Monthly Archives: April 2018

Casual Fridays

First Look at Dominaria’s Prices

3 Comments

It’s here! Finally, after waiting untold years, we’re back on Dominaria and we have a whole lot of new cards to look at.

Today I’m sampling preorder cards and looking for bargains, though I’m fully aware that most preorders are a bad idea.

Let’s not wait, or talk too much, but just dive in!

Karn, Scion of Urza (about $32 preorder)

At first blush, you see five loyalty jumping to six and you’re super on board, but the problem is that new Karn needs a lot of help to be good. Even his -2 is going to be pretty lame unless you have lots of artifacts. Your worst-case scenario is making two 2/2 tokens over two turns for four mana, and unfortunately, that’s a common sorcery in this set.

Your best case is that you’re getting a card a turn, and that has potential, especially if you played a mana dork in the first two turns. Giving your opponent the choice of cards is always bad for you, but you’ve got the elegant -1 ability to get it back.

I would like to see this in Modern Affinity, but that’s super-niche and unlikely.

As for his price, the $35 isn’t going to hold. It’ll drop, and affecting the board is hard for him, so he’s never going to be a four-of. He’s got some amazing play in Commander, and I can easily see him getting out of hand in Brawl. I’d imagine he stabilizes around $15.

Teferi, Hero of Dominaria ($15)

This is a little too on-the-nose price-wise for me. He’s instantly one of the best things to do in a WU deck, where defending him and getting the ultimate seems like the best plan ever. His plus ability helps you use the extra card, and we are getting Seal Away, making them best buddies.

As a two-or-three-of in only one deck, he’s never going to have a huge price, but he’s another planeswalker that Doubling Season works really well with, allowing for instant ultimates and enabling all sorts of shenanigans.

It’s possible he drops to $10, but he’s going to see just enough play to keep him between that price and his current price of $15.

Mox Amber ($30)

I’ll say it: I think this is not as good as many people think it is, especially for Standard and Modern.  The only cheap legends people are playing with in Modern are Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy, and Kataki, War’s Wage. We have some three-drop Lilianas, but one extra mana on turn three (after dropping a Liliana) seems terrible to me.

Just don’t try to cast this on turn 2 after you cast Thalia…

Standard is a different animal but the design of this card means that you need to drop Shanna, Sisay’s Legacy on turn two, and then you can add a one-drop to the board. Hopefully. It’s not an accelerator, it’s a fixer, a helper, and being legendary it’ll never be a four-of by itself.

Same thing for Commander: It’ll be good, a fixer, but very hard to play early and use in a broken way. Note that Legendary Lands do not allow this to be used, and Mox Opal doesn’t count either. As a result, I suspect this will end up in the $15-$20 range.

The enemy checklands (Isolated Chapel, etc, all around $4)

The mana for three-color decks is pretty good now. Having one Island out means you can have four other colors of mana come into play untapped. I strongly suspect that Esper is going to be the combination that takes over, given Cast Down, Search for Azcanta, and Seal Away as good cheap plays and the ease of mana.

This could be $30 by Christmas, depending on how control decks do at rotation.

This set of reprints has come along at the perfect time, and I think Isolated Chapel will climb the highest, to around $7. The rest are going to creep upward by a dollar or two.

Seal Away and Cast Down ($1/$1.50 each)

I would buy my playset now of either of these. We haven’t gotten to a point where people are playing enchantment hate, and we don’t have incidental hate (such as Dromoka’s Command) to clean these up.  These are going to see a LOT of play, as I wrote about last week, and somehow these are super cheap. I don’t think they will get expensive enough to make a huge profit on, but if you’re going to even possibly play Standard in the next year, get these now.

They are going to spike to $3, maybe even $4, but then trickle downwards.

Lyra Dawnbringer ($15)

She’s better than Baneslayer Angel, who had very specific protections that didn’t help much. Lyra offers a very powerful set of abilities, a top end that is hard to argue with in most decks, and nearly impossible to tangle with in combat.

Importantly, she’s immune to Cast Down, though not Vraska’s Contempt. I hated losing Baneslayer to Doom Blade, because that gap in mana spent is the easiest way to get ahead in a game.

She, along with everything else, dies to Chupacabra.

People would play 3-4 Baneslayer in a deck, and I think the max for Lyra is likely three. She’s a mythic, and a great Commander for an Angel tribal deck. I think her price will drop some, but not too much.

Gilded Lotus ($4)

We haven’t gotten a printing of this since FTV: Twenty in 2013, and not in a booster pack since Magic 2013 (released in 2012), which means that the originals are about to take a bath. Those had made it to the $13 range, but with this version at $4 that’s a gap that won’t last long.

I actually really like picking this up at $4. even if I do wish they had kept the FTV art. This is one of the best cards to cast in Commander, enabling all sorts of stuff no matter the number of colors.

 

Cliff is an avid Cuber and Commander player, and has a deep love for weird ways to play this amazing game, as well as being guest host on MTGFF when needed. His current project is a light-up sign for attracting Cubers at GPs, so get his attention @wordofcommander on Twitter if you’ve got ideas or designs.

Jason Alt, Unlocked ProTrader

Unlocked Pro Trader: Fblthp 2.0

I wrote a pretty… cynical(?) I guess article this week on Gathering Magic which comes out the same day this article becomes free for everyone to read. I feel badly for the team that slaves away making a gigantic, expansive world filled with characters with rich, detailed backstories so that the Magic community can look at all of it and say “Lol when’s Fblthp getting his own Planeswalker card?” I went on a bit of a longer rant than that so if you’re interested in reading what is easily the most acidic and unprofessional article I’ve written on Gathering Magic where I’m usually pretty cheerful-sounding because I want to keep my job, check that out.

I won’t rehash my screed here but it seems like the new, stupid meme from the /r/magictcg gang is that they’ve thanked Richard Garfield for coming out of retirement and helping to design a set with 137 brand new Legendary characters by making a huge, semi-ironic deal out of the fungus monster named Slimefoot. I said on GM that “When you think about it, Slimefoot is a fungus-covered freeloader who spends all of its time in the dark, making it the perfect mascot for the online Magic community” and if it hadn’t been for Gathering Magic, I likely would have added that some fungi are asexual, much like everyone who posts on the main Magic subreddit.

But enough about why Slimefoot’s ironic hipness is an affront to the people who slaved away building an expansive world for Magic players to ignore because they’re basically monsters, let’s talk about how Slimefoof is actually a legit card and could be a good candidate for making some cards go up in price. Let’s do that thing I’m always doing where I make a bunch of really accurate predictions and toil in obscurity because  6 years ago I decided, erroneously, that I would be taken more seriously if I wrote for an established website rather than making terrible videos on YouTube. I’d be Lion if I said I didn’t regret my decision.

 

Slimefoot Best Foot

People are beginning to publish their decks online and while I should wait for EDHREC to do this for me, I’m manually checking a bunch of decklists and manually noticing (is that a thing?) the common cards that are showing up. Also, I brewed the deck and came to a lot of conclusions on my own. I don’t have as much data as I will later but I think I have enough to know what we should be ahead of. I’m going to stay away from foils although this would be a reasonable deck to foil out except for all of the stuff that’s in every EDH that’s not reasonable to foil out. Utopia Mycon is under a buck foil and that may lure you into forgetting that a foil Doubling Season is like $90.

Saproling Symbiosis

This is a card. I am not sure how good it actually is in Slimefoot decks, but a lot of things are happening. Look at the spike at the edge of the graph. In the last few weeks, buylist and retail price on this card both increased. This is going places. It’s an Invasion rare and that means it’s 18 years old. Invasion has $40 Phyrexian Altar and $25 Captain Sisay. Will this be $40? Nah, but it won’t be gettable at under $3 the way it is right now at CCG House so grabble that free money. If you’re not a Pro Trader and you’re reading this and you’re like “There aren’t 5 copies NM and 2 Japanes NM for all under $3 on CCG House right now” that’s because some Pro Trader just paid for their subscription for like 6 months when these babies peak at $10 and they are ready to sell. I’m not paid extra to push Pro Trader but I do sometimes feel bad knowing that people are going to read this and hear about prices that don’t exist anymore. If they’re still there, that means all of the Pro Traders don’t believe me when I say things and I don’t know what to make of that. If you don’t believe me and you don’t buy them either and they’re still there on Saturday, I’ll buy them and that you can believe.

Again, I don’t know if this card is good, but this card is identified and that means it’s going up in price whether it’s good or not. Ask the price of Patron Wizard. You know, for all of the Wizard synergy.

nailed it

If you still can, and I kind of hope you can’t because that means I lack credibility among Pro Traders and kind of hope you can because that’s a gift of free money I’m bestowing on my readers, snag these. I bet they go up. You know, because they basically already kinda are.

Speaking of Saprolings…

Saproling Burst

I’m pretty sure you play this, make 7 saprolings which instantly die as you create the 7th one because they all become 0/0 and you get 7 Slimefoot triggers. I’m not a judge and Magic’s comprehensive rules are pretty stupid but if you only get 6 triggers, I’m going to laugh and say “only” in ironic quotes because that is kind of a lot. This is better with Parallel Lives, you know, that card you’re absolutely playing in the deck. It’s great with Death Pact and Dictate of Erebos, you know, those cards you’re absolutely playing in the deck.  This card is a bulk rare but it’s showing signs of life, kinda. There are approximately as many copies of it as there are of Saproling Symbiosis so they have the same theoretical ceiling if you don’t know anything about other factors. However, it being a bulk rare means the price spike will be mitigated by cheap copies being ferreted out that we won’t see with a card that’s already a couple of bucks. This can still quintuple pretty easily and you can buy in very cheaply. Symbiosis is currently in 5 times as many decks as Burst but Burst is uniquely good in Slimefoot and I think there’s upside. This is riskier because I kind of like to be in on a card when people have moved the price and demonstrated they’re aware, but if you want to make real money, you have to be weeks ahead of them and on Burst, you can be.

Illusionists’ Bracers

This may seem like an odd pick because it’s basically vaguely good in every EDH deck which has a Commander with activated abilities but this is actually part of a few potential combos. Activate Slimefoot with this one for 4 mana to make 2 Saprolings. Sac those Saprolings to Ashnod’s Altar, getting two death triggers on Slimefoot and giving you 4 mana. Use that 4 mana to make 2 Saprolings. Rinse, repeat.

I think Bracers are in a good spot to pop soon, aren’t likely to be reprinted this year and can make us some money. Did you buy $200 worth of these when they were $0.50? Not many people did. It’s OK, there’s time to make money even buying in at $2 and unlike Saproling Burst, every copy of this basically made it into the hands of an EDH player so cheap copies are unlikely sitting in binders because who that plays EDH wouldn’t just buy this loose for $0.50? Look at the dealer confidence in this card, by the way.

Buylist is about to hit retail. If it crosses, we could be talking about an actual arbitrage opportunity on a card that came out in Gatecrash. That’s pretty recent, don’t you think? This is the 55th-most-played artifact on EDHREC. Just seriously break off $100, throw it at Bracers and I’m really confident you’ll make money. Dealers are paying current retail and it’s their job to do this all day. Let’s take them at their word and pay what they’re paying now and not what they’re selling for in 6 months.

Paradox Engine

You lose here if one of three things happens in the next 6-12 months.

  1. Paradox Engine is banned in EDH by the EDH rules commitee
  2. Paradox Engine is reprinted
  3. Paradox Engine gets cheaper for some reason

I don’t think one or two will happen, so why would three? I realize that’s a succinct way to end this section but what more do I need to say? This gives you a lot of mana, it’s an infinite combo with Sprout Swarm a card, and I hate to sound like a broken record, you absolutely play in this deck.

Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest

Here are some interesting facts about this card and the deck it’s in. The deck also contains Meren, which is like $9. It has an $8 Thought Vessel, a $4 Eldrazi Monument, a $7 Eternal Witness and nothing else over $2. The deck is trying to go for like $70 on eBay but the cards add up to like $70 if we’re being generous and paying the full $0.36 on Kessig Cagebreakers and not just calling every rare in there a dime like most of them are. There is room for this deck to grow – Wade Into Battle used to be the worst one and now it’s over $100 with cards like Urza’s Incubator, Blade of Selves, Magus of the Wheel (you know, before), Gisela (you know, before), and a $30 Fiery Confluence because yeah, you probably want 4 of them if you want any of them and this is how you have to get them. I’m saying the deck with Mazirek is a good way to start as a basis for your Slimefoot deck since all of the cards that are in it that are expensive go in Slimefoot except maybe Meren and also Toys R Us went out of business in the USA. Rather than sell their product at 50% off, the company that stocks Magic at big box retailers said “no thanks” and cleared the shelves. Those decks are popping up at my local Target, Walmart and a place called Meijer that if you don’t have them, you sort of missing out. Meijer is like if Target had food but also twice as much non-food stuff as Target. I know some Targets have food but imagine Target had the kind of food you could buy and say “I purchased groceries” rather than “I bought a frozen pizza and somehow a 6 pack of wine in cans” because even when a Target says they have food, they don’t have food. They have food the same way that dude on LetGo with the sealed 2017 gift box has $75 worth of cards to sell you because, hey, they’re his step-dad’s cards anyways and he’s just tryin to do tha old man a favor and do you want them or not quit wasten my time.

If those should pop up in the cards section of your Walmart or Target or Piggly Wiggly (whatever your region’s “Meijer” is. I don’t want you to, but you’ll probably write something like “Food Lion represent!” in the comments section and I can’t legally stop you) they won’t be marked at $70 or $100, they’ll be marked at $34.99 and you should buy them. The GB one is the worst one and you should still buy it for $34.99 because did I mention Thought Vessel is $8 right now? In the mean time, it’s not great to bust these for the $70 eBay dude wants for them which means it’s not super profitable to inject Mazireks into the market. Could Mazirek be as much as Meren? Nah. But it can be more than it is now and I’m banking on that because I bought a lot of the stupid Meren decks at Meijer 6 months ago. I should recoup $34.99 but let’s not pretend I’ll recoup $70 – not in a world where Kessig Cagebreakers isn’t $0.36.

Anyway, this article was dense with good financial advice. If you wouldn’t mind, tell your friends that this article was dense with good financial advice (I’m basing this off of the degree of confidence I have in the picks rather than my own assessment of my own abilities as a writer) and they should read this when it becomes free every week. If you couldn’t buy any of these cards, the Pro Traders got them and you can’t beat them and may want to join them. That does it for me this week, readers. Until next time!

Watchtower

The Watchtower 4/9/18 for ProTraders – Plan Your Specs

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.

Magic fans got a treat this weekend, with a Standard GP, a Legacy GP, and a Modern Open. No matter how you enjoy your sixty card formats, there was an event for you to watch. Furthermore, each format looked healthy! In Standard you can play any Bomat Courier deck you want, in Legacy you can play any Deathrite Shaman deck you want, and in Modern you can play any Lightning Bolt deck you want. We haven’t been this spoiled since we all chose to drive black cars.

Gamble

Price Today: $6
Possible Price: $15

For the longest time, Gamble was one of those “it’s how much?” cards. An otherwise innocuous card reached a staggering $30 on the back of Legacy play in Lands (who cares if you discard the card you tutor when you’ve got Life from the Loam too) and EDH, where concerns of having to discard the wrong card are often met with “just cast the damn card and take another drink.”

A printing in Eternal Masters brought the price down significantly, to the point that EDH players will actually purchase it. That’s great for people that wanted to make money on the card, since it’s infinitely easier to buy and sell a card at $4 and $6 respectively, rather than $25 and $30. It’s begun to climb from its just-printed lows, and is positioning itself to keep climbing.

Supply is healthy for now, as there isn’t dramatic demand. It’s ticking though. And it’s going to keep ticking, as these find their way into collections of players that had held off purchasing them before, becoming permanent fixtures in EDH binders everywhere. Is it going to double in two months? No. But later this year or next you could find these with a healthy appreciation.

Bring to Light (Foil)

Price Today: $3
Possible Price: $10

I may have written about this one in the past, but I don’t have an easy way to search for specific cards in my archives, so we all get to (possibly) enjoy this one again.

In the SCG Modern open, Scapeshift BTL made another appearance with a playset of said card. That’s great and all, but don’t expect a Tier 2 Modern combo deck to drive the price too wild. It will keep a steady demand up, for sure, but it’s not going to drain the entire foil supply over the course of a month.

Our best bet for price growth is EDH. Changes to the way mana works in the format with the release of…Battle for Zendikar? enabled some great tricks with this that I suspect haven’t been fully appreciated by the EDH crowd yet. Regardless of general, you can now generate all colors of mana. This means your Razaketh the Foulblooded deck can generate all five colors. While you’re not putting BTL in there, you can slide it into something like Kumena. So long as you’ve got a Chromatic Lantern in play, you can now BTL for all five colors in your UG deck. How’s that for nifty!

It’s been awhile since BFZ now, and supply is getting lowish. Once it bottoms out, I’d look for a restock in the $9 to $15 range.

The Other Inventions

Price Today: $25 – $125
Possible Price: $100 – $250

Over the last two weeks or so, Masterpieces Inventions have been on the move. Mox Opal, Aether Vial, Mana Vault — many of prices have moved significantly.

Amidst this buying frenzy, several others are going to move as well. We’ve seen it before, and we’re going to see it again. Everything is on the table — Defense Grid and Sphere of Resistance jumped, and demand for those is tiny — but competitive and EDH staples are more likely to stick once there’s a change. I outlined a few on MTG Fast Finance this weekend, so check that out if you want specific examples.

Overall they’re all probably gravy, and if you’ve got the funds to dump into these, I’d be surprised if you’re not happy with the move. If you’re working with a $200 bank roll I’d stay away, since it will eat basically all of that without an immediate promise of return, but if throwing several hundred dollars at this won’t impact your behavior otherwise, this is a rich vein at the moment.

Travis Allen has  been playing Magic: The Gathering since 1994, mostly in upstate New York. Ever since his first FNM he’s been trying to make playing Magic cheaper, and he first brought his perspective to MTGPrice in 2012. You can find his articles there weekly, as well as on the podcast MTG Fast Finance.


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Casual Fridays

Dominaria’s Uncommon Power

We’ve learned some interesting lessons from the way that part of Dominaria was spoiled. One of the hardest things to do in MTG finance is stay away from preordering cards. I get it, I do, and I try very hard to understand what it takes to make me break that rule…but we got some punishments this time around, and here’s the big one:

We’ve all been there, but the shift in expected rarity is just a real kick in the teeth.

Ouch. Someone paid $40 to preorder a set of four uncommons right before the set came out.

Now, I understand the impulse. If you’d asked me, I would have said that this was a rare. It’s garbage in Limited, and that’s usually a slot which needs to be used for something to make the format better. I would have been on board with the $10 apiece tag, too, especially if you wanted to have these for the first Modern tournament possible. The card is a house against both the big-mana strategies (Tron/Eldrazi) and Storm, a good chunk of the meta, plus decks playing Snapcaster, or using one spell to set up another…

A beatable card, let’s not kid ourselves, but I am all for sideboard cards that say ‘beat this or lose!’

With the Sphere weighing heavily on my mind, I want to look at something unusual Wizards has been doing lately: printing powerful, and therefore valuable, uncommons. We had a few in Kaladesh block, but Ixalan kept it going and now it’s a full trend.

So let’s talk value!

Wizards has announced that they are going to go back to printing Standard-legal cards as FNM promos, and I don’t think they are going to start messing with rares in that space. I could be wrong, but I’m proceeding with last known information, such as Unlicensed Disintegration, Fatal Push, and Aether Hub.

Lock it down: We are going to get promo versions of Ravenous Chupacabra, Field of Ruin, Damping Sphere, and Seal Away. Wizards has already given us three promos to be given out during the three months of Dominaria: Opt, Shanna, Sisay’s Legacy, and of course Cast Down.

I miss the textless cards but I dig this new frame.

I want to buy Cast Down at ~$2 each.  It just packs such a punch in Modern that it needs to be considered. It’s one more mana, but I went scouring lists and I could come up with four Legendary creatures seeing a notable amount of play: Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Vendilion Clique, Tasigur, the Golden Fang, and Baral, Chief of Compliance. There’s a few who pop up here and there, but you’re more likely to see an Ornithopter than a non-Thalia legend.

I don’t think that Cast Down is the next Fatal Push. I want to be clear about that. Push has been a powerful card precisely because it’s a single mana. Going up to two is a significant cost but you’re going to see some mix of Push and Cast Down in Modern, and $2 seems cheap for a card that is going to have immediate impact in Modern.

The impact in Standard is real. Black decks are so stacked right now, the removal is so good, here’s a sample curve for mono-black.

Turn 1: Fatal Push your Elf

Turn 2: Walk the Plank your Shanna

Turn 3: Cast Down whatever

Turn 4: Ravenous Chupacabra, which kills almost everything in Standard anyway.

That’s where I would start, and I’d absolutely be maindecking at least two Golden Demise to deal with these pesky token decks. Duress is still there too, don’t forget.

NONE OF THOSE ARE RARES.

Don’t want to Walk the Plank? The world is your oyster. Never // Return. Vraska’s Contempt. Moment of Craving. Impale. Doomfall. Trial of Ambition. Bontu’s Last Reckoning. And don’t forget Arguel’s Blood Fast to keep your hand stocked. Maybe a Tetzimoc, Primal Death to end the game. Doesn’t really matter.

Back to my original point: Cast Down is really really good and will be more than the $2 preorder, but if you want to hold out for the FNM copies, I won’t blame you.

If you didn’t read Wizards’ post, note that stores aren’t going to give out a single promo per month. They are given the three promos in a big stack, and will give out the promos as they see fit. There’s not going to be a month where Cast Down gets cheap because EVERYONE gets one. It’ll be a steady current of additions.

I feel good about Seal Away at about $1. You have to wait for someone to attack with it, and it’s less proactive than Baffling End, but a set at $4 right now will save you a few bucks. I don’t expect this to impact Modern at all, be warned. I feel good that Cast Down will be $5-$7 at Christmastime, but Seal Away will plateau at $2.

Damping Sphere is a card I want to love. As I mentioned at the beginning, it’s a super-powerful card against a range of strategies, but the additional cost to play extra spells hits both players. You can’t just slam it in your deck and get them.

Don’t overlook how good this is against Burn, though. It’s got game against decks that want to flood the board with creatures, too, but it’s pretty darn lame against Aether Vial. Hollow One decks don’t much want to see this card, but that deck is capable of having 12 power in play on turn one.

Right now the Sphere is preselling for $5, and that’s a price where I’m not going to make any money for a long time. If it’s not reprinted, it’ll see enough play to eventually creep above that, but the initial supply is going to be big, plus the likelihood of a promo version. Modern decks aren’t going to all pack a playset of this, either. I’ll be hoping to get this in the $3 range at the end of summer.

We’re 1000 words in and I haven’t even mentioned Sagas, or the Memorial cycle of lands, or the new Black Knight and White Knight. That’s a low of power, and a lot of value, crammed into the uncommon slot, and we’ve had this in enough sets in a row to make it sort of official. I’d be interested in knowing what the rationale is behind this change, but I’m all for more $1-$2 (and more) uncommons!

 

Cliff is an avid Cuber and Commander player, and has a deep love for weird ways to play this amazing game, as well as being guest host on MTGFF when needed. His current project is a light-up sign for attracting Cubers at GPs, so get his attention @wordofcommander on Twitter if you’ve got ideas or designs.