Tag Archives: EDH

Hobbit Banquet: Your Complete Guide to Upgrading the Food & Fellowship Commander Deck

With the Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle Earth Magic the Gathering set now fully revealed it’s safe to say that Commander fans have plenty to be excited about. From fantastic new commanders to excellent new staples in multiple colors, the LOTR experiment seems set to be a great success even without the intense hunt for the 1/1 The One Ring.

Alongside the main set release, WoTC has also tabled the usual slate of four new pre-constructed Commander decks. In looking over the deck lists, one of the decks in particular jumped out at me as being particularly synergistic and primed for easy upgrades. Take a gander at the Food & Fellowship deck over here. And here is my upgraded version: The Hobbit’s Banquet.

It should come as no shock that Wizards wants their Frodo and Sam deck to be popular, but given that Food has been one of the more underwhelming tokens in Commander play to date, the freshly acquired power level of this strategy based on all the new cards may catch many players off guard.

The first key pillar of strength in this list is your access to dual commanders. The partner ability has already proven to be highly effective in strategies like Tymna and Thrasios, and the synergy between Frodo and Sam is much more specific. Frodo’s role here is to leverage consistent life gain from food tokens and other sources of life gain to ensure that you can achieve all four levels of the ring tempting you by the mid-game, and in doing so, generate a ton of card advantage. Let’s review what the temptations the ring has to offer, shall we?

So along the way we get to keep choosing a new ring bearer, and eventually our ring bearer is legendary, can’t be blocked by creatures with greater power, loots on attack, forces blockers to be sacrificed at end of combat and hits all opponents for 3 if it hits a player. That’s a pretty good stack of bonuses, especially when the emblem can’t be interacted with and the bonuses last all game once you have them. Sure, they can keep killing your ring bearer, but the reality is that in this deck, they are going to have other threats to worry about that don’t care about attacking. This means Frodo will often get to do his job pretty well at least into the mid-game, where your combo kill plan can take over.

As the other half of your dynamic Commander duo, Sam is an excellent engine for any food deck. He guarantees food production every turn, and makes all food cheaper to activate by 50%! That’s a very important set of abilities for this deck, so generally speaking you will want to spend more resources protecting Sam than Frodo.


Food Engine Supporting Cast

While Sam and Frodo form the core of your synergy, their friends greatly expand your combo potential and all work together as a finely tuned value engine building towards draining or bleeding out the table.

Merry, Warden of Isengard and Pippin, Warden of Isengard provide excellent food synergy in this deck, and also help further your theme of constant access to key creatures via their partner ability enabling you to pull the missing warden out of your deck when you cast the other. Merry rewards artifact production with 1/1 lifelink tokens, which all of your token doublers interact with and the lifelink on those tokens assists with your life gain synergies. Pippen makes food tokens for one mana while also providing an overrun effect for the mid to late game once you have a pile of food. Both cards being halflings means they are also solid ring bearers and can make good use of Bilbo’s Ring.

Meriadoc Brandybuck provides backup for Sam’s food during the attack phase strategy. Banquet Guests cast into a board with four food tokens would cost WG for an 8/8 that can sac food to gain indestructible until end of turn, marking it as a sneaky Hogaak variant in this build. Frodo Baggins ramps up your incidence of ring temptations and provides an additional ring bearer option.

Rosie Cotton of South Lane makes one or more food tokens and rewards further token production of any kind with +1/+1 counters on any creature other than herself. This was very good in games where she showed up. Peregrin Took both doubles food production AND lets you trade food for cards. Excellent! Treebeard, Gracious Host was a monster in the games we played last night, adding two or more food to the table while immediately providing the threat of growing itself or a ring bearer to massive size in short order.

Lobelia, Defender of Bag End lets you sac your array of artifacts to either cast free spells or drain the table. Bilbo, Birthday Celebrant ramps up the life gain, and provides a ridiculous end game should said gain get out of control. Samwise Gamgee helps crank out food and then turn that into additional redundancy if you need to retrieve one of your many historic cards from the yard.

Token Doublers

Cards that can double (or quadruple or more!) your token output are fantastic in this deck. Not only are they ratcheting up your food production, but they also have a shot at multiplying incidental creature tokens in the build from cards like Farmer Cotton, as well as clues and treasure from Academy Manufactor or Smothering Tithe. As such, you will definitely want all of Parallel Lives, Anointed Procession, Mondrak Glory Dominus and possibly a Doubling Season in a flex slot. These cards all interact, to additionally multiply token production from 2x to 4x and beyond, so critical mass is a good way to end the game in combination with your drain effects. Chatterfang, Squirrel General is a natural fit here from multiple angles, providing a forest walking ring bearer, a ton of squirrel tokens to double and some creature control on an adorable body.

Win Conditions

This deck doesn’t need to win in combat at all, allowing you to ignore a lot of what your opponents are up to in your average game and just focus on establishing and protecting your engine. Your primary route to victory will typically consist of overwhelming artifact token production leading to mass artifact sac to drain the table.

Agent of the Iron Throne (CLB) can’t be used as a background in the command zone here but it is still excellent in the 99 given that you have two commanders and are likely to have one in play to bleed the table whenever you sac artifacts. Nadier’s Nightblade (CMR) is even better, as it loses the requirement for a commander to be present, and drains rather than bleeds. And of course Mirkwood Bats is the nastiest of all, bleeding each opponent on both your token creation AND sacrifice.

Disciple of the Vault can only bleed one opponent at a time, but it does so whenever anyone sacs a treasure so it seriously punishes a treasure heavy pod for just one black mana.Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose and Sanguine Bond punish a single opponent for your constant life gain. Add in Exquisite Blood to complete the two card combo if you’re into that sort of thing. Bloodchief Ascension furthers your table drain shenanigans.

I prefer Protection Racket in my drain focused decks, but you may decide to find room for Black Market Connections as an alternative. Finally, Felidar Sovereign presents a must kill threat, lest you win the game on the following turn. Aetherflux Reservoir can fill a similar role. I haven’t included Bolas’s Citadel here, but that’s also an option.

Protection Spells

As with most low slung creature combo decks, you are particularly vulnerable to sweepers and given that your action relies heavily on both creatures and artifacts, you aren’t going to be looking to run many sweepers of your own. Instead, you will likely want some efficient point removal, defensive enchantments and a quiver of instant speed protection spells to protect your creature combo engines.

Heroic Intervention, Teferi’s Protection, Akroma’s Will and Clever Concealment provide an excellent core protection package. Given your access to dual commanders, find room for Flawless Maneuver if you like instead of my chosen Shalai, Voice of Plenty. Serra Paragon recovers most of what you might care about ending up in your graveyard.

The One Ring provides a turn cycle of respite from most threats with trailing card draw balanced against life loss you can easily stomach given all of your food tokens.  Bilbo’s Ring does excellent work in this deck full of hobbits and ring tempting, making sure your ring bearer is unblockable and hexproof on your turn and drawing a card per attack cycle in a deck that could care less about the single life loss. When the ring is on Frodo, you get to draw up to 3 cards per attack via the combination of rings and abilities.

Flowering of the White Tree puts a tax on targeting your various legendary ring bearers and combo pieces, while simultaneously turning them into bigger threats and doubling your creature token size. Boromir, Warden of the Tower is a fresh white EDH staple that does double duty here, protecting your team and shutting down cascade shenanigans, pitch spells and any other free spells your opponents are trying to leverage. Samwise the Stouthearted provides additional protection for your key engine pieces while adding a ring temptation trigger.

Removal

I’ve chosen to go light on removal here, but season to taste. For now I’m running just Path to Exile, Swords to Plowshares, and Claim the Precious to deal with key threats. Voracious Fell Beast provides a solid ring bearer that can kill three creatures and make three food tokens. Beyond that you’re looking to race to the end game by draining the table so get your your spices and get cooking.


Life Gain Doublers

Boon of Reflection neatly doubles all your life gain. So does Rhox Faithmender and both cards are auto includes here.

Utility Cards

The Ring Tempts You ensures you max the ring benefits quickly and draws cards everytime you name a ring bearer, again, for life you can generally afford to lose. Lotho, Corrupt Sherriff is a great commander in its own right, and does solid work here generating treasure tokens at largely irrelevant cost of life. Likewise, Orchish Bowmasters is a great new black EDH staple that does the same kind of work here as Lotho, namely via punishing opponents who are trying to do too much by pinging any target and providing creature tokens that can end up doubled if you don’t already have one. Rapacious Guest adds additional synergies between food and the attack step.

The Great Henge
isn’t at it’s best here, but as The Party Tree box topper, it still is likely to cost 4 mana or so in the mid-game and provide card advantage, mana ramp and consistent life gain. Shadowspear helps ensure you have consistent access to lifegain and trample for your ring bearer, with the side benefit of letting you remove hexproof and indestructible from opposing threats, and can be searched up with Urza’s Saga.  Revive the Shire gives you a regrowth effect that also incidentally makes a food. Delighted Halfing provides an additional Cavern of Souls style protection from counterspells on key legendary spells, of which this deck has plenty. Gilded Goose doubles as mana and food production, so it’s a no-brainer. Trail of Crumbs ties everything together, both generating food and allowing you to turn food into cards.

Blind Obedience slows your opponents down while letting you leverage spells cast into additional table drain. Shelob, Child of Ungoliant might be a hot new spider commander but she also does solid work in this deck as a massive threat with built in protection and the ability to significantly upgrade dead utility creatures from your opponents into food with upside. Denethor, Ruling Steward provides additional table drain, and his creature replacement ability interacts really well with your token doublers. Sheoldred, the Apocalypse bleeds your opponents for card draw while boosting your life gain and providing a solid ring bearer.

War of the Last Alliance searches up two key legends out of your deck and then sets up a big attack phase while tempting your ring bearer. Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit grows a creature, draws a card and makes two food, capping off with a big creature token payoff. Dauthi Voidwalker does its usual thing here, keeping opposing yards in check while also presenting a nasty ring bearer. Angelic Accord rewards your constant life gain with 4/4 angel threats that can present an alternate win condition. Inkshield goes a step further, heading off a potential killing blow from an opponent and likely unleashing a devastating torrent of tokens from your token doubler effects. Kambal, Consul of Allocation provides additional incidental drain and Esper Sentinel draws cards for minimal cost as per usual and Smothering Tithe does the same for treasures that might get doubled. Necropotence cleanly draws a ton of cards given your life gain potential.

Nasty End and Deadly Dispute both allow you to trade up easily on cards in a deck with so many cheap Legends and artifacts. I’ve been trimming tutors from my decks lately, but clearly Worldy Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Eladamri’s Call, Demonic Tutor and so forth can all boost your consistency in high powered pods.

Key Lands

The Shire offers additional food production which is perfect here. Minas Tirith provides optional card draw during your frequent attacks and rarely comes into play tapped.

Because you’re gaining so much life, you can absolutely lean into the pain lands in this deck and run Mana Confluence, City of Brass, Horizon Canopy, Ancient Tomb, Brushland, Caves of Koilos and Silent Clearing.

Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth auto fix for two of your main colors. If you’ve got them, the full suite of fetch lands and shock lands are a lock. Add as many of the CMR/CLB duals as you have on color. Urza’s Saga can get half of the Cat Oven combo or Shadowspear, Sol Ring or Mana Crypt. If you’ve got a Gaea’s Cradle it will do work here. With so many powerful enchantments in the deck, Hall of Heliod’s Generosity is likely to do work. Volrath’s Stronghold does the same for your key Legends.


The Specs

Now from an MTGFinance perspective, speculators and players should likely focus on cards with lower supply, less printings and a high chance of being added to variants on this build.

A couple of key options include:

Academy Manufactor FEAs, $16 and climbing with plenty of existing EDH demand being expanded upon with the advent of this food deck
Boon Reflection, last seen in Double Masters and available near $5 in both foil and non-foil though it could see a reprint in a Secret Lair or Commander Masters this year
Rhox Faithmender foils, single printing from 2013, currently near $10 but headed to $20+ if it doesn’t catch a reprint
Feasting Troll King is a solid threat in this deck if your mana base can support it, and FEAs are single printing, low supply and sitting at about $10.
Angelic Accord hasn’t caught a reprint since IMA, and foils are sitting hear $6 with very low supply
– This deck generates pressure for Parallel Lives, Anointed Procession and Doubling Season, but that pressure base is already large, and at least some of those have to catch a reprint in Commander Masters.

Here again is a link to my upgraded version of The Hobbit’s Banquet, all ready to serve as a jumping off point for your own culinary delights. Bon appetit!

James Chillcott is the owner of MTGPrice.com, Senior Partner at Advoca, a designer, adventurer, toy art fanatic and an avid Magic player and collector since 1994. He has been producing MTGFinance content since 2012.

PROTRADER: Unbanning Speculation

How about this week for bannings and unbannings! Gotta love when changes happen all over the place, in an apparently random way. The end result is important, though, and I think the Felidar ban is good for Standard. Shake it up!

This week, and next, I’m going to look at the currently-banned cards in a couple of formats and see what I’d like to have on hand in case of unbanning. Protean Hulk made some amazing gains when it was unbanned in Commander, and frankly, I’m looking forward to seeing how I can abuse the card in a couple of different decks.

I didn’t see the Hulk coming, but I did have a stockpile of Kokusho, the Evening Star when it got unbanned, and that was a nice play. So let’s start with Commander this week, and see what we can speculate on and what we should not get.

Power Nine: Not coming off the banned list ever, the RC is pretty clear about this. Mana Vault being legal is indeed an inconsistent application of their ‘no fast mana’ rule, but if you can get Power you should do so on general principle.

Chance of unbanning: less than 5%

 

Library of Alexandria: So this card is not legal, while the literally-twice-as-expensive The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale is. I would advocate owning a Library, as it’s got nowhere to go but up. There’s a chance this gets unbanned in Commander, since lots of disgusting things are legal.

Chance of unbanning: 25%

 

Balance: This has been banned for a long long time. If the effect was limited to creatures, it’d likely be unbanned already, but the effect on lands and hand is a very unfair and unfun experience.

Chance of unbanning: 0%

 

Biorhythm: The RC is not big on ‘play this and win’ cards, so I don’t think Biorhythm ever gets banned. I’d like to say something like ‘Green players need to stick it to those creatureless Blue players!!’ but the truth is that G/U decks are super strong. Jerks.

Chance of unbanning: 0%

 

Braids, Cabal Minion: This would be okay except that mana acceleration is so very good, and it’s easy to get this out early and lock the game down. If you’re locking everyone else down, go ahead and giggle, but everyone else hopes you die of paper cuts.

Chance of unbanning: 0%

 

Coalition Victory: I feel like this should be legal, and considering the hoops that have to be jumped through, I think this has real potential to be unbanned at some point. It is a rare from a small third set (plus the Timeshifted version) and people would immediately jump on the hype. I would advocate picking some up, considering that regulars are fifty cents and foils are under $3. I get that you’re thinking ‘But it wins the game on the spot!’ and my reply would be “Look at this Reddit post and tell me Protean Hulk isn’t just as bad?”

Chance of unbanning: 65%

 

Channel: Fast mana is not good, especially with Eldrazi running around. I don’t think this is ever unbanned.

Chance of unbanning: 0%

 

Emrakul, the Aeons Torn: This was a sore point for a long time in the EDH community, and the banning felt inevitable. This wouldn’t get cheated into play much, but it was not terribly hard to build a deck that accelerates well to the spaghetti monster. I think it’s unlikely but possible, and its use in Modern and Legacy already has affected prices.

Chance of unbanning: 10%

 

Erayo, Soratami Ascendant: This prevents people from doing things, and it’s in blue, so you’d likely need three spells to get rid of this. Unfun and noninteractive means it’s probably never coming back. However, it’s already at $9/$24 foil, indicating that there’s a lot of people who like this card.

Chance of unbanning: 5%

 

Fastbond: What makes this card busted is the potential with Crucible of Worlds, paired with Strip Mine and Wasteland. The problem isn’t someone playing three lands on turn one, it’s someone paying a life to destroy a land.

Chance of unbanning: 0%

 

Gifts Ungiven: I always forget this card is banned, but really, it needs to be. It’s super busted, to go find Time Warp, Time Stretch, Relearn, and Call to Mind. I call that the ‘Flipped Table Special’ and that’s before I get into Unburial Rites combos. It’s already at $5-$7 due to Modern and other formats, despite being in two different Modern Masters sets.

Chance of unbanning: 25%

 

Griselbrand: Nope. Sorry. Never. Starting at 40 life and without even a ‘shuffle me from the graveyard’ clause, it’s far too good. I played with it during the short period it was legal, and it’s precisely as busted as you fear.

Chance of unbanning: 0%

 

Karakas: It’s not that the effect is unfair, it’s how free it is being on an untapped land. A lot of Commander decks wouldn’t fold to this, but it’s so easy and free and tremendously effective.

Chance of unbanning: 0%

 

Leovold, Emissary of Trest: I’m aware that this was designed while Tiny Leaders was hot stuff, and either ability would have been fine separately, but these two together are unfun. That said, I think he’s too expensive to spec on right now, even though I don’t think he will be banned forever.

Chance of unbanning: 15%

 

Painter’s Servant: Originally, this was legal and Grindstone was ruled to be too good. The RC decided to switch the cards, and Grindstone is now legal. I highly doubt that this ever gets unbanned, but it’s not a zero-percent chance.

Chance of unbanning: 10%

 

Panoptic Mirror: Cast it. End of the turn, imprint a take turns card. Defend until it’s your turn. Take all the turns. GG. Never ever, sorry.

Chance of unbanning: 0%

 

Primeval Titan: This was a longtime battle to get banned. It’s severely powerful, and fetches up whatever you need, though most often it was Cabal Coffers and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth. The presence of this card quickly becomes a battle of control and copy effects, or one person gets way far ahead on mana. This isn’t coming off anytime soon, but it’s just good enough in Modern that I wouldn’t mind having a few on hand.

Chance of unbanning: 10%

 

Prophet of Kruphix: Oh, I want this to be unbanned. Please. Please! I’ve got a stack of these that I traded for at $1-$2 each. Infinite turns on one card is too good, though, and this card enables everything in the two best Commander colors.

That being said…I’m glad I already have my stack. This is a ridiculously good card in casual circles, and it’s at a low point in its price history.

Chance of unbanning: 15%

 

Recurring Nightmare: This was ruled to be too good in 2008! That’s nine years of degenerate graveyard interactions. Graveyard hate has gotten much better, and the creatures have gotten far better. I have abused this in Cube and this would be much more likely to be unbanned if returning it to hand weren’t part of the cost! It’s already a $12 card, and is pretty much a Cube staple…and I want to have some of these on hand.

Chance of unbanning:30%

 

Rofellos, Llanowar Emissary: I don’t think he’s as big a problem in the deck as he is when he’s the commander, but he’s busted right in half.

Chance of unbanning: 10%

 

Sway of the Stars: Resetting a Commander game is lame. There’s just no other word for it. The best way to use this is with Jhoira of the Ghitu, and suspend a couple of big things to resolve after this.

Chance of unbanning:5%

 

Sundering Titan: I’m going to let loose a contrarian opinion here: I think this card isn’t terribly unfair. It can only hit lands with basic types, and that skips over a lot of lands that see a lot of Commander play. Yes, it hits basics and duals and shocks, and the battle lands and the new cycling duals, but that’s it, aside from the corner cases. I know that my three-color decks aren’t dependent on those lands, enjoying checklands, manlands, filters, Temples, etc. I think there’s a chance here. It can be had for $5, $20 in pack foil or a $35 Invention. There is room for significant growth.

Chance of unbanning: 75%

 

Sylvan Primordial: So this got banned pretty soon after it came out, and mainly because it destroys lands and then gets you more lands, enabling whatever shenanigans you’re into. You end up with one person having all their Forests out, and no one else has lands in play, once you start flickering or recurring this in some way.

That said…is it really worse than Hulk ending the game on the spot? This is a super-attractive speculation, as you can get this at nearly-bulk prices, and foils are just over $2.

Chance of unbanning: 50%

 

Time Vault: Considering all the ways there are to take infinite turns in Commander, I’m sort of surprised this isn’t unbanned, but the RC is not known for consistency, as previously noted.

Chance of unbanning: 0%

 

Tinker: I feel like artifact decks don’t need the help. I really don’t want Blightsteel to be in play on turn one or two.

Chance of unbanning: 0%

 

Tolarian Academy: This isn’t allowed, but I can play other degenerate and fast artifacts? Again, I wonder if the Hulk gets out of the penalty box, there’s got to be a chance for this, right? It’s at $32 now and it would jump to at least $100 if unbanned.

Chance of unbanning: 20%

 

Trade Secrets: So the rationale for banning this was when two players decided they wanted to draw all the cards together. That seems more like a failure of the social contract than anything else, but I think this will get re-evaluated eventually. Nearly a bulk rare, only a $3 foil.

Chance of unbanning: 45%

 

Upheaval: I already want to kick Cyclonic Rift to the curb, and this is even worse. I won’t have anything at all in play!

Chance of unbanning: 0%

 

Worldfire: Same as Sway of the Stars above. Just silly.

Chance of unbanning: 0%

 

Yawgmoth’s Bargain: Academy Rector is already super annoying, and this would be neck-and-neck for the best target, alongside Omniscience. This card spiked earlier this year for reasons I can’t seem to find, but it’s on the Reserved List anyway. Having a few on hand would only be prudent.

Chance of unbanning: 15%

From the Vault: Random Stuff Laying Around

The new FTV is out and it’s… full of cards? I don’t know, what do you want me to say about it? Usually they have a theme and this has to be the loosest possible theme ever. Literally anything could be in FTV: Lore. There’s lore behind Joven’s Ferrets and those have never been foil. The worst part is there are going to be people who wanted the lore they like in here and it didn’t make the cut. “No Helvault? This is bullshit” I’m sure at least one person has said. Can you imagine?  Everyone thinks the stupid lore crap they like is the most important which is why doing this particular FTV is bound to be fraught. The people who don’t give a hot fart about lore won’t care about the flavor of the junk you jam in here, we’ll just be upset that we’re paying our LGS $80 for a set that has Near-Death Experience in it. The people who give all of the farts (of every temperature) about the lore are going to be upset that you didn’t include Argus Kos, Wojek Veteran because they were reading the Ravnica book the first time they touched a pair of boobs or whatever reason people get nostalgiac for M:tG Lore.

Luckily, we have additional metrics for judging the success or failure of FTV sets apart from “Do we care about cards with terrible foiling?” and “Do we care about Vorthos crap?” and that is “dollar sign question mark” which is all we should be caring about. Should I write this article with at least a bit of an eye toward EDH? I guess, sure. Fine. I can’t imagine writing this from an EDH perspective without a finance bent and I can’t imagine writing this from a finance perspective and being entirely agnostic to EDH. Either approach is going to result in roughly the same article, anyway. Let’s just talk about these stupid cards and get it over with, shall we? I mean, I’m getting it over with, You’re being entertained and educated so I guess you’re trying to savor this experience. Just remember this took hours to write and will take minutes to read. What do you care about? EDH playability? Accessibility? Finance? I’ll try to talk about everything I think is relevant. Let’s light this candle.

Cabal Ritual

Untitled

Traditionally, FTV printings tend to affect the non-foil price way more than the foil price, especially if no foil was available before. This is a $1 card with a $13 foil and I don’t see a garbage, curly FTV foil dragging the foil price down a ton when it’s hardly a credible alternative. People who like foil cards do so because they like the best version of the card and an FTV foil hardly qualifies. I imagine the FTV foil doesn’t do much to the foil price. If this had never been foil before, this would be closer to Hymn to Tourach but even then we got a set foil very soon after and people couldn’t wait to not have to play it.

Untitled

Cabal Ritual has a good foil already and there’s not much reason to expect the FTV version, even for people who prefer the new art, to replace them. If anything, this is close to Kird Ape which had been foil once before. We don’t have pricing data that goes back that far but assuredly, the FTV foil wasn’t a threat the the 9th Edition version.

Untitled

Especially not long-term.

Ultimately I think the foil may get dinged a few bucks but will go back up, unless we get a reprinting of Cabal Therapy in a future set that doesn’t have FTV foiling. If it has this same new art, all bets are off. For now, I don’t expect much movement, nor for EDH players to care much.

Conflux

Untitled

This is a different ballgame. EDH players are less antagonistic toward FTV foils than Legacy players, especially given the fact that sometimes FTV or Commander’s Arsenal foils are the only foils we have. That’s not the case here with Conflux foils fetching $15, which is a decent multiplier for such a weird card. I think the $15 price tag of the foil could take a minor hit and I bet a lot of the new foil Confluxes end up in decks and may keep the price from recovering. This saw a bump in Legacy Dream Halls a while back and that obscures the price a bit. I think it’s possible that new supply could reveal that there’s not as much demand as anticipated, although Conflux is getting a decent amount of play in EDH per EDHREC.

A good corollary is a recent FTV card from the same set and same price point, though a different rarity, something there being a set proportion of FTV cards smooths out a bit.

Untitled

I’d compare Conflux to Martial Coup, though Coup’s drop is obscured by Commander 2014 and FTV: Annihilation reprinting the card twice within months of each other. You see the big hit to the non-foil price, so let’s see what happened to the foil price since C14 didn’t do any of that.

Untitled

No change. You’d swear FTV Annihilation never even came out in August 2014. That’s something to bear in mind. It did seem to reverse some growth and hurt the long-term prospects of the set foil despite being a garbage FTV foil, though, so if you have money tied up in foil Conflux, maybe get out, though it seems like you have some time.

Dark Depths

Untitled

This won’t do as much as we want, I fear. This may give some people a chance to buy a $58 card at MSRP if they’re very lucky, a set with a $58 card in it plus some other cards for like $80 in a lot more cases and could see people upgrade to a foil affordably. At $215, the Dark Depths foil is sure to take a bit of a hit, or a big one. The FTV foil is obviously less desirable. This is the money shot for this FTV so let’s really try and accurately predict what this will do.

Untitled

This is an awkward corollary. FTV: Realms came out in August of 2012 where I drew the arrow, but demand in Modern Tron that people didn’t anticipate when Punishing Fire was banned saw this card still being purchased 4 copies at a time. I don’t see Dark Depths maintaining the same insane growth curve as Grove, but this does show how little of an effect the FTV can have on price if there is sufficient demand. I think the FTV copies can smooth out the growth curve of Dark Depths and dampen it a bit but the copies won’t be enough to hold the card back if it continues to be as good a card. Banning it in Modern attenuated its price to a great extent and Modern demand ultimately made it go nuts, something I’m less convinced will happen to Dark Depths with demand from Legacy and EDH, 1-of formats for the most part.

Untitled

Again, the FTV printing barely had an effect, although Ancient Tomb was a sleeper in Legacy (which was weird because City of Traitors spiked twice in the time Tomb was doing nothing). It could be argued the FTV printing delayed its price explosion, but demand couldn’t be staved off for long. I think we could see Dark Depths’ price flatten a bit, but ultimately I think another reprinting in another venue will be needed.

Glissa, the Traitor

Untitled

$3 card with an $11 foil? Seems pretty straightforward. This should attenuate but not entirely inhibit growth. Douglas Johnson cares a lot about this but I don’t expect anyone else to. They didn’t even give it new art.

Helvault

Untitled

Wait, Helvault IS in this set? Gross. I was just making a joke earlier about how Vorthos people care about dumb cards like this. You know what? I’m leaving it. I don’t care if it makes me look dumb for reading the list of cards in this set and forgetting I saw Helvault in it and then making a joke about how Helvault wasn’t in it. That’s how little I care about a $0.60 card with a $2 foil that’s getting a printing with a bad foiling process that no one will care about.

Memnarch

Untitled

$8 card despite an Archenemy printing? $30 foil? Popular EDH General? It’s going to be tough to find a corollary for this to predict what will happen. Even with a whole FTV: Legends to look at, are there any cards around $8 with 2 non-foil printings and 2 foil printings? I guess the best we can do is look at what FTV: Legends did to $8-$10 cards that were growing steadily before the FTV.

Untitled

Oona was still growing after the FTV printing and it only fell off with its reprinting in Modern Masters. The foil took a hit from Modern Masters, also.

Untitled

Oona cost roughly the same as Memnarch does now right after her FTV printing and while I don’t have data, I can speculate the numbers were very similar. Modern Masters brough Oona’s price down in a way the FTV didn’t seem to be able to. Oona might have stayed an $8 card with a $30 foil even after FTV if not for Modern Masters, so I think Memnarch’s price will remain relatively stable.

Mind’s Desire

Untitled

A bulk rare with an 18x multiplier? Have we seen something like that in a previous FTV set? How about Upheaval? Bulk rare, $15 foil, small amount of demand from cube weirdos. What did the FTV do to that price?

Untitled

It reversed some modest growth on the non-foil (I’m not sure what the growth was predicated on, honestly).

Untitled

It likely held back a little growth in the foil, though it’s obscured by some shenanigans. Honestly, foil Upheaval is going in cubes and cube players don’t want an ugly FTV foil if they can avoid it. I think Mind’s Desire likely has the same fate, although maybe Mizzix or something goofy like that wants it in EDH? I think Mind’s Desire likely has a similar trajectory as we saw with Upheaval. Mind’s Desire isn’t banned in EDH the way Upheaval is, and that helps, but otherwise the cards are eerily similar.

Momir Vig

Eb0d2tbctZ_EN

Momir has new art and all bets are off. If the card sits in your Command Zone the FTV foiling process is less worrying and the new art could see Momir players upgrading.

Untitled

Momir was seeing very positive trending and his plateau preceded his annoucement in FTV: Lore so I imagine it could reverse itself a bit, although I’m not sure. The new and different art is a bit of a game-changer. Nothing in FTV:Legends quite compares but let’s take a look.

Untitled

Rafiq more then recovered from its lowest point on our graph, which was months after FTV: Legends came out. The set foil is a bit above where it was also, but not a ton. I feel like the new art may have helped Rafiq out and I predict pretty similar price trajectories for Momir based on what we saw for Rafiq.

Near-Death Experience

Untitled

Bulk gets bulkier. I want to like this card but can’t, even in a pillowfort deck with Worship.

Obliterate

Untitled

If I had to guess, the Invasion version is so much more expensive than the 8th edition version is someone guessed people hated white borders and they bought out TCGPlayer and the other dealers updated their prices because they do it with an automatic algorithm instead of a human brain which lets this stuff happen. Whatever the case, this is a $4 card in my view and the FTV won’t change that given how much price shock can be absorbed by a lot of copies floating around and this being the third time they printed the card foil. 8th foils have a black border, also, so any appeal Invasion has over 8th for non-foils is gone. Ultimately, this won’t matter.

Phyrexian Processor

Untitled

This has never been foil before! Too bad no one plays it in anything.

Tolaria West

Untitled

$8 uncommon with a  $25 foil.  This card is going to be tough to nail down, but if I had to guess, I’d predict price drops for both and the plateau in the price means that demand needs to catch up to supply before the price moves, and additional supply will only put that day off.

Untitled

If the price dips for Tolaria West the way it did for Dryad Arbor, I think you want to buy in. Arbor isn’t played nearly as much as it used to be and its price is nutty. With Tolaria West able to tutor for 0 cost stuff it will always have a place in the game and barring another reprinting, I think it’s a solid pickup if it drops. For reference, here’s the foil trajectory for Arbor, also.

Untitled

Untitled

Demand overall is clearly up, so if Tolaria West’s FTV graph looks like this did at the beginning then tanks, buy at the floor, clearly. Tolaria West is a good card and it’s only getting better as more people find uses for it in Modern.

Umezawa’s Jitte

Untitled

Jammed in a $12 precon, reprinted as a GP foil, banned in Modern – nothing can hold this card down. I don’t think the ugly FTV foil will hurt this card much and there won’t be a ton of demand for the ugly FTV foils. Could the $240 set foils suffer? They could, a bit. Foil Jitte is out of proportion with non-foil Jitte because the precon copies diluted the number of total copies a bit which explains the multiplier. This is a Legacy and cube and EDH staple and the price will go up over time unless they keep reprinting it. I don’t see this dipping much even in the short term, but if it does, there’s opportunity there.

Unmask

Untitled

A $4 card with  $30 card seems like the exact profile of a card that an FTV printing won’t do much to. The non-foil can’t go down much more and the foil is clearly demanded by people who will pay extra for a nice foil and don’t care about an ugly FTV foil. I imagine the FTV one ends up almost exactly the same price as the non-foil and that’s all I have to say about that.

Well, that’s all. Come back next week, I guess.

Article on Redundancy Article

Last week, I wrote about cards that I thought were redundant copies of cards that are already played in EDH and were liable to get jimmy-jammed in EDH decks because who doesn’t want two chances to get the effects they like? I didn’t mention anything from Eldritch Moon because you’re not my boss and I do what I want.

I think this week I am going to scour the Eldritch Moon spoiler and pull out like two or three cards and say “Why did I think this was enough of a premise for an entire article?” and have to scramble to do something at the end. My plan is just to mention all of the cards from Eldritch Moon that I think will be good in EDH regardless of whether or not they are redundant copies of cards already getting use. Sound good? I’m asking a question that you can’t answer because I can’t hear you and if you think about it for a few seconds, you’ll come to the conclusion that it’s because I don’t care what you respond. You’re getting the article you deserve, not the one you wanted so buckle in, nerds, because I have no idea how this article is going to turn out.

Eldreduntant Mooncy

There are cards in Eldritch Moon that are going to be basic reprints of cards that already exist. Probably. I literally haven’t looked at the spoiler with that in mind. I mean, there is one obvious one I can think of off the top of my head, but I haven’t really looked much at uncommons with respect to… I’m just going to go look now and report back.

eternalscourge

Wow, I found one right away. This makes infinite mana with Food Chain, so that’s cool. You can play this in decks that can’t run blue for Misthollow Griffin, such as Prossh. I don’t know why you’d go infinite with a card other than Prossh, though. Still, Food Chain pairs with this and it’s a second Misthollow in the blue decks that run the combo. This has Legacy playability, also, so keep an eye on this.

longroadhome

There are officially more cards than I had anticipated. Good.

This one is solid. Flicker effects are always welcome and spells like this that can flicker creatures and have upside are always welcome. This can even blank their creatures in combat though the +1/+1 counter isn’t really upside at that point. Still, this has a lot of parallels.

Untitled

This was nearly arbitrageable (That’s a word) before its 5th printing. I’m glad they gave us a new card because a 6th printing would have been silly. Not as silly as having an arcane spell in Innistrad, but still silly.  A new card is likely to be in draft chaff for free and is likely to buylist for a quarter. I don’t know about you, but I’ll pick up a quarter off of the ground so I’ll surely take a quarter out of draft chaff. It ain’t sexy but it’s worth identifying these cards before they go up rather than after.

mausoleumwanderer

This isn’t exactly Judge’s Familiar, considering that can go in a white deck, but this has a bit of upside in the right deck. Equipment can make this a floating Mana Leak and there is precedent for cards like this seeing play.

Untitled

The $0.50 retail is less impressive when you see it buylists for literally nothing. Being a rare and not being an FNM promo should help wanderer, and having its power affect the cost of the spell should, also.

summarydismissal

EDH players LOVE Voidslime. They can’t get enough of it. Why? Because it does two very important things. This is a Voidslime that doesn’t have to go in a green deck, but can, meaning Voidslime players now have a second Voidslime and people who couldn’t play Voidslime now can if they have access to blue. Is being compared to Voidlsime flattering? Let’s find out.

Untitled

I would say so. Do I think Summary Dismissal will be $11? Not really. That doesn’t mean buying in at bulk is a bad idea. I think Summary Dismissal has a lot of upside and I think Voidslime does a pretty good job of demonstrating that. Anyone who argues that 4 CMC is harder to hold up than 3 CMC has never held 5 CMC up for Desertion all game like I do routinely. I think the mana difference is pretty trivial and not having green in the casting cost more than makes up for an additional total mana. If you’re playing Voidslime but not Plasm Capture, I’m not sure what you’re doing with your life, anyway.

imprisonedinthemoon

This is another Song of the Dryads, but color shifted. Color shifting as a way to reprint cards is going to piss me off before this article is over, I can feel it. Is there upside here?

Untitled

You tell me. Song of the Dryads is in a precon where the total cost of the cards that aren’t this one are already well over MSRP because it’s full of elves. This doesn’t need to be $4, it wants to. I think Imprisoned in the Moon at bulk has some upside based on a $4 analog existing.

collectivedefiance

This is a wheel effect. Nekusar likes wheel effects. It only affects one player, but I don’t think that’s a reason not to play it if you have room. I think that this could have some upside.

Plus, every other red card in Eldritch Moon is trash in EDH.

harmlessoffering

“But Jason, didn’t you just say that every other red card in Eldritch Moon was trash in EDH?”

Yes, and I meant it. This is not a red card. Oh, no. Oh, no no no. This is a blue card. You can dress it up in a fancy pink border and paint a kitty cat on it like a Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper but I know this is Donate. It’s Donate. It does what Donate does. It’s Donate.

Am I mad that we have Donate in red? @$#% no, I’m not! It’s in Bazaar Trader colors! It allows it to be played in a ton of different decks that Donate couldn’t be played in. So why am I miffed? Because the phrase “It allows it to be played in a ton of different decks that Donate couldn’t be played in” is their justification for color-shifting a card on the Reserved List and pretending it wasn’t a functional reprint.

Untitled

I don’t want to live on a planet where Harmless Offering can cost as much as Donate, so realistically, the ceiling is like $1.75. Buy with that in mind.

mercurialgeists

This has super prowess! Anyone playing Wee Dragonauts is likely to want to jam this along with Chandra’s Spitfire. Neither of those cards is worth a ton, but, whatever.

geierreachsanitarium

This can be construed as a lot better than a card that just makes each player draw. Making them loot is essentially milling everyone and if you’re set up to be milled and they aren’t, you can benefit when they are at a disadvantage. This can give you hella Waste Not triggers, ensure even players with empty hands have to discard and generally it can squeeze people who are behind. It can also be seen as a benefit to everyone, letting players all draw and discard land or excess spells if you want to play a group hug thing. There are a ton of ways to build around this and it’s bound to impact EDH. That’s good because it reminds me of another land that’s similar.

Untitled

This is a $1 land that just came out that is situationally better than (although situationally worse than, also) a card that is $13 and climbing. Have we seen something like this before? We sure have. Every card from last week’s article, basically. This is a great example of a card that we’re fairly certain we’ll see get there in price it’s only a matter of time. I imagine the graph of the price of GRS will be Nike Swoosh-shaped. So if you’re on the fence about picking up a bunch of cheap copies when it’s bulk, just do it. 

Do you see what I did there? I referenced the Nike thing. From the thing.

Well, that’s all I’ve got for you this week, join me next week where I’ll be talking abou… I just wrote like half an article. I knew this would happen.

Well, since I still have some room, there are some cards I like for EDH that are going to get cheap and then get expensive so it’s worth discussing them.

brunathefadinglight

This is a bulk rare that will be a decent commander, melds into a beast of an Angel and is a Legendary angel. This is a great card to snag hella copies of in bulk.

Since it’s a bulk rare, I thought “I bet foil copies will be reasonable” and then I remembered that the back is half of Brisela, so the foil price of Gisela is going to really screw with the foil price of Bruna. Either Gisela’s foil price will price everyone out of the market or Bruna’s price will be dragged up? It’s still a foil Angel on the front…

Personally, I think this will be like the McDonald’s Monopoly thing. You know how there are like 0 Boardwalk game pieces but they put Park Place in just about every meal? It doesn’t make the Park Place stickers worth more money just because all you need is Boardwalk after that. I feel like since there will be like 3-5 times as many foil Brunas, it shouldn’t matter and foil Gisela will be all that matters. Buy accordingly.

collectiveeffort

Would you play your Disenchant at Sorcery speed if it meant you could kill a creature? You would? Me too.

deploythegatewatch

How hard is it to throw a Scroll Rack into your Superfriends deck? Besides, we already have Oath of Jace to help us Scry. This could be a very fun card.

sigardasaid

This will hit bulk. There is absolutely nothing to enable this in Standard and it’s probably not good enough for Modern or Legacy. This card is a snap-include in a lot of EDH decks and when this is bulk, trade for these. You get players wanting to trade some bulk rare for their FNM deck. Good. Get rid of Standard bulk rares and trade them for EDH bulk rares because in two years, you’ll look like a genius. Skirsdag High Priest used to be worth two Parallel Lives in trade. I was happy to ship my priests out.

thaliaslancers

This card is simply amazing. It tutors for stuff that isn’t always easy to tutor for, especially in white and the fact that it’s a creature means it’s easier to recur in white since you have flicker effects and not Eternal Witness effects. Grabbing a Serra’s Sanctum or Jitte with this seems dirty.

coaxfromtheblindeternities

Stuff like this just goes up over time inevitably. I don’t know if it’s EDH or casual that will drive it, but this has upside and it’s liable to be bulk for over a year.

mindsdilation

This is the cheapest EDH mythic in the set and I can’t figure out why. People are so Standard-centric in their initial pricing. If this is still under $2 when the set comes out I will consider my readers sufficiently informed and drop a couple hundo on these guys. I don’t see them getting a ton cheaper because bulk mythics aren’t that much less expensive than these are now. Have you READ this card? I expect a 5x foil multiplier and I expect these to approach their closest analog.

Untitled

These cards aren’t exactly the same, but Mind’s Dilation is pretty close in terms of power level and I can see a mythic hitting $4 if a non-mythic is $6 or $7 and climbing.

oathofliliana

I am not super impressed with this, but I imagine people play it, if only to run the whole cycle.

treeofperdition

This is stupid in EDH where you can use it to deal someone 27 damage. Killing them with Tragic Slip or Triskadekaphobia after is optional.

splendidreclamation

Buy these at their floor. Lordy, lordy; this card brings the heat. It’s a personal Planar Birth in relevant colors? Be still my heart. This card is ready to go in any dredge deck, in The Gitrog Monster or Titania and basically any deck running Squandered Resources. Hot diggity.

gisaandgeralf

I have exceeded my word allotment once again. Is this the last card I wanted to discuss or were there more cards I could mention but I don’t get paid extra to talk about them? I guess you’ll never know.

Join me next week where I may start out by talking about leftover cards from this article. Or not. You have no idea.