What a Waste

December 9, 2015 Jason Alt 7 Comments

So that Wastes card is all but confirmed, isn’t it?

This guy. The card that is *wink wink, nudge nudge* unconfirmed. I am not going to 100 percent say that we know this card is real, but I don’t think it would kill us to pretend it is.

This card actually matters a great deal even if it’s not real, because it’s going to drive buying behavior for a little bit, and if it is real, everyone who was waiting for confirmation is going to act and only those who bought before they got confirmation are in a position to benefit. Let’s look at every possible consequence of this card within an EDH-finance perspective and try to see how much this card matters and how likely we think it is to be real.

I think it’s probably real. I’ve heard from a few people who design proxies, most notably “Proxy Guy” (@theproxyguy) that if this card is a fake, it’s flawless. For a while, the odd symbol on the card appeared like it might be a dreaded sixth mana color. Players who are optimistic like me when I’m drinking (but only the right amount and the right stuff—like, Whiskey Jason is only optimistic about his ability to beat school buses in fights and Tequilla Jason blacks out and tells people he invented time travel, but only a few hours into the future and your pants can’t travel into the future with you) will tell you they think this is just a basic land that taps for colorless mana.

How do we explain Newzilek (Newlamog rolls off the tongue so much better) and the fact that he has colorless mana in his casting cost?

Being charitable, we’ll assume the two diamond shapes are colorless mana that originated from a source that produces colorless mana and the other eight mana can come from colored sources. You can tap eight forests and two wastes, for example, but you can’t tap ten forests. That seems a little bit clunky and unintuitive, but the alternative is living in a world where Wizards of the Coast took all of the design work Johnathon Loucks did plus all of the feedback they have gotten from EDH players with colorless generals, put all of those things into a pile, and peed on them. Just peed right on that pile of mostly intangible concepts.

I don’t want to live in a world where Wizards of the Coast pees on concepts. I want to live in a world where I can play Evolving Wilds in my Karn, Silver Golem EDH deck, should I ever hate winning enough to build that kind of deck. Although, maybe I will build it, because the idea of using Liquimetal Coating to assassinate their lands one by one or attack them for seven with Spine of Ish Sah makes me laugh.

So maybe it’s not just wastes that produce this diamond mana. Maybe other lands tap for it and maybe it’s just a new and totally unnecessary way to denote colorless mana. Did we have other clues? You bet.

There’s that symbol again. So, either only lands from this set produce this mana (stupid) or this is the new way lands that tap for only colorless will denote that (stupid, but less stupid, so it wins).

Let’s ignore how totally hot sex Mirrorpool is in EDH for a few weeks, even though this card is. It’s hot, hot sex. Can you think of a deck that doesn’t want to do any of those things? Oh, you can’t? And Crucible of Worlds is a card? Interesting. I hope this card’s real. You know what else I hope is real? The last piece of the puzzle.

There’s that fugly diamond again. I could kiss you, fugly diamond. I could kiss your fugly, foil f$^%*@# face.

I don’t want to talk about the price of a Mystic Gate Expeditions land will cost, because I just started thinking of the analysis I could do to figure it out, and correctly predicting the price of something that the market will dictate the price of before any of us can preorder them and no one can make any money from short of buying packs and busting them is a lot of work to show off, maybe be wrong, and not talk about what I wanted to talk about when I started writing this article.

Let’s stick with the task at hand. Still, if this is real, we’re getting foily, fantastic filter lands in EDH, and maybe some other formats, too, I guess. It also confirms the diamond symbol. There will be DIRE CONSEQUENCES.

Card with Symbols

I did this in MS paint because I was out touching girls’ boobs when the rest of you nerds were learning how to photoshop boobs onto the Facebook pictures of the girls in your homeroom class. The point still stands: if they’re committed to the stupid diamond thing outside of this block, and therefore for the rest of the time this wacky card game keeps selling, this is how the next Sol Ring might look. Why is this important? Well, it’s new. And new could matter.

Oh, the plateaus and plummets of our old friend. Every time it looked like the card might get back on its feet, another reprint came and kicked the legs out from under it like old Brooks kicked the legs out from under the chair he was standing on when he carved “Brooks was here” in the support beam in the room in the halfway house where he was staying after getting paroled from Shawshank. Who’s going to feed old Brooks’s crows, now? Are you? No, all you care about is yourself.

Maybe you want to think about other people for a second, though. Because people have different opinions. Some people think Shawshank Redemption wasn’t one of the greatest movies of all time. They’re wrong, but since we can’t put a snubnose .38 in their face (the very same gun that was use to frame old Andy Dufrense) and force them to buy a DVD copy, we have to tolerate their points of view.

The point is: preference could come into play. I can’t guess at the exact distribution, but there will be people who prefer the new double diamond look of the Sol Ring from Commander 2016 which, let’s not pretend we all don’t think is happening, and the people who prefer the classic circle deuces look. People will prefer one or the other, and the new look could mean the price won’t be quite as cheap as we expect, even though there will be a Sol Ring in every deck. The price of the new, diamondy Sol Ring is likely to finish above the many different printings of the older ring, and the price divergence could stabilize the price of the older versions, as the preference players have for the different versions could have a stabilizing effect on the supply and demand curve.

Ditto here, and maybe moreso.

Colorless Cards

There are EDH staples and then there are narrower staples. It’s the manabase pain in the ass that kept people from building a deck with a colorless commander. There are a lot of colorless cards with upside if people start to build more decks with colorless commanders, made easier by Wastes. Maybe Newzilek would be a sweet commander.

An artifact that is less useless in mono-artifact decks all of a sudden? Be still my beating heart. The Commander 2015 version of Marvin the Paranoid Android is hovering under $3 and has some real upside at that price. I don’t see it getting any lower. It’s a damn Solemn Simulacrum. True, there is a chance it’s reprinted a year from now, but I bet it goes up enough from $2.50 that you’ll be glad you bought in. Besides, being able to fetch Wastes is unprecedented for this card, and when people realize how much applicability it will have in a type of deck people weren’t building before, I see real upside. The original version is still the most expensive because it looks the coolest (why have an Invitational and do a portrait of the winner on the card they designed if you’re going to change the art later? It’s dumb) and because it’s super rare compared to the rest. It’s also got a foil version.

The new applicability in the colorless decks could be the kick in the ass frowny Jens needs to climb the charts again. You could get an ugly 2012 version in foil, but you could also join the Hare Krishnas or pierce your own nipples with that kit you bought on Amazon because the directions looked so easy, and that cute goth chick in your computer programming class said “tight” when you mentioned you thought you might get a piercing (and you didn’t mean it), but maybe this could be your in; you could be like “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours” and maybe the piercing she shows you won’t haunt your nightmares. The point is: don’t buy ugly foils and don’t pierce your nips. That chick’s getting back together with her ex, everyone knows that.

The third printing, even though it was at mythic, brought this card down to a new low. According to EDHREC, this is a +47% synergy rating for Karn, Silver Golem, a commander with upside with Wastes. This can’t get cheaper barring a reprint, and it could be turning the corner already.

This thing is almost impossible to reprint, and it’s already doing what we expect it to do. Dealer confidence could be higher, but you never know what caused the behavior which was following the plot to tail off. What we do know is this card is nutter butters with artifacts.

It’s not just artifacts that could benefit here. A new Kozilek and new Ulamog give us a chance at having sicko Commanders, ready to come out of the Command Zone and get into trouble. Although Wastes may figure into the mana base, it won’t be the only thing.

Can we agree this card isn’t going anywhere but up?

At first glance, there’s no money to be made here. Bulk rares in in-print sets that are non-mythic in the post-mythic era aren’t going to be significantly buoyed by EDH alone, but wait. Let’s look at another graph.

Foils under $3? Thanks, generous multiplier stymied by a low non-foil price. If this card preserves this multiplier (it can’t) this could be a $50 foil as the non-foil grows, but I’m thinking we’re seeing a divergence due to the high desirability and low relative availability of the foil versus the non-foil, and I expect more divergence is possible.

We can explore a few more examples later. I have a final point I want to make.

Wastes Themselves

Awwww, yiss. Playing with Wastes is going to be sicko. How do we evaluate the price of Wastes? Are they in every booster? Are they inserted as a sixth basic land? Do they replace a common? Are they mixed in with commons? Will this be the last set with them? What I think is important to know is that these will likely be discarded by Limited players and are worth jamming in a box if you get them for free. I think it’s unlikely they will be printed again soon, and if they are, I doubt it will be full-art. This is free money.

Here’s a card to look at. Four printings have beleaguered its price, but it’s still hanging in there. Imagine only one printing of this card. I realize it’s uncommon from a much older set, but it’s also a card that everyone who wants them wants a lot of. Foils are $4 to $7 depending on the set. Want a closer example?

I feel like Wastes are$1 (or more!) cards waiting to happen. Snow-covered lands are cool, but Ice Age gave us a ton of them so the two printings limit the upside.

Here’s a price you should have memorized as we go into preorder season:

Is $10 unreasonable for foil Wastes? I don’t think so. If you can get them for very cheap, imagine what a foil, full-art Wastes could go for very easily in a year or so. Will Wastes be in every set? Return to Return to Zendikar only? Will they never print them again? All I know is that we have some decent price corollaries and we should be mindful of them going into “busting packs of Oath of the Gatewatch” season. There will be full-art lands in the fat packs again, there will be Expeditions lands again, but there will also be foil Wastes. As far as I know, that’s worth paying attention to.

After my article last week went a little bit long, I was told my article this week would have a hard cap at 2200 words and that was non-negotiable. No matter what I was talking about, 2200 is the cap, so I need to work on being a little pithier. I understand the need to be more succinct in my writing and respect the decision to cap me. I’d like to thank you all for reading and I invite you to join me next week when the topic of my article will be

Going Mad

Going Mad – Why Standard is Becoming Less Relevant

December 9, 2015 Derek Madlem 21 Comments

By: Derek Madlem

A cold wind blows in from the Northwest as the last dying leaves succumb to the paralyzing reality. Winter is knocking at our doors and the foliage is not the only thing in a state of torpor. The holiday season has always been a hard time to get any real wizarding done and this year’s event calendar is certainly not any help. December has always been light on premiere level events, but this year we have zero Grand Prix events. This comes after five straight weekends of constructed Grand Prixs…maybe we’re just hungover.

Local Magic is suffering as people are abandoning Standard in levels not seen since Caw-Blade summer. This is where I should chime in with an analysis of the competitive Standard environment to explain that it’s much more diverse and competitive than it was when those four little birds were the crux of competitive Magic, but I really can’t. I don’t know what’s going on in Standard because I just don’t care about Magic right now. I said it. I’m bored with Standard and hardly care to attend the dwindling weekly locals.

But I’m almost certainly not alone in this regard; FNMs and local weeklies everywhere are suffering with the main culprit being that players simply can’t (financially or mentally) afford to buy into the current Standard format. Mono-red, the game’s perpetual budget deck, is sporting a mana base that’s approaching $200, and that’s before you even throw in your first copy of Atarka’s Command. We’re playing a format that features the first $1,000 Standard deck, this is anything but an entry level format at this point.

Magic is ultimately a social game and our excitement, or lack thereof, to play is contagious. If you’re used to 32-man FNMs and you show up to a paltry nine players, there’s a good chance that you’re going to consider other options the next weekend, and your absence only adds to the snowball effect of people abandoning weekly tournaments.

Five Stupid Lands

The lion’s share of blame for the current state of Standard lies in five stupid lands. The irony here is that these five lands were so successful at making Modern more accessible that people decided to just go play that format instead. After acquiring a few fetches, people took a look around and saw that they could play Siege Rhino mirrors for 18 months, or they work toward finishing their Modern decks and ignore Standard completely.

Then the fetches started climbing. Players that had acquired a “playset” of Khans fetches started cashing in the extras to acquire the newly cheapened Splinter Twins and Cryptic Commands to gear themselves up for tournament play, and it was all over. Tarmogoyfs becomes a lot easier to acquire when you can just hand over fetch lands to acquire the mythic two-drop.

Despite popular belief, Magic players are constrained by budgets. With the Pro Tour, we’ve heard players talking about “getting on the train,” which is to say that once you achieve silver level in the Pro Players Club the first time, it’s easier to achieve the next time and easier to make the jump to gold or platinum. The same is true for constructing top-tier Standard decks. If you had a tier-one deck in Theros / Khans / Dragons Standard, you probably have one in Khans / Dragons / Battle Standard; but if you started or attempted to return to the game at Dragons of Tarkir or Magic Origins, you’ve been playing catch up this whole time. And if you came into the game at Battle for Zendikar, I’m sorry about your luck, kid, the train has left the station.

Something Dismal Stirs

By now you’ve heard this next line dozens of times, but I’m all for repeating myself just to up the word count: Battle for Zendikar sucks. It’s painfully apparent that Battle for Zendikar is one of the worst sets of the modern era and that the Expeditions lottery is one of the set’s few saving graces, and even they’re not looking incredibly impressive right now.

Compounding the problems that were already bubbling just below the surface with the expense of Khans fetches is the absolutely dismal power level present in BFZ. Normally when a new set is released you’ll see some reasonable deck alternatives popping up to give players somewhere to start leading into the next block. These decks are rarely tier one, but they’re usually powerful enough to at least battle through a few FNMs without getting repeatedly curb stomped into the 0-4 bracket while we wait for new cards to get printed.

This time, not so much; we have a set full of Wasteland Stranglers. Cards that rely heavily on synergies (that are hardly obtainable in draft) to do mediocre things. The best comparison is I can make is the Rise of Vigil expansion for Ascension; the set contained dozens of cards that did the exact same thing as existing cards only after jumping through hoops to activate them. Why?! This is reverse power creep in it’s worst form. This is Kamigawa… and Rosewater said we wouldn’t ever be returning.

Battle for Zendikar had fewer cards show up in its own Pro Tour than any set in the modern era. But it’s not just what’s in Battle for Zendikar that’s making Standard miserable, it’s what was left out.

Theros may not have been the most compelling block in the history of Magic, but it featured a set of checks and balances that leveled the playing field. Certain archetypes rely on certain cards existing, and shifting the power level of commons and uncommons down closes the door on those archetypes, creating an environment where people have no choice but to play a pile of rares and mythics. We now have a format where Siege Rhino and Woodland Wanderers are rampaging the countryside, but Lightning Strike is somehow too powerful.

Against the Tide

Traditionally, at this time of year we see the tide lowering and prices across the board dropping, both in Standard and Modern. The January after release has long been pegged as the low water mark for fall sets, but if you’ve been watching the weekly interests page, you’ll notice that Standard and Modern cards just aren’t moving. Most of the big movers have been in nonsense Legends and Arabian Nights cards that show up in ’93/’94 decks and other cards with low inventory levels.

Part of this is likely due to the lack of premiere level events and their ripple effect on buy and sell prices, but the majority of it is likely due to a widespread attitude of “let’s wait it out” as players hope that the release of Oath of the Gatewatch will be the shot in the arm the format needs moving forward. I’m not optimistic (am I ever?) that Oath is going to bring any real substance to the mix.

We have little to go on as far as Oath speculation goes, but we do have a gimmicky mana symbol and the promise of “the most cards designed for Two-Headed Giant ever.” Neither of these are selling points for me. Short of tacking “exile the top card of your opponent’s library” to every card in Oath or devoid somehow becoming relevant, this block feels close to a complete loss. These might be the best prices we see for any card in Battle for Zendikar and I’m frankly kind of amazed that they’re holding at current levels. There are only two cards I see any upside on: Gideon, Ally of Zendikar and Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger, and even those are tenuous at best.

Dragons of Tarkir / Magic Origins

Here’s where we are likely to part ways, but I’m of the opinion that it’s all downhill from here for Dragons and Origins cards. Pretty much everything from these blocks peaked the second week of October and has been on a slow and steady decline ever since. The chart for pretty much every rare looks similar to Deathmist Raptor’s:

While there’s a chance that we see a second spike on these cards around the release of Shadows Over Innistrad, I’m putting my money on a response similar to what we saw in Khans as BFZ showed up. I’m operating on the assumption that sets are likely going to peak six to nine months after release moving forward, and I have already dumped everything from Dragons / Origins that I don’t expect to play in Modern.

Watchful Eyes

Going forward, we have a couple things to watch for. Chances are good that Oath is going to be just as bad as BFZ, and this sustained “player recession” is going to put pressure on a lot of retailers and organized play in general. Many players are just going to sit out completely until Shadows Over Innistrad or shift their focus to Modern.

If the return to Innistrad follows the same pattern we’ve seen in the last two “return” blocks, we’re in for another shit show. Return to Ravnica was serviceable as a return block, but succeeded mostly on the strength of a few guilds carrying the weakness of others…I’m looking at you, Simic. BFZ has been a pile of gimmicks that are neither cohesive nor compelling and we can expect any return to Innistrad to be laden with mediocre demons, angels, and vampires taking up more than their fair share of the rare and mythic slots.

Shoehorn in some werewolves and a couple watered-down graveyard mechanics and there’s little room left for anything fresh and new. If we’re lucky, we’ll get an Avacyn’s Pilgrim reprint so we can play with a reasonable mana dork again, but it’s becoming apparent that Wizards is moving away from mana dorks at one mana in the same manner that we’ve moved away from Rampant Growth effects at two.

The other issue we can expect to rear it’s ugly head going forward is the two-set dynamic does not leave room to both pay homage to the previous block and introduce something new, leaving us without the critical mass to power the synergy strategies and shifting Standard to solely be a “best cards” format.

If Shadows falls flat like BFZ and lacks the full-art lottery tickets, we might see the first year with a decline in Magic sales and a stagnating Standard player base, which is only going to put more focus on Modern—the format that players demand and goes against Wizards’s entire primary business strategy.

I’d love to hear what Standard looks like in your area. What’s attendance like? What are players saying about the format? How many have dropped the mic, never to return?

Jim Casale

Grinder Finance – Having a Very Standard Christmas

December 8, 2015 Jim Casale 8 Comments

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the internet, not a price was rising. Not even a Mox.

Once a year, Standard staples reach their lowest points before a sharp rebound the next year when people are back to playing Magic. While this was not true of every card in Khans of Tarkir, Siege Rhino is one of the best case scenarios for people investing this holiday season. Like many other people, I’ve been putting some cards on my naughty list and some cards on my nice list to purchase this holiday season.

I’m going to borrow Wizard’s 2012 Holiday card to help out a little this year.

Nice

Gideon, Ally of Zendikar

Fair trade price for Gideon right now is listed as $29.42. A far cry from his actual price. You’re seeing very stubborn stores keep their prices high to recoup as much of their investment as possible before the end of the year. The truth of the matter is cash value is much lower. Right now you can find Gideon on TCGPlayer for $20 per copy and even lower – at 13 € (about $14 USD) in Europe. That’s pretty insane for what is essentially a format defining 4-of planeswalker, right? There is another one on my naughty list I will show later, but right now seems like a great time to buy into Gideon. He won’t rotate until you’ve likely got more than your $20 worth of play from him.

Eidolon of the Great Revel

Eidolon is a mainstay of Modern Burn decks and will be for the forseeable future. In a deck that doesn’t play any other creatures with 2 CMC, it’s obvious this card is a house. While the spread between the Fair Trade value and TCGPlayer is rather low, this card has a huge price jump overseas. On Hareruya, one of Japan’s premier MTG card stores, Eidolon is listed at ¥1,800 (which is ~ $14.50) while it’s on sale! There is obviously much more demand over seas and it is only a matter of time before our market is corrected as Eidolons are bought and shipped to Asia. This is one of the rare circumstances where North American card prices are not leading the way and influencing other markets. I would recommend buying into them before the Modern Pro Tour and they get some camera time.

Stoneforge Mystic (pack foils)

All you want for Christmas is a playset of pack foil Stoneforge Mystics? Well now is probably the best time to pick them up. A flood of foil Stoneforge Mystics will hit the market as it was announced as next year’s GP Promo. The way I see it, is if you play Legacy you have a lot less to lose by buying in later rather than now. In an unlikely scenario where they unban Stoneforge Mystic in Modern, the price of them sky rocket until the end next year while we await distribution of promo copies. If nothing gets unbanned, then they probably keep the same price trajectory as pack foil Griselbrands. Pack foil Griselbrand dropped ~ $20 in the year and now with no more promos being distributed, will climb back up. In the short term (a year) you may see loses buying in now but in the long term it is unlikely to see another reprint with this art.

Naughty

Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy

Jace has come a long way down from his Pro Tour spike but dealer confidence is pretty low right now. Buy prices have dropped faster than the card prices so right now I’m not looking to buy in. You can find JVP on TCGPlayer right now for ~$56 per copy which is only 85% of fair trade value. It’s not nearly as good of a buy as Gideon (which is 68% of fair trade). Jace also survives one less rotation so there may be more time for him to drop if you want to play him in Modern.

Lantern of Insight

I don’t have a lot of non-expletive words to say about this card so I’ll communicate in interpretive memes.

The fact that is still not banned:

It’s price:

This card has a lot of the same problems written all over it as the Eggs deck did and Sensei’s Divining Top did. I don’t want to buy these until the after the Ban and Restriction announcement January 18th.

Crucible of Worlds

I’m on the fence here. Crucible of Worlds is probably due for another reprint but at the same time, there are some weird prices abound. TCGLow is $11 more (at the time of this writing) than the fair trade value. I checked the websites and there are about 11 copies of Crucible of Worlds listed between $45 and $48 on websites that MTGprice pulls it’s fair trade value from. Will they still be available at the time you’re reading this? I’m not really sure. That’s why this card is on my naughty list. I don’t understand the large discrepancy in price and I can’t give you a good guess as to what is happening.

Musings of the week

Stoneforge Mystic probably wasn’t their first choice for GP Promo. I’d expected something from RTR block so downward pressure on Abrupt Decay and Voice of Resurgence should be alleviated.
The internet wide buyout of foil Edgewalkers is silly. The new legendary cleric might make the EDH popular but I think your money is better spent on cards for decks that exist but get better (ie colorless EDH)
Expeditions are going to be really hard to come by in the next few months. I’m not sure if Oath of the Gatewatch Expeditions will be enough to stagnate demand for the prices to drop.
We’re about a week and a half away from the cheapest BFZ cards for the next 6 months so it would be a good idea to consider filling out your battle land playsets then.

Danny Brown, ProTrader

PROTRADER: MTG Grab Bag

December 8, 2015 Danny Brown 5 Comments

Lots of topics I’d like to touch on today, so let’s get right down to it.

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