Hi Everyone,
I’m back with my first write up in a few weeks and it’s to kick off Dominaria United coverage.
We’ll have a ton of content pouring out for spoiler coverage over the next few weeks, but first up I want to address the teasers we’ve been seeing regarding a reprint for a Liliana planeswalker. The teaser tweet makes it pretty clear we’re getting one of four Lilianas as a reprint: Liliana, Dreadhorde General, Liliana the Last Hope, Liliana, Death’s Majesty, or Liliana of the Veil.
My personal opinion is we should expect Liliana of the Veil because it fits both thematically within the storyline, and because Liliana the Last Hope just received a reprint in Double Masters 2022. But if LotV is reprinted, what does that mean for Standard and Pioneer? And more importantly, what does that mean for the price tag of the card?
There’s not a ton of good precedent for this situation to lean on historically, especially given LotV has been a core piece of any Jund deck in Modern for nearly a decade. It’s a staple. Powerful, efficient, and run as a 4-of almost exclusively because it can be discarded to itself in a pinch.
LotV projects to be stronger than the recently-printed Ob-Nixilis the Adversary from Streets of New Capenna, and as such I expect LotV might even replace it in the current R/B midrange deck which is holding a reasonable meta share in Pioneer (and stands to be a favorite deck if Nykthos or another piece from the Mono-Green Devotion deck is banned).
With that in mind, I expect the demand for this card to initially skyrocket and the price to actually go up from its current $55-60 threshold. We’ve experienced “supply shortages” with nearly every set in the last two years at release, and I don’t expect Dominaria United to be any different. If true, the supply won’t be enough to offset demand in the early stages of the new-look Standard (and Pioneer), and LotV will be a hot commodity.
I think you can do no harm in picking up copies right now if you’re a player who might use LotV in Standard and/or Pioneer and you don’t already own a playset. Once the card is spoiled today, many players will have this same reaction, and we could see LotV temporarily sit at $75-80 before Dominaria United gets released, opened, and supply eases that price tag.
Longer term, I expect the card to retrace to $40-50, but that’s going to take 6-9 months to happen given supply constraints and the unique demand profile LotV has. Fortunately for players in constructed formats, LotV isn’t a heavily used card in Commander, so that’ll help keep extra pressure off the price both near term and over the long run.
Hope you enjoyed the write up, and stay tuned for a lot more coverage in coming hours, days and weeks as Dominaria United hype hits full speed!
Cheers,
Chris