Hello and Happy New Year!

It’s hokey as all hell, but I find that yearly resolutions keep me focused, or at least a little organized in terms of what I want to accomplish in the coming 12 months.

I’m going to list some of my favorite picks of right now, as a present for myself (and for you, dear reader!) next holiday season.

First of all, here’s a link to my resolutions from last year. How did I do?

#1: Finish the Un-Cube

Oh yeah. And it’s a blast. I prefer the seeded packs of my Uncommons Cube, but as a change of pace, or palate-cleanser, the Un-Cube is a riot. Combining the three sets, adding sets of uncommons/commons, deciding what comes out…it was an intellectual challenge. The weird thing is that while every new set/release changes what’s at uncommon, this Cube is going to be unchanging for quite a while.

#2: Attend at least 3 GPs, including #GPVegas

Done! GP Oakland, next weekend, is going to be my fourth GP in 53 weeks, and I’m doubtful that I’ll match that again for a while. I’m based on the West Coast of the USA, so we only get about one event about every four months. I’ve already decided I’m skipping GP LA this year.

#3: Meet Travis and James and Jason in person

Sadly, both Jason and Travis skipped GP Vegas this past summer, so we didn’t have a chance to meet up. Chilcott is a delight, and his dad is a hoot, flashing sealed Revised starters with no protection in his bag at dinnertime. Vegas was a great time, and I got to Cube with a lot of new folks.

#4: Stay Organized

Mostly done. I’ve got sheets to track what I spent and when, and I’m in the midst of picking my collection yet again. So many random things have spiked! The funniest so far has been the playset of Portal Goblin Lore. When did I pick those up?

#5: Buy more of my picks

Semi-accomplished. I went in on a box of UMA for $230, I did indeed pick up playsets of Hadana’s Climb for $5, and other things like Dream Eater sort of hit. I’m still waiting on Earthcraft, Winding Canyons, Soulflayer, etc., but I feel good about this year and value-wise I’m up nicely.

So what do I want to get done this year?

#1: Start a Magic club at my school

I’m a high school science teacher by day, and I don’t think any of my students read my stuff here. There’s a surprising number of people who share my name, thankfully. What I do want to do is encourage the game at my school. I built a Battle Box for quick games, but there’s enough stores in the area that I should be able to arrange sponsorships, freebies, and discounts.

#2: Finish de-randomizing the packed cards

I’ve got some binders/fat pack boxes of random stuff still in storage. I don’t think any of it’s valuable but I won’t know till I look. I do know there’s ~3000 basics and ~2000 tokens/rule cards/other inserts that I’m just going to dump in the recycle bin.

#3: Rework the sign

If you saw the playmat-sized sign flashing the words CUBE DRAFT at a GP, that was me. I don’t like the way it works, though, and it needs some work. I think I want to have the lights be on the outside, or maybe have the lights spell the words, instead of surround the words. Like anything, it’s an iterative process. First drafts are exactly that, sadly.

#4: Get all the Box Toppers

Oh, are we at that point? Very well. That’s actually my first gift to my future self: I’m trading for all the Toppers I can get, and I don’t much care which cards. Yes, even the manlands and Balefire Dragon.

Right now, if you add up all forty cards, it comes out to about $3800. By January first, 2020, it’ll be over five grand. I think Cavern of Souls has the potential to be the most expensive eventually, because it’s much more widely played than Liliana and Goyf. A Topper version of Cavern is #1 on my shopping list for GP Oakland, and while these are more common than the Inventions/Invocations, we’re at the point where you want to get these.

Usually for a Masters set, it’s about a six-month period before the cards reach their lowest, as the supply works it ways through everyone, but we’re seeing things creep back up. I find myself hoping that a second, small wave of UMA is announced, because of the dip that will follow.

An exaggerated effect of this is what happened on MTGO when the $10 million prize pool was announced. If you bought in at the crash, you made something like 20% in a week.

My second gift to your future self: The guild lands from GRN and RNA are going to all be $2+ by then. Yes, they are commonly available in the guild kits, but there’s only 8 of each and these are already close to $1 for the Izzet versions. The time will come where they are pricey. I’m picking up a dozen of each for my Cube and I’m stopping there. Probably. Maybe both Cubes.

It’s been a while since basics have been so iconic, and while I don’t see a big rise in the much-much-rarer foil versions, the nonfoils are going to get bought up, put into collections/cubes/Commander decks, and supply isn’t going to last long.

To be clear: I’m not advocating that you’ll be able to buylist these in a year for more than you’re buying them now. I’m telling you that if you’re thinking about it…get it done before the beginning of summer.

My third gift to you: Prepare for Standard+. I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago, and that’s something we’re going to see this year. Remember, for all the attention, Arena is still officially in open Beta. Collections aren’t going to get reset again, though, so don’t fear that problem. Make sure you’re stocked up on shocklands and buddylands.

Fourth and final gift: Get out of most M19 and Dominaria by the start of summer. Keep a playset of things you’re still using, but to illustrate my point, let’s look at Hazoret the Fervent:

Oh look, three months before rotation, a $15 card dropped to $5. The peak was $25, the weekend Hazoret was all over the Pro Tour. If you keep some copies of Carnage Tyrant all summer, I sympathize, but that’s going to drop to sub-$10. It’s a singleton in some Modern builds, and won’t hold its price. Teferi, Hero of Dominaria looks like he’ll stay relatively strong, but he might go from $50 to $25.

Ixalan, Rivals of Ixalan, Dominaria, M19 are the sets rotating and please don’t hold onto those cards longer than you needed to.

And Happy Holidays!

Cliff has been writing for MTGPrice for five years now, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the official substitute teacher of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at a GP (next up: Oakland in January!) and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.

One of the things that is pretty amazing about Wizards is their knack for keeping us going on the hype train. They have a dozen sets/releases/specials per year (Is it more? Less? I’m not sure anymore!) but we almost never have a chance to feel bored. Ready to take some time off and have the holidays? Here’s the mechanics from Ravnica Allegiance, just to wet your whistle and get you thinking.

Let me tell you, there’s some speculating to be done here.

I’m going to look at each of the guilds and their mechanics, and identify some picks that I think will have potential, given what we know. I’ve pulled some interesting targets out for Standard and for EDH as well.

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ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.

Cliff has been writing for MTGPrice for five years now, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the official substitute teacher of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at a GP (next up: Oakland in January!) and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.

I have to admit, every time I hear about the MTG Finance ‘cabal’, those ‘shadow manipulators,’ I’ve got to laugh.

I don’t know of another group (granted there might be others, but they charge more, like a bookie’s sports line or a stockbroker’s private group) who does more to be transparent. I’ve been part of this site for more than five years, and I admire the way that we all make it super damn obvious what we’re doing and why.

You’re allowed to be annoyed when a card becomes unaffordable for you, but it’s not our fault if you don’t want to listen. We (James, Jason, Travis, me, plus the long and impressive list of others who’ve written for this site) want you to gain value and avoid losing value in your collection. That’s all we do, and we’re very open about our thought processes.

So this week, I want to go over my information sources, some of these are super obvious and some might not be. None of these are going to cost you much, either.

First of all, the obvious: Be a ProTrader! You get these articles before others, including the indomitable MTG Fast Finance podcast. MTGFF is a lot of fun for me when I fill in, and it feels good to be able to pontificate about the cards I like without worrying about my word count.

MTGFF also combines the ‘what has happened’ with the ‘what will happen’ without throwing too much other data at you, and rarely goes over an hour. I know some of you listen to podcasts all the time, but for those of us who do so sparingly, brevity is a gift.

Also, in all modesty, our track record is pretty impressive.

You should also be following all of us on Twitter. We all have our Twitter names in our articles, and if you don’t want to pollute your main feed with a ton of Magic, use the list function. I like keeping my feeds separate for Magic, and sports, and politics, and faces in things.

Twitter is an amazing resource, really. It’s an instant source of news, with rapid feedback, and for a lot of us, a fun way to interact with fans and readers. There’s a lot of the site that’s annoying, yes, but use that block and that unfollow liberally.

My personal tip: mute ‘RL’ and ‘Reserved List’ tweets. Saves me such a headache every time someone wants to revisit settled history.

There are several non-Wizards websites that I often consult (aside from this one, naturally). I refer to mtgtop8’s ‘staples’ section when I want to gauge the playability of a spec. It’s super helpful to know how many Modern decks are playing Engineered Explosives (21%!!) and how many copies each. (1.6, so 1-2 in the sideboard of a ton of decks)

If I’d thought about it, I would have known that Noble Hierarch was the most-played creature in Modern, but finding that tidbit just makes pulling the trigger on a playset so much easier.

Another great function here is the lists of what’s won tournaments, including the sideboards. This is useful for a number of reasons, including being able to quickly see that two Arclight Phoenix decks made the top 8 of GP Portland last week. I know I wrote about the Phoenix as part of Standard+ last week, but all signs point to it being a staple that only gets better with each cheap spell printed.

You’ve seen me refer to EDHREC, or heard us mention it on the podcast, but really, spend the time and go explore the site. It’s got a limitation in that you have to want to upload your deck online, but people who do that are more likely to be the ones who buy cards online. My kind of people, frankly.

Being able to see what the hive mind is thinking in Commander is super-useful. Lots of people approach the format as experiential, as some way to be incredibly unique. For instance, a friend of mine had a Stonebrow, Krosan Hero deck that he called ‘The Juicer’ due to every card featuring mega-buff male chests. Think The Brute and you’re there.

Most folks, though, want to optimize a deck or at least find the sweet combos. You’ll see a lot of repeats (Eternal Witness everywhere, lots of decks with Mirari’s Wake, etc.) but you’ll also be able to see what might spike next.

An example: everything with Proliferate went wild when Atraxa, Praetors’ Voice came around, but it took time for The Chain Veil to pop too.

Finally, I want to give some love to a site that I use more than any other, and I have for years: whatsinstandard.com is a godsend for people like me who know things but have trouble with the specific details of what is known.

I want to give credit to the creator by name. I think it’s Ben Carlsson, but if I’m wrong and misread GitHub, forgive me, and correct me so I can correct this.

I found this site back when we were going to have 18 months and rolling rotation in Standard, and I could never keep track of anything. That’s a real liability for me, and messes with my ability to plan. Finding this simple, easy, and clear list of what people could play and for how long…I refer to this site weekly, if not more often. It’s bookmarked on my phone, too, because I can’t always remember which year what sets are rotating.

Everything that’s Standard-legal right now, for instance, rotates out in about 10 months, except for Guilds of Ravnica, which has 22 months to go. Enormously useful and easy to grok. Thank you, What’s In Standard?

Cliff has been writing for MTGPrice for five years now, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the official substitute teacher of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at a GP (next up: Oakland in January!) and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.