How Do You Catch a Legendary Creature?

Unique up on him! 

Get it? I started off the article with a Dad joke. Cool, give me nothing on it, I guess. You love it when the EDHRECast does it.

Something else I love that the EDHRECast does - they mention underplayed cards in a few of their segments. The EDHRECast isn’t the Command Zone in terms of “if they say the name of a card printed before 2013, hold onto your hats,” but highlighting underplayed cards can make people go back for old gems. They mentioned a pet card of mine and it made me increase my investment in the card a bit to see if it did anything without me buying enough to tip anyone off. I really just kind of wanted to see how it would grow organically. The card is a land, in fact, and it is in all of my Landfall decks. I have… kind of a lot of Landfall decks. 

Ghost Town

Ghost Town was about $0.50 at the time it was mentioned. I was using it because I love getting Landfall triggers and I was playing a lot of Omnath decks. I have more than five Omnath decks. There are only five Omnaths. That means I doubled up. I like Landfall a lot.

The thing is, people are better at finding cards than they were when this was $0.50. It’s doing a lot better now, as you can see. Do we credit the EDHRECast? According to the graph, it happened when Dominaria hit. What happened in Dominaria?

See it yet? ENHANCE!

Tatyova, Benthic Druid came along and everyone wanted to do Landfall stuff, not just sickos like me. It’s obvious in hindsight that a land that bounces itself became more relevant when a Landfall commander was printed. I am basically insulting your intelligence if I write an article that does a post-mortem on this wacky interaction. You’re on a finance website or you’re one of my wife’s relatives who Googled my name because I couldn’t explain what I do for a living - either way, you can grasp the concept of supply and demand.

Why are we talking about this at all? I think this spike based on a new commander was special, and I think it bears looking into a bit deeper. This is an uncommon and its price nonupled. And it's still climbing.

That’s not just a hit, it’s a home run. I’m not patting myself on the back; the truth is I half speculated, half stocked up. When I get the rush of euphoria from finding the perfect card for a pet deck and it’s something no one else told me about, it feels like I should celebrate and I buy twice as many as I was planning to buy. I didn’t go deep on Ghost Town because I want you to think I’m good at speculating. I want you to understand that I went deep because I really wanted a lot of copies of Ghost Town. This was basically 50% accident and 50% dopamine - it’s a good beats story but it’s hardly worth bragging about.

The thing is, and I didn’t realize this until basically tonight, my speccy sense wasn’t tingling (solely) because I am a junkie for getting Landfall triggers (winning the last round of a PTQ because I paid for a Mana Leak tapped out because I had Lotus Cobra and Knight of the Reliquary felt so good I don’t even care that I got 9th on breakers). I think it was because there really is no other card that does what Ghost Town does. 

Don’t worry, I realize I’m also insulting your intelligence if I think that’s a bombshell. The thing is, buying unique cards isn’t exactly a mind-blowing technique, but the thing also is, I think it’s such an obvious thing that I never bothered to deconstruct how I employ it as a heuristic. I used it basically in one direction - it was a factor I considered when I was evaluating a card as a spec.

Now maybe you have thought a lot more about this than I have, but the thing about a heuristic is that you don’t really think about it too hard - that’s kind of the point of employing one at all. I was using the fact that cards with unique effects are better specs than a similar card that has a lot of other ways to get that effect and stopping there. Why haven’t I been using it for more than just evaluation - why haven’t I been using it to identify specs? I had a routine, it was working, I stuck with it. While I’m doing the same old shtick, though, the next Ghost Town is lying in wait. One year it was Citadel of Pain. One year it was Final Fortune. Let’s find some candidates for the “wow, this old card is ridiculous” 2023 tournament bracket. Sifting comes later, today we dig. 

Mana Severance

I am going to just pick cards from Tempest, and, if possible, cards not on the Reserved List. RL cards have basically been mined on principle so we shouldn’t waste time on cards that have already popped. I think Tempest is a pretty deep well of cards that do unique things and some of them are bound to be interesting. Here is what I found.

Mana Severance is probably cheating since it has popped before, but it didn’t pop because it’s on the Reserved List, it popped because it does something unique. It’s actually insane how powerful this one card is. In those days, they were making cards that did a ton, but they didn’t do anything anyone wanted. It took years for Lion's Eye Diamond to do anything. Hey, a lot of you are finance people - have you or have you not come across a Lion’s Eye Diamond with “Lotus Petal” or “Paradise Mantle” written on it? I sure have. People used to write on LED with Sharpie. LED is incredibly powerful, but there weren’t any cards that could take advantage of it. Ghost Town and Burgeoning were in the same block, sitting there dormant until getting Landfall triggers on someone else’s turn started to matter.

Mana Severance is cheap compared to its historical peak, and it’s on a subsequent spike. What I mean by that is, briefly, when an old, obscure card spikes the first time, it goes up slowly because people aren’t forced to contend with TCG Player for a $10 copy if their LGS has it in a cobwebby five-row for $0.25. When a card spikes, people like us go find all of the loose copies and buylist them. The second time demand goes way up, Card Kingdom has a gajillion copies and no one has the cheap ones at the LGS to soften the blow and the next spike is usually higher and faster. 

Ancient Runes

Ancient Runes is another card that got some attention already and is likely to spike again for a few reasons. Dealing exactly one damage seems to be a design space they’re exploring a lot and people are playing a lot of artifacts. I can’t make people play this card more, but people are using Scryfall now. They’re finding all kinds of old stuff, and if they need a card that does two things, both of which are very good, they’ll come back. This is currently at a third of its historical peak and it’s starting to disappear. 

Rootwater Shaman

It’s not easy to find cards from Tempest that haven’t spiked already, but the set is so deep on quirky cards that there are a few really good candidates. We’re eventually going to have another enchantments-matter set, and it’s only a matter of time before playing enchantments on their turn could matter. This is a unique ability and its low price makes it attractive as a gamble. I can’t imagine with the rate they’re printing that they won’t break this card by accident very soon, and then someone will find it on Scryfall, and we’re off to the races.

Spirit Mirror

There are a few we just missed by a bit. If I had written this article a year ago, we could have made some decent money off of this bad boy.

There’s no way we have fully explored how powerful this card can be. There will be another card that breaks this wide open, and next time it won’t stop climbing at $4. Also, why is it more on TCG Player than on CK? A common reason is that Near Mint copies on CK are sold out. What do you want to bet that’s the case here? 

Tempest is full of a ton of examples of unique cards that we missed the boat on. Bounty Hunter, Flickering Ward, Whim of Volrath, Shadow Rift. Other old sets have gems, just laying dormant. Maybe Tempest does, too - I am suspicious of Magnetic Web and No Quarter, for example. They’re cooking up something, I just know it.

Speaking of cooking something up, I have a good one for you next week. Thanks for reading - until next time! 

 

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