair Trade Price of 87 cents with only one printing, I could see this being a target for growth. I expect slow growth, to be sure, with a pretty high reprint risk and a low ceiling, so get these as throw-ins, not as primary targets.

More price memory nonsense, as this is currently almost $3. Then again, uncommon Spitemare is 83 cents, so maybe this is something casual players like. In any case, it’s been pretty steady at $3 for nearly two years, so if you want a copy, this is a perfectly reasonable price point.

Gatecrash was significantly less popular than Return to Ravnica, so the shock lands in this set are likely in shorter supply than their RTR counterparts. Buy accordingly.

Planeswalkers are super safe to buy in general, and Domri is no exception at a Fair Trade Price of $7.80. I miss the days when this was just barely released, when Modern players were going turn-three Domri into turn-four Phyrexian Obliterator. Why did that stop, anyway?

This card is really good on its own, but if you are playing black and/or blue devotion cards in your cube, it’s a must-add. It has the same price memory effect from Standard Mono-Black Devotion as Pack Rat and Desecration Demon, but it’s only $1.21 and is a fine buy at that price, even if it slightly inflated.

This card slowly but surely has worked its way from $1 to $2.50. It will continue growing in this slow, incremental fashion as long as it can avoid a reprint. It’s really only playable in Cube in conjunction with Dark Depths, but the new colorless symbol gives it some new, additional utility.

Dragon’s Maze

As far as control finisher go, this is right at the top of the list. And it’s only 39 cents?! I don’t think this is going up, but I’m surprised price memory doesn’t have it over $1.

This isn’t a Cube card by any means. I just wanted to mention it because Glimpse of Nature is more than $20 and this is a bulk rare. Could somebody break this, please?

Ral was like Domri in that his price was pretty solid for a couple years, but he’s starting to see some upward movement. He’s in a prominent color combo, is prominent among Vorthos types, and is from one of the least-opened sets in recent memory, so it’s not surprising to see a bit of upward movement. He also does some sneakily combolicious things with his first ability. I don’t see how a reprint could happen at this point, so if you need a copy, you probably shouldn’t put it off.

Whoa, this is $46 now. That is news to me. The luxury of a casual format like Cube is that I don’t actually need to have anything. At all. This card is really good, and it would certainly make the list if I owned one, but come on. I’m all-in on a reprint at this point, because there’s no way I’m paying so much for a utility creature that doesn’t even add that profound an effect to my cube. No thanks.

Top-Heavy

Man, the community at large already knew this, but going through this block, it reminded me how bad Gatecrash was compared to Return to Ravnica, and how bad Dragon’s Maze was compared to Gatecrash. There’s lots of EDH playables in Gatecrash that I didn’t cover, so if that’s your scene, I’d suggest going through the list. Dragon’s Maze, on the other hand, was filled with complete junk, and I regret that I will never get the minutes back that it took me to scroll through that awful list of cards.

Any Cube-playables that I failed to mention from Return to Ravnica block? Have a specific card you’re wondering about? Drop a comment below.

Jason Alt

How Are B&R Announcements Like Transformers?

January 20, 2016 Jason Alt 7 Comments

We got some surprising bans in Modern this weekend, but I’m not here to talk about that. You have probably read so many EDH articles from me between MTGPrice and Gathering Magic that I imagine people will wonder if they even want my opinions on Modern.

I mean, maybe they do. I said to buy Night of Soul’s Betrayal at $4 and it spiked hard, just in time to tank because no one needs to worry about beating Pestermite and Deceiver Exarch anymore.

But you’re right, you don’t want my opinion about Modern, so let’s not talk about the Modern bannings and their implications. If you want that, you can read literally every other finance article written this week. Instead, let’s delve into another interesting banning, one that no one is really talking about fully.

EDH makes its own banning announcement about around the same time as sanctioned Magic makes its announcement, the Monday after the prerelease, and EDH didn’t make its announcement early because they aren’t completely inept dipshits who banned Splinter Twin and Summer Bloom a few days early on MODO, prompting an early announcement. EDH made its announcement on time, jsut so they could make my Blue Monday even more depressing. And what an announcement it was.

* Commander-specific mulligan rules are removed
* Rule 4 (mana generation restriction) is removed
* Prophet of Kruphix is banned

The full announcement is available here.

The Obvious One

Yes, Prophet of Kruphix is banned. Yes, I’m upset. No, I don’t think this is super-duper relevant financially for the most part. However, there is language worth discussing.

With traditional boogeymen such as Consecrated Sphinx, you’re forced to expend a lot of your mana to cast it and will have a challenge protecting it as the turn goes around the table. With Prophet, it has virtual protection built in, negating that disadvantage almost immediately.

If this doesn’t say, “We’re not banning Consecrated Sphinx any time soon,” I don’t know what does, frankly. I don’t know that anyone was holding back on buying Sphinx, but there was always a little tension since it was always whined about in the same whiny paragraph as Prophet of Kruphix whenever whiners whined about EDH. With the future of Sphinx all but assured, new confidence in the card should push anyone who was on the fence about it off of the fence. Buy them now if you were holding off, because stock is low and I bet this dries up the last few loose copies. I expect this to end up higher than it is now.

I’m writing this on Monday and there are a lot of $18 copies, but some jackass is trying to get $40 for his on Amazon even though there are foils for $42 on also Amazon.

If this article was too late to pick these up at this price, you should follow me on Twitter (@jasonealt), I guess. I tweet about Magic finance sometimes and even when I don’t, I’m tweeting jokes, and isn’t that half of the reason you read my weekly screeds? If I write an article with no finance content, no one complains, but if I don’t put enough ha-has in your heads every paragraph, I get a bunch of emails asking what’s wrong. Reddit is full of bad advice and bad detective work, Facebook is full of racists, and Twitter is full of people asking dumb questions. My wife is so pregnant right now that we didn’t have any ornaments on the bottom two feet of our Christmas tree, and she could pop any minute and Netflix took House of Flying Daggers off of its list in November and I just noticed now. David Bowie and Glen Frey are dead and Ted Nugent is still alive. Lots is wrong right now. I guess what I’m trying to say is that this is a good writing gig and thanks for reading, nerds. If there are any Sphinxes left, make sure and get yours.

What takes a hit? EDH isn’t a format where a ban takes out one-fifteenth of your deck and can remove the one card that makes the deck work (unless it’s a Commander, obviously). It’s a format where you lose one percent of your deck and you can usually recover. Am I going to scrap my Vorel of the Hull Clade deck because I can’t cheat at Magic and take every turn? Nah. I’m going to put in a Seedborn Muse or one of the sweet hydras I don’t have room for. (I don’t expect Seedborn Muse to go up, by the way, because it’s not the same card and isn’t that important to do half of what Prophet did.)

I’m really deeply saddened to lose literally my favorite EDH card in Prophet’s banning, but I don’t see it making any of my decks worse. If you have a Kruphix deck where you make hella mana with Prophet of Kruphix, sure, I guess you get a little worse. In general, though, Prophet being banned means the guys with a big box full of Prophets and who traded for another foil one on Saturday (you know, me) eat it, and that’s about it. I think there is a bigger financial impact buried in the announcement and we should talk about it, but first…

The Irrelevant One

After examining several popular options, and coming up with a few of our own, we’ve concluded that the Vancouver Mulligan (with the standard first-one-free in multiplayer and a scry once you go to 6 or fewer) is the best option. The RC continues to use and recommend the Gis (“Mulligan 7s to a playable hand. Don’t abuse this”) for trusted playgroups, but that’s not something that can go in the rules.

Sell your Serum Powder, guise.

Seriously, this is a good change, but it doesn’t matter financially. I’m sure some nerd can come up with some circuitous sequence of events that will make someone some modicum of money and that would make the Rube Goldbergian sequences from the latter Final Destination films look like the plot to a porno by comparison. For the most part, though, this change is all upside and is largely irrelevant, but had to be addressed because it was included in the announcement and allowed me to set up some “The Obvious One, The Irrelevant One, and X” rule-of-three device for the article which is psychologically satisfying to me as a writer, and I’m glad it worked out that way.

The Non-Obvious One

There was another change that no one but the diehard EDH guys are talking about, and I think it’s worth delving into because it has a lot of financial repercussions that aren’t obvious, which is good because I’d feel silly telling you something you already knew. They made another rule change and this time it impacts “Rule 4” which I thought was the rule where if you think about anything, like dragons having sex with cars, someone will make porn out of it, but that’s rule 34 it turns out—and also, don’t google basically anything from this paragraph unless you’re in a public library or something. Not because someone will look up your browser history or anything, but because it’s apparently super socially acceptable to look at weird porn in public libraries if the homeless dudes at the library I go to are any indication.

Anyway, Rule 4 in EDH was a rule that limited the mana you could generate with respect to color. If your commander was Kruphix (be strong, Jason. Don’t let them see your tears) and you had a Birds of Paradise, you could tap it for blue or green and that’s all. Since there were no other colors in your general’s identity, you were limited to those two colors. This rule changed for two reasons.

…the mana system of Magic is very complicated, and trying to insert an extra rule there has consequences in the corners. Harvest Mage. Celestial Dawn. Gauntlet of Power. And now, colorless-only mana costs.

Being able to generate colorless mana more easily in Commander wasn’t going to break anything. But, it represented another “gotcha” moment for players, who were now likely to learn about Rule 4 when someone exploited the colorless loophole. We could paper over it (both “mana generated from off-color sources can only pay generic costs” and “you can’t pay a cost outside your color identity” were considered), but a lot of the flavor would be lost in the transition, defeating the purpose. Without the resonant flavor, Rule 4 was increasingly looking like mana burn – a rule that didn’t come up enough to justify it’s [sic] existence.

Not only was the rule a little bit archaic and not that necessary, it was going to be very confusing for players when you factored in the new “pure” colorless. You can’t use that Birds of Paradise for a mana to activate your Endbringer with this rules change. Basically, this is upside. Sure, you can’t use your City of Brass for a colorless mana to activate your new Oath of the Gatewatch Eldrazi, but you can tap that City of Brass to generate a black mana in that Kruphix deck to play a spell you have taken control of somehow. This change makes what we said about pain lands essentially being tri-lands in post-Oath EDH still true, and it also has a few implications for good cards becoming better. So if we have lands that generate any color in a deck that isn’t five colors, what’s going to get better?

Awww, yiss. Stealing their cards is fun, but now it’s way easier to cast those pilfered spells. Lands that tap for a mana of any color are suddenly very, very good in this deck. You can load up your mana base with a ton of them in a Sen Triplets deck. You can run three Vivid lands for starters—I don’t see any of them becoming all that expensive as a result of this, but Sen Triplets has a little room to grow if the deck gets more popular, and any cards that are used in that deck to a large extent get very good. Celestial Dawn, ironically, gets a little worse, or maybe just a little less necessary but still pretty good.

This guy plus Springleaf Drum, right?

Hey, this does stuff, right?

Any hope of getting a Lantern sub-$10 next week is a pipe dream. This is now a much better mana rock, as if it wasn’t insane before, and decks like Sen Triplets can use this to full effect. Stealing their spells and powering them is trivial with Lantern. I would flip these quickly, since I can’t imagine Lantern not getting a reprint in a supplementary product if it goes above $10.

This has been a penny stock of mine forever, and now it’s getting even better now that you can cast something other than their Sol Ring or Solemn Simulacrum or use this as a bad Jester’s Cap. Being able to cast anything is amazing if you can come up with the colored mana. Remember, you can’t just jam a Gruul Signet in a Sen Triplets deck, since the mana symbol on the card still precludes it, but cards that used to tap for colorless because they produced a mana not in your commander’s identity can now tap for any color.

It isn’t just casting their spells that gets better, either.

Casting this with five colors in a two-color deck is saucy as all get-out, and that’s exactly what you will be able to do if you have enough Mana Confluences and Forbidden Orchards in your mana base.

Ditto on this guy. These cards were never designed to be super amazing in two-color decks, especially not in EDH, but with a new paradigm, they are looking a lot better.

You mean I can use the lands I take? Sounds amazing.

At this point I may just be grasping at straws, huh?

Any G/x deck can jam this, now. That doesn’t suck.

Anything with converge or sunburst suddenly deserves a second look. Lands that add mana of any color to your mana pool should get a second look. Cards like Sylvan Caryatid and even Orochi Leafcaller get a second look. People spent a lot of time fretting over Prophet of Kruphix today, but looking a little deeper, we found a new paradigm in EDH that is a relatively rare but can be exploited for an advantage, and which can push a few cards up in price. Particularly, I’m very worried about how good Lantern is going to be all of a sudden, and its price could get out of control in the near term.

That does it for me this week. What do you think: was this super obvious or was it valuable analysis? Did I miss a card you think has upside with the rules change(s)? Am I underestimating how bad losing Prophet is going to be for your deck? Sound off in the comments and I’ll try to resist the urge to make fun of how you spell your name. Until next week!

Jason Alt

When Does a Staple Act Like a Rock?

January 13, 2016 Jason Alt 11 Comments

I always imagine there is one person who has never read one of my articles before. I imagine them reading the title and thinking, “What in the actual crap is this dude talking about?” and it makes me laugh. There is a non-zero chance even people who read my article from last week are confused. Either way, maybe brush up on that piece because I introduced a few metaphorical concepts that we’re going to continue here.

Last week we talked about identifying cards that either can make other cards go up by how they impact the format (rocks, so called for the way they aren’t interesting themselves but can generate ripples when thrown into a pond) or are going to impact the format directly by virtue of their own power and be used across a variety of different decks (staples).

I only mentioned the card once, but I really structured how I thought about all of those concepts around the card Eldrazi Displacer. Do you like the card Eldrazi Displacer? Do you want to talk about the card Eldrazi Displacer? Would you like to see me spend 1,800 more words on it? Because that’s what’s up. In case you need your memory refreshed, and also because I love posting the picture of the card so I can admire it in all of its glory, here it is again. Your new overlord.

If you know anything about EDH, you know this card is going to be ridiculous and will make people re-evaluate mana bases to see if they have the non-generic colorless to support this card. I feel the same way about Endbringer, so I think the first topic we should tackle is the effect that non-generic colorless mana will have on manabases and other cards. There is real upside here.

I consider Eldrazi Displacer to be a future staple. I don’t know if its adoption in EDH is initially going to be enough to make non-foil copies of the card worth any money, and for a card that’s just a staple, that’s usually the end of the conversation. Its sheer power level influences its ubiquity and its ubiquity influences its price. However, there are times in this wacky durdle format that I love (and I also assume you love, because when I ask people who want to make money on Magic cards but don’t personally play EDH themselves, they look at me like I asked them to donate a kidney), where a card that looks a lot like a staple of the format can act a lot like a rock. It pushes up prices of the cards in the deck with it without meaning to.

This is odd behavior for a staple. Chromatic Lantern didn’t do that. So why should this? Well, I’m obviously going to tell you why. That’s sort of my whole deal.

Effect on Mana

At first glance, this looks more mana-hungry than Deadeye Navigator because it costs three to activate to Navigator’s two and requires you to have true colorless, which could be harder to generate than we think. However, the need for colorless mana and ways to turn generic mana into colorless can really get some use.

This card has been reprinted into just about powder, and it could see another reprinting in Commander 2016 (although it didn’t in Commander 2014) so that limits its upside a bit, but this is the sort of card you want to be looking at. You can turn generic mana into colorless mana at the rate of three for three. That doesn’t look like much, but this sort of card is useful in a manabase that needs true colorless in ways it wasn’t necessary before. Basalt Monolith prima facie is pretty inefficient, but as a mana filter, it’s pretty saucy. There has to be some way to make some money from this card seeing more play.

The Unlimited printing seems to be shrugging off the ugly reprints nicely. I like how this looks compared to Commander and Revised, but its odd centering may bother some. Still, they aren’t making more of this particular card, and I like how it’s retaining value despite not seeing more play. If it sees more play, we can pretty safely predict there will be some upside.

Compared to a less efficient, more expensive card, Basalt Monolith starts to look like what it is and less like a bad Grim Monolith, which is in turn just a bad Sol Ring. Let’s ignore the price of Grim Monolith since it’s predicated on other formats, but let’s remember Grim Monolith is expensive because it’s a good card—and if Basalt Monolith can be better in our decks, the price has upside.

I think true colorless mana is going to put some pressure on some manabases to change. I talked about generic and colorless mana and its implications in depth in a previous article which still has a lot of info worth brushing up on. Cards that generate true colorless are going to be in more demand with silly Eldrazi that require this specific mana and those cards will see some upside based on the new demand. I won’t rehash the examples from that piece here—take some time to reread it if you want a better sense of what could be affected.

It seems like Eldrazi Displacer is powerful enough that people are willing to change up their manabases, especially if they jam a few more Eldrazi like Endbringer to make the most of that new manabase. I like pain lands a lot in the future, especially the ones which generate white mana.

Archetypes It Bolsters

Decks that are already decks are going to love this card. Basically, if you go to EDHREC and look for decks that are playing Mistmeadow Witch and/or Deadeye Navigator you will see quite a lot of action. Roon. Brago. Reaper King (awww yiss!). Augustin. Phelddagrif. These decks are already doing stupid stuff with Mistmeadow Witch. The list gets even bigger when you add Deadeye Navigator. Sakashima. Tasigur. Sedris. Silumgar. So many decks that are using this silly ability. While only decks that play white benefit from Eldrazi Displacer, it’s fun to see how many decks cards like this effect. But it’s worth looking a little deeper, because there are some decks where Eldrazi Displacer is more than just a second copy of Navigator or Witch.

This creature comes into play with seven counters on him that can be removed for colorless mana. You remove all seven, putting seven colorless mana in your pool. Use three of those mana to activate Eldrazi Displacer, removing Rasputin from the game before returning him with all of his seven counters restored. Do this a lot of times to net four colorless mana each time you do it. Proceed to drill everyone in the face with whichever way to use infinite colorless mana you’d like to use to end all of their lives. This doesn’t make this deck more than a turn faster, but it does give it one more avenue to go infinite, and it’s a two-card combo plus your mana outlet rather than you having to come up with blue mana for Deadeye. This makes Rasputin a much better deck than it already was, and it was already pretty good. Rasputin has demonstrated the ability to hit $50 or more and with copies available below $40, this seems like a good example of a card whose archetype is bolstered disproportionately. Eldrazi Displacer works with Rasputin better than it works with almost any other Commander which can play it in its deck, and that has to matter. Rasputin is old and it’s not like it’s getting a reprint.

This could lead to some people building a new Brago or Derevi or Lavinia deck which means staples in those decks have upside. I’d absolutely watch cards like Great Whale, Peregrine Drake, and the big one:

Palinchron was on the way up anyway, and any little boost could just steepen the curve.

This is all fascinating for a card that isn’t a legendary creature. It’s a staple that’s behaving like a rock quite a bit with all the ripples it’s creating.

True “rocks” don’t just bolster old archetypes.

New Archetypes It Creates

Eldrazi Displacer is white, that much is obvious. But did you know it also wasn’t blue? That’s sort of important, because Mistmeadow Witch and Deadeye Navigator and Venser, the Sojourner and Grover from Sesame Street are all blue, and that limits the number of decks they can go in. While Deadeye Navigator is played in decks like Tasigur that Witch can’t go in, it can’t go in some of the non-blue decks with white the Displacer can go in. If there’s no blue at all, Witch and Navigator aren’t an option, but all of a sudden Displacer is.

Are there commanders that have white but not blue that could use this? Of course there are! It may take some time for people to figure out exactly which white-but-not-also-blue decks they want to jam Displacer in and which archetypes can be created. In the mean time, we do know which cards pair with it, and that’s important.

This took quite a blow from being forgotten by Standard players and getting a reprint, but it has growth potential, especially since this can be abused in decks without blue. There are enough angels with good enter-the-battlefield effects that Eldrazi Displacer could bolster one deck right off the bat.

This badass and all the cards that go in the deck suddenly look a little sexier. FTV Angels (don’t google that exact thing. It’s porn. You get porn.) got people jazzed about angels and Displacer does dumb things with basically every angel and demon in the deck. Once, you couldn’t go nuts with an Angel of Despair that you could tutor for, but now you can. And that’s just dandy.

Hey, look at a combo that was only available in decks with blue before. Isn’t that dandy? Everything is dandy. And that’s the point.

Lots of decks are going to want to use Eldrazi Displacer as a mono-white Deadeye Navigator, but it has defensive properties as well. If you use it on an opponent’s creature, it leaves combat and comes back in, tapped. This can keep you from dying to certain Voltron decks until they give their commander ~~protection from white~~ or creatures, it can lock down big beaters and creatures that have to hit you to take effect, and can generally just keep a lot of damage out of your face. Tokens? Dead meat. Forever.

What’s one last way a card that seems like it’s bound to be an EDH staple is going to act a bit like a rock, and therefore a card whose own price may actually matter (and go up from where it is now)?

Effect on Other Formats

EDH is EDH. EDH rocks tend to not be worth a ton of money sometimes (Nekusar) compared to staples (Mana Reflection). But EDH is only one format, and it’s just one place where the cards can impact play and therefore be financially relevant. Edric was a great commander, but his price really soared when people played him briefly in Legacy. The speculation community as a whole, as well as armchair speculators reading tweets from pro players, all bought in heavily to Edric and other first-generation EDH commanders. Even a modicum of playability in Legacy set off a chain reaction.

Could we see Eldrazi Displacer make some movies in Standard? There are potential combos with Standard cards, and some of them let me kill people with Zulaport Cutthroat, which is all I ever wanted to do as a Magic player. Any interest in Standard, even interest that doesn’t end up substantiated by sustainable play, can give this card itself a chance to move up in price. If it does work out, it can bring other cards with it to the top. Those speculations are outside the scope of this article series and better left to Standard specialists, but an EDH staple can find its price affected by things no one anticipated.

I was taking my time and trading for See the Unwritten at a leisurely pace when Standard speculation about upcoming Eldrazi kicked the price in the ass, and it still hasn’t recovered. It’s good to be on top of things, because you never know what Standard could do to upend your plan of, “Wait to get this for cheap at rotation,” and the price may never get to below where it was when you decided to wait.

Eldrazi Displacer is a very special card. It’s going to cause all kinds of tumult, and it’s going to make all kinds of shenanigans possible. I personally welcome it and can’t wait to jam it in every deck. Cheap foils? Sure hope so. Expensive non-foils? Maybe, and I hope I’m invested if it happens. All I know is that there’s more than meets the eye with this card, and it’s going to cause more ripples than any other card in the set. Seeing what this card can do will help us immensely if we see a card like it on future spoilers. Until next week!

Jared Yost, The Gilded Goblin

OGW Spoilers I’m Excited About

January 11, 2016 Jared Yost 6 Comments

The first card I want to talk about that I’m really excited for from Oath of the Gatewatch is Nissa, Voice of Zendikar. I haven’t seen too many mentions of this planeswalker yet but I want to point out that she is a perfect slot into the previous Pro Tour breakout deck, Bant Tokens from Pro Tour BFZ.

As you might recall, Sam Black and crew piloted this deck to amazing success at the last Standard Pro Tour. Now, I’m not saying that this deck is going to take down a huge tournament right out of the gate again – that is presuming too much on my part, where right now really I’m just trying to get a feel where the metagame might be going. Dark Jeskai is a much faster and more consistent deck than Bant Tokens, which is why it has fallen out of favor since the release of Magic Origins and the ubiquitous adoption of Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy (the little Jace that could). However, Nissa adds some versatility and stall to the deck that is desperately needed.

Putting out 0/1 plant tokens and having the ability to pump your whole team is nothing to scoff at. She fits right into the curve at three mana, with a four mana followup Gideon being extra special.

Plus, since we’re playing eight planeswalkers in a deck like this there might even be room for the new Oath of Nissa enchantment. At one mana, we can’t discount the usefulness of this enchantment since it acts practically as a one mana land tutor (and if there are better cards than lands well so much the better!) and then on top of that provides perfect mana for the three mana Nissa into the four mana Gideon, which normally would be somewhat difficult at the best of times due to needing two green for Nissa and two white for Gideon. Being Legendary for this enchantment isn’t even a drawback – you’ll never need more than one in play at a time, so feel free to keep casting more to continue digging for cards you might need off the top of your deck. I really like this enchantment a ton, since it feels like a fixed Sylvan Library or Sensei’s Divining Top that is still fine for a format like Standard.

Nissa is currently preselling for $20, which I think is extremely cheap for a planeswalker that could definitely have four copies in the updated deck. Again, along with cards like Hangarback Walker and Gideon, Nissa adds another element of ongoing token generation and threat that needs to be dealt with. Typically, three mana planeswalkers have proven to be powerful and I would not be surprised at all for Nissa to help new and existing archetypes as the OGW Standard metagame pans out.

Oath of Nissa is preselling for a bit more at $6-$7, which I think is pricey for a Standard rare. Remember, we are in a totally new era for Standard rare card prices, so I’m not expecting Oath of Nissa (even if it is found in a playset in a Tier 1 deck) to ever stay above $5 for long. There are just too many Standard rares out there these days, and if you consider the amount of product that will be opened for Expeditions in this set, you have a recipe for long term lower prices across the board on all set rares. I mean, if Siege Rhino could never break $5 for long, I certainly don’t expect this enchantment to.

Next, I want to talk about this guy, Reflector Mage. This card seems really good to me. Obviously since it is an uncommon, the price ceiling is going to be something like $2, especially since it is a multicolor… but wow is that effect nice! I mean, this card could even see play in Modern or Legacy. Not being able to cast the card again during your opponent’s next turn is devastating, especially for combo-oriented decks. Plus, you don’t even have to cast this guy to get the effect – all you have to do is have him enter the battlefield, so the trigger still works with stuff like Aether Vial. Just wow, very excited for this card and the possibilities it has in Standard and beyond.

OK, now this card is what I think that Snapcaster Mage was supposed to be. Now, this card has limits that Snapcaster does not – first, it doesn’t have flash and it will always cost at least five mana to cast. So we’re not going to see any four mana Anticipates with a body being cast in Standard. Even though this is a terrible Snapcaster for eternal, you are getting a ton of value for you mana when playing this in Standard. It provides a 4/4 body with (some form of) evasion that primarily allows you to flashback an instant or sorcery card from your graveyard. Just because this isn’t Snapcaster Mage doesn’t mean that we should count the Dark-Dwellers out – on the contrary, I think this card will be great in Standard and I expect to see Atarka Red or other decks adapt it quickly in the new metagame.

Also, Commander is a Thing…

Along with some awesome new Standard tools, we’re getting some great Commander staples that I’m sure have been causing some buzz since their release.

Obviously leading the wave is Kozilek, the Great Distortion, which is the big nasty Eldrazi that all the casuals have been swooning over ever since #Oathgate happened where key pieces of the set were spoiled on /r/magictcg. This guy is going to have casual appeal for years and years to come, so the play here is to wait about three months after the set’s release and then pick up your copies for stocking away for a rainy day. Like the past Eldrazi bretheren (and even the new Ulamog, which is starting to rise in price again…) this will be a great addition to your portfolio for years to come. The key is to time the market right and try to get in on the low point, hopefully when it hasn’t found a home in Standard and the set has reached market saturation.

Holy crap is this Sphinx bonkers in Commander! As if blue wasn’t oppressive enough as it is! If this “resolves” (since there are ways of getting rid of this on the stack that aren’t counterspells) it is going to be so, so difficult to stop the combo player that just dropped this thing on the table.

This card has to be the one of the most protected cards in Magic, and that is saying something. Yes, you can still wipe this with something like Wrath of God, but you’re playing against a blue player! Who is almost always going to have countermagic to back this up. Sure, it costs a ton of mana, but in more casual playgroups I can totally see this thing running away with the game.

I’m actually really glad this card isn’t Legendary, because having this as your general would be super oppressive. Geist of Saint Traft is pretty bad but this would be even worse since you can’t counter it. Just my two cents, maybe I’m overrating this card, but when I first saw it I couldn’t believe that Wizards made a card that is such a potential lockdown against you.

Finally, the last card I want to mention is Thought-Knot Seer, which has been getting a ton of buzz from the Commander crowd. A four mana 4/4 with Thoughtseize+exile attached is really, really good. The fact that you get to let an opponent draw a card is irrelevant in multiplayer, since you can make an ally or other opponent that isn’t a combo player have a card.

Since most Commander decks play lands that generate colorless mana, this is an easy slot into many decks. I for one can’t wait to update my Karn, Silver Golem deck with all the great new toys in the set, including putting basic Wastes into there so I don’t get blown out by cards like Ruination or Wave of Vitriol!

Final Thoughts

All in all, I’m really excited for OGW for both Standard, Commander, and beyond. This set is much more exciting than Battle for Zendikar, because not only do we get Wastes and add a brand new Basic Land to the game, but we also get much more powerful Eldrazi and Allies (along with an Ally Commander, which has a five color Commander identity and is easy to cast!) that many players are going to desire.

Not sure if I’m onboard with whole 2HG theme for the release or whatever – personally, just always give me one-on-one matches. For those that enjoy that, though, you have something else on top of all the new cards to look forward to!

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