I’m nothing if not a man of the people, and while I have a vision for this column and occasionally get inspired to write three–part series (I made each word a link to a different article, so I guess you could say I’m pretty awesome at the internet) about even the most miniscule-seeming of topics, I’m not above feedback.
By: Derek Madlem
Spoiler season is in full effect and Twitter is abuzz with the praises and condemnations of the masses. Preorder prices are being conjured from the aether and we’re left pondering whether or not we should be buying into the hype.
Taking a look at the Magic Origins Planeswalkers has basically left me befuddled, I’m honestly having a hard time evaluating them in a vacuum because they’re templating is brand new to Magic. The best I can figure so far is to start with the creature, examine how easy it is to flip said creature, and then determine if the payoff was worth it.
So Gideon starts like this, an obvious upgrade to Elite Vanguard. Kytheon slots into a white aggro deck pretty easily and transforms easier than most of the other walkers in this cycle. Currently we really only have a couple archetypes that this just slots right into: Abzan Aggro and the Heroic decks, the latter of which has fallen out of favor recently.
The flip side of Gideon is more or less a mini impersonation of his previous incarnations. There is no “ultimate” ability so Gideon doesn’t force an opponent to care about his ticking clock but he does offer a variety of combat related tricks. Forcing an attack, making an unstoppable blocker, or wading into combat himself are all abilities that fit in a wide array of scenario. This card has a lot of flexibility.
Problems: it requires you to overcommit to the board to flip, something that’s going to be even harder to do with black getting ANOTHER board wipe in Languish.
So is this worth the $25 preorder price that SCG has slapped on it? I’m going to go with an emphatic “no” on that question. This is a conditional role-player in a sub-category of decks, likely a 2-of at most. Short term I see this card dropping into the $10-15 range quickly after release and ending up floating between $7-10 after that, relying heavily on casual appeal. The hardest thing going forward is evaluating how popular these characters are for casual players.
Merfolk Looter has rarely been a constructed playable card. Even on sterroids, Magus of the Bazaar can’t make too strong of a case for looters being constructed viable cards so Jace isn’t starting off on the right foot .
Is this a Jace you would put in a deck if you could “just cast” him? Probably not, so why would you want to jump through hoops to get to this? His “ultimate” provides the threat of defeat for your opponent without actually doing anything to hasten that defeat. Let’s put it another way, if you’re losing and you resolve this ultimate – you’re still losing.
For a meager $19.99 preorder this could be yours, This card seems less playable than Jace, the Living Guildpact and that saw basically zero constructed play, so I have a hard time imaging a world where this one feels much better. I’m betting on this card being sub-$5 within a couple months. Just draw one side of a pyramid and you should be able to find Jace’s pricing trajectory.
As purely a 2/3 lifelink for three mana, Liliana is a situationally playable card. Showing up to watch your other creatures die seems easy enough, though it might actually have the side effect of making some of your creatures unblockable. So Liliana’s starting off with potential, especially when you consider she starts off her Planeswalker career with a pet zombie.
Once flipped you realize that Liliana is an awkward place for deckbuilding; she only brings back your own creatures to the battlefield and the only way to keep fueling that engine is to keep discarding cards. So by including Liliana, you’re painting yourself into a corner playing a deck that wants you to dump your hand and play tons of creatures so that you can awkwardly return them to play once they die.
Mono-black humans seems like a place for Liliana, but is she any better than an Obelisk of Urd or a targeted removal spell in those decks? Liliana is often going to be an awkward scenario where you trade Liliana + another creature for a zombie + another creature, which is not exactly thrilling. The ultimate takes four turns to achieve and requires you to spend that time protecting Liliana, which is counter intuitive to the decks she would best fit into.
This is another card with a preorder price of $24.99, a price that just can’t be sustained being such niche card. I expect Liliana to make a run at $10 and then slump from there as she sits buoyed by casual demand.
Chandra is where things start getting interesting for me. Chandra is a pain to flip, but still easy at the same time. All you have to do is attack unblocked, cast a red spell, and then untap and tap again to that last point, of course this doesn’t take into account tricks like Titan’s Strength or Hammerhand that can push through that three damage pretty quickly.
So she flips and turns into this…
At this point Chandra becomes a ticking clock that’s going to ruin your opponent two points at a time. After three turns of this, there is very little reason to do anything other than pop the ultimate and ride out Chandra’s volcanic aspirations from there, This should leave your opponent dead in two turns or less.
In a strange twist of fate, Chandra’s price tag is carrying some baggage. At an $11.99 preorder price it’s pretty clear that Chandra has a long history of being the Planeswalker that couldn’t and this price reflects it. This seems like the easiest of the cycle so far to slot into existing decks without much hassle… I would almost call this price “reasonable” in comparison to the others, though I expect this card to settle closer to the $5-8 range because casual appeal for Chandra just hasn’t ever held her price very high.
In a world where Rampant Growth isn’t very rampant, the conditions for flipping Nissa become a bit harder to achieve, this is a turn three spell that you essentially have to keep alive for four more turns, or wait to play it. So after you reach this magical land where you control seven lands, you get this:
Nissa grants you an extra spell each turn for a number of turns until you get to alpha strike with six of your lands. Nissa does have the distinct advantage of her ultimate being capable of outright winning the turn it’s activated, the second ability is just “fine” in a pinch.
Nissa’s biggest advantage is that she is a serviceable topdeck in the late game: you can cast, fetch a land, flip, and then draw another card off the top of your library immediately. If you need to squeak in the last couple points of damage you can instead activate the -2 ability to send a 4/4 rumbling into the red zone immediately. But is any of this realistically better than the existing Nissa? I can’t see why I would.
Nissa is preordering for $19.99, a price that might seem reasonable if Nissa, Worldwaker wasn’t already under $14. When to cards occupy the same space, the price of the greater is going to put a ceiling on the price of the lesser and this seems like a compelling case for that. But then again, maybe people really just want a Borderland Ranger that only searches for basic forests.
Is this card good? The design clearly wants to gut you of any advantage gained casting this card by giving your opponent the first chance to take advantage of the seven new cards.
The first thing that came to many people’s minds was Quicken, or Leyline of Anticipation, but at that point is the setup worth the payoff? If you’re building a deck around it, you really have to build a deck around it.
Then Craig Wescoe tweeted out asking about the following opening hand:
The idea being that Affinity could use this card to help them dump their hand and refill instantly… the debate erupted from every angle imaginable: Is this a playable card? Is this a valuable card? Is this a $5 card? No convincing of anyone was accomplished.
So here’s how I’m approaching Day’s Undoing, I’m making a list and checking it twice.
Maybe I’m a bit gunshy because I did preorder a playset of Time Reversals at $19.99 a piece, I have a soft spot for Timetwister effects. I love Timetwister so much that I refuse to build additional blue Commander decks unless I have additional Timetwisters to put into them. So I’ve clearly got mixed emotions regarding this card.
Let’s just consider it in best case scenarios, in Standard what are you going to do with this card? Most likely candidate is a 1 or 2-of in a Blue/X control deck to refill late game, but is taking a random seven and reloading your opponent better than Dig Through Time? I just don’t see it. It’s just not a card I want to cast late game, regripping your opponent is just not where any deck wants to be.
What about Modern? Three mana draw sevens scream “combo deck” but that whole “end the turn” part of resolving the spell sure doesn’t lend to any combos that I know. So that leaves us with a cute first turn by Affinity or teaming up with Notion Thief as our best options. Notion Thief is just a little too cute to be constructed viable, so let’s run with slotting it into that affinity list. Three copies? Two copies? What about those pesky Etched Champions and Master of Etherium? All of the sudden those expensive cards become a liability when we’re all-in on the low end of the curve, more Memnites please!
So likely what we have is a card that has a lot of raw power but doesn’t necessarily have any immediate home outside of decks banking on being able to dump and reload. I’m guessing this card has to follow one of two paths: it struggles to find a home and slips quickly to $10 and descends slowly from there until someone finds a way to break it OR it “breaks” immediately and the formats simply adapt and the price begins its natural post-release descent.
Either way this card is probably good for a $10 swing, I’m betting it swings south.
The first wave of cards in this set have been unusually difficult to evaluate. I still have a sinking feeling that I am “just not getting” something about the new Planeswalkers, but for the most part they seem like garbage to me. Day’s Undoing is another one that simultaneously gives me a million ideas, all of them sketchy at best… but it only takes one. I’d much rather avoid the risk on a card like Day’s Undoing in favor of more predictable targets.
Oh and this guy at $40? Come on guys, you can’t be serious.
By: Travis Allen
Does everyone remember this article? If not, read it again. It’s going to be what we’re talking about today.
Last week, Derek wrote about how Khans of Tarkir would fare leading up to rotation. This is the first set that will rotate earlier than we expect it to. Rather than rotate in the fall of 2016, two years after its release, it will rotate during the spring of 2016. Dragons of Tarkir launched in late March and Battle for Zendikar will release in early October, meaning that KTK will lose about six months of Standard legality. While he has a grim outlook on the future of Khans, I’m not as certain we’re done with this block (well, Khans and Fate Reforged) yet.
Editor’s Note: Jim Casale is a talented writer who has a lot of insights into how to get the most of your money when it comes to actually playing Magic, and we’re excited to welcome him to the MTGPrice team! I’m looking forward to seeing his content here every Tuesday.
– Corbin
By Jim Casale
I’m sure many of the readers of this article consider themselves players of Magic: the Gathering, a collectable card game unlike many others in its longevity and the size of its player base. The biggest barrier to entry for many players, like myself is the cost of buying the cards needed to play. I’m here to explain how to best avoid paying too much for the cards you need to play the game. Unlike many columns on this website, mine is not focused for the people that want to speculate on cards. My goal is to find the best time for players to buy the cards they need to play with. These cards may go up in price or may not but the value that you’re gaining here is by playing with the cards.
Many people have noticed the recent soaring price of modern cards. Snapcaster Mage, Blood Moon, Olivia Voldaren, Raging Ravine, Oblivion Stone, and Heritage Druid are just a few of the cards that seem to become unreasonably expensive. But what is the reason for all of this? Is it some black market underground dojo keyboard cagefighter speculators or real demand? Well it’s complicated but it’s most likely artificial demand not caused by buyouts but by players who are worried if they don’t buy now it will only go up. Panic is the real problem here. We need to be confident in our purchases and be able to build towards the deck we want to play in the future.
Which brings us to my point, what is the true cost of a deck? How does someone decide to “buy in” to a deck?
I have a theory to answer all of that. For many Magic players, cards they already own are a sunk cost. When debating what deck to play they do not associate the cards they already own as “costing” anything to them. Which makes a lot of sense, since you don’t have to go out and buy or trade for those cards. This artificially lowers the cost of a deck. If you already own Deceiver Exarch, Pestermite, Snapcaster Mage, and Cryptic Command then it’s a lot cheaper to play the Splinter Twin deck, even if you don’t own any Splinter Twins. The bottleneck is the card that is stopping people from making a deck and it is generally the most costly card in said deck.
Did you notice what cards got reprinted in Modern Masters 2015? Tarmogoyf, Dark Confidant, Bitterblossom, Vendilion Clique, and friends are all expensive staples that are the bottle neck to building their respective decks.
How does someone who wants to build Jund look at the deck? Have you ever heard anyone complain about the price of Terminate as being the reason they are reluctant to build the deck? Absolutely not. They can’t afford the Tarmogoyfs, Liliana of the Veil and Dark Confidants that make up the most expensive parts of the deck. The true cost of the deck is not realized when the barriers are set so high. If a player opens a few of the expensive cards he or she needs to build the deck then true cost of a deck gets lower.
This is what is causing the spikes in cards that used to be “cheap.” Snapcaster Mage is the prime example of a card that is bottlenecking anyone from playing a blue deck in Modern. Previous bottlenecks to blue decks have been printed a ton recently and help build more interest in completing decks. The previous bottlenecks to build these style of decks were lands, Vendilion Clique, and Cryptic Command. I would venture to guess that with the abundance of shocklands from RTR block and the flood of fetchlands from KTK block that lands are no longer the biggest barrier to entry to building these decks. Vendilion Clique and Cryptic Command are on their third printing as of MM2015 and you don’t need 4 copies of either card to play the deck.
Where does that leave us? Well, at the point we are now. The demand for Snapcaster Mage rises because the true cost of building their deck is lower. If you need 4 Snapcaster Mages to finish your deck completely and they cost $25 then it’s pretty reasonable to spend the $100 and finish it off. If enough people do that then that causes the price of a card to rise. Snapcaster Mage can retail for almost $100 now despite being $30-40 throughout most of last year. Consumer confidence in its statistically-low chance of being reprinted coupled with the lowered true price of the decks, makes this card’s price sky-rocket.
What can we do about it now? Not really a whole lot. Maybe Snapcaster Mage will be next year’s GP promo. Maybe we have to wait until MM2016 or MM2017 for a reprint. Either way it looks like in the near future we won’t see a decline. The only reason eternally playable cards decrease in price is because of lowered consumer confidence because of a reprint, the actual reprint, and the card falling out of favor. The key to playing Magic affordably is to plan longer term.
The true price of a deck can be very low if you want it to be. Patience and smart purchases can lead to large savings down the road. I play Splinter Twin in Modern and have spent maybe $200 on cards for it in the last year. That’s a far cry from the $400 it would take just to buy a set of Snapcaster Mage. The key to this is finding the next bottleneck and purchasing those cards ahead of time.
Even right now, I can see a few cards that could bottleneck players in the future. For instance, if you don’t already own your shocklands I can’t recommend buying them any later. The market has been slow to mature due to their low played count in Modern but if we get more juicy land reprints in Battle For Zendikar (like many people suppose we will) then the hardest lands to get will be shocklands. Due to how flooded the market is, I doubt we will see them reprinted again in the near future (next 3-5 years). I would also recommend picking up a set of Khans of Tarkir fetch lands. They’ve bottomed out and started to rise and it really doesn’t get cheaper than now. If we don’t get Zendikar fetchlands in Battle For Zendikar then it is likely they fetches rise even faster. The key to finding out when to buy in is important. For Modern this season, the best time to buy cards not in MM2015 was once the spoiler was finished. The time to buy cards in MM2015 was the week before Vegas or on site if you were able to attend.
The next thing to consider is the reprintability and reprint schedule for cards. This doesn’t apply to Standard usually, but Modern-legal cards are frequently printed in a cycle. It seems Wizards of the Coast is intent on Modern Masters every two years and it will introduce new copies of existing cards too strong for Standard. When Modern Masters 2015 was announced it was also announced cards from that set would be no newer than New Phyrexia, meaning Innistrad and Return to Ravnica block cards were safe from reprint. That should have been your cue to buy the cards you need from those sets. You can wait as long as possible to see if a reprint is coming, but the backlash for an anticipated reprint not being in the set is fierce. Right now Scalding Tarn and Misty Rainforest’s price is inhibited by the anticipation of a reprint. If there is none, don’t be surprised to see them jump.
For Standard players, there is a cycle that ensures you always get your cards for the lowest price. Right now Dragons of Tarkir cards are insanely cheap. Planeswalkers that pre-ordered for $40 or more are now $8-10. With a lot of Standard’s heavily played walkers rotating out soon, it’s never been a better time to get into Tarkir Block cards. If you named the most played planeswalkers in standard you’d probably end up with Elspeth, Ashiok, Xenagos, and Nissa, right? Those all rotate in a few months. The Tarkir block walkers (Sarkhan, Sorin, Ugin, Sarkhan Unbroken, and Narset) are poised to take over. While it’s true some of those cards may not go up in price, it’s pretty likely they will also not go down. Bulk planeswalkers can usually hold a $5-6 value and heavily played ones can skyrocket past $30. I personally did myself a favor and bought a playset of all of the DTK mythics except the Dragonlords and Deathmist Raptor. It’s hard to go wrong there and it will definitely help the true cost of your deck in the future.
In the future I hope this column will help you buy into cards at the best possible time and take some of the surprise out of price jumps. As we are quickly approaching the release of Magic Origins, I will be addressing cards that I think you should preorder next week!
– Jim Casale
