Welcome back to my Daily Financial Value of Shadows over Innistrad series! From now until the full set is spoiled, I’ll be posting up regular updates with my thoughts about the officially-spoiled cards from Shadows over Innistrad!
I will be reviewing cards using the following system:
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 around 5:00pm the day before 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.
We’re now in the final week of spoilers and that means we’ll have a lot of ground to cover! Let’s get started!
Rarity: Rare
Starting Price: $2
Current Price: $2
Future Price – Low: $1
Future Price – High: $2
Thoughts: This card is a side-grade to Glorious Anthem. The vigilance aspect of Always Watching is neat and I could see it making the sideboard of aggressive decks to allow them to swing while still being able to protect themselves. If that happens, then Always Watching could potentially become $3-$4, but it seems like an unlikely scenario.
Rarity: Rare
Starting Price: $5
Current Price: $5
Future Price – Low: $3
Future Price – High: $7
Thoughts: I want to get a few things out in the open. People are comparing this card to Pain Seer and Blood Scrivener, which, yes, they all do have similar abilities. Also, yes, I know both of those cards are bulk rares now. The difference between those cards and Asylum Visitor is that those bulk rares are 2/1s and Asylum Visitor is a 3/1.
Just kidding.
The difference is that Asylum Visitor has a deck it will definitely go in. In addition, the card also operates a little bit differently: if your opponent is hellbent, then you’ll get the benefits of Asylum Visitor and not your opponent. If the Vampires deck ends up being as dominating as I expect it’s going to be, this will be an essential card.
If you’ve read any of my previous articles, you already know that I’m 110% on board with an insane Vampires deck, so when I saw Asylum Visitor it was love at first sight. If you look at cards like Gravecrawler and Geralf’s Messenger, they were both played in what will be a similar archetype, they were both rares, and they both went over $10. I’m not sure if Vampires will be as popular as B/R Zombies was, but if it’s anywhere close to it, then Asylum Visitor can easily hit $7.
Rarity: Mythic
Starting Price: $3
Current Price: $3
Future Price – Low: $1.50
Future Price – High: $3
Thoughts: My inner Commander player screams “Yes!” while my financial side says “Bulk mythic.” It’s a constant struggle in my daily life. There are many awesome things you can do with this card and I’m super-excited to get to play it one day in Commander; however, it won’t really ever be worth anything. I could see the foils hitting $6-$8 eventually, but that’s about it.
Rarity: Rare
Starting Price: $1
Current Price: $1
Future Price – Low: $0.50
Future Price – High: $0.50
Thoughts: I’ll give you three Clues that let you know this is a bulk rare. … … …
Rarity: Rare
Starting Price: $5
Current Price: $5
Future Price – Low: $2
Future Price – High: $3
Thoughts: Diregraf Colossus is a good card, but the future of Zombies is still unclear in Standard. They’re printing some great Zombie cards, but they’re not being pushed as hard as Vampires are. It would be neat if R&D set up the post-Eldritch Moon Standard format as all Vampire, Zombie, Werewolf, and Human decks, but that seems like it would be difficult to arrange. This is certainly a card you should keep an eye on, but I would recommend waiting until we have more information.
Rarity: Rare
Starting Price: $2
Current Price: $2
Future Price – Low: $1
Future Price – High: $2
Thoughts: I’m not a fan of Corrupted Grafstone. As a person who absolutely loves Signets, I can’t support a conditional one that enters the battlefield tapped. I don’t see why this enters tapped or is a rare; it just doesn’t make sense to me. Due to the fact that it is a mana rock, it will likely stay above $1 for the duration of its life, but I wouldn’t expect this to be a significantly valuable card.
Rarity: Rare
Starting Price: $1
Current Price: $1
Future Price – Low: $0.50
Future Price – High: $1.50
Thoughts: I actually like this card a lot. I could see this being played in control decks or in various Casual decks; however, I don’t think it will see enough play to ever be worth more than a few dollars. Outside of Standard, Evacuation is strictly better.
Rarity: Rare
Starting Price: $2
Current Price: $2
Future Price – Low: $1
Future Price – High: $3
Thoughts: Casual all-star! Sadly, like most casual cards, they’re not worth very much while they’re still in print. However, if you told me in that, in five years, this card will be $8, it wouldn’t surprise me at this point in my life. (See: Parallel Lives.) As with most casual cards, foils are usually a safe bet, but unless you’re willing to sit on your investment for years, I’d probably look for other cards to pick up.
Rarity: Rare
Starting Price: $2
Current Price: $7
Future Price – Low: $3
Future Price – High: $10
Thoughts: Everyone else on the internet seems to like Sin Prodder more than I do. It’s a fine card in my opinion and I’m sure it will see a fair amount of play in Standard, especially in the first few months after Shadows over Innistrad comes out. Red decks have always been best when the Standard environment is fresh. Since this is the first rotation with the new Standard format, I’m unsure how that will affect red decks.
Red card advantage is always great and this is a well-designed card; I just don’t like the idea of my opponent getting to control my extra card. I understand that there is a ton of variance associated with draws, but this card gives your opponent the option to cut down on a lot of the damage your cards can do. They can also opt to take damage to the face rather than giving you a removal spell for their creature. There are a lot of arguments for these facts not necessarily being drawbacks, but I would argue that they are. When your opponent is faced with the decision of, “You can have a Lightning Bolt or I can take one damage,” it’s not a hard sell for them to toss the Bolt in the bin.
Rarity: Rare
Starting Price: $2
Current Price: $2
Future Price – Low: $1
Future Price – High: $3
Thoughts: Thalia’s Lieutenant has the same issues that Diregraf Colossus has; it’s a very good card, but it just doesn’t have a deck right now. This card could see tons of play in the future, but it’s all dependent on what they’re printing in future sets. As for now, it will likely remain a low-dollar card until they print more cards to go with it in the future. It is worth noting that cards like Thalia’s Lieutenant are usually good cards for people who like to speculate; all WotC has to do is print a handful of commons and this card becomes $7 overnight.
Rarity: Rare
Starting Price: $1
Current Price: $1.50
Future Price – Low: $0.50
Future Price – High: $3
Thoughts: Clues are going to be a great way for decks to gain card advantage. I like that some aggressive decks now have a way to reload their hands later in the game, thus giving them more longevity than they previously had. I don’t think it’s feasible to start sacrificing Clues early on, as it will be too taxing on your mana and won’t allow you to progress your battlefield state.
Because of this, I don’t expect Tireless Tracker to be very valuable for the next few months. A G/W Humans deck still needs a lot more support in order to be a top-tier deck. I do believe that, over the next few sets, G/W Humans will get the support it lacks, but until that happens, Tireless Tracker will likely stay around $1.
Rarity: Rare
Starting Price: $1
Current Price: $1
Future Price – Low: $0.50
Future Price – High: $1.50
Thoughts: This card is very likely to become a bulk rare. There could be a weird future where there are a bunch of control decks and they use this as a way to steal their opponent’s Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy before it flips, but that seems really unlikely. This card does provide some amount of damage control against aggressive decks as well, but it’s still too slow.
Rarity: Rare
Starting Price: $3
Current Price: $4
Future Price – Low: $0.50
Future Price – High: $1.50
Thoughts: This card seems to be getting a lot of hype right now and I’m not 100% sure why. I’m not a fan at all. It has a ton of casual appeal, but it’s just too slow to see play in any competitive format. I would expect Westvale Abbey to be a bulk rare within the next few months.
Lands
Rarity: Rare
Starting Price: $6
Current Price: $6
Future Price – Low: $3
Future Price – High: $10
Thoughts: Finally! The much anticipated Shadows over Innistrad land cycle!
I’m a big fan of the Shadow lands. They play well with the Battle for Zendikar lands as well as basic lands. I like that R&D successfully designed these lands so that one is desirable early in the game and the other desirable later in the game. It leads me to believe that they put a lot of care into the upcoming Standard format.
Their value should be pretty comparable to the Battle for Zendikar lands. Those lands started in the $8-$10 range but quickly fell to around $3-$4. They’re now starting to rise back up and I expect the Battle lands to eventually settle around the $5-$8 range for the next year or so.
The Shadows over Innistrad lands are currently preselling for $6 and I think that’s a fairly safe price to pick them up at if you’re looking to play with them. I do believe that they will fall down to the $3-$4 range as they’re drafted and that would be the ideal time for an investor to acquire them. It’s really hard for Standard lands to fall much below the $3-$4 range, but as we’ve seen time and again, Standard lands follow a cycle of “start high, get drafted a lot and lower in price, rise again once they’re not drafted.” In my opinion, they’re one of the safest investments in Magic.
As requested… pack value!
Pack Value
Mythics of Note ($4+)
Archangel Avacyn: $25
Arlinn Kord: $40
Geralf’s Masterpiece: $5
Jace, Unraveler of Secrets: $30
Olivia, Mobilized for War: $20
Relentless Dead: $20
Sigarda, Heron’s Grace: $8
Sorin, Grim Nemesis: $25
Startled Awake: $6
Total: $204
Rares of Note ($2+)
Always Watching: $2
Asylum Visitor: $5
Brain in a Jar: $2
Bygone Bishop: $2
Choked Estuary: $6
Drownyard Temple: $3
Eerie Interlude: $3
Foreboding Ruins: $6
Game Trail: $6
Rattlechains: $2
Second Harvest: $2
Sin Prodder: $7
Thing in the Ice: $20
To the Slaughter: $3
Westvale Abbey: $4
Total: $121
I’ll be using the same equation Ben previously used: 2R + 1M (each rare is printed twice against each mythic) / (2x total number of rares + number of mythics) = Pack Value.
Right now people are guessing that there will either be 59 rares and eighteen mythics or 53 rares and fifteen mythics. We don’t have a confirmed number yet, nor do we know at which rate flip cards will appear in packs. I’ll give you the pack value for both scenarios.
If we assume 53 rares and fifteen mythics:
((2*121)+204)/121 = $3.69 per pack or *36 = $132.84 per box
If we assume 59 rares and eighteen mythics:
((2*121)+204)/136 = $3.28 per pack or *36 = $118.08 per box
Join me tomorrow as I continue to cover the Shadows over Innistrad Spoiler Week!