Unmask would've been a Story Spotlight card, if WOTC had made such a thing explicit, back in the day. It shows Takara, a member of the party, revealing herself to actually be Volrath, one of the major antagonists of the story.
3 is the minimum casting cost number of a PW. Tibalt was a failure and WotC isn't willing to make again that mistake.
Also, not interested in extremely weak and boring CC1 walkers, since the uncommon ones are already weak enough.
Don't dismiss the uncommon walkers out of hand. Saheeli looks really good to me, Tibalt actually has a role to play, Wanderer seems like she could be great in EDH, Narset is the Fun Police, and Jiang Yanggu can definitely enable shenanigans. These are all meant to be niche role-playing walkers, not generic "jam me in a deck and go!" walkers. You just have to find the right deck.
Also, for purposes of this discussion, does Kytheon, Hero of Akros count? He's a great card that was printed at exactly the wrong time for Standard. If he'd been in RTR block, he would've been format-defining.
Man, Last Supper vibes coming out of that art. Card is fairly decent too.
No artist credit yet, but I'd bet money on that being Howard Lyon's work. Howard has a background in religious illustration, so I'm not surprised that there's some significant influence.
It's the new Karn from the set. He can combo with it. Fetch it and the shut off the opponent doing anything due to his static ability to shut off all activations from artifacts that your opponents control.
But Null Rod already existed and is harder to interact with (and easier to fetch) than an attackable Planeswalker.
Edit: I guess Karn only hoses your opponents' stuff, so sure, that seems reasonable.
Sliver Queen is the best 5C Superfriends commander. She's been ticking up lately, but had a pretty solid rise over the last month. Yes, she's absolutely a good card to have in general because she's RL and a casual/EDH favorite, but her latest activity is due to WAR.
Sliver Queen seems like another spike, for the same reasons (I was going to use her as my Superfriends general, and then Atraxa got printed). Some people really want all five colors. Some people just want to throw their opponents for a loop. And some people just like 2: create a 1/1 token.
You could say the same thing, but stop at Revised. "Why are the post-revised sets all only two or three digits of EV? The first few sets started out strong with four or five."
Yes, RTR was when the print runs ramped up hard, so there's a lot more supply. That's really the heart of the matter.
What will change in the near future is the Modern Set, as they (WotC R&D) most likely have a floor-length list of cards that would like to print that would (in their eyes) break standard. Maybe this is what keeps the EV down, R&D is walking on eggshells because they are so afraid of breaking standard and having to create a mid-season emergency ban of a card. If R&D would step out of their comfort zone, we might see some future sets have a higher EV after said set rotates out of Standard.
You say this shortly after one of the most ban-heavy Standards EVER rotated a few months ago. I don't think thatR&D has been walking on eggshellsworried about power level.
Planeswalker-centric cards have been on the rise since WAR's gimmick was released. The Chain Veil, Oath of Nissa, stuff like that. Atraxa is $45 at this point, so I'd say she's already gone bonkers. Looks like it's ramped up since early March, so not a spike but more organic demand. Honestly, I expect this to be mostly all organic demand. Maybe some foils will spike from buyouts, but this smells like "Hey, I like that strategy, I'd better buy into it before it gets too expensive!"
Is there a good resource for finding the pricing of specific test print cards? Is the best bet just to find closed ebay sales (of which there isn’t a result for some of the test prints I’m looking for)?
Test print cards go for sale so infrequently that yes, searching for eBay completed listings is your best bet.
I know that it's an absurdly bad card, but I think that my favorite card is still Gabriel Angelfire. I remember when I first got one for my GW deck, before it was reprinted in Chronicles. I had a choice - for $17 I could get either Gabriel or the Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale. I was advised by the store owner to get the Tabernacle, and I kind of wish I'd followed that advice now, but I bought Gabriel and shuffled him into my 65 (60 card deck? What's that?). I don't know that I drew him in more than a handful of games, but I really liked playing with a Legend.
Anson signs cards through the mail, so no huge premium on that.
Don't dismiss the uncommon walkers out of hand. Saheeli looks really good to me, Tibalt actually has a role to play, Wanderer seems like she could be great in EDH, Narset is the Fun Police, and Jiang Yanggu can definitely enable shenanigans. These are all meant to be niche role-playing walkers, not generic "jam me in a deck and go!" walkers. You just have to find the right deck.
Also, for purposes of this discussion, does Kytheon, Hero of Akros count? He's a great card that was printed at exactly the wrong time for Standard. If he'd been in RTR block, he would've been format-defining.
No artist credit yet, but I'd bet money on that being Howard Lyon's work. Howard has a background in religious illustration, so I'm not surprised that there's some significant influence.
We're talking about spoilers that are unique to the as-yet-unreleased book. If it's on a card, it's fair game.
Sorry, but yes. We know all 37 planeswalkers, and none of them cost 1.
Edit: I guess Karn only hoses your opponents' stuff, so sure, that seems reasonable.
Yeah, TCGp has spiked as well. Possibly related to the new Tezzeret, Master of the Bridge, but it might just be a run on a popular artifact.
Rings of Brighthearth is a good call, though.
Yes, RTR was when the print runs ramped up hard, so there's a lot more supply. That's really the heart of the matter.
Edit:
You say this shortly after one of the most ban-heavy Standards EVER rotated a few months ago. I don't think that R&D has been walking on eggshells worried about power level.