UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Devastating Preorders

June 30, 2017 Cliff Daigle 1 Comment

Hopefully you’ve read enough of what we write here to know that pre-ordering cards is usually a bad idea. Cards are overhyped and usually very overpriced, but there’s something kind of unusual going on with Hour of Devastation: The preorder prices are remarkably…sane.

Today I want to look at a couple of the reasons why that might be, and if that means we’ve turned a corner as Magic vendors and players. We don’t want $40 Day’s Undoing, or $50 Chandra, Torch of Defiance.

Idea #1: We are more patient

We all know that a set’s value goes down over time as more and more packs are opened. That’s true of any set, for any of its time as the set that’s being opened at FNM and Grand Prix events. Even the Masters-level sets that are only reprints, those follow the same curve most of the time.

We’ve learned that unless you’re going to be using these cards the very very first weekend, you’ve got time. Even waiting a week or two can be worth a lot to someone who isn’t a pro player. Preordering cards is devastating from a feel-bad perspective, and hopefully people who have done that have learned their lesson.

Imagine being someone who looked at the Amonket previews, and saw Gideon of the Trials. You know he’s good with the Gideon, Ally of Zendikar deck you’re already playing. You think, “It must be worth this much or people wouldn’t be paying this much!” and you plunk down $160 for a playset.

That card, one of the banners of the set, a three-drop planeswalker, can be had for $40 a playset now. So that’s a painful lesson to learn.

Is this permanent: God, I hope so. I fervently want to believe that players will not break their bank trying to get out ahead of the new cards, but I doubt it in the long-term. New players might not listen to others who have learned, and new cards are always going to sucker us in.

Idea #2: We are stretching our Magic dollars

This is something that Wizards/Hasbro has been doing to us for a couple of years now: We are getting more and more Magic products each year, each designed to suck our wallets dry.

Have you seen this list? That’s a murderer’s row later this year, and that’s before you take into account all the stuff we’ve already had this past seven months, which includes a Masters set, three regular sets (I’m including Hour of Devastation) and two different Anthology releases.

I don’t think there’s a market for those who buy every single product released, but that’s a lot to spend money on.

Is this permanent: Unless the company decides to slow it down, apparently this is the world we live in. Let’s also not forget that the Magic Digital Next program is also coming, and that might be a whole new siphoning off of money. Heaven help us, they are going to keep making a zillion products a year. Budget accordingly.

Idea #3: The cards aren’t that powerful

I’m not saying that they aren’t good, but they sure aren’t backbreaking. The set (so far, the full set should drop the day this article is published) has a cycle of undercosted ‘exert sorceries’ where your lands don’t untap for a turn, but everything else looks to cost a little too much for that effect.

Perhaps this is the overcompensation of stuff like Smuggler’s Copter being two mana? Perhaps this was meant to be part of an 18-month Standard which was more midrange-focused? I don’t know the answer, or if from time to time, we just get a slightly clunkier set.

I want to reiterate that point, though: Just because we don’t have a ‘pushed’ card doesn’t mean these aren’t going to be players in formats going forward. Right now, though, only a few of the mythics and none of the rares are preordering for more than the retail price of a Fatal Push.

Is this permanent: Likely not. There will be undercosted, overpowered cards again. None of them have been shown in this set, though.

Idea #4: The cards are just worth less due to Masterpieces

This is an idea that’s been explored several times, and the summary is as follows: When Masterpieces are in a set, they account for some of the value of the set. If cards have a total value that’s higher than the cost of a box at the distributor’s price, then retailers will crack those packs themselves and sell the singles.

We saw this recently at work, with Battle for Zendikar block and Shadows over Innistrad block. The Expeditions helped push the prices of other cards down, except for Gideon and Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger. Basically, more packs of BfZ block got opened to find those lands, and that meant a lot more of the other cards were released into the world. When the Masterpieces weren’t present, we had a more even distribution of value.

Is this permanent: We already know it isn’t. While the Masterpieces are helping make Standard be the cheapest it’s been in a while, they are running out of cards quickly. There’s some real clunkers in the Invocation series. Divert? Super niche. Diabolic Edict? Who was clamoring for more copies of this? They have already announced that Masterpieces won’t be in every single set going forward, so this effect will certainly vanish.

Cliff is an avid player and frugal financier. His love of unusual Cubes and formats is resulting in some very interesting Magic experiences, and Grand Prix events have been offering him all sorts of new ways to play this amazing game.

Digging for Dollars, James Chillcott

PRO TRADER: Digging for Dollars: Amonkhet

June 27, 2017 James Chillcott 4 Comments

By: James Chillcott (@MTGCritic)

The release of Amonkhet this spring found Magic: The Gathering in a pretty strange place. After having committed to 8 ban announcements per year, WoTC declined to ban Felidar Guardian when the infinite combo was first discovered, citing lack of data. After it became clear the deck was narrowing the format and limiting player participation, the ban hammer still didn’t drop five weeks after Pro Tour Aether Revolt. This brought us to one fateful monday, when the company again declined to ban any cards in Standard, only to change their minds a couple of days later, completely outside the set schedule for such announcements, and ban Felidar Guardian after all. Fast forward a month or so and Aetherworks Marvel decks posted up as the new dominant archtype, leading to yet another ban.

Between this crazy sequence of events and the (at best) mixed reaction to the Amonkhet Masterpiece card frames, the very positive reactions to the limited format makes the debut of the set a tangled web indeed.

So now that the dust has settled and the set has reached something close to peak supply, how does one go about trying to make some money on Amonkhet cards?

Well, as per usual if you planned to crack cases and sell singles, you should already have done so, since just a couple of weeks after release you were already facing a saturated market and singles prices that fell to lows as much as 80% below starting prices. At present there are just three mythics over $10 (Gideon, Rhonas and Liliana) and just two rares over $4 (Anointed Procession & Glorybringer). In other words, the set is cheap and still getting cheaper as early hype fades into a more realistic picture of which cards are actually playable in the near term.

Secondly, as a large spring set with several unique cards, Amonkhet is likely to end up with a bunch of cards that don’t quite have the necessary pieces to make it in Standard, only to show up in other formats down the road as folks figure out the most efficient deck shells or new combo partners appear.

Finally, with the Masterpiece Innvocations present in Amonkhet, the Expected Value of the rest of the set is similarly impacted as it was with the Kaladesh and Zendikar blocks, though to a lesser extent since only Force of Will, Cryptic Command and Daze are holding over $50 thus far.

There are also several interesting cards in the set for Commander and a few for Modern, but it’s not certain which are traps and which aren’t.

Now, Digging for Dollars is about looking for opportunities that aren’t played out yet, not identifying the most powerful cards in the set, or the obvious cards most likely to see the biggest gains. Many of these picks need planets to align to earn you money, so make sure you’ve exhausted your best options before you go digging folks. Where a card has not yet found it’s bottom, or has been hyped above it’s value, I will try to identify the proper entry point.

For Amonkhet we’re going to break up our specs into three categories: Standard Breakout Targets, Potential Eternal Staples, Long Term Casual Targets, and the Invocations. The first group generally needs to find a home within the year in multiple standard decks to do well for you. The latter two groups are mid to long term holds that you should be aiming to acquire at their forthcoming peak supply lows for solid potential future gains.

FUTURE STANDARD STAPLES?

When considering potential standard staples, you first need to be cognizant that Standard has had a pretty rough year, lost a bunch of players and doesn’t yet show definitive signs of recovery. As such, I’ll be steering clear of Standard specs for a while, especially with such fertile ground in Modern, EDH and via European arbitrage, but if you’re aiming to accumulate some staples you might need later it can’t hurt to consider your options.

1. Bontu the Glorified

Now: $3.50 ($8 foil)
Target Buy Price: $3.00 ($8 foil)
Target Sell Price: $8 (+167%)/$20 foil (+150%)
Timeline: Short to Long Term (0-12+ months)

So a 4/6 indestructible creature with menace for 3cc is clearly a pretty good rate. Sure, you need to make sure one of your creatures dies this turn to get him into the red zone, but he does carry that on-board ability to make sure things will line up so long as you have some filling fodder on board. In Standard some of the Embalm creatures interact positively with this play pattern, and Sultai brews have been spotted, but I haven’t seen a truly great list yet.

In Modern, cards like Hangarback Walker, Walking Ballista, Kitchen Finks and Lingering Souls all set this up reasonably well, but it’s not clear that the payoff is worthwhile when Tarmogoyf and Death’s Shadow are setting the standard for creature rates in Modern. I am testing Bontu in B/W tokens for Modern as a 1/2 of instead of a planeswalker, and it’s possible he could be useful in some kind of Aristocrats style brew, but it’s pretty unlikely he becomes a real Modern staple. Most of the gods carry some casual and Commander appeal, so under $3 I’ll start picking up a few sets for the long haul, with an eye to getting out earlier if Standard gives him a quicker boost. Foils may turn out better down the road, especially if Meren EDH players catch on to the synergies.

2. Approach of the Second Sun

The question here is whether there is life for this card in Standard without Aetherworks Marvel. The odds are not good, but at $.50, it’s not going to make or break your bankroll either way. Mostly a personal play set option I think.

MODERN/ETERNAL PLAYABLE?

3. Harsh Mentor

When this was first revealed, people seemed pretty excited at the prospect of punishing their opponents in Modern and Legacy whenever they cracked a fetch land, spun their top, or activated their Arcbound Ravager, but the excitement seems to have cooled and many pros seem to have decided the card isn’t such a big deal after all. Mentor doesn’t punish planeswalker activations, and there aren’t any fetches in the format, so unless vehicles stays dominant I have a feeling we’re going to see the bottom drop out on this card by summer, opening the door for a decent buy-in price.

Personally I feel that Harsh Mentor is likely to see at least occasional play in Modern, with long term potential to break out as a staple in the right meta. I was considering testing the card alongside Eidolon of the Great Revel in a revised burn shell, perhaps something like Josh Silvestri recently wrote up over on Channel Fireball. Craig Wescoe, on the other hand, has been looking at Mentor in R/W Hatebears for Modern. Both of these concepts could end up as little more than thought experiments, so commit accordingly.

In Commander, this effects all opponents in a format with a ton of on board triggers, so foils may have some legs from that angle.

Now: $1.50 ($7 foil)
Target Buy Price: $1 ($5 foil)
Target Sell/Trade Price: $5 (400%+)/$20 foil (+300%)
Timeline: Long-Term (12-36 months+)

4. Glorious End

Now: $3 ($7 foil)
Target Buy Price: $2 ($4 foil)
Target Sell Price: $10 (+400%)/$10 foil (+150%)
Timeline: Mid to Long (12-24+ months)

Glorious End is a classic trap card. In the right circumstances it can be a time walk that cancels your opponent’s turn and and gives you the one extra casting or attack step you need to put the game away. If you can chain them, you can take multiple turns in a row without your opponent being able to do much. (You’d like to Snapcaster Mage this back to really get rolling, but you can’t because Glorious End exiles itself from the stack.) If you play cards like Gideon of the Trials, Platinum Angel or Angel’s Grace you can dodge your fate, but the question is whether someone will find the right shell to make all this durdling worthwhile.

I’d put the odds somewhere around 30/70 that this makes a splash in Modern somewhere down the line but I don’t think you need to rush into owning any, so feel free to keep an eye out for interesting deck lists and snap some up during a summer sale if you’re excited to try and break it.

5. Bone Picker

Now: $4 foil
Target Buy Price: ($3 foil)
Target Sell Price: $10 foil (+333%)
Timeline: Long Term (24 months+)

This guy doesn’t quite look like Delver of Secrets now that we’ve had some time to put him to the test, but there is still potential for him to slot into a very quick aggro strategy in Modern if the right combination of ways to activate him reliably appear. I’ve seen him tested in Legacy.

As an Uncommon, I’m not interested in non-foils, but a few sets of foils around $3 seem fine as a low priority target that may or may not get there in the next few years.

6. Shadow of the Grave

Now: $0.50 ($4 foil)
Target Buy Price: $4 foil
Target Sell Price: $10+ foil (+250%)
Timeline: Long Term (12+ months)

Here we have the poster child for open ended synergy, a card that works with both cycling and discard, both of which have plenty of support now, and will only gain additional options down the road. As a two-mana instant this has the potential to set up really nasty combo turns, and whether that ends up being with Seismic Assault, Dredge cards or Life from the Loam doesn’t matter much to me. I only care that this card is only going to gain momentum as time goes on and is unlikely to see frequent reprints given the mechanical focus. I love these foils at $4, and intend to stock up this summer and await the inevitable spike.

7. As Foretold

Now: $5 (Foils: $20)
Target Buy Price: $4 (Foils $20)
Target Sell Price: $10+ (+150%)/Foils: $40 (+100%)
Timeline: Long to Very Long Term (12-36 months+)

The As Foretold hype machine was running hot during spoiler season, with the card charging out of the gates close to $20. With no home in Standard and none of the Modern brews making major waves yet, the hype has cooled and I think there’s a good chance you can pick up a pile of these for $4 or so this summer and stock them away for down the road when someone outright breaks the card.

It’s important to keep in mind that despite the fact that this card does nothing when it hits the board, it immediately starts letting you cast up to two extra spells per turn cycle including Living Death (Living End), Wheel of Fortune (Wheel of Fate), Balance (Restore Balance) and Ancestral Recall (Ancestral Vision) effects. The card has open ended synergy with similar future cards that might appear, as well as with mana denial strategies, and in EDH it can potentially allow you to cast X spells per turn cycle, where X is the number of opponents, assuming you have a way of keeping your hand full. That’s enough for me to grab twenty to thirty copies.

Foil supply is already relatively low at $20, and as a mythic rare that is going to be played as a four-of if it’s played at all, I’m happy to pick up a dozen at that price as well.

8. Gideon of the Trials

The latest incarnation of the Gatewatch’s resident bruiser has been in steep decline since he was pre-ordering at $40. Now available for just $10, the card has shown up in a few Modern control lists including UW and RW strategies, usually as a 1 or 2 of. Those aren’t the kind of numbers that are likely to cause a major spike, but I’d keep your eye out for foils closer to $20 than $30, because foil supply is relatively modest and they could end up over $40 down the road.

I’ll be picking up a play set of non-foils this summer, but will mostly focus on getting six to eight copies of the foils as cheaply as possible as a longer term hold.

Now: $10 ($22 foil)
Target Buy Price: $6 ($20 foil)
Target Sell Price: $12 ($40 foil)
Timeline: Short to Very Long-Term (6-36+ months)

9. Hope of Ghirapur

Now: $3 (foil)
Target Buy Price: $2 (foil)
Target Sell Price: $10 (+400%)
Timeline: Long Term (24+ months)

It’s a total trap, so just ignore me. For this to ever be a thing, a few things need to line up. You need a meta where you can consistently get a 1/1 flyer in for damage and where stealing your opponents ability to cast non-creature spells is powerful. You’re really doing it if you figure out how to recurse this thing and give it Haste, perhaps via Thopter Engineer. Trinket Mage and Ranger of Eos can go find this card, and Leonin Squire can bring it back. Master Trinketeer makes it bigger, and Silence and Isochron Scepter could form the nucleus of a soft lock. I only listed the foil prices above because the formats I can see this being most useful are Legacy and Vintage, where Xantid Swarm has been useful out of the sideboard. This one is a definite long shot, but it sets off my spidey senses and I’ll likely pick a few up once they get cheap for a casual Thopters deck if nothing else.

Long Term Casual Targets

10. Cascading Cataracts

Now: $.75 ($5 foil)
Target Buy Price: $0.50 ($4 foil)
Target Sell Price: $4 (+700%)/$16 foil (+300%)
Timeline: Long Term (24+ months)

In a few months we’re getting at least one new five color Commander deck (Dragons), and possibly others as well. That aside, 5-color EDH decks are only going to get more robust as time goes on and this land is an auto include in all of them. Foils should be the play here, and they’re dead cheap if you’re comfortable with a longer hold. I already bought some experimental Japanese foils, and I’ll definitely be stashing some more of these away once I see a solid deal on English copies.

11. Rishkar, Peema Renegade

Rishkar has already seen plenty of play in Standard, but I’m more interested in his long term usefulness in EDH. The strong utility of both buffing creatures and turning them into Llanowar Elves is going to be popular in casual circles for years to come and being both an Elf and a Druid is a boon for Commander. Interactions with Atraxa, the other “cares about counters” commanders, and Hardened Scales/Doubling Season only bolster the appeal. I’d focus on foils here, since there are likely to be plenty of non-foils lying around once he wraps his tenure in Standard.

Now: $4 foil
Target Buy Price: $4 foil
Target Sell Price: $12 foil
Timeline: Long Term (24+ months)

12. Throne of the God Pharoah

Yeah, that says “each opponent” all right. Attack or tap your creatures in EDH to hit all your buddies at once. That’s enough to get me on board here, but I suspect this cheap and deadly artifact will find a home in Modern and/or Legacy at some point as a finisher that doesn’t have to attack through blockers to win. Legendary status holds it back some, so I’ll focus on foils here as well, expecting modest growth, but allowing for more exciting results if someone figures out how to break out of the pack on the back of this card. At just a quarter for regular copies, hard to go wrong with those either.

Now: $0.25 ($3.50 foil)
Target Buy Price: $0.25 ($3 foil)
Target Sell Price: $4 ($10 foil)
Timeline: Long Term (12+ months)

13. Pyramid of the Pantheon

Now: $0.25 ($2 foils)
Target Buy Price: $0.25 ($2 foils)
Target Sell Price: $3 (+1200%)/$8 foils (+300%)
Timeline: Long Term (24+ months)

No one seems very excited about this card, but in Atraxa EDH decks, this “Builded Lotus” can get rolling pretty quick and ramp you into more shenanigans. It’s unlikely to escape the range of mediocre to medium good in that format, and is likely unplayable everywhere else, but at $2 for foil rares, I’m willing to throw $20 at this and see where it lands in a few years.

So there you have it. Anything I missed that you’re on top of? Logic to kill one of the specs? Share your thoughts for the benefit of all in the comments.

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.

Jason Alt, ProTrader

The Crucible Reprint We Deserve, Not the One We Need

June 27, 2017 Jason Alt 6 Comments

Wizards has gotten a little bit better about reprinting stuff before or just after the price goes nuts. It’s kind of impressive, really, when you think about it. If a card spikes like Goryo’s Vengeance did this week, Wizards can’t issue a reprint next week. They can’t do it next month. They probably can’t do it next year under a lot of circumstances. They simply aren’t as nimble as they would need to be becuase sets are planned far in advance. In the case of something like Modern or Eternal Masters, I suspect some last minute changes can be made but even then the cards are sent to the printer months in advance. Official WotC product isn’t a cigarette boat, it’s a huge oil tanker and if we know anything about oil tankers, it’s that they aren’t easy to turn and sometimes disasters happen. When WotC does nail a reprint of a card soon after the price really goes up, it almost seems like it was an accident given how difficult it is to see that far into the future.

You can add to that the fact that if a card isn’t reprinted when it needs to be and no reprint seems to be forthcoming anytime soon, that in and of itself is a reason for people to begin to hoard the card and for the price to go up. I write fairly often about cards that are either a do or die reprint in Commander sets – they get the reprint they need or the price is going to go out of control. We saw that with Phyrexian Altar and I think we’re going to see that with Patriarch’s Bidding. I was going to say the same of Mana Echoes, but people didn’t even bother waiting for Commander 2017 to be spoiled fully before they went out and bought Mana Echoes because I guess they think the Locust God is going to be much better than The Locust God probably is. I think a card in particular, Crucible of Worlds, is well outside of its “painless reprint window” meaning that its reprint options are so limited that anywhere it’s reprinted is bound to barely make a dent. Cards that cost as much as Crucible are basically reprintable as Masterpieces, which will do approximately both jack and shit for the price. Where else can you jam a card that costs more than $35? In a Commander deck with a $35 MSRP? Reprint avenues are super limited and the card might as well be on the Reserved List at this point.

But things are not always so bleak as they seem. Even though Hour of Devastation isn’t giving us Crucible of Worlds, we are getting a functional semi-reprint in the form of a card that is sort of similar. It’s not an artifact, it’s a green creature but what it lacks in being an artifact it makes up in being a Crucible of Worlds with feet. This is going to do two things in my estimation. First, it’s going to give decks running Crucible a second Crucible which will allow them to go a little deeper on their Crucible strategy. There aren’t a ton of decks not running green doing Crucible stuff – per EDHREC, the only generals with Crucible in the top 10 that aren’t green are Daretti and Oloro. Daretti wouldn’t run a non-artifact Crucible creature even if it were red and Oloro is for people who steal their neighbor’s wifi and cheat on their taxes so there’s no pleasing human garbage like that. We have a green card that can go in the mostly green decks that were running Crucible before, only this time you can find it with a green Sun’s Zenith or Worldly Tutor meaning there’s some upside. The second thing I expect this to do is put a Crucible of Worlds into the hands of people who cannot afford a Crucible of Worlds. It’s the most expensive card in a The Gitrog Monster deck, for example, and all of a sudden people who couldn’t afford to play the deck at all can suddenly make it happen. The card priced some strategies out completely and a budget alternative existing is great for Magic.

As always, I don’t have much of an opinion about the price of Ramunap Excavator itself because I don’t know what Standard and Modern are going to do and you don’t care what I think about something as hard to know as that. I stick to the easy, obvious money from EDH picks because I’ve learned that in this business it’s not worth it to pontificate about stuff you aren’t sure about because you want people to consider you an expert. Why bother trying to predict everything when all you’re going to do is get predictions wrong because you had no business making them in the first place. Rather than try to figure out the price of a card with changes to MODO redemption, a Standard banning every ban cycle, Modern and Frontier to contend with, shifting metagames in all formats and the rest of Hour of Devastation which could make the card better or worse in Standard, not to mention how this set will fit in with the block before and the block after it, why don’t we just look at what we know? What we know is kind of a lot, actually, so let’s see what is going to go up in price as a result of Crucible decks getting a second Crucible and poors getting their hands on their first Crucible.

Constant Mists – Below $4

I know this card basically already went up, but this is a very old card. It’s under $3 right now and with more people able to make a perpetual fog happen, it’s attractive to think about jamming these two cards together. Mists is getting concentrated in the hands of dealers as the buy price goes up and people beging rooting these out of collections. Being in green is especially helpful for this card because it can go in any deck that Ramunap Excavator can. Not everything that paired with Crucible will pair with Ramunap Excavator but green cards sure will and this is a green card.

Squandered Resources – Below $6

You’ve probably already made your money on this, but there is a non-zero chance we could see a second spike. People who never had access to Crucible before now do and that could be big things for a card like this, and not only in The Gitrog Monster decks. We were all over this card at a quarter and buying in at $5 to sell at $7 isn’t as sexy, but if you want to play with this card, now is the time to buy before it potentially goes up again. Remember, this would be a second spike so the odds of someone ferreting out cheap copies to relist on TCG Player at the same price it sold out is less likely so if this card does go, it could potentially go pretty hard.

Green Sun’s Zenith – Below $7

Speaking of GSZ, this card is fresh off of a reprint and it’s banned in Modern which limits is price upside. It’s also Green Sun’s Zenith and it’s probably as cheap as it’s ever going to get. I imagine this card recovers organically from its last printing and I imagine additional upside from being able to tutor for a Crucible is going to help out. Grabble these up.

Dust Bowl – Below $12

A super underrated EDH card, Dust Bowl does not play even remotely fair when you have Crucible of Worlds. You’re not going to be able to lock someone down with this, Dust Bowl’s role is more to keep them off of lands like Gaea’s Cradle than it is to strand them with no lands at all. Super versatile, a great pairing with Crucible and Excavator and pretty cheap to buy into despite being from a block as long ago as Mercadian Masques, this card covers all bases. I’m excited about this.

World Breaker – Below $5

World Breaker is a card that while it doesn’t benefit directly from Excavator, appears in nearly every deck that Excavator is likely to be in. This is a bit of a stretch, maybe, but I’m exploring the possibility of correlative links being enough to drive price increases rather than causal ones. If Excavator makes Crucible decks better, it stands to reason more will be built and the cards that are in those decks will have upside. I could be super wrong about this, but I also think it’s pretty tough to lose if you can buy Eldrazi under $5, especially ones that are this good in EDH.

Next week, I hope our server migration is complete which will mean the return of price graphs. Thanks for sticking with us through this tumultuous time. Next week I should have my thoughts about the financial implications of Hour of Devastation as a whole on EDH and you’re not going to want to miss that. Until next week!

Watchtower

PROTRADER: The Watchtower 6/26/17

June 26, 2017 Travis Allen 2 Comments

By: Travis Allen
@wizardbumpin

Don’t miss this week’s installment of the MTG Fast Finance podcast, an on-topic, no-nonsense tour through the week’s most important changes in the Magic economy. And if you enjoy playing Magic, make sure to visit https://scry.land to find PPTQs, SCG Opens, and more events on an interactive map with worldwide coverage. Find Magic near you today.

Grand Prix Cleveland was a GP For Magic players in the same way that Eric Warheim is a comedian’s comedian. That is to say, it was limited. It was also a fairly quiet weekend overall. GP Vegas and the massive spoiler week were both in the rear view mirror, and there weren’t any further leaks of cards, meaning nothing new really broke out or spiked.

Perhaps most interestingly at the moment is the leaked Ixalan (ix-a-lon) sheet that reveals that planeswalkers are getting the ‘legendary’ supertype. Two possibilities exist here. The simpler of the two is that Wizards is bringing consistency to their card types. Since planeswalkers already behave in the same fashion as other legendary permanents, it makes sense they should have the same supertype. The other, less-occam’s-razor possibility is that they’re adding the supertype in order to set up a rules change in Commander that allows for all planeswalkers to be your general. That’s certainly more of a stretch, but it’s exciting to think about, no? Boy you thought Doubling Season was expensive before…

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Monthly Archives: June 2017