Welcome to my Daily Financial Value of Oath of the Gatewatch series! From now until the full set is spoiled, I’ll be posting up regular daily updates with my thoughts about the officially-spoiled cards from Oath of the Gatewatch! The main change this time around? All updates will arrive at 11am, so no more wondering what time the article will be published!
How I Review:
Starting Price: The first price we assign to this card as a preorder.
Current Price: The current price of the card at the time this article was written (usually by midnight on the day of publication).
Future Price – Low: The lowest price I believe this card will hit while it is Standard legal, post-release.
Future Price – High: The highest price I believe this card will hit while it is Standard legal, post-release.
There are a lot of cards to discuss, so I’m going to jump right into this article!
Rarity: Rare
Starting Price: $2
Current Price: $2
Future Price – Low: $2
Future Price – High: $4
Thoughts: If Ayli were solely a 2/3 deathtouch for BW (and no drawbacks), she’d be playable in Standard. With two abilities that are relevant for Standard and Modern (Soul Sisters anyone?), Ayli will be a card that gains value based on seeing tournament play. Ayli also makes an excellent commander, so there is an intersection of three formats that will seek this out.
Rarity: Mythic
Starting Price: $3
Current Price: $2
Future Price – Low: $1.50
Future Price – High: $1.50
Thoughts: Bulk mythic. Only question here – will there be a Surge card good enough that will make Gitaxian Probe get banned in either Modern or Legacy? So far, the answer is no, but there’s an argument that Gitaxian Probe is pretty close to that line already.
Rarity: Rare
Starting Price: $0.50
Current Price: $0.50
Future Price – Low: $0.50
Future Price – High: $0.50
Thoughts: Bulk rare. Wizards tends to spoil the Intro Pack rares towards the beginning of the spoiler cycle, and these rares tend to end up being Bulk.
Rarity: Rare
Starting Price: $0.50
Current Price: $0.50
Future Price – Low: $0.50
Future Price – High: $0.50
Thoughts: See Deepfathom Skulker.
Rarity: Rare
Starting Price: $1.50
Current Price: $1
Future Price – Low: $1
Future Price – High: $2
Thoughts: One of the problems with a mass-influx of early spoilers is that people get excited about a couple of the best cards (even if many of them are good) and then quickly forget about them/lose excitement because the rush is over. Endbringer is a casualty of this – extremely versatile, splashable, and card advantage. While I wouldn’t exactly be thrilled if I were using this as two points of damage at the opponent’s head each turn cycle, sometimes that’s what you need to win a game. Sometimes you need to remove an attacker and/or a blocker. And you always need to draw 1-2 extra cards. Splashable, versatile, and a finisher on many different levels. Probably not playable in Modern (though I wouldn’t 100% count it out as an Urzatron card), so it won’t shoot up as much as Ayli.
Rarity: Rare
Starting Price: $0.50
Current Price: $0.50
Future Price – Low: $0.50
Future Price – High: $0.50
Thoughts: Bulk Intro Pack rare.
Rarity: Rare
Starting Price: $2
Current Price: $3
Future Price – Low: $1
Future Price – High: $2
Thoughts: So here’s a list of BFZ rares that are $2+ right now:
Canopy Vista ($4)
Cinder Glade ($4)
Painful Truths ($3)
Prairie Stream ($3.50)
Shambling Vent ($4.25)
Smoldering Marsh ($3)
Sunken Hollow ($5)
The huge depreciation in the value of BFZ rares can be attributed to three factors: 1) BFZ didn’t end up being a particularly great set from a playables perspective 2) A ton of BFZ was opened in the rush to get Expeditions 3) BFZ was one of (if not) the best-selling sets of all time. In order for me to say that a rare from OGW will hit over $2, I’d have to think that it’s either going to dominate Standard, or it’s going to be a multi-format playable card. I don’t think Goblin Dark-Dwellers is going to be either of these. It’s not Snapcaster Mage (there’s a three-mana difference, and an instant-speed casting difference), and it’s not easily splashed. I think that of all the cards spoiled so far, this is the most overhyped of them.
Rarity: Rare
Starting Price: $2
Current Price: $2
Future Price – Low: $0.50
Future Price – High: $1
Thoughts: Another card I expect to drop quickly in value. Three mana for a 2/3 body that doesn’t affect the board is pretty bad. The ability to maybe draw extra cards (which is by no means a sure thing earlygame) isn’t great. I believe that Jori will end up in the bulk bins pretty quickly.
Rarity: Mythic
Starting Price: $12.50
Current Price: $12.50
Future Price – Low: $15
Future Price – High: $20
Thoughts: New Kozilek and New Ulamog both cost ten mana, though Kozilek requires two of these be colorless. Kozilek has evasion (menace), can draw you between 1-7 cards (technically yes, you can draw zero off Kozilek, but that won’t happen much), plus have the ability to play Counterbalance with your hand for the remainder of the game. I think Kozilek is better than Ulamog this time around (In ROE, Ulamog was better than Kozilek), and will see a lot of Standard play. Given that Ulamog has been stable at $15-$18 since release, I see no reason Kozilek should be at any different of a price point.
Rarity: Mythic
Starting Price: $5
Current Price: $4
Future Price – Low: $3
Future Price – High: $5
Thoughts: Mirrorpool has two effects that you will almost never see on a land (Clone/Fork effects). Both are a little prohibitive to use due to mana cost (an effective four mana to Fork, and six to Clone, since you have to tap Mirrorpool in addition to the mana costs). Both are very strong effects to get essentially for free, so I can see Mirrorpool getting played in Standard, and as a one-of in both Modern and Legacy (Lands!). It’s also going to be a Commander staple – but not ubiquitous enough in Standard to catapult this into the stratosphere price-wise. This is the type of card that I think will command $10+ dollars a few years down the road, but not anytime while it is in Standard.
Munda’s Vanguard
Rarity: Rare
Starting Price: $0.50
Current Price: $0.50
Future Price – Low: $0.50
Future Price – High: $0.50
Thoughts: Bulk Intro Pack rare.
Rarity: Mythic
Starting Price: $15
Current Price: $15
Future Price – Low: $6
Future Price – High: $20
Thoughts: I believe that Nissa will spike up to $20 by release, and then will quickly free-fall. The second ability is pretty bad. The first ability is okay, but it’s nowhere near as good a token generator as Gideon, Ally of Zendikar. In fact, almost everything about this card is inferior to Gideon, Ally of Zendikar. There may end up being a deck that wants Nissa, but I don’t think that this is a good planeswalker.
Rarity: Rare
Starting Price: $1
Current Price: $1
Future Price – Low: $0.50
Future Price – High: $1
Thoughts: Should drop after release – unlike the original Oran-Rief, the Vastwood, you’re not going to be able to take advantage of dropping the new Ruins of Oran-Rief and then follow it up by having mana dorks that you can make larger en masse on one turn.
Rarity: Rare
Starting Price: $3
Current Price: $3
Future Price – Low: $2
Future Price – High: $5
Thoughts: I think Sea Gate Wreckage is really good, and should see play in every format in Magic. It’s not going to be a four-of, but even Vintage would love an uncounterable way to draw cards on a regular basis. Lands will want this in Legacy (card draw with Manabond). It also works well as a Dredge enabler for Modern and as just a way to keep the offense going in Standard. Again – not going to want to run four of these (two in play is the most you’d ever really want), but there are a lot of decks that want this effect.
Rarity: Uncommon
Starting Price: $1
Current Price: $1
Future Price – Low: $0.50
Future Price – High: $2
Thoughts: The closest comparative card to Spatial Contortion is Nameless Inversion – same effect, same mana cost, both instant speed. Nameless Inversion was heavily played during Lorwyn Standard, but often the key to making it work was the fact that it was tribal. Spatial Contortion can be splashed into any deck – a huge boon – but you have to be able to produce colorless mana – a potential drawback.
I feel that this will be a staple removal spell in Standard since decks that normally don’t get removal will suddenly have access to straight creature kill via painlands. I’d compare it to Dismember, which ended up being a $6 card when it was Standard-legal. Dismember was better (since it could only cost one and because -5/-5 is better than +3/-3), but Spatial Contortion fills that role for many decks.
Rarity: Rare
Starting Price: $1
Current Price: $1
Future Price – Low: $0.50
Future Price – High: $1
Thoughts: There was a time when a two-drop white creature that said both “equipment” and acted as a pseudo-lord would start at $4-$5, and then precipitously drop after release. These days, people know that this set of effects needs to be good and not just keyworded – and I don’t think Stone Haven Outfitter quite gets there. Should have casual appeal, but I don’t think this will work in Standard.
Rarity: Rare
Starting Price: $0.50
Current Price: $0.50
Future Price – Low: $0.50
Future Price – High: $0.50
Thoughts: Bulk Intro Pack rare.
Rarity: Common
Starting Price: $0.50
Current Price: $0.50
Future Price – Low: $0.50
Future Price – High: $1
Thoughts: There are going to be two pictures of Wastes, and they appear at roughly twice the frequency of a normal common, meaning that any given Wastes will appear at a 4:1 ratio against other commons in the set. Wizards announced there are ten more commons than normal in this set. It’s unclear if that number is 70 or 80 commons total, but the point is this: in Constructed you can run any number of Wastes in your deck, as it’s a basic land. I compare this to Snow-Covered lands from Coldsnap and Ice Age – if you want Snow-Covered lands, you’re going to want 12-25 of them. The same is going to go for Wastes.
Heck, let’s say that any given player wants 10 Wastes just to have some number of Wastes for Standard deckbuilding. At 70 commons in the set, Wastes would appear four times every 72 cards (Cards #69, #70, #71 and #72). If you open a booster box (36 packs * 10 commons) = 360 commons. This would yield exactly 20 Wastes per box on average. At 80 commons in the set, Wastes would appear four times every 82 cards (Cards #79-#82), which would yield 18 Wastes per box on average. Fat packs will have 14 Wastes each. Either way – one booster box or one fat pack will have about 1.5-2 playsets of Wastes each (or less if you think people will want a full complement of 20-25 Wastes). This will mean that demand will exceed supply in the long run on these, just as they did for Snow-Covered lands (the total number of each Snow-Covered land between Ice Age & Coldsnap print runs is pretty large).
Long story short, unless Wastes are reprinted beyond this set, it’s likely that they will command a premium value until the first time they are mass-reprinted.
All of the Expeditions were spoiled for Oath of the Gatewatch. In tomorrow’s article, I’ll go over the initial pricing for these cards – along with having them set live for presale starting around 11am EST tomorrow. Tune in then to get your first shot at the Expeditions and to see my thoughts about newly-spoiled cards!