Commander Masters Cycles
I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about the implications of this set. I’d be even more remisser if I didn’t actually add some value to the conversation. Fine, good, I can do that. I want to take advantage of something that the set gives us that can help us figure out where relative values will shake out if anyone ever buys packs of this set. Let's talk about the cycles in this set, their relative playability, where I think the price trends will go, and the impact of first-time foil printings. Let’s get into it, shall we?
Medallions
The Medallion cycle is getting printed again, and for the first time in foil to boot. I think it’s instructive to rank them by EDH inclusions for two reasons. Firstly, ranking by price tells you what they are now, but hopefully ranking by inclusion tells you what order they should be in if the answer is different. Secondly, because ranking by raw % obfuscates the fact that they are artifacts that have a color identity in that they won’t be played in decks where they can’t make the spells cheaper very often.
Was that the order you expected? Is the price order the same? Let’s look at the prices for the
Jet - $35 market
Ruby - $34 market
Sapphire - $28 market
Pearl - $30 market
Emerald - $15 market
Emerald is the least necessary because green doesn’t need it and Jet will be the most because mono-black has like zero tools besides rituals. (I saw a guy use a
Pearl is played less than Sapphire but costs more because Sapphire Medallion was on
All of that is fine, but since these are first-time foils, I want to look at those prices as of right now.
Jet - $17 foil
Ruby - $15 foil
Sapphire - $15 foil
Pearl - $13 foil
Emerald - $12 foil
If Emerald is still on its way down, I’d wait. If Emerald’s price is already rebounding, though, expect these prices to diverge a lot.
Just the TCGPlayer sales graph isn’t exactly a TON of info, but it still tells us that we could have seen the floor already thanks to $300 booster boxes. Unless Emerald has a long way to go down, and I don’t know that it does, $17 for a foil Jet Medallion and $15 for a foil Ruby Medallion seems super low. Unlike with the other Medallions that have all been printed in different quantities across the years, the only foil copies are all printed the same amount and their prices being this close together won’t hold due to Jet’s demand being nearly double what Emerald’s is.
I’m going to do the next cycle with way less explanation to make it quicker to read, so if you get lost, refer to the Medallion paragraphs. I’m making it sound like it’ll be confusing, it won’t. You’re on a finance site, I trust you to know more than me, not less.
Free Spells
You don’t even know the name of the Green one - 16,940 decks
Fierce Guardianship - $40 market
Deflecting Swat - $33 market
Deadly Rollick - $20 market
Flawless Maneuver - $8 market
Unreal putting
Deadly Rollick can’t stay 250% as expensive as Flawless Maneuver when it’s only played 25% more. I don’t know if Maneuver corrects up or Rollick corrects down, but I think we need to look at the foils.
Fierce Guardianship - $45 market
Deflecting Swat - $38 market
Deadly Rollick - $20 market
Flawless Maneuver - $5 market
Obscuring Haze - $1.50
Flawless Maneuver was printed more than some of the others due to its inclusion in
Confluences
Mystic is used 25 times more than Righteous. Sheesh, nice cycle you’ve got there, would be a shame if only two of them were playable.
Mystic Confluence has way more printings than the others, including a
Do you want me to go into this at all? My advice is going to be to avoid this cycle.
Planeswalker Commanders
Daretti - 2,626 as commander
Freyalise - 1,355 as commander
Teferi - 784 as commander
Nahiri - 654 as commander
Ob Nixilis - 364 as commander
It’s interesting that the order for decks “as commander” is in the same order as inclusions, considering Teferi was the go-to spikey deck for a bit. That said, today’s demand matters for today’s repricing. These are all about $1, except for Nahiri which is $3. You know, for now.
This is Nahiri’s graph for Commander Masters on TCGPlayer. It’s gone down in price very sharply since it was printed and even Daretti’s very palpable demand doesn’t seem to be helping it go above $1 as a foil. Daretti’s etched foil version looks different than the others and is under $3 now - if any of this cycle is going to do anything, it will be Daretti. He’s in as many decks as Sapphire Medallion, yet the foil Medallion costs 30 times more than Daretti does. Whether or not any of these get built as commanders again, Daretti is the only one in enough decks and likely to get enough future support, and if you don’t think it should cost less than Nahiri which is in fewer decks than Wretched Confluence, I think these new prices are wrong and they should feel bad.
Was that all of the cycles in the set? No! Will I be talking about the
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Jason has been writing about Magic: the Gathering since 2010. He currently writes an EDH-focused column on CoolstuffInc.com and is the content manager of EDHREC and Commander's Herald. When he's not writing you can hear him as the cohost of the Brainstorm Brewery MtG Finance podcast weekly on YouTube and all podcasting apps. Follow him on Twitter for more free finance tips - free in the sense that you don't pay with money, but with having to see too many tweets about hockey.
