Unlike MTG Spider Man, Avatar: The Last Airbender has already shown off a ton of incredibly powerful spells. Spoiler season isn’t even over yet, but we already have an incredible mana generator and a new, powerful tutor hate card. Both of these cards are getting a lot of attention, but the tutor hate is, at the moment, a bigger story than Badgermole Cub.
Wan Shi Tong, Librarian has a ton of MTG players freaking out. The card looks like it has some serious potential, pushing its prerelease price to $49 overnight. Whether or not this is premature hype or not is yet to be seen, but for now, Wan Shi Tong, Librarian is the talk of the town.
Wan Shi Tong, Librarian
Wan Shi Tong offers players a combination of effects that we already have in Magic. Mixing Hydroid Krasis with Archivist of Oghma, Wan Shi Tong, Librarian certainly has the makings for a metagame menace. This somewhat underplays Wan Shi Tong’s potential, however, primarily because Archivist of Oghma is not legal in Modern.
Tutoring is particularly plentiful in Modern and Commander, two of Magic’s most popular formats. Between Fetch Lands and Vampiric Tutors, Wan Shi Tong is set up to draw you tons of cards and become a powerful threat in no time. The extra mana sink associated with this card ensures that Wan Shi Tong is never a bad topdeck, as well. If this all weren’t enough, Wan Shi Tong has evasion and Vigilance, for some reason.
All of this means that Wan Shi Tong, Librarian is seeing a lot of Modern and Commander interest. Modern even has some obvious homes for the Bird Spirit, meaning that the card might impact the format extremely quickly. For this reason, it didn’t take long for the initial wave of preorders on TCGplayer to get snatched up, and the next wave of listings are starting to exchange hands too, despite them being $20 more than the previous ones.
Quick $49 Sales
While Wan Shi Tong certainly feels like a card that could sell for around the $50 range, it’s important for us to mention that we are still in very early MTG Avatar spoiler season. MTG cards commonly experience steep premiums during these periods due to extremely limited quantities. It’s quite common for MTG cards to fall from their preorder prices when the set sees its official release. This means that there is a very real chance that Wan Shi Tong will be cheaper once MTG Avatar is available on store shelves.
Despite all this, it’s rare for an MTG card to see a jump this immediate, even in preorder season. Wan Shi Tong saw dozens of sales on its spoiler day, many of those being playsets for $30 each, until October 30th. Listings quickly jumped to $49 and, while sales have slowed down, they haven’t stopped. Copies of Wan Shi Tong that have sold since October 30th have done so for $49, and current preorder prices float around that number. Despite early $30 sales for Wan Shi Tong being recorded, it feels like that price point is far behind us.
To make things even wilder, these are the cheaper variants of Wan Shi Tong currently available. Wan Shi Tong also has a borderless variant that has been spoiled, and recent sales and listings for that variant currently put it at a whopping $110. That said, only one sale for the card has been made at this value, and only one listing for borderless Wan Shi Tong is currently available, also at this number. Expect these numbers to vary wildly, even in preorder season.
This puts Wan Shi Tong, at time of writing, as the most expensive base variant MTG Avatar card. Badgermole Cub seems to be the runner-up, currently listed at about $33.
Be Very Cautious
Despite Wan Shi Tong, Librarian’s sudden rise to fame, because these are preorder prices, there is a very real chance that the $49 price tag won’t hold up. This almost entirely depends on Wan Shi Tong’s success in various competitive outlets, like Modern and cEDH, but considering how excited everyone is for the card, it probably won’t take long for players to figure things out.
Wan Shi Tong could break out in short order, or could fail to catch fire right away. If its the ladder, demand for Wan Shi Tong will probably fall off somewhat, as a decent margin of the extremely early preorder sales are for playsets of the card. Prices will likely plummet in the short term should Wan Shi Tong not be the menace that everyone is expecting it to be. I wouldn’t be surprised if the card eventually rebounds strongly due to Commander interest, however.
All of that said, we’re certainly not capable of telling the future, as anything could happen. The use cases of Wan Shi Tong are very broad, meaning that it will likely find a home somewhere. Whether players are preparing for Modern Regional Championships, or just trying to get the Bird Spirit for their Commander decks, Wan Shi Tong, Librarian is one of the most heavily anticipated cards from MTG Avatar: The Last Airbender.
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