Yearly Archives: 2019

Casual Fridays

Mystery Solved!

Normally I’d be all over the Mythic Championship, held at MagicFest+ Richmond, which included a Hall of Fame induction and some more changes to the Players Tour…and I can’t keep it going. Why is high-level Magic so confusing?

My true interest, though, has been these damn Mystery boosters. I can’t remember the last time a set was completely unknown until packs started getting opened, and that’s an experience I love. I dive right into other peoples’ Cubes, and the only thing I want to know is if it’s got Power in it. Fresh Magic experiences are to be savored, and Mystery didn’t disappoint.

We are going to get the official card list on Monday, but there’s already some things we know and some things worth acting on…

First of all, the only new cards revealed so far (subject to change come Monday) are the Playtest cards. These are printed cards made to look like Wizards’ own internal playtest cards, which are stickers slapped onto older cards. (A friend of mine who designs games once said that the greatest thing Magic ever did was put millions of free cards into the hands of would-be game designers, and now the circle is closed!)

The Playtest cards are super neat and do some really interesting things. They are all marked as “Not for Tournament Play” and I imagine that individual Commander groups are going to decide for themselves if they are going to allow someone to play a Sliver Eldrazi, or the dying-to-be-broken How To Keep An Izzet Mage Busy.

Financially, the Playtest cards are going to struggle to be expensive. Every MagicFest is going to have Mystery events and this will be a thing until they run out of packs sometime next year. There might be one or two that are expensive because of niche appeal or the meme value (e.g. Dr. Richard Garfield, PhD.) but these sorts of things, even if rare, aren’t automatically expensive. I stocked up on foil Cogwork Librarian back when Conspiracy first came out, and over five years, that card hasn’t budged. The Conspiracies from CN2 are the same way. Hard to use and incredibly powerful, the niche wasn’t there and they aren’t expensive.

If you want to collect the Playtest cards for fun, do so. Magic is really catering to those who like different things, and there’s been a run of stuff worth collecting for the fun even if the long-term value might not be amazing: the JPN alternate walkers, the Showcase frames in Throne of Eldraine, and now these. I don’t anticipate the full set of Playtest cards being a super-chase item though.

More relevant financially is that the set is otherwise 100% reprints, and it’s not the Pioneer Masters people predicted/hoped for. It’s a Chaos Draft + Future Sight environment, one where the packs are seeded for color but not rarity. Here’s Gavin Verhey on Twitter: “Each pack has 2 C/U of each color, 1 Multi C/U, 1 artifact/land C/U, 1 playtest card, 1 M15 forward R/M and one pre-M15 card in its original frame.” Theoretically, a pack could have 13 uncommons. Or 13 commons. In browsing streams and Twitter, I saw that the pre-M15 card was occasionally a rare, so double-rare or double-mythic packs were possible too.

Notably, no foils. That’s a big ouch for the people who paid $75 to be part of the first event.

We were told this morning by Mark Rosewater on Tumblr that the game store version of Mystery will not have these playtest cards. Most likely, that’s a foil slot opening up but we will see.

Now, the reprints. They are keeping the original set symbol but these are reprinted cards, and are marked as such by a planeswalker symbol in the lower left. These cards were reprinted direct from the old card files, so the old copyright date and original printed text are on the cards. Odd aesthetic choice, but what the heck.

Thanks to the efforts of people participating in the Discord channels (and really, you ought to be a participant) we’ve identified 15 mythics and 62 rares, as of Monday morning, as well as some reprints in the common/uncommon slot that are notably expensive.

Given that these packs are going to be opened at MagicFests for the next year or so, plus the amounts of Mystery packs going to local stores, I’d expect that all of these prices take a small hit. Keeping the original look, including original set symbol, but adding the planeswalker symbol is probably equivalent to a new card with a new set symbol.

A couple of cards you ought to know about:

Bloom Tender ($50 nonfoil/$300 foil)

Eventide was a small set, and was the last set before Magic’s rebirth in 2009 with Magic 2010 and Zendikar. Stock was never high on this card, and every time it wasn’t reprinted, the price ticked up more. I’m glad we are finally getting more copies of this on the market. It’s not the most broken mana generator, but it’s capable of some disgusting jumps in mana. 

I would expect the originals to lose maybe $10 or $15, before stabilizing. The new ones are going to end up in the $15 range once the initial feeding frenzy ends.

Mana Crypt ($190/$250/$400 Invention)

Let’s take a moment and toast a card that has gone from $50 a bare eighteen months ago to $150 now:

Then let’s reflect on what a new influx of supply means. Is Mana Crypt going to be $50 again? Probably not. EMA was pretty heavily opened by drafters and collectors alike, and we’ll see if Mystery gets the same level of attention. Is it a $75 card? Maybe $100 fresh from a pack? I’m not sure where it ends up but I do know that when the Mystery packs are no longer being opened, I’ll want to pick up a few of these for the inevitable rise. The only worry about this card would be a Commander banning, likely on the same day that Sol Ring gets hit. (So, basically never.)

There’s a lot more to come, but I’m already over my word count and the full list is coming. Maybe we won’t get foils after all? Let’s find out Monday!

Cliff (@WordOfCommander) has been writing for MTGPrice since 2013, 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: ThroneDH of EldraineDH

Readers!

Usually I take a look at a commander and drill down into their top cards, but a curious thing happened this week.

Between the usual suspects and a bunch of commanders we talked about months ago dominating the charts, as we’d expect at this point, I felt it was better to look at Throne as a set rather than an individual commander. There are likely to be some cards we want to look at for long-term, full-art and foils to think about and cross-format appeal to discuss. In short, let’s get super vague and talk about what “feels” “correct” because that’s what you pay us for. I’m good at this, I promise.

These are the top cards as commanders in the set, ranked. No surprises here, the top few sort of echo what we’ve seen in the top commanders overall with respect to the format as a whole. The new hotness is expected to make a splash and splash it did. The Top 5 here is all inside the Top 10 for the week. Eldraine is making an impact. However, the commanders aren’t really as interesting as the cards, but it was worth noting a few things.

Embry is nearly as popular here as it is in other formats. Kenrith and Embry have the most cross-format applicability, unless you count Brawl, which I don’t, because I don’t know how to count Brawl yet. But perhaps the commanders are only telling a small part of the story. In general, I tend to sort of gloss over commanders because unless they’re like, Atraxa, their price matters less than the cards they enable. We have spent a lot of time talking about the cards these commanders enable, but the rest of the stuff in the set seems to matter a lot.

Could EDH cards be underpriced because cards that don’t so much impact EDH especially are overpriced? Once Upon a Time and Oko are widely regarded as gigantic mistakes but they aren’t really that EDH-relevant, or are they?

Oko is the 24th-most-played card and Once Upon a Time is 101st – after Didn’t Say Please, Crashing Drawbridge and Revenge of Ravens. We can worry about cross-format applicability a bit, but clearly EDH has a few of its own ideas to an extent. Let’s look at a few.

Arcane Signet is #1, but with the card promised in draft packs of the new weird EDH draft set, the price is likely to plummet. We’re getting a re-supply of the Brawl decks these are exclusive to, so sell high while you still can. This is bound to be an EDH staple forever, but they’re already printing it way more than cards like Commander’s Sphere and Thought Vessel and if there is a Brawl deck every year or two, this will likely be in it. I say sell, this is hard to maintain value long-term with how aggressive they could be with printing it. I’m not saying they will, I’m saying nothing is stopping them and there are better places to park your money.

If you want somewhere to park money, look no farther than the #2 card. With a corollary in Bloom Tender, a $50 card, this seems slightly underpriced at $1. The reprint risk is medium, but I’d say the reprint risk is no higher than Bloom Tender, a card that has been shouting at the top of its lungs for a reprint for half a decade. This card would be a “wow, I can’t believe they printed this” card in any set but one where they printed a Green card that’s a better cantrip than Gitaxian Probe, a Green card that’s a better Planeswalker than anything named Jace or Teferi, a Snapcaster Mage that you can fetch with a Scalding Tarn and a Green creature with 17 abilities. This is pretty good and it’s not a $1 card in a just universe.

Why is this card still expensive? People are drafting this set every week and this card doesn’t seem to have much impact anywhere. Here’s a card I think is a decent corollary.

The Immortal Sun has an interesting price trajectory. The Immortal Sun also made a splash in Standard, something that seems less likely for The Great Henge. Best case scenario this is the trajectory. Worst case, you can buy in even cheaper and watch EDH buoy the price right back up.

I think Mirrors are slept on, historically.

See what I mean? I am not saying for sure that Mirrormade is as good as Mirage Mirror, but I bet a lot of you didn’t even know Mirrage Mirror was a $5 card if you don’t follow EDH. Are people sleeping on The Magic Mirror? It’s ranked 38th in the set, so, maybe, mayne not. Mirrormade is outperforming modest expectations, though, so maybe take notice.

This card seems like the case study of what a lot of play in literally just EDH can do for a strong, non-mythic rare. I think this is going to see a ton of play and really impact EDH and I also think it can’t impact price. You’ll want some cross-format play or increased scarcity to see the price make moves less modest than the modest moves I expect from this card. This will be our base-line and barring cross-format applicability, don’t expect anything played less than this to go anywhere in price.

I continue to like Faeburrow Elder and awful lot and think it’s a steal at $1 or under and think the foils and full-art copies are obvious money. I also think I’m looking forward to knowing more about some ancillary product so I have new things to discuss next week. That does it for me. Until next time!

Watchtower

The Watchtower 11/4/19 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.

This article goes live a few hours before the first Pioneer B&R update, so you’re probably reading it with more information than I have. Unless they do something REALLY wild, I’m not expecting it to impact too much, other than a solid chance of hitting Oko. If Oko goes I don’t have a good feel for how things will change yet; we’ll need pros and reps to figure out what that means for the format. I doubt they’ll go after anything else at this point, and even if it does, I’m not focusing too hard on Pioneer today anyways. Next week we’ll have a better idea of how any changes today have played out.

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

To learn more about being a ProTrader, click here to see all the benefits.

  ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.

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 2013. You can find his articles there weekly, as well as on the podcast MTG Fast Finance.

Casual Fridays

What the heck just happened?

I think that Wizards really appreciates Commander as a format. If it hadn’t been invented and codified years ago (remember, the first release was 2011!) then they would have had to do something to come up with a format like this.

A nonrotating, variable power level format where 99.9% of cards are legal, allowing players to pursue the foils, the foreign languages, the miscuts, the alters, just to make their deck unique. 

If it weren’t for Commander, I don’t think we’d have the wide range of products and versions of  cards that we have today.

Commander is also responsible for a big slice of the #mtgfinance pie. For a certain set of cards, the question is ‘When will Commander players notice this card and make it jump 5x in price?’ and that’s both a silly thing and a very very relevant thing.

This past Wednesday, Wizards gave us a few tidbits for what’s coming up, and there’s a lot to unpack in the announcement…

First of all, here’s the official announcement. Read it if you have a moment.

Here’s the first quote that is relevant to us: “I can’t possibly reprint everything, but I think many of you will be happy with the reprints coming throughout 2020.”

That’s the first set of alarm bells for me.

Next, we are told that the Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths release won’t have Planeswalker decks, but instead will have the yearly Commander release, with more new cards than ever. 

Zendikar Rising, the Fall 2020 set, will have a couple of Commander decks too but only three new cards per deck.

Then, the two biggest pieces of information:

The Commander Collection: Green is apparently taking the place of the Signature Spellbook (or alongside it?) and will have eight cards. The higher-level WPN stores will get the all-foil versions for selling, and the more plebian ones will only get the nonfoil packages to sell.

Finally, we’re told of Commander Legends, a draftable Commander set. It’s bigger than a normal set, a foil in every pack and two legends per pack. It’ll have some mix of reprints and new cards: “It is larger than a normal set, with oft-asked-for Commander reprints and new cards alike.”

Wow.

My first reaction is that this is all to the good, that more stuff for Commander players is always welcome. And then I start really thinking about it. 

Takeaway #1: Dump anything you’re holding for Commander purposes.

I mean this with every fiber of my being. We are going into a year of heavy-duty reprints. Hopefully, it’s the medium prices like Primal Vigor and the high prices like Bloom Tender. The things that ought to have been reprinted at some point but just haven’t gotten more cards somehow. 

I’m going to spend the time between now and Christmas reviewing what’s in my collection, with ‘Is this going to take a huge dive when it gets reprinted?’ as my guiding light. 

Takeaway #2: We are going to see a lot of new legends, and therefore a lot of spikes. Be prepared to sell into the hype.

While I’m sorting out the things I want to get rid of, I also need to make sure that what I do have is easily accessible. Maybe you have too many cards for a binder and you’re using a spreadsheet, but the important thing is that you’re able to find the cards when you need to. Generally speaking, you’ve got about two to three days to sell into some hype, and it’s vitally important that you do.

The examples are many, but let’s focus on the sort of spike we’re going to see with new legends. Some new card is released, and there’s new synergies, and all of a sudden, a bulk rare is flying high…for four days. I give you Knucklebone Witch: 

Yes, it’s still selling for a big amount more than it was, but you want to be at the height of the wave. Be prepared, and avoid the situation of putting something up for sale, then being unable to find it. It’s a terrible feeling and it’s quite the stain on your reputation as a seller on any platform.

Takeaway #3: Prices will bottom out…but they will rise again. 

The thing about staples is that they are super popular. You see this with every reprint set, how the value tanks but then rises again over time. Yes, lots of prices are going to tank, but when they do, that’s the time to pick up spare copies, because there’s going to be more Commander players and more Commander decks built. There’s going to be a lot of reprints in 2020. Not necessarily in 2021, though. 

With these ideas in mind, here’s a couple of other cards for your consideration, keeping in mind that they might well get printed at some point, given the sheer number of reprints coming:

Demonic Pact ($1 nonfoil/$4 foil)

It seems likely that we will get another ‘here you go’ Commander in the vein of Zedruu the Greathearted. Black should get a piece of the action this time, as we’ve got cards like Sleeper Agent and Xantcha, Sleeper Agent to fit nicely into such a theme. If you agree with those suppositions, Pact is going to have a great time. 

Weatherlight ($.50/$2.50)

I think we’re going to get something that cares about historic cards, and Weatherlight can do some amazing work in that context. Jhoira, Weatherlight Captain might also be a consideration if you’re willing to stomach the reprint risk.

And a couple of cards I know I’m not keeping:

Doubling Season ($40/$160 for Ravnica pack foil)

Having been reprinted several times ad some of that being a promo, you’d think this would stay down. Nope! And frankly, it never will. The Season is going to be printed again, and when it gets back to $20, I’ll happily scoop up lots and lots of copies for the inevitable growth. 

Oracle of Mul Daya ($29/$84)

Never reprinted in ten years, one of the most efficient ramping creatures, a card that demands to be killed immediately…and a lock to be reprinted next year. I can’t wait to buy copies left and right at $10, or maybe even less.

Cliff (@WordOfCommander) has been writing for MTGPrice since 2013, 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.