Monthly Archives: October 2018

Jason Alt, Unlocked ProTrader

Unlocked Pro Trader: A List Of Foils You Should Look At Or Whatever

5 Comments

Readers,

Not much is happening in the corner of MTG Finance I tend to know stuff about. A lot of my Standard-based predictions for Guilds of Ravnica were pretty iffy – I thought Tajic might have caught on by now (The best Wr deck is almost entirely Dominaria cards), I thought Dream Eater at $3 was a better buy  than Doom Eater at $20 (It kind of was) and I would have bought more foil copies of Boros Locket at its original $1 the LGS wanted but I used that money for gas to drive to the LGS where I run the case to sell my Arclight Phoenixes for $7 each 3 days before they went to $20. Hindsight is 20/20 and while I have been doing just OK at guessing what Standard is going to do because I don’t understand the evolving Standard metagame better than the entirety of the Magic community but I did nail a few picks and I think I’ve been doing this long enough to have figured out a few long-term trends.

I think there are some foils in Guilds of Ravnica worth harping on about and while we have a bit of a lull in anything really going on in EDH because no one is building decks with Guilds commanders right now because they’re either bad versions of existing decks or identical versions of existing decks or they’re Aurelia, I think various formats can still impact the prices moving forward and they’re worth discussing.  Let’s look at some foils. You know, or whatever. I feel like I’m taking a break from stuff I care about lately – I really hope the next Ravnica set gives us some good EDH stuff or I’ll get so rusty at finance I’ll assume the next card with “Phoenix” in its name won’t be $20 even though that isn’t happening much lately.

Creeping Chill

I think this is a $10 foil. Obviously it was better to get in closer to $2 or $3 a week or two ago but that was then so let’s talk about now. Now Creeping Chill is a card that is cheating in Dredge. This is going to disappear in playsets which is good because there are a lot of foil uncommon from Guilds of Ravnica because I’m guessing it’s the best-selling Magic set of all time or will be soon. This seems like a bit of a gainer after we pass peak supply. It’s a powerful card and while it’s a bit narrow, it just seems like the sky is the limit on this. If you can buy in around $5 it seems like you’re going to be hard-pressed to lose, but this is probably more useful as a baseline case. Cards that are strong and identified as players in Legacy and Vintage command a high foil premium are coming in around this level at uncommon and this should more than maintain the price. For whatever reason, despite there being way fewer players, Legacy foils just tend to pop like this. I’d like to point to some recent historical precedent for a card like this being $10 or $12 but there really hasn’t been a card like this lately that is so perfect but so narrow.

Chromatic Lantern

However you feel about foil Creeping Chill at $7, you should feel much more strongly about Chromatic Lantern at $7. Is Lantern getting pounded into the dirt by reprints? Yes, kinda. But how likely is this to get another printing in foil anytime soon? The Commander precons are an excellent place to reprint this and keep the non-foil price down to under $5, but if the non-foil got above $7 even after its first reprinting, I don’t see a better place to park your long-to-medium-term money. Lantern is in like 57,000 decks on EDHREC and when you consider it was a $20 card in December of last year and people were still jamming it in decks more often than Commander’s Sphere and Darksteel Signet which are both pocket change, you know how important it is to players to be able to be LAZY. You can be so lazy with this card out. You can’t tap mana wrong, just tap the number of lands equal to the CMC. This card makes turns go faster AND it taps for mana itself. Playing spells with Lantern out lets you be almost as lazy as I am right now calling this at $7. I mean, if you do nothing else in MTG Finance this year, spend $100 on $7 Lanterns. Use some of the profit to by Pro Trader access for a year so when we have weeks where stuff I can help you with happens, you’ll know about it before the general public.

Steam Vents

A 2x multiplier is non-correct. All of the foil shocks in this set are historically low. I realize that this art isn’t as desirable as the Guildpact art but is the Guildpact art 5 times better? I happen to prefer this art in foil and the fact that these are around $20 seems like cheating. Could these be $50 in a year? I don’t know. Could they be $17 in a year? No way, I can’t think of circumstances where that happens. As we get farther from peak supply (which hasn’t even happened yet) I think these are going to realize they’re played in a ton of formats where people like foils. I don’t think these are $100 but I don’t think $20 is reasonable, either.

Circuitous Route 

This is a 10x which seems fine. What people may not realize is that this is the 9th-most-played GRN card on EDHREC. That’s more than Price of Fame, Doom Whisperer, Niv-Mizzet, Thief of Sanity and Sinister Sabotage.

At under $2, foils of this are pretty attractive. This is a solid card that I expect people to continue to play and I’d like to think a playable foil can pull $2. I could be wrong about the sustained demand since it will all come from EDH, but this is my first set really paying attention to prices before they settle rather than after. Interestingly, one more thing.

Lockets

I was pretty bullish on Boros Locket at first, but a few things happened. First, people didn’t really do what I expected. Despite having access to Blue which means access to actual card draw, people are jammming the Blue lockets more than the Boros Locket, and maybe that’s because no one is making new Boros decks because of this set and they are making new Izzet decks with Niv-Mizzet and new Dimir decks with Etrata and Lazav, but I also think I didn’t do a great job of predicting what would happen with the prices or the distribution.

I still think Boros does well long-term, but another thing is worth noting, and you won’t like it if you paid close to $1 for Boros Locket when it first came out.

Not only is Orzhov, a color combination with access to Phyrexian Arena and Tymna the Weaver running Cluestone more often than Boros decks, they aren’t running them THAT much. Want to know what’s worse than that?

Orzhov Cluestone foils aren’t worth diddly. They’re practically the same price as the non-foils. And that’s from Dragon’s Maze, a set that was so bad that boxes are basically dealer cost 6 years later. Stay the hell away from lockets, even Boros and Orzhov, unless they’re the same price as the non-foils and even then, no one is going to care. That’s a lesson for me as well as the rest of you. Yikes.

That does it for me this week. I don’t hate any of the shocks, really, especially Watery Grave and I don’t really know where cards like Venerated Loxodon will end up. I think there are a lot of copies of the cards in this set and even the foils are going to continue to tank. When prices begin to recover, we’ll be there waiting but until then, look stuff up like I didn’t with the Cluestones. I bought maybe 3 or 4 Boros Lockets for $0.75 each from the LGS and they’ll trade out at $1 or so but until then, I’m stuck with a reminder that I should wait for data before I buy. Luckily, I mostly knew that and didn’t buy deep. That’s all for me this week. Until next time!

Watchtower

The Watchtower 10/29/18 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.

Triple Primeval Titan decks in the top three of the Modern Open, eh? Modern is all over the place at the moment. Which is a good thing, to be clear. Lots of fun looking decks, plenty of variety, and no sense that the format is stifled by an overpowered strategy. I’m jealous of the people that get to sit down and play it on a weekly basis.

Arclight Phoenix, the latest talk of the town, had a reasonably successful weekend. Its best place in Modern was 30th, in a list similar to what we’ve seen already. Phoenix fared better in Standard, cracking the top 8 in both America and Europe. You can get $21 for your copies right now, and I wouldn’t wait any longer to sell. What price could you possibly hope to sell out at? You likely paid $2 to $3 each, so get while the gettin’s good.

Patron of the Vein

Price Today: $2
Possible Price: $8

Twilight never lost popularity with Magic players, it would seem. Edgar Markov, a vampire that farts out vampires, has been a top weekly and monthly commander for quite some time. He hasn’t cracked the “all time” rankings yet, but I suspect he will by the end of the month. And while what feels like half of the cards in that deck are in the precon, and the other half were printed within the last year, there’s still some opportunities if you look closely.

Patron of the Vein is one of those precon cards. He’s the most popular though — no other new card introduced in that precon is more popular than Patron. About 80% of Edgar decks use Patron, which is about as high as those numbers typically get. Of course, on the flip side, that also means that about 20% of Patron’s use is in other strategies. Presumably vampire strategies. Overall, if you’re playing a vampire-focused deck, you’re very likely to be in the market for Patron. Our takeaway then is that virtually every person building Edgar is going to be tracking one of these down, and anyone else building a vampire deck will too. But there’s only one of these for every Edgar Markov that exists, so a tension exists there. That’s the tension that will push Patron’s price higher.

You can score copies in the $1 to $2 range today, depending on quantity and shipping. While there’s more than a handful available, there aren’t a lot. And as new Edgar decks spring up every week — which we’ve been seeing happen for months — people will continue to snag those copies one or two at a time. Before long Patron will have crept up to $8 on the back of dwindling supply, and nobody will really notice or care, except those that had picked up a pile at $2.

Whir of Invention (Foil)

Price Today: $7.50
Possible Price: $20

If you scrolled down far enough to see the Arclight Phoenix deck in the Modern Open, you would have passed the “Grixis Whir” list. It’s sort of a Lantern deck, except instead of emptying its hand in order to raise the Ensnaring Bridge, it finds Bottled Cloister, a fun four-mana artifact from Ravnica that removes your own hand from the game during an opponent’s turn that then draws you a bonus card on your turn. Typically the whole “no hand on your opponent’s turn” thing is a drawback, but with Ensnaring Bridge in play, it’s not too shabby.

Cloister is amusing for sure, but for sure the meat here is Whir of Invention. This build uses all sorts of silver bullets, from Damping Sphere to Grafdigger’s Cage, and in addition, as with most decks of this stripe, there’s only a single copy of the various win conditions. (Loop Ipnu Rivulet with Crucible of Worlds to mill your opponent.) Finding that Crucible is another of Whir’s various duties.

This is hardly a format-shaking performance. One copy in 26th place isn’t sending the hordes to start whirring themselves at FNM. It is, however, a perfectly good proof of concept that demonstrates that Whir of Invention really can be played like the blue Chord of Calling, a card with a long and irrefutable legacy in Modern. If it isn’t this Bottled Cloister/Ipnu Rivulet build, it will be some other list that twists Whir to great effect. Of course, it’s also in 6,000 EDH decks too.

Foils at $7.50 aren’t dirt cheap, though I don’t think that matters. It’s growing rapidly in EDH, and is making a real go of it in Modern. I expect we’ll find these between $20 to $30 relatively soon.

Cryptolith Rite (Foil)

Price Today: $10
Possible Price: $20

I’ve absolutely talked about Cryptolith Rite foils before, so I won’t go on and on about it. It’s a legit card, and I like it as much at $10 as whatever it was when I wrote about it a few months ago. 11,000 EDH decks, including as a staple in one of the top weekly and monthly decks, Narjeela, is no joke. Add that it should be in so many decks — Sidisi, Brood Tyrant chief among them — and you’ve got a recipe for a card that is going to end up in short supply.

There are still foils available for $10, and I definitely still like them at that price. Getting them at $5 or $7 or whatever it was before was absolutely correct, and it’s still correct at $10. There’s fewer than 30 under $15 on TCGPlayer, and a single $15 copy at SCG. Make sure you’ve got a few before the inevitable jump.

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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Brainstorm Brewery

Brainstorm Brewery #310 Gavin Verhey, Architect of Sets

 

Corbin’s (@CHosler88), DJ (@Rose0fThorns) and Jason (@jasonEalt) have on a very special guest, Senior Game Designer and Writer at Wizards of the Coast, Gavin Verhey (@GavinVerhey) to talk about all things magic and get a good look behind the R&D curtain.

Make sure to check us out on Youtube for hidden easter eggs and facial reactions  https://www.youtube.com/user/BrainstormBrewery

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Casual Fridays

Five more to come!

1 Comment

I have to admit, I love where Standard is at right now. Nothing is overwhelming, there’s something like five decks I’d play if I was going to a FNM event or a PTQ, and I like tuning into coverage of Standard, whereas five weeks ago I would have rather swallowed a sea urchin.

One thing I know: We’re not done innovating Standard, and there’s a key set of things coming: Ravnica Allegiance and the other five guilds. I’ve got some ideas on what that means for our wallets and trade binders.

What I’m talking about are the lands, especially. We’re about to have all ten shocks and all ten checklands together. It’s going to be an era of deliciously greedy decks, splashing all over the place.

It’s going to be that way for nine months, too, until Ixalan block and Dominaria rotate in Sept/Oct of 2019.

So here’s my hot take: I would advocate picking up Glacial Fortress, Rootbound Crag, Hinterland Harbor, Isolated Chapel, and Dragonskull Summit now, before the rush.

Some of these are already on the uptake, and it’s the distinction between buying now at $5-$7 and buying in two months for $10.

I know you don’t believe me fully, so let’s look at some of the reasons why I’m potentially wrong.

#1: Supply on allied checklands is extensive.

You’re right: The checklands are some of the most-frequently-printed cards in the modern era. They were debuted in Magic 2010, and then reprinted in 2011. And in M12. Plus Magic 2013, and then nothing till they were in Ixalan last year.

You know what happened to those four years of printings? They got absorbed, in large part by the casual market and the Commander crowd. That’s a lot of copies which aren’t going to be broken free. Yes, there’s a lot out there, but there’s also a lot of decks soaking up that supply.

Here’s the graph on the Ixalan version:

I liked the original art better, but that’s me.

It’s gone up by about $1 since being printed. It didn’t even dip at first, as you might expect. It’s just been a steady riser. It’s not going to rise indefinitely–I suspect that rotation will hit this like a ton of bricks–but the Standard demand is really pushing this card.

It’s a pushed price before its favorite guild and best land are printed! I’m going to blame Teferi, Hero of Dominaria for that.

An aside: I think Teferi will hit $70 around Valentine’s Day, and I’d be speculating on him with glee, except that the timeframe for profit is pretty narrow if I’m buying right now at $50. At +$20, the fees put my profit at about $10 per copy if I’m selling on my own. Buylisting won’t be much profit either, he’d have to hit $80 for even the credit bonuses to be worth it. If you think you might be playing Teferi once we’ve got Azorius out, I strongly urge you to buy now.

 

#2: Shocklands are just better.

Well yeah. No one is arguing that. Shocks are going to bump upwards too. Let’s look at the Return to Ravnica version of Steam Vents, while people are playing Expansion/Explosion and trying real hard to get Niv-Mizzet, Parun into their decks.

It’s super popular in Modern too!

That’s what I like to see: steady upwards progress. Yes, it’s a third printing of the shocklands, but the original was forever ago, and the RTR block shocks got soaked up by Modern and Commander demand. The thing about those formats is that people aren’t terribly willing to break up a deck’s manabase if the lands rise modestly.

I’m not predicting a big jump in the shocks that are about to be printed, but again, I’d get mine now. Jeskai control, for instance, can run the perfect 24 lands for its three colors if desired, and splash into other colors without trying very hard.

 

#3: Dominaria lands are still available cheaply.

For now they are. Sulfur Falls has already seen a recent increase, restoring most of what it lost in being reprinted:

I’ll listen if you want to argue art choices.

And now let’s bring up Woodland Cemetery.

I miss Innistrad.

Oh yeah. One printing in Innistrad, way back in 2011, and copies got soaked up over time. We’re not left with pretty much the leftover Dominaria copies, and there’s not enough given the demand. Woodland is already back at the price it had when Dominaria came out. We’ve got a fair bit of time till it rotates out, and I wouldn’t be shocked if it hit $9 or $10.

Traditionally, the year after a land is printed is the time where it’s rising, and I fully expect that to continue with these lands and this Standard.  Shocks will get played more than the checklands, but both are going to be used extensively.

The two remaining enemy lands are likely the best targets of all: Hinterland Harbor at $3 and Isolated Chapel at $4. I don’t know what mechanics and goodness we’re going to get with Simic and Orzhov, but I know people will want to play them and the cards are going to go up.

Cliff has been writing for MTGPrice for five years now, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the official substitute teacher of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at a GP (next up: Oakland in January!) and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.