Pro Tour Shadows Over Innistrad (Draft/Modern): Preview

April 22, 2016 James Chillcott 1 Comment

In the stunning city of Madrid, Spain an excellent weekend of Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour action is in motion. Coming off the results of the last couple of weeks on the SCG circuit, the pros have been tasked with addressing a Standard metagame that has so far been dominated by Wx Aggro and Bant Collect Company decks. Quick starts, and curve toppers Archangel Avacyn and Archangel of Tithes have made answering the aggressive decks difficult, as has the lack of definitive and timely sweeper spells. Nevertheless, after weeks of secretive testing, the top pro teams from across the globe have gathered for another epic quest to take home the trophy. With over $250,000 USD on the line, and the winner taking home a hefty $40,000, players will be hard pressed to overcome the deep pool of talent.

The Pro Tour, of course, requires players to succeed in a mixed schedule of booster draft (SOI – SOI – SOI) and constructed play (Standard in this case) with 3 rounds of draft Friday morning, followed by 5 rounds of Standard starting around 7am EST.

For the MTG Finance community, the question of the day is which decks will rise to dominance today in a field that has seemed close to being solved fairly early on.

Will any of the pros find a way to unlock a new archetype with game against the known field? Will an underplayed deck from the previous weeks results suddenly end up perfectly positioned after adding a few new pieces of tech? Will there be a chance to get in on a must-have card that shows early promise or will the hype train leave the bandwagon speculators out in the cold without buyers come Monday morning?

Thus far Shadows Over Innistrad has behave a bit oddly vs. other sets from the last few years, with a full ten rares and mythics holding price tags over $10 a couple of weeks after the set first hit the streets. Archangel Avacyn is the current queen of the format, commanding a consistent $45 at retail, and showing up as a 2-of to 4-of in many of the best performing deck lists. Declaration in Stone is going for $15, an incredible value for a rare kill spell in this format. Meanwhile, much hyped rares Thing in the Ice and Westvale Abbey have peak in the high teens only to fall back towards $10.

Let’s take a look at some of the cards most likely to make a move this weekend.

Cards to Watch

With many Shadows Over Innistrad cards already commanding unsustainable price tags, most of the speculation potential lies this weekend should reside in cards that have yet to make an impact. Here are a few of the interesting cards on our radar this weekend:

Arlinn Kord: Stuck on the bench?

Despite plenty of early excitement from the Werewolf fans, Arlinn has mostly been left out of the action thus far at the top tables of Standard. With white set up as the de facto best color in the format, and other top decks configured to run Bant or Izzet color schemes, the green/red planeswalker has struggled to make an impact. The winning GR deck at the SCG Standard Open last weekend failed to field a single copy of Arlinn. At $20, a failure to make waves this weekend should set Arlinn on a path to collapse back towards $10. Plan accordingly, but keep any eye out for a list in the top ranks that runs multiple copies, perhaps in the form of a Jund mid-range list alongside the Gitrog Monster ($6), which could likewise top $10 on a successful showing this weekend.

Current Price: $20
Predicted Price May 1st: $14
Odds to Top 8: 20 to 1

Nahiri, the Harbinger: Time to Shine?

On the other side of the numbers we have a planeswalker that may turn out to be much better than anticipated. Already popping up in lists like KikiChord in Modern as a 2-of, there is every reason to believe that there may be a configuration in Standard that wants to run multiple copies into a trophy position. If that were to go down, Nahiri could easily swap prices with Arlinn Kord and provide savvy speculators with a potential double up.

Current Price: $10
Predicted Price May 1st: $14
Odds to Top 8: 6 to 1

Sylvan Advocate: Ubiquitous on 2?

Once available for $2, many players utterly missed how powerful and important a 2-drop that became a Tarmogoyf in the mid-game would be in Standard. The bonus this elf gives your creature lands is just the icing on the cake. This Oath of the Gatewatch rare has already topped $5, but a dominant showing in 50% of the Top 8 decks might be enough to push demand up towards $10 as players conceed to the necessity of running three or four copies.

Current Price: $5
Predicted Price May 1st: $8
Odds to Top 8: 4 to 3

Jace, Vrin’s Prodigy: Can He Hold the Line?

Player consensus a few weeks into the new Standard seems to be that Jace isn’t as good in a format without fetchlands and without popular decks capable of filling graveyards quickly. That being said, he is still showing up in both UR Goggles builds as well as in some Bant Company lists. The real question however is whether Jace will be able to hold a $70 price tag heading into rotation in the fall. My gut says the card will fall to $40 or so in late summer, bouncing back over $50 within the year. As such, if you have non-foils you aren’t playing, you may want to think about trading out now, and getting back in down the road. Foils may also show weakness this year, but as the card is playable all the way back to vintage, you can likely hold those for the long term without much fear.

Current Price: $70
Predicted Price May 1st: $65
Odds to Top 8: 5 to 1

Archangel Avacyn: Still Flying High?

Avacyn has started this season off as the most feared creature in the format, a flying beater that can mess with combat, save the team, clear the board and certainly finish the game. At $45, she is certainly priced for continued success, so if the metagame managed to swerve around her and keep her from the top tables, her price would be prone to a slide. Given what we’ve seen so far however, white is the color of the season, and the odds are very good that Avacyn will earn her keep in the Top 8.

Current Price: $45
Predicted Price May 1st: $40
Odds to Top 8: 3 to 2

Demonic Pact: Ready to Rogue?

This card has jumped by 100% this week on Magic Online, and rumor has it that an Esper enchantments list running four copies of this powerful mythic alongside multiple copies of Starfield of Nyx has been testing well. I would be surprised to see more than a handful of notable pros run a deck like this, but no one saw UR Eldrazi coming at PT Oath of the Gatewatch either. As a $2 mythic, strong performances into Day 2 on camera could easily trigger rampant speculation, pushing this card over $6. Starfield of Nyx is available under $3, and is an easy favorite to top $10 down the road on casual demand in enchantment flavored decks. I like Starfield as a pickup immediately, and will be ready to move in if Pact shows up on camera this weekend.

Current Price: $2
Predicted Price May 1st: $4
Odds to Top 8: 20 to 1

Stay tuned for Round by Round MTGFinance coverage of Pro Tour: Shadows Over Innistrad all weekend!

James Chillcott is the CEO of ShelfLife.net, The Future of Collecting, Senior Partner at Advoca, a designer, adventurer, toy fanatic and an avid Magic player and collector since 1994.

Casual Fridays

Money in the Box?

April 22, 2016 Cliff Daigle 5 Comments

Well, Shadows over Innistrad is here, and while I have been wrong about a lot of things, I want to look at one of my most cherished ideas and see if that’s even applicable this time around: Not opening packs/boxes.

There’s 59 rares and 18 mythics, and that counts the double-faced cards. There’s not any strong or official information out there regarding the relative rarity of the double-faced mythics as opposed to regular mythics, but since two of the three double-face mythics are two of the three most expensive cards in the set, maybe there’s something to that.

It’s time look at some cold numbers.

Here’s all the cards currently that have a Fair Trade Price over $2.50. I’m using that as a general cutoff, that means the box price is $90. I know you can beat that price, but that is a pretty optimistic box price.

Just in case you’re curious, though, I’ll note when we pass the MSRP of $4 and when we get to $3, which puts a box at $108, a better price than stores will give yet slightly higher than TCG.

Card Name and Fair Trade Price

Archangel Avacyn $57.49

Sorin, Grim Nemesis $23.99

Arlinn Kord $23.64

Declaration in Stone $17.99

Jace, Unraveler of Secrets ">Jace, Unraveler of Secrets $13.73

Westvale Abbey $12.73

Thing in the Ice $12.35

Relentless Dead $12.05

Olivia, Mobilized for War $11.85

Nahiri, the Harbinger $11.60

The Gitrog Monster $8.23

Tireless Tracker $7.23

Thalia’s Lieutenant $6.98

Mindwrack Demon $5.64

Ulvenwald Hydra $5.64

Anguished Unmaking $5.58

Startled Awake $5.14

Foreboding Ruins ">Foreboding Ruins $4.53

Sigarda, Heron’s Grace $4.38

Traverse the Ulvenwald $4.19

Port Town $4.17

Under MSRP

Only 21 cards at $4 or more, two weeks into the set. Now let’s see what’s under MSRP in value.

Game Trail ">Game Trail $3.98

Always Watching $3.97

Fortified Village ">Fortified Village $3.97

Goldnight Castigator $3.73

Sin Prodder ">Sin Prodder $3.60

Cryptolith Rite ">Cryptolith Rite $3.59

Choked Estuary $3.51

Descend upon the Sinful $3.04

Eight more cards have the average value of a pack. So if you happen to win a cheap eBay auction or something and get your box for $90, there’s an additional pair of cards that are worth the price of a pack:

Drownyard Temple ">Drownyard Temple $2.73

To the Slaughter $2.51

At the most optimistic price, you have a 31/77 chance of making the value of a pack. That’s 40%. Ouch. Not great but not awful? Would you push all-in on a 60/40 hand?

If you get your packs at the TCG price of $108 or so, then you have a 29/77 chance, and that’s a slight decrease to 37%, and at the full MSRP on boosters, it drops further to 27%.

Further Explanation

There’s a couple of flaws with my admittedly basic methodology, and it’s worth addressing them.

First of all, I don’t have any way to account for foils. That’s a random event and a nice bonus, but nothing that can be counted on. For every box with a foil Archangel Avacyn, there’s another box with no foil rare at all. If you get it, great! If you don’t, well, better luck next time.

Second, the distribution of double-faced cards is a little wonky, and you can have a double-faced mythic and a double-face uncommon in the same pack. That’s a weird way to go about collating the boosters but hey, that’s not my job. If this is the price we pay to no longer have box mapping be a thing, I’m all in favor of it.

With that said, though, I have to say that the value is just not there for me. Opening a box is a rush, one I know well. Pack after pack of potential, of going slowly to drag out the anticipation or just tearing into it all in a flurry of Mylar. It’s a great feeling…until it’s gone.

I am obligated to point out that not all mythics are equal. Three of them (Seasons Past, Geralf’s Masterpiece, and Wolf of Devil’s Breach) don’t even make this list. That’s not a surprise in the abstract, as we all know mythics can be powerful and yet still inexpensive, but with so little time in retail stores and draft settings…that’s a lot of value gone and fast.

We have a potential spike in front of us, though, with the Pro Tour starting today.This will begin the dance of ‘who will follow through with orders?’ and ‘I can’t sell this fast enough!’ and the popular ‘oh god the card spiked and I had it on my want list…’ and that’s all an extra layer of price complexity. What cards will be popular? Who will run the table with an unforeseen and effective metagame call?
Still, the advice remains solid: Don’t buy packs. Don’t buy boxes. Don’t buy cases. At this point, you’re going to be lucky to open even equivalent value.

Corbin Hosler

PROTRADER: Catching up on a Busy Week of Finance

April 20, 2016 Corbin Hosler 7 Comments

Things just don’t slow down, do they?

Not only do we have the Pro Tour fast approaching, with (hopefully) less Bant Company making the rounds, but there was also a triple Grand Prix weekend, some big Standard movers and even some rather big Modern news you may have missed.

This is one of the busier times in Magic finance, and the interesting part is that it hasn’t always been this way. In fact, the spring-to-summer part of the year is typically a big lull that I’ve termed in the past the “dead zone” of Magic finance thanks to a Standard format being settled and not much else going on as everyone enjoyed the nice weather rather than slinging magical cards.

It turns out the new block structure may be changing that. There’s been no shortage of interest in Standard since Shadows over Innistrad released, and the Modern unbans have shaken up that format as well.

So on the eve of the Pro Tour, where do things stand?

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Conjured Currency, Douglas Johnson

Natural Crit

April 20, 2016 Douglas Johnson

Hey there, you! I recently reached out on Twitter asking for article ideas, because I’m at a bit of a loss for words. Final exams are coming up, so I’m trying to juggle the whole “school” thing with staying on top of the Magic finance market for your benefit. I appreciate all of my readers who sent me great ideas, so I’m going to splurge this week and try on touch on a little bit of everything instead of saving these up for multiple article ideas like a rational human being. If I end up hitting my head against the computer next week on the night of my deadline, I’m sure I can just fart out another piece of god-tier penmanship about how I should be swimming in Mayor of Avabruck right now if I knew anything about this game. Let’s roll.

The Little Boar that Could

So this little piece of ham is something I’ve been wanting to write about for a while, because it’s just so innocuous at first glance. Is it Modern legal? Nope. Legacy playable? Not even close. Commander appeal? Basically none. The trick here is that it’s actually legal in the Magic Online Pauper league, where it’s printed as a common and sees a little bit of play in Green Stompy lists. There was a Reddit thread on the mtgfinance subreddit about a week and a half ago that gave some excellent insight into why a card like this can appear to be at $7, so I’ll just link that here instead of paraphrasing and regurgitating it up here. /u/another-reddit-guy had some excellent insight into a format that none of the rest of us “financiers” really pay any attention to, and its’ absolutely worth keeping your finger on the pulse of the trends in Pauper if you want to make sure that the next Brindle Shoat doesn’t slip through while you pick bulk.

However, a slight bump in pauper popularity obviously isn’t enough to cause this kind of increase in price. Supply is absolutely a factor, and we can talk quickly about just how low that number is for Planechase. You know that stupid joke I always repeat when mentioning the scarcity of a card? I say that there were basically six packs of Coldsnap or whatever opened, so the supply is extremely low and easy to dry up if even a small spark of demand appears for the card. That holds especially true for all of the cards from Planechase and Planechase 2012, where even the uncommons can be treated as super mythics considering how low the print run was.

Even Amazon has no idea what that card is. That’s not to say Amazon is the hotbed where all the Pauper aficionados buy their “battle boxes” (a new term I learned recently), but you know that supply is a barren desert when there’s a combined total of less than a dozen copies on eBay, SCG, TCGplayer, Coolstuff, Amazon, Cardshark, and Channelfireball combined. Normally I just say “Oh, wait until people start pulling these from their bulk and listing them online, the price will settle at a degree between the pre-spike price and the post-spike price.” This time, I’m not sure there are enough of these in bulk to satisfy that growing Pauper demand. If you’re in the market for these to build your battle box, I’d still avoid paying anything over $4 though.

MTGTop8Shoat — This is how much play the little boar sees, at most. Yes, that’s enough.

Planeswalking Segue

So if an uncommon that sees play as a two of can hit $7, surely the planes from the same set are equally as popular…. right? Well, not exactly. I mentioned this week on Cartel Aristocrats that you should probably go through any of your old oversized Commanders or Planechase cards, and see if any of them are worth anything. After doing a b it of digging, it looks like the real money is in the 2009 and promo planes, not so much the 2012 versions. While this information probably won’t be relevant for the next few collections you buy (I think I’ve only bought three or four collections in my life that had Planechase planes or Archenemy schemes), it’s definitely something that should encourage you to go through your own old stuff if you’ve been playing since these were released. The same goes for the 2011 Commander oversized cards; Kaalia goes for around $8-10 for the supersized version!

So you ran into your basement, pulled out twenty Stairs to Infinity, and you want to turn them into crisp dollar bills. I understand. I was in your situation not too long ago. While I was doing some cleaning last year, I found a pile of schemes and planes from my days as a casual player, and decided to buylist them all to save myself some trouble. While you can technically sell them on eBay or TCGplayer, I can’t speak for how quickly they’ll actually sell. There’s also the added trouble of shipping single oversized cards; They obviously don’t fit into a regular toploader, so you’d have to get creative with the packaging to make sure the card doesn’t get damaged in transit. I had success selling all of mine to ChannelFireball, as they paid the best prices out of all the stores I looked at.

While we’re on the topic of supplies, I’d like to talk very quickly about spindown dice; the kind you get From a Vault of Some Kind, or perhaps a week before a set releases. In my experience, I saw a lot of people throw these away at the last prerelease I went to. I know because I threw mine away, forgetting that it even came with the box. Whoooops. Anyway, that’s okay. The D20 spindowns that come with the prereleases now aren’t really worth anything; most buylists will pick them up for 25 cents each, so don’t feel bad if you can’t find them.

The real fun comes if you have any of these lying around that are from pre-Innistrad era. Most of the spindowns that you see in the picture are $4 or $5 if you check on SCG or Coolstuffinc, except for a couple that I mispriced (can you guess which ones?). I ended up getting around $40 for this lot when I sold them on Twitter, which was a nice buffer to the collection that these came in around a month ago. If you’re an old timer and were around for the “good old days” of Magic (or so I’ve heard, I was like eight years old at the time), you can sell the spindowns from Apocalypse, Onslaught, or Judgment for around $25.

Just another side note about shipping before I take off for the week; Ship spindowns in a PWE at your own risk. While I’ve talked to a few friends about their experiences mailing dice in envelopes, they’ve had mixed results. Some post offices will be comfortable mailing it as a non-machinable letter with just a stamp or two, but my local USPS made me ship it as a small package so I ate $2.50 shipping a single one of these at $5. Gross. Thankfully I was able to ship the rest to a single individual and save a ton on shipping, so find that one guy in your local area who wants to catch ’em all.

Until next week!

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