All posts by Cliff Daigle

I am a father, teacher, cuber and EDH fanatic. My joy is in Casual and Limited formats, though I dip a toe into Constructed when I find something fun to play. I play less than I want to and more than my schedule should really allow. I can easily be reached on Twitter @WordOfCommander. Try out my Busted Uncommons cube at http://www.cubetutor.com/viewcube/76330
Casual Fridays

Four Simple Rules

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I have been trading magic cards for 20 years.

It pains me to say, but I’ve made some terrible trades in my lifetime. TERRIBLE. Like, Onslaught fetch land for brand-new-shiny-mythic bad. I was 33, it’s not like I was a teenager who didn’t know better. (The teenage trades were more “my Tropical Island for your Lord of the Pit and its new best friend Breeding Pit.” Sigh.)

Today, I want to share with you four simple rules that if you follow them, you will never lose money at Magic. These are my safe rules, rules that will prevent you from losing significant value. I’ve never been one to speculate on cards or act in fevered response to results.

Rule #1: Trade all opened cards away at a pre-release or release event.

I have mentioned this rule in the past, but it remains a basic tenet of my philosophy. Supply is at its smallest, demand at its greatest. People lack the patience necessary to save money, all they see is the new hotness.

This is especially true for the brand-new mythics. The price on everything is going to go down (more on that in a moment) and even the bad mythics have a certain number of people who have to have the card. Fill that need for them. Trade them a bad card for the current premium price.

My personal experience: The Return to Ravnica prerelease. I opened a Vraska the Unseen, and within ten minutes of the end of the event, I’d found someone to trade me a Guildpact Stomping Ground and $15 in cash for it, since the planeswalker had a price at the time of $30.

Current example: Arlinn Kord. If you’re able to trade this away at $35-$40 or so (its preorder price) then you’re going to be far ahead. Only one planeswalker has kept that sort of price recently: Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy. Arlinn has the chance to be good, with tokens and targeted damage as only two of her five abilities, but as history shows, she’s more likely to be $20 in a couple of months.

Rule #2: Never pre-order cards.

This is closely related to Rule #1, because no one wants to lose money on a preorder. What people remember is the one that got away, the Jace, the chase mythic, the surprise rare. Our memories are not as good at recalling the mistakes, the ones we bought at too high a price and did not make money on. Somehow, mentally, we accept those mistakes but tend to fixate on the opportunities we didn’t take advantage of.

I’m here to tell you that because almost all prices drop over time, there’s no financial benefit to preordering cards. Their prices are going to go down. Look at Oath of the Gatewatch. Kozilek was preordering for more than double his current price. Oath of Nissa was $8, now it’s a little over $2. You might hit it big on the one or two that are more expensive, but mostly, preordering will leave you in the red.

My Experience: Thespian’s Stage. I bought ten of these at $4 when it was first revealed, and I traded for them at $6…and then at $4 again…and then at $2…and then at $1…and now it’s finally back up to $2, three years later. Don’t be me!

Current example: Thing in the Ice. $15-$20 for this card is just silly. It can’t protect itself, and Reflector Mage is going to make you so very, very, very sad. Don’t preorder this. Don’t trade for this. Just wait. Please.

Rule #3: Do not buy singles until at least one month has passed.

This is one of the simplest concepts to get: Cards are most expensive immediately after release, and they are going to trend downward after that. Even when Standard cards spike, it’s rare that they maintain that spike, especially for a rare. Here’s Eldrazi Mimic:

Mimic

Even as a four-of, even in the hottest deck in Modern, this has not been able to keep its price. Ten dollars that weekend, and trailing downward since. The vast majority of cards are going to lose value as more copies are opened. If you have to have a card for the new deck you’re playing, understand that you’re paying an extra premium for it. If you needed Gideon, Ally of Zendikar in the first month, you had to pay $40 or more! Now it’s down to $20, a more reasonable and manageable price.

My Experience: Prophet of Kruphix. I picked up a lot of these at about $4 soon after it came out, because a card this good just had to eventually find a home. It never did, and they went into long-term storage, where the Clash Pack and then the Commander ban keep shoveling dirt on my dreams.

Current Example: Jace, Unraveler of Secrets. He will have a big initial price, because his abilities are very strong. As time passes and more are opened, he’s going to drop. No one is going to play four of a Jace that costs five mana. Even the Jace, Memory Adept version was a one- or two-of in control decks as a finisher, and this Jace is defense and card advantage.

Rule #4: Stock up on things at the end of their block.

This is the time to buy stuff from Battle for Zendikar and Oath of the Gatewatch. It’s no longer going to be opened at Grands Prix, at Preliminary PTQs, or even at Friday Night Magic. There’s a new set getting all the attention and now is the time that the supply is at its greatest. This is when supply is highest, value is at the lowest, yet the power is the same.

My Experience: Jace, Architect of Thought

Look at this graph for that Jace.Jace Aot

During the time of Dragon’s Maze and Magic 2014, you could get him for $10. When Theros came out and devotion to blue became relevant, his price spiked hard to $30. Picking up cards when they are moving on to a new set is the perfect time to build value to be released later.

Current Example: The Battle for Zendikar lands. Especially because no one is playing this as a playset, they are primed to go up when fetch lands rotate out of Standard. You have been given a fair chance to get it cheap!

These are my rules, but come to the forums and share your financial rules!

Casual Fridays

Zombies (Potentially) Rising

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So Shadows over Innistrad is getting spoiled and to no one’s surprise, Zombies are making an appearance.

Today I want to go over the stuff that’s not printed as a Zombie but has been given errata to make it a Zombie. This is important for tribal abilities, but more importantly, it’s a chance to pick up a card on the cheap before people realize it’s a Zombie. Beat the rush!

I also want to review some of my favorite Zombie enablers. We saw new Allies raise the price of older cards, and we should get a similar effect here.

Ashen Ghoul – A classic “It keeps coming back!” card, this may not be strong, but it is resilient. Plus, it’s from Ice Age, giving it a laughably low supply.

Coffin Queen – Yes, she’s a Zombie now. She’s amazing if you have a sacrifice outlet handy.

Eastern Paladin &Western Paladin – Total badasses in my Balthor the Defiled deck. You’re never lacking for targets, even if it’s creatures only and not permanents as the original was.

Gloomdrifter – One of the true joys of writing weekly is the chance to discover new things. I didn’t know about this card at all and it is exactly what I love. Zombies reanimate well, and when your Patriarch’s Bidding brings this back it becomes delightfully uneven.

Kabal Ghoul – Old School hasn’t caused this price to go crazy yet but it’s a good card to speculate on due to tiny supply.

Lord of the Undead – It’s already pretty expensive but you should know it’s a Zombie too.

Lord of Tresserhorn – I love this card, I do. It has a ridiculous amount of baggage, though, but I will give full credit to anyone with the intestinal fortitude to run this as a Commander over Thraximundar or Nekusar.

Marauding Knight – There will be games where this is quite dull and others where your opponents die very quickly.

Necrosavant– It is big and brings itself back relatively easily. What’s not to love?

Nightscape Battlemage andNightscape Master – These are Zombies with often-relevant abilities, especially the Master. Repeatable bounce is ridiculously useful and applies to both your creatures and theirs.

Plaguebearer – Exodus rare, amazing ability, fragile but capable of dominating a game, especially where tokens are involved.

Rathi Assassin – It’s a lot of fun to have an assassin effect on the field, primarily because you never get attacked for it. This one can even search up other random mercenaries you have.

Stronghold Assassin – In a well-built Zombie deck, sacrificing creatures is not a drawback. Go forth and wreak havoc.

The Fallen – Worth including just for the amazingly creepy art. Plus, 93/94 might really make the original Dark versions spike eventually.

Tsabo’s Assassin – It’s a brick of text, I know, but basically it says “Tap: Bury a creature that’s the most common color.” The fact that it can’t do a thing about colorless creatures is starting to become a drawback, though.

Boris Devilboon – It’s a red card, but it’s a zombie, and good token makers are surprisingly hard to come by in 93/94. It’s already up to $5 though, so it would need a major effort to climb significantly higher.
The following cards aren’t Zombies, but they are excellent accessories for the tribe and represent good candidates for growth.

Call to the Grave – It’s got two printings, and that’s a strike against it, but it’s got excellent potential. It’s also one of the most deliciously one-sided effects you can have.

Deadapult – This card is why I have such trouble ignoring the red part of the Zombie tribe. It’s cheap, effective, and exactly what you want to be doing. Plus, it has one of the greatest names in Magic history.

Deathmark Prelate – Zombies and Clerics have a very on-off relationship. Rotlung Reanimator and this card work so well together, feeding off of shambling masses that want to come back over and over again.

Dread Summons – Depending on the people you play against, this might be one of the most efficient cards in terms of mana spent and power gained. If you are in a four-player game, and you hit half the time, each mana in X is going to get you four power. The only thing close to that is Entreat the Angels when on a Miracle draw. In addition, this is a mill card and we all know how people love to mill.

Empty the Pits – It’s got a big starting price but if you like instant-speed tokens, here you are.

Endless Ranks of the Dead – It’s snuck up to the $3 range and they even brought the art back for Relentless Dead. This is really the definition of a casual card, as it’s so incredibly slow in a 60-card format. In kitchen table games, though, it’s the card people are going to keep glancing at nervously until the game is over.

Ghoulcaller Gisa – She’s already seen a small spike and I wouldn’t be surprised at all if she’s put into Standard during this block. If she is, the price will spike hard on foils and drop for non-foils. I’m salivating at the thought of using her plus Relentless Dead.

Grave Betrayal – It’s expensive at seven mana but suddenly, no one wants to make a move at all, because you’ll be the beneficiary. This is one of the cards that will get you killed, but you’ll play it with a grin. If you’re able to wrath after landing this, it’s one of the best feelings you can have.

Grave Titan – I don’t know who decreed that the giant whose belly is full of zombies isn’t a zombie, but I hope that person suffers eternal torment at the hands of Vorthoses like me who just yell, “LOOK AT THE ART!!” over and over again.

Havengul Runebinder – Generally speaking, you hate to exile creatures out of your own graveyard, value or not. The effect is undeniably powerful, though, and something you have to at least consider. There’s always Riftsweeper to return the cards back.

Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet – Not a Zombie himself but one of the greatest ways to both hose a graveyard strategy AND get full value all at the same time.

Lim-dul the Necromancer – Seven mana is a lot for a mere 4/4 but the abilities are worth the wait. Most tellingly, he can’t regenerate himself, though. Unsurprisingly, this is a lot of mana before you even get to use one of the abilities, but it’s another card that will just take over a game.

Necromancer’s Covenant – There’s this card, and one Soldier Zombie for BW, and that’s all the support white gives black’s signature tribe. If this lands, it’s powerful, but not impossible to overcome.

Necromantic Selection – Who doesn’t love a wrath with upside? You can just wait on this until you get something sweet out there, at which point you steal the best creature for yourself.

Overseer of the Damned – First of all, this doesn’t work with Kalitas. The creatures have to die for this to trigger and Kalitas has a clause that replaces death. Nice to have a backup, though.

Rooftop Storm – This is it. The holy grail for a tribal deck. Dump your hand after playing this, and do it again as needed. It’s fifty cents now and it could be six times that when the Zombies go wild.

Stitcher Geralf – He hasn’t seen the same price rise that his sister Gisa has, and maybe it’s just a matter of time. This is another card that could easily be in Standard.

Tombstone Stairwell – Reserve list alert! With the right enabler, this card is a house. My personal preference is Vengeful Dead, but Noxious Ghoul is another card that ensures the triumph of the mindless horde.

Unholy Grotto – Volrath’s Stronghold is more universal and more expensive, but given the chance and the right deck, this is just as good. The foils are at a truly reasonable price, too.

 

There’s a chance I missed your favorite Zombie enabler. Comment away, let me know what cards make your Thraximundar/Grimgrin/whoever deck sing!

Casual Fridays

How Chronicles burned Wizards

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Come with me, back in time.

Step into the Wayback machine, set for November of 1994. Magic: The Gathering has taken the gaming world by storm with its gameplay, portability, and fun. Stores cannot keep product on the shelf, and Wizards of the Coast has been plagued with problems as it tries to meet demand. People who run stores ask for 100 boxes and get ten, meaning that no one knows how much product they will get. Prices fluctuate wildly based on availability, local metagame, and the lack of centralized information.

Fallen Empires was supposed to fix all of that. Magic, for about the first 18 months of its life, was unable to stay in stock. Alpha, Beta, Unlimited…all of these had bigger and bigger print runs that they thought would keep up with demand but really, all it did was make players hungrier as the game grew and spread.

Stores would order what they thought they could sell, and then Wizards would only be able to meet a portion of those orders. By the time The Dark was printed, this was the practice stores had settled on: Order a whole bunch, and get only a part of that.

Well, Wizards had finally figured out how to meet demand, and when Fallen Empires came out in November 1994, they gave every store as much as they had asked for…and lots of stores couldn’t pay for 10 cases when they were only expecting one. Fallen Empires remains the gold standard for overprinting sets for this reason.

The next expansion was part of a three-sets-in-four-months run that Wizards is going to try again this summer. April 1995 saw Ice Age, June brought Fourth Edition, and then July had Chronicles.

Personal aside: I was a sophomore when Ice Age came out. I remember seeing that a new  Counterspell was all of a sudden in the nickel bin at my LGS, and I bought four for a quarter, and I thought, “Someone really messed this up!!”

Ice Age had a small number of reprints, stuff like Icy Manipulator and Hurricane, but the other two sets were all reprints, all the time, and Chronicles specifically picked on things that were Rare or Uncommon. This was a game-changer, as some prices took a huge hit, as the number in circulation went up by an estimated factor of 10-20, according to Ben Bleweiss.

We have to remember how we found out about price changes back then. There were two main magazines that collected price data: InQuest and Scrye. Prices updated once a month when these bad boys hit the streets.

There was no shadowy #mtgfinance cartel orchestrating buyouts; this was opening a magazine and finding out that your rare $20 Killer Bees from Legends, the scourge of Hoover High School and a card with an ungodly number of kills…is now a dollar card thanks to being printed as an uncommon in Chronicles. Also, his Bees were not the only Bees to be reckoned with anymore, as we all had died to that card and now we all wanted to rack up kills with them!

What I want to think about is how the overprinting of Fallen Empires and Chronicles has made Wizards extremely hesitant about how they approach reprints at this time. We have some unofficial data about scarcity of Fifth Edition through Tenth Edition: They did not sell well, as evidenced by their low prices, aside from a few key cards.

It’s hard for me to express what it was like back then. There were boxes and boxes of Fallen Empires sitting on shelves, their six-card packs offering pump knights and the hope of a Breeding Pit. There was almost none of The Dark or things previous.

Contributing to the problem was that the packs previous to Ice Age were searchable. We knew the rare (or uncommon 3, or 2, or whatever system was in place) was the last card, face down. A little patience could tickle that card upward enough to expose the name, at which point the semi-transparent white plastic of the pack would yield the name of the card and whether it was worth buying…so the only older packs left on game store shelves were not going to have the cards people wanted most.

I’ve seen this trick done and it is disheartening in the extreme. Do not, ever, never, under any circumstance buy a loose pack of anything previous to Ice Age, when opaque foil started being used on booster packs. It’s been checked for duals/power/expensive cards already and while you might make a little money on the uncommons you have no hope of snagging the chase cards.

Chronicles was meant to make the game accessible for those who hadn’t had a chance to buy cards during Magic’s early days. Because Wizards had sorted out the printing problems and could meet demand, it was theorized that everyone would be happy having lots of copies of the stuff that wasn’t available early.

There were indeed a lot of people who were stoked to have lots more copies in circulation, but there were lots of others who saw the value of their cards drop like a rock. This very vocal group of people continued to make noise at the company over reprints, to the point that Wizards tried to mollify them almost immediately with the creation of a reprint policy. This locked down the rares which had not yet been reprinted and prevented any rare printed between Ice Age and Urza’s Destiny from being reprinted more than once. That ‘one time’ is why you get Judge Foil versions of things that weren’t allowed to be reprinted.

Say what you want about what exactly Wizards does in response to player outcries, but they have never failed to deliver a response, even if that response boils down to ‘calm down and wait,’ as evidenced with the outbreak of Modern Eldrazi. Wizards reacted swiftly to the outcry and decided that they were not going to devalue collections instantly.

This decision is at the heart of Wizards’ support of non-Standard formats. They have made a conscious and deliberate decision to attempt to lower prices gradually. Even big Standard reprints like Thoughtseize and fetchlands have not hit those prices too hard, and those are top-tier, four-of tournament staples.

I admit, I gave up trying to predict Wizards’ future behavior after they put Iona, Shield of Emeria in Modern Masters 2015 and then with the same art in the From the Vault set that same summer, yet the Reserved List makes a certain amount of sense. Some things are safe, everything else is fair game. You might not agree with this policy. Mark Rosewater doesn’t. Lots of people don’t, but as has been stated, it’s a policy and a promise that Wizards intends to honor.

MTG_iona

However, Wizards doesn’t want to make access to older cards too easy and too fast for the new player at the expense of the established player. This is a tricky line to walk, and I don’t think there’s a single correct path.

Wizards is aware of the pitfalls they have made in trying to strike that balance. Randy Buehler said it flat out: Chronicles was a fairly big mistake. It was overprinted. It tanked too much value too fast, and now every time there’s a set of reprints of non-Standard cards (Modern Masters, Modern Event Deck, From the Vaults, etc.) they have to reassure players that this will not be Chronicles all over again.

Wizards would rather underprint than overprint. We saw this in both Modern Masters releases, where there was a burst of product available but the demand was too high to keep prices low for long. You can find it now, but it’s going to cost you, and Wizards is okay with this outcome.

The end result is this: Eternal Masters is going to have a print run that’s relatively small. More Modern Masters 2013 than the 2015 version in terms of the numbers, and that means there will be less in circulation than you’re hoping for, especially the mythics or other cards you need a four-of, such as Force of Will.

 

Casual Fridays, Uncategorized

The Safety in Shiny Things

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I love foils. I’m not shy about it. I am constantly looking for foils to go into my Commander decks, and that’s proven to be a sensible financial investment.

In the last couple of years, we’ve had some notable foil versions of lots of cards, and I want to examine what the long-term prospects of those cards are, because it seems likely that we’re going to get more and more of these.

For a long time, the usual special release of a card was a Judge Foil. This was a slow-but-sure way to get reprints out there or to put out foil versions of a card that had zero chance of being foil. Flusterstorm is an example of this.

flusterstorm

The Commander version has been ticking upward since its release in 2011, primarily due to Legacy play, but its power in any format cannot be overstated. The Judge Foil has consistently stayed more expensive, but not to a major multiplier. We don’t have exact numbers of how many Commander versions there are and how many Judge versions there are, but a multiplier of only 1.5 is surprising.

Should Flusterstorm be reprinted, what would happen to these prices? Well, it depends. Are there foils of the new printing? Is it in Conspiracy 2: Conspire Harder? Eternal Masters? Another Judge printing?

Normally, the most valuable printing of something is the original foil. In these cases, new versions, even in foil, aren’t going to ding the originals or even will increase the values.

For instance, Damnation. The foil has stayed consistently in the $100-$120 range for the past couple of years, despite the presence of an MPR version and a Judge Foil in 2015. The foil has stayed stable, even with the foil judge version coming out. That’s what we want from our high-end cards: stability.

A big factor, though, is the art and the look. Let’s look at a case when the new art can blow the old versions away: Hanna, Ship’s Navigator.

Hanna

Hanna’s pack foil lost about a third of her value, dropping from $55 to $35 at the beginning of 2015, with the release of a Judge Foil featuring gorgeous new art from Terese Nielsen. In this case, the original took a hit but that’s quite rare. Mostly, old foils and especially those in the old frame, are immune to losing significant value.

There’s another example in recent times of a card that’s been given multiple printings and what the prices can do: Polluted Delta, along with the other Onslaught fetches.

The original Onslaught foil of Polluted Delta is at a little under $400, but two years ago it was about $100 more. In 2009, there was a Judge printing of those lands, and that helped keep prices reasonable, if not quite affordable in terms of the foils. We’ve gotten two new printings of the card, though, in Khans of Tarkir and as a Zendikar Expedition.

PD Foil

The price on this flinched slightly, about 15%, when Khans came out but didn’t budge at all when the Expeditions became known. This tells us that the sheer number available as an in-print rare matters a lot more than the presence of the Expeditions version. There’s not many of the pack foils, and they are going to stay rare and expensive. You now have four choices for the foil in your deck, though, and all four have different looks and different frames and different prices. It’s totally up to you what you like vs. what you can afford.

The Judge Foil version of Polluted Delta took a little bit of a hit as well from the one-two punch of Khans and then Expeditions. I expect the price to recover, though, as the supply has maximized and people are getting the foils they want. There’s almost a glut on the market, though only two of these are printed in the last five years.

What does this mean going forward? It means that I love picking up the Expeditions edition filters. There’s one version competing, the original pack foil. These Expeditions will not go down in price once Oath of the Gatewatch stops being opened, and the relatively smaller print runs mean a smaller supply.

The pack foils from Shadowmoor and Eventide did not change in price when the Expeditions were announced, and that is telling. I think it reflects the relatively small print run of those sets more than anything else, and it’s entirely possible that there’s more Expedition Cascade Bluffs out there than Eventide foil versions.

These Expeditions are in a strange place, as some of them are more expensive than the pack foil, and others are cheaper. I am a fan of getting these, and other foil lands, as safe to hold their value for years going forward. If you want them for your Commander deck, your cube, or just to bling out any deck, I suggest you get them now.