r/mtgfinance is currently a crime scene, and the suspect is a 100-card pile of cardboard that Wizards of the Coast just priced at roughly one month of a Midwest mortgage.
The new Multiverse Reforged Commander deck dropped this week, and if you thought the last premium precon was bad, buckle up, buttercup.
For the uninitiated, a "Commander decklist" is the list of 100 singleton cards you shuffle up for the format where you pick one legendary creature to babysit the other 99.
Normally these preconstructed decks run $40 to $50, which is already steep for cardboard that isn't even foil.
This one clocks in around $150 at big-box retail, and the secondary market is treating it like a limited-edition sneaker drop.
Wizards stuffed it with reprints people have been begging for since the Obama administration, plus a couple of new legendaries that are already warping local metas.
The headline act is a five-color commander that lets you cast spells from a "what if" alternate timeline, which is either the coolest mechanic ever printed or a judge's nightmare, depending on how many beers deep your pod is.
Naturally, scalpers bought every copy within a 40-mile radius before your Aunt Linda could finish her coffee.
They were gone in nine minutes, and three of them are already on eBay for double.
This is the same energy as people hoarding toilet paper in 2020, except the toilet paper now has a serial number and a fake shortage.
The decklist itself is genuinely stacked, which is the problem.
If you just want to play the game, you're competing against trust-fund Timmys who pre-ordered twelve.
The singles market is equally unhinged — one reprinted mythic in this thing spiked 60% overnight because everyone assumed it wouldn't get reprinted, and then it did, and the price still went up.
Here's the part nobody wants to admit: the deck isn't even that good out of the box.
It's a pile of value with a mana base held together by hopes, prayers, and a single Command Tower.
You'll still need to drop another $200 on lands to make it function, which means the real cost of "just buy the precon" is closer to a weekend getaway to a place with a pool.
Wizards, for its part, issued the standard statement about "meeting demand" and "committing to reprints," which is corporate for "we already cashed the check, good luck out there." Meanwhile, the secondary market is doing what it always does: punishing anyone who didn't refresh the product page at 3 a.m. like a raccoon raiding a trash can.
The funniest part is that in six months, this thing will sit on clearance shelves next to unsold Funko Pops, and everyone who paid triple will pretend they didn't.
That's the circle of life for Magic players.
Buy high, sell low, and complain on Reddit the whole way down.
Skip the FOMO and buy the singles you actually want, or split a box with friends and proxy the rest.
Final Thoughts
The decklist is fine, but it's not "cancel your Netflix" fine, and the people treating cardboard like a retirement portfolio need to touch some grass — ideally a basic Forest, ideally unfoiled.