Greetings, Spectators!

It's been a minute since we talked about specs and that's my fault. I've been speculating based on announcements for a while and this week I finally got a chance to think about what's going to happen when Theros block rotates out of Standard and what MM2 is going to do to prices.

Specifically, I want to look at what Tiny Leaders and EDH are doing and what you can do to be ahead of the curve and know what to dump now and what to snag at rotation or sit on for the next year.

My Inspiration

I have written and tweeted about this card a bit before because I thought it bore watching when it bottomed out a while back (a full $2 below its peak price--not bad!) and I thought it had real upward potential. The card is rising steadily right now and I think we're not done seeing growth.

Out of a popular deck from Commander 2013, Primal Vigor is a great EDH card that, while not as good as Doubling Season, gives you a clear advantage if you're built around it, and most people play both. Doubling Season is an EDH staple that recovered nicely from a recent reprinting.

Do I see the ceiling on Primal Vigor as the same as Doubling Season? Absolutely not, but I do see real growth potential, especially if you went deep at $4-$5 like I did. I sure hope I wrote about liking them at $4-$5... it's hard to remember. One of you will know.

Either way, the sheer number of times I've brought Primal Vigor up has to count as an endorsement. I think Vigor sticks around on the board longer if opponents think they can benefit from it and it puts in work. It's not quite as busted with planeswalkers as Doubling Season, but there's no reason it stays below $8 over the next year.

Watching Primal Vigor tick up has given us a pretty decent idea about what to watch for on Commander 2014 cards that we think will see similar amounts of play. Commander 2014 has a few cards I think we can compare to Primal Vigor. What do I think will begin to do what Vigor is doing now and creep up in price around tax season next year?

Next Year's Buys

While not playable in as many decks as Primal Vigor, Daretti has the benefit of blowing Vigor away in terms of unfairness. Vigor is a popular card due to how fair it is and what a good approximation of Doubling Season it does, but in a way that opponents won't kill on sight. Daretti is an absurdly powerful card, evern more so in practice than he was theorized to be.

He's a go-to general for red-based artifact decks in a way that "cute" generals like Bosh, Iron Golem never were. Daretti also comes in a deck with a Wurmcoil Engine and a Dualcaster Mage, and he benefits from being one of those cards that was just sort of discarded in bulk when people busted the decks for those cards. Everything not called True-Name Nemesis hit very low prices in C13 and I see that happening with the stuff in the red C14 deck.

Daretti isn't done falling, but when he begins to rebound, the smart money is buying. Historically, only one planeswalker has stayed below $5 and he had to be printed twice on top of being the worst planeswalker in history to see that price. Daretti going below $5 is wrong and if it happens, be ready to scoop.

The only liability is that he could see a reprinting due to his popularity as a general, maybe as a judge foil or in some future supplementary product that gives us good EDH generals in foil. The risk is mild to low, so I don't feel like it will stop me. Buy planeswalkers under $5 always unless they rhyme with "Scribalt" and buy unfair EDH generals that are also planeswalkers doubly so.

This has room to fall, but it's such a good removal spell in a color that infrequently gets them, expect a highish ceiling due to its power level and low reprint risk. I don't know if green will ever get a better Arrest effect than this and this sees enough EDH play to warrant picking up if it approaches bulk, something it could do in a year's time. I don't like it at $2.50, but I could see it getting above that eventually, so get these as cheap as you can unless they never go below $1.

This is a "maybe" but I'd say it's more likely a "probably" especially as cards that don't immediately seem flashy are overlooked increasingly. This doesn't have the benefit of being in a deck speculators busted just for one card like the red or white one.

This angel, however, was in a precon busted for a single card (Containment Priest) and its playability has caused loose copies to dry up and its price to begin to reflect its playability rather than its scarcity. You can probably get these abundantly, especially if you know someone who tried to flip copies of the white precon. These are still tradeable as a "bulk rare" from most people and I think this is a $5 card.

I like these, but you can't wait a year like you will on Daretti. I think these are going to creep up steadily the farther we get from the precon printing. This is a very good card and with a bunch of people poised to build angel decks with FTV: Angels on the horizon, sooner is better than later on this guy.

Rotating Gems

We're about to see some good cards rotate out with Theros block and with that comes opportunity.

A card this good in EDH warrants the 5x multiplier but, bafflingly, the foil price seems to be declining along with the non-foil price. Does this mean we can buy foils for $5 at rotation when Ashen Rider's price plummets?

Rider is seeing practically no competitive play and while it's relatively abundant, it's too good a card not to be included in most black-white EDH decks. It's been flirted with in some reanimator lists, too, but don't expect that to prop its price up. I see this being dirt at rotation and on that day, I want foils and non-foils alike.

Two printings on this card and it's still going for twice what Ashen Rider goes for now. It does benefit from being an angel, but Ashen Rider is much, much better and I fully expect Rider with one printing to see $5ish if Angel of Despair can maintain $4 after two printings. I also think Angel of Despair will see a bump when FTV: Angels raises a lot of prices, but not so much upside that I'm a buyer at its current retail.

Brutal. The clash pack printing decimated not only the non-foil but also the set foil price on this card. The clash pack was bought up a ton because it had a Courser of Kruphix and Prophets were dirt cheap after that.

Make no mistake, Prophet of Kruphix is risky. Every time a new banned list update goes out, everyone acts like Prophet narrowly escaped the hangman's noose. If you don't play EDH, imagine taking every turn. This card is pretty good in 1v1. Imagine how good it is when you're untapping four extra times before your turn. Now imagine your general is Kruphix. Starting to get the picture? Prophet is insane in EDH and it's a staple in every blue-green deck.

I think the play is for set foils, which are hella cheap and getting cheaper, and for Clash Pack foils, which have a different (worse) art but are also pretty cheap. No one bought the clash pack for Prophet and they were cast aside in large quantities. A while back they were around $1 and you could get 90 copies from the same vendor. That isn't the case now, but it's still not bad. Prophet isn't a $2 foil and a $5 set foil, and the cheaper they get, the more insane you'd have to be not to snap them.

Ditto for this guy. I like all of the Temples at rotation where their price will surely go to dirt cheap because the Temples aren't really played outside of Standard and EDH. I think Temple of Mystery specifically will be a good play on the set foils because of the hammering the clash pack printing gave the price.

Still, all 10 temples if they hit $1 are great targets. EDH is slow, and Temples are always a welcome topdeck. Cheap temples are great trade binder fodder if you have a thriving EDH community and they will likely be a few bucks minimum in a year or so after rotation.

Foils of this are too cheap already; imagine what will happen at rotation. This is premiere removal in a color that doesn't get much removal. Curse of the Swine is a silly EDH card and it's unlikely we'll see it becoming obsolete very soon. If foils of this tank, scoop 'em. These are already a fine card to pick out of bulk and sit on a pile of since this could hit $2-$4 in a few years and people ship them in bulk all the time.

It's absurd how cheap this card is. The foil price even seems a bit low right now, but since EDH players have identified this as a busted EDH card already you can expect a high multiplier. Still, the farther we get from peak supply, the more dear foils will be. If this card hits bulk at rotation, scoop X copies. I am buying every copy of these I can get my hands on when rotation hits.

Grave Pact is on its sixth printing and even the ugly Stronghold art is going for $8. Even if the number of copies of a Journey into Nyx rare is double the number of Grave Pacts total, there is no reason at all for Dictate of Erebos to be a bulk rare. It's arguably better than Grave Pact. The fifth mana is offset by the surprise factor of playing it with flash and the fact that it's double black, not triple black, which is a huge consideration given that Dictate and Pact are often played in Jund-colored decks.

Dictate of Erebos as a bulk rare is incredibly incorrect and there is real opportunity to make a good return as the price creeps up over time. It may take a while, but sit on a bunch of copies until you forget you have them and one day you'll see Dictate is like $4 and you'll have a pile of them ready to buylist for $2 a pop. I'll take an 8x all day.

There are probably a few more EDH staples that are about to dip severely at the next rotation cycle. Since a total lack of playability in competitive formats isn't propping the price up like it did with cards like Snapcaster Mage when Innistrad block rotated, expect prices to fall significantly. When they do, make sure you're ready.