Quote from Squirtle_Squad »Do you think the print sizes are affecting the price? The BFZ and SOI blocks are/were being printed into oblivion. I dont know about KTK block however.
KTK had a fairly large print run because it was drafted as 3x for 3 months and then as 2x for another 3 months. Additionally, tons of people cracked it for the Fetchlands.
Dragons of Tarkir only had 3 months as a 2x set and was never drafted as a 3x set. It's also the only large set ever printed where this is the case - Avacyn Restored, Gatecrash, and Rise of the Eldrazi (the other non-Fall Large sets) were all drafted by themselves as 3x for at least three months. It has only a few staple Eternal cards, so its draw from the Eternal crowd was much smaller as well.
On top of this, Collected Company has been the cornerstone of one of the most dominant strategies in Standard, and has made a splash in Modern. So it's one of the most expensive non-Land, non-Mythic Rare cards in recent memory.
All that said, the set is one of the few standalone sets in standard, so there's lower intra-block synergy than with BFZ and SOI cards, and it has only three months left in Standard, which is why everything is starting to creep downwards.
There's the classic Opalescence deck. It used Attunement to filter through cards, then Replenish to return a bunch of enchantments at once. Opalescence turns them all into creatures. This can also enable some dirty stuff - if you've got Parallax Wave as a creature, you can target it and it will exile itself and then immediately return itself to the battlefield. So you can target a bunch of other things, then respond by targeting it, and it will flicker itself, then permanently exile everything else - since it's a new object, it will no longer track the cards exiled by the "first" copy and they won't return the next time it exiles itself. You can permanently exile every opposing creature (and enchantment) this way. Throw in Parallax Tide as well and you permanently exile all opposing lands as well.
There's another Opalescence deck that uses a bunch of Leylines. Drop them all into play on the first turn of the game, then use Serra's Sanctum to play an Opalescence and start attacking.
Opposition is one of my favorite older enchantments. Combine it with token-generating enchantments like Squirrel Nest, Zendikar's Roil, and similar, and you can easily tap down all of your opponent's cards and keep them from doing anything. Like Diversionary Tactics but on steroids.
There was a standard deck that used Assemble the Legion plus Descent into Madness to Assemble the Madness. Assemble gives you an evegrowing army, Descent asks for an ever-growing sacrifice. You can feed your army to the Descent to stay ahead while your opponents lose more and more of their board or hand.
There's also the classic Enchantress deck. You use cards like Enchantress's Presence, Argothian Enchantress, and Eidolon of Blossoms to draw from every enchantment you play, then play a bunch of cheap enchantments like Wild Growth, Utopia Sprawl, and similar. Throw in stuff that protects you like Elephant Grass, Sphere of Safety, Solitary Confinement and you can become nigh unkillable, and grind your opponents out with Words of War.
It's unsurprising that Rider is spiking again as it did so when Eldritch Evolution came out too. Chancellor spiking is a new one, but the card has been fringe playable in decks like Belcher for a while.
I think the true catalyst to this is that there's potential in Modern for this deck, especially as the London mulligan heavily rewards combo decks like this.
Venturing a guess that it's too narrow, since it requires planeswalkers in play to do anything.
RTR looks like a big dip because one of its big money draws - Shocklands - is currently in-print in Standard, depressing demand. But before Shocks were reprinted, there was a smoother transition with RTR falling between the sets that came before it and the sets that came after it in value.
Okay so you answered one question - you can use legendary lands. But you didn't answer my other questions. Are legendary sorceries like Kamahl's Druidic Vow okay? How does Color Identity apply here - does your second card need to be within your first Commander's color identity (like Oathbreaker), or is the color identity of your deck the combination of both of your Commander cards' identities (like partner)?
I really think this is a bad idea. Part of the point of Commander formats is that the slower games, larger deck sizes, and singleton restriction allow more cards to be playable because you need to include more unique cards in your deck. Removing the singleton restriction means that rather than play 60-65 nonland cards, you're playing 2 copies each of ~30 nonland cards and maybe a couple of singleton tutor targets. It's going to raise consistency by more than a little. 5-10 doubled copies alleviates this a little, but most people will probably just double up on tutors and you end up with a lot of the same problems. It's also going to deter people from trying your format, as many people only have one copy of staple cards (especially expensive stuff like Duals, Mana Crypt, etc) and won't be able to build a tuned deck without shelling out a lot.
This sounds like some great feedback as to things that do not work in your format. You're giving *way* too much consistency to your combo decks with the 2-of rule, and trying to "solve" it with a clunky, hard-to-track rule that doesn't shut down a lot of problematic combos isn't helping much. I look at this rule and my first thought is "Wow this guy must just really hate combos and is building this format to avoid having to play against them". Which I guess is somewhat legitimate, but it seems to me like most of the fun of EDH comes from having those big explosive turns that you're not going to see with this rule. It feels like you're throwing out the baby with the bathwater, when there are other, less drastic steps you could take like pinpoint bans, reversing the "2-of" rule, etc if there are actual things that are problematic in this format.
If you feel you have to ban time magic, so be it. But I feel like this is one of those things that can be left up to societal pressure. If someone is regularly casting Time Stretch/Expropriate and not immediately winning, and durdling around for all their extra turns, just shun and shame them until they stop, or stop playing with them. Trying to make draconian rules against things that aren't super problematic in Commander proper just seems weird, especially when there's a bunch of stuff that's at least as frustrating to play against that you haven't mentioned, like Stax, Mass LD, Chaos, etc.
There is no card in the game that unconditionally searches for two lands at two mana, even if it's only putting them into your hand and even if it's restricted to basic forests. The closest is Gaea's Bounty at three mana. All of the Cultivate variants are three mana as well.
There are very few cards in the game period that give you an unconditional two-for-one at two mana.
And that's before taking into account the Nissa mode, which turns this into a three for one and drastically broadens what you're searching for, letting you assemble combos like Stage Depths, all 3 Tron Pieces, multiple Cloudposts, Urborg + Coffers, etc.
It is feasible that MaRo provided incorrect information (he said so himself), which could mean that Tamiyo and Narset are both mono-blue. I'm operating under the assumption that he provided correct information.
As to why the leaked image provided the cards it did... we have no idea where these were sourced from. It's very likely that this was not an intentional set of cards. Why put Roalesk and Niv in the mix when everything else was walkers? Why spoil Karn but not Ugin? Why spoil all of the Gatewatch but not the other mono-colored rare walkers?
Some interesting ideas here, but I have a few questions/concerns:
1) Two "commanders" is an interesting idea and a few variants of this have been thrown around, including Partners in actual Commander, "Lieutenants" as a second commander within your colors, and Oathbreaker which has a Legend/Planeswalker + a "Signature Spell". Can you elaborate on why the second commander has to be a non-creature? You can already have a non-creature (Planeswalker) as your main commander, and the options for non-creature, non-planeswalker legendary cards are pretty restrictive. Can the second card be a legendary land like Gaea's Cradle? Can the second card be a legendary instant or sorcery like Kamahl's Druidic Vow? How is color identity determined? Does the second card need to be within the first card's color identity, or is your deck's color identity determined from the union of both cards?
2) Why two copies? It seems like this adds a ton of consistency (100 cards with 2 copies of each is going to be more consistent than 60 cards with 1 copy of each) and probably limits brewing space a lot because suddenly every "auto-include" is worth auto-including twice. Can you include an additional copy of your commander(s) in your maindeck? Can you run two of the same planeswalker as your commanders?
3) This rule seems designed to discourage combo-type play, but it also seems like it's incredibly hard to track and overly restrictive. And if discouraging combo is your primary goal, rule #2 seems really backwards. Like, I could build an insanely powerful Hermit Druid combo deck that would win within these constraints - Activate Hermit Druid (1) milling your entire library. Two Narcomoebas enter the battlefield (3). Flashback Dread Return (4) targeting The Mimeoplasm, exiling Hydra Omnivore and Lord of Extinction. Dragon's Breath triggers and returns (5). Swing, deal ~100 to your opponent, Omnivore triggers dealing 100 to each other opponent (6). Even has room for a couple of counterspells. Alternatively, Dread Return brings back Angel of Glory's Rise which triggers (5) returns Laboratory Maniac and Azami, Lady of Scrolls, tap either (6) to draw a card which is replaced by winning the game. And when my deck can include 2 Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Imperial Seal, Worldly Tutor, Sylvan Tutor, Green Sun's Zenith, and other tutors, plus two copies of every fast mana artifact like Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Chrome Mox, Mox Diamond, etc I can easily do this turn 2 or 3 basically every game.
4) This rule seems fine, discouraging people from running a bunch of extra turn spells, but the way you've worded it here seems weird. Does this *just* mean I can't take 3 turns in a row? Or does it mean that I can't add additional extra turns to the stack if I'm in an extra turn? It sounds like you mean the latter, which means I could still cast Time Stretch and Twincast it a few times and take 5+ turns in a row. If it's the former, it drastically alters how Time Stretch and cards like Temporal Expropriation work. If that's the intent, why not just ban those cards?
Negative, MaRo provided a mono/multi breakdown at rare that indicates we are missing exactly one monocolored and one multicolored.
Sarkhan can be the mono-red Rare or he can be multi. However, RU and RG already have rare walkers and RB already has two rares, so unless he is RW, he has to be mono-red.
Narset could be the last blue uncommon, a blue or white monocolored rare (more likely Blue as MaRo says she's centered in blue), or a multicolored rare. BUT UW and UR already have rare planeswalker (and RW is unlikely because she's centered in blue), so she is almost certainly *not* multicolored as there is no open pair that would make sense.
Tamiyo could be the last blue uncommon, a blue rare, or a multicolored rare. UW is again taken, but she could be UG.
The most sensible remaining configuration is:
Narset U uncommon
Sarkhan R rare
Tamiyo UG rare
Theoretically these two are possible, though it seem unlikely:
Sarkhan RW rare
Narset U uncommon
Tamiyo U rare
-or-
Sarkhan RW rare
Narset U rare
Tamiyo U uncommon
Notably, BR already has two rares, and there are only 42-44 multicolored cards. That means each color has 2 uncommons and 2 rares/mythics, plus Bolas, Niv, and maybe 1-2 other odds and ends. It is extremely unlikely that there is another BR rare (and it would also force a backslide in his color identity). If Sarkhan is multicolored, the only possibility at this point is RW (which also doesn't make much sense). By this, we can conclude that Tamiyo must be the remaining multicolored planeswalker at UG (as UW is taken).
Unfortunately I'm not certain how to help you.