Yearly Archives: 2019

Watchtower

The Watchtower 3/18/19 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.

As much as I enjoy rambling about Modern and all the wild possibilities that the format is never kind enough to materialize, it’s not too exciting to look into at the moment. GP London saw Izzet Phoenix absolutely take over, with something like 23% of the field on day one. That’s an absolutely staggering percentage for a format like Modern, when 5% of a day is typically indicative of a tier one list. Pair that with Modern’s forthcoming upheaval (perhaps including Upheaval), which while exciting to consider, has rendered today’s Modern fairly meaningless. As Modern cards that I suspect will remain relevant cross my path, I’ll be sure to mention them, but for now, we’re keeping our sights on EDH.

Rings of Brighthearth (MPS)

Price Today: $100
Possible Price: $150

This is the third time the building our apartment is in has sold while we’ve been living here, so we didn’t think much of it when we received notice. We straightened out our security deposit on the new estoppel, signed the document, and got back to the standard tenor of our everyday lives. It was only when one of the business tenants of the building came to speak with us because they had learned that the new buyer had no intention of renewing anyone’s leases. Ours was the first on the chopping block, with an expiration date of August. Phone calls were placed, and the sum of it was resounding uncertainty. Left with no clear idea of whether we’d be allowed to live here past August, we had to reconsider our heretofore, uh, relaxed pace of home discovery. Faced with the possibility of needing to come up with a down payment a year earlier than expected, I took to my collection to see what I could begin liquidating. A box of Masterpieces found its way to the front of the line, and up a few went to test the waters. Within 48 hours the first sold; a Mana Crypt for $315. This recent sale was on my mind when I went exploring for this article, as it had been awhile since I had perused the Inventions from Kaladesh.

That chunk of filler text aside, Rings of Brighthearth jumped out at me as one of the better positioned Inventions. Stock is low, perhaps the lowest of all the NM Inventions right now, with only 10 copies available for purchase at TCG (with zero left at SCG). Checkmark number one. Sorting the Inventions by most popular, you’ll find Brighthearth in sixth place. Checkmark number two. (Now, I take that to mean that Rings as a card is the sixth most popular within the list. Given that Cataclysmic Gearhulk is the second most popular, and there are 32 copies of the MPS left, I don’t believe it is looking specifically at the MPS copies.) Third, the pack foils of Rings have just about exceeded the Inventions copies. While the market price on those pack foils hasn’t caught up to the lowest listed price, that just means there’s a lot of attention on the card at the moment as it is. If people are buying out the pack foils and driving the price upwards of $100, what’s going to happen to the MPS copies?

At a $100 buy-in, you’re looking for probably a $130 or $150 exit. If you’re lucky, you can find a copy floating somewhere under $100, at which point there’s some definite returns.

Primal Amulet (Foil)

Price Today: $5
Possible Price: $15

Niv Mizzet has been enjoying some time in the sun over on EDHREC, which sent me perusing for anything worthwhile. It’s a lean build from our perspective, as there’s a lot of “dead” cards – Opt, Ponder, etc. Excellent for the build, terrible if you’re looking to make money. One card that’s not so poorly positioned though is Primal Amulet. As an enabler, it’s obviously excellent in Niv Mizzet, as well as any EDH deck looking to cast spells. It’s also going to be a lot of fun at home, where cards like Cloud Key always entertain reasonable popularity.

At 4300 decks, it hasn’t exactly exploded into EDH. At the same time, it’s from Ixalan, a relatively new set to EDH. It’s the sixth most popular from that set as it is, and the gap between it and the first card is reasonably narrow. Given that it’s about 2/3rds as popular as Growing Rites of Ixalan, a “fixed Gaea’s Cradle,” I’d consider it a well-positioned card.

You’ll find a few pack foils hanging around at $5, though not too many. Prerelease foils are around $7 or $8, and the Buy-A-Box promos are $8 or $9. Pack foils at $5 are solid, though I certainly also like the BaB copies. If we see pack foils get to $15, BaB copies to $25 seems entirely plausible.

Utvara Hellkite

Price Today: $10
Possible Price: $25

There’s nothing too revolutionary here, but Utvara is worth keeping an eye on. As a dragon that makes dragons, you can see how he would strike a chord with certain players. He doesn’t need to attack to trigger, either. It’s so long as any dragon attacks. Plop Utvara down on the table, swing with two or three other dragons, and you’re in business. (This gets even more fun if you have Dragon Tempest in play along with an effect that lets you attack more than once in a turn, as the dragons you create on the first attack get to swing on the second, generating even more.)

At 8300 decks, Utvara Hellkite is solidly popular, if admittedly not an Eternal Witness. However, popularity within the tribe is remarkable here. Dragons are the second-most popular tribe in EDH according to the numbers, behind only Zombies. And within Dragons, Utvara Hellkite appears to be the single most popular card of the tribe. While the overall number of people playing Utvara Hellkite may be middle of the road, if you decide to play tribal, there’s a good chance it’s dragons, and if you’re playing dragons, you’re almost definitely playing Utvara Hellkite. And we both know Wizards isn’t going to stop supporting dragons any time soon.

Pack foils of Utvara Hellkite are floating between $10 and $11, and supply is well past a tipping point. There are maybe six foils left on TCG? And two of them are $18 or more? SCG has one. You won’t sell multiple a day, but it’s tough to imagine losing money on $10 foil Hellkites. [/hide]

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.

Brainstorm Brewery

Brainstorm Brewery #330 Fire the Customer

Corbin (@CHosler88), DJ (@Rose0fThorns) and Jason (@jasonEalt) bring SCG grinder and Vendor Liz Lynn (@DevotedDruid) on to the cast to discuss grinding the SCG, Legacy, and being a vendor.

Make sure to check us out on Youtube because everything is better with video. https://www.youtube.com/user/BrainstormBrewery

Need to contact us? Hit up BrainstormBrew@gmail.com

Casual Fridays

The Life of Standard Mythics

I’ve been telling everyone to buy Arclight Phoenix for about two months now. I’ve got a one playset and two foils, so I’m not trying to buy the market out, but I do want a few of these to sell when they hit it big. I’m quite confident about this card, because of the numbers it’s showing in Modern and Legacy decks.

In our ProTraders-only Discord channel (yes, that’s a thing and it’s awesome!) a player mentioned their Hydroid Krasis, which was amazing in their Vorel of the Hull Clade deck but getting so pricey. What’s a finance-savvy person to do?

Luckily for you, and for that member, I’ve been researching the price arc of Standard’s best mythics, to get an idea of what’s in store for the bird, the jellyfish, and some others.

The rest of this content is only visible to ProTrader members.

To learn how ProTrader can benefit YOU, click here to watch our short video.

expensive cards ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.

Cliff ( @WordOfCommander ) 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 and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.

Jason Alt, Unlocked ProTrader

Unlocked Pro Trader: Anti-Tech

Readers! As you all probably know, War of the Spark is going to feature Planeswalkers. Not just that, it’s going to feature ALL of the Planeswalkers. One in every pack, 36 in all. “One in every pack “sets like Dominaria with its Historic card in every pack, Ravnica sets with their Guildgate in every pack or Unhinged with their premium card in every pack sell well. That’s why Unhinged sold well. Every pack had a contraption.

With a glut of new Planeswalkers, we’re bound to get some good ones, right? 36 is a lot and while there are bad to be same bad ones at uncommon, there are bound to be some good ones at rare. People are planning on them impacting every format and should they impact EDH, there are some cards we can use to stop the other players. A lot of them are good against Atraxa, also, which is nice. Here’s some anti-walker tech. If the card is usable in formats outside of EDH, I’ll be sure to mention that, also.

HATE

These are sort of weak metrics for what I consider to be a pretty decent card. Its “rarity” means it was in 2 decks and is therefore twice as common as a rare in the set like the $10 Meren, and it was in a Commander Anthology as well, so it will take some doing for this to move. It’s also not going down and the buylist price as showing signs of life for a minute. This is actually a terrific beating if you’ve ever resolved it but at 6 mana for a creature, people aren’t super thrilled about it. I’m not sure why. It’s not a 1/1, it’s frequently a 25/25 for 6 mana and you kill a bunch of walkers. If you’re buying In Garruk’s Wake but not this, get your act together. Also, if you’re running in Garruk’s Wake but not this, well you’re 6 times as likely to exist. This card’s good but I can’t make people discover it unless the Command Zone ever has me come back on the cast, and if they do, I’m talking about Acquire, not this.

Another bit of anti-walker tech has the benefit of being a card I saw people talking about. I don’t think any of this stuff is good but I do think people will try it and I think if you buy now, you can sell to the greater fools who notice the cards selling out. That’s not the best strat, but neither is using Thran Temporal Gateway to construct a 2-card combo where you play a Planeswalker that costs 2UW for 4 colorless.

This has the added benefit of being legal in Modern, unlike Thief of Blood. I don’t think that’s all that relevant, but Modern players are optimistic enough to think Stoneforge was getting unbanned and Faithless Looting was getting banned, so it’s possible they’re optimistic enough to buy into something like this. Realistically, a deck in Modern playing Walkers is playing Jace, Karn, Terferri or other Karn and odds are they aren’t letting you resolve a damn Aether Snap, but tech is tech. This also nukes tokens, which can really matter in a game of Magic, especially since it gets non-creature tokens, which matters in EDH. A little.

It’s not just black cards getting caught up in the fun, though.

Tragic Arrogance usually gets the nod because you can pick an artifact creature or artifact land as two of the modes and really hose them, but Cataclysm nukes Walkers entirely and leaves you with an angel with an aura and a sword, usually. People don’t like MLD much, but I don’t like Planeswalkers much, even the ones I do like.

Hex Parasite got a bump when Solemnity hit but it’s always been a pretty solid way to deal with Planeswalkers. It’s mana-intensive, but you get a power boost that could knock out a now-defenseless player and it’s reusable. I like it to keep counters off of my Decree of Silence, but I always liked that.

The EDHREC metrics on Anti-Walker cards are weak, and probably for a good reason. The ones that don’t do extra duty, like also wiping out tokens, or killing all creatures or wiping the whole board aren’t worth a spot in a deck. You won’t necessarily play against a walker, and a lot of spot removal just gets it. You should be playing Merciless Eviction regardless of whether Walkers see more play. But with terrible cards like Thran Temporal Gateway poised to go up in price, it doesn’t hurt to think about how to counter the incipient Walker uprising. Until next time!