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
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PucaPicks for August 18, 2016

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Welcome back to PucaPicks!

I can’t wait to go over some of the cards which are undervalued and which are overvalued. Last week I talked about Oath of the Gatewatch and Battle for Zendikar, and this week most of my attention is on the rotation: Magic Origins and Dragons of Tarkir!

There are some cards in here which I love love love, and others barely worth the effort of a stamp. Let’s get to it!

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ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.

Casual Fridays

Long-Term Thinking

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So the Pro Tour was last weekend, and now we are in for a long lonely spell until Kaladesh…

…oh yeah. We are still in the throes of a very expensive summer to be a Magic player.

From the Vault: Lore is coming out next weekend, and I can’t remember the last time one of these was so ho-hum. Sure, it’s the first foiling for some of these, but the niche of people who need a Dark Depths or an Umezawa’s Jitte is relatively small. Plus, neither of those are particularly expensive cards.

At least FTV: Angels last summer has some sweet new art Akromas to tempt us with. This looks more like FTV: Barely Worth Retail.

Conspiracy spoilers have already started (the Ghost Assassin!!), and that I’m pretty stoked for. I want to warn you now: Don’t get caught in a trap like I did and start trading for all the assorted ‘draft matters’ cards like Cogwork Librarian. Those haven’t budged in price at all since that set came out, much to the chagrin of my foils.

But what I want to talk about this week is a topic I’ve only recently come to appreciate: how Wizards R & D plants seeds across sets for the stuff that’s coming up.

To get the sense of what I mean, I want to talk about a card that was good when it came out, good with the sets that came later, and good with the last set it’s legal with.

Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy is an awesome Magic card. It’s cheap, could block if you wanted or needed, lets you cycle through your deck, and then turns into a planeswalker who locks things up nicely. It’s a powerful card all by itself, and strong enough to make waves in Modern and Legacy, not just Standard.

Consider this your regular reminder to pick these up at sub-$30 prices and be prepared to reap the profits in a year. If decks are powering out Gurmag Angler and Tasigur, the Golden Fang on turn two or three, then JVP has a real chance to be flipped by then.

What else is Jace good with? Madness. Delirium. Self-mill, like Gather the Pack and Grapple with the Past. Cards that want to be in the yard, like Kozilek’s Return and Prized Amalgam. Only because hindsight is 20/20 can we see how good it is with a range of abilities and card mechanics.

Until very recently, I hadn’t learned to appreciate the sneaky-brilliant nature of the game designers that work in Seattle, but I’m aware now. More to the point, I don’t want to get caught out. I want to have a better time anticipating what is good and will remain good in the future.

A few weeks ago, when I was guesting on MTG Fast Finance, I picked foil Eldrazi Mimic at about $6 as a long-term hold, because I love how good Legacy Eldrazi decks are. Still do, as a matter of fact. A couple weeks after that, my compatriot Travis Allen picked nonfoils at 75 cents to a dollar, because they are good with these huge Emerge creatures, but both of us missed a very salient point:

Eldrazi Mimic only cares that the creature is colorless. It doesn’t have to be an Eldrazi, or something with devoid. It could be an artifact creature, and oh look, Kaladesh is going to have an artifact theme!

This is brilliant forethought from Wizards, and once you start looking at it, and thinking about it, you realize that they have been doing this for years! Remember the glory days of Mono-Black Devotion? Gray Merchant of Asphodel plus Nightveil Specter? Who knew that hybrid symbols could be so incredibly relevant? Wizards did.

I don’t claim to be smart enough to have figured out all the plants ahead of time. I do know that I am taking a hard look at cards that notice colorlessness (like Sanctum of Ugin) versus those that are specifically looking for Eldrazi (Kozilek’s Return). I truly love when a plan comes together, like the UR Spells deck that for some reason isn’t playing Chandra, Fire of Kaladesh. It seems like a better Thermo-Alchemist, and playing her is a total blast. I’m enjoying Standard for the first time in a long time. Powerful cross-block synergies is what Wizards is planning for, building, and anticipating. Unlocking that knowledge, and looking for those interactions, is something I want to get better at.

Also, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Shadows over Innistrad gave us token, disposable artifacts right before an artifact-themed block. Tireless Tracker is probably the best, but Tamiyo’s Journal or Magnifying Glass might become super-relevant.

The two sets after Aether Revolt, if I were to speculate, will have something to do with sacrificing. I don’t know what, but I know that Shadows over Innistrad and Eldritch Moon certainly are encouraging us to discard and sacrifice creatures, and I won’t be surprised at all if that’s the theme in nine months or so. Probably it will be enough to reinvigorate our interest in Emerge or Voldaren Pariah or something like that.

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PROTRADER: PucaPicks for August 11, 2016

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Hello and welcome to PucaPicks!

Each week, I’m going to go over cards that are undervalued, some of the cardboard you should send away right now, and some of the things that have had a lot of movement.

My goal is to help you buy low and sell high, increasing your points just by having the right timing.

For each card, I’m going to give you the current points and the foil price as well.

Today, I’m going to focus on Battle for Zendikar and Oath of the Gatewatch. We only have about eight months left of them being Standard-legal. I’m not sure what the eighteen-month period is going to do to these prices. Are people already selling out? Are they holding on desperately?

 

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ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.

Casual Fridays

Liberation

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I don’t have a lot of spare time. Maybe you do, perhaps you have hours you’re willing to wile away in endless pursuits of things that consume your time.

I don’t have a lot of extra space. Maybe you do, you might be living over your own personal Batcave, walls and racks of neatly organized cards.

I’m going to share with you a viewpoint that is going to cause some controversy, and why I’m wrong, and yet why I’m right.

I’ve stopped keeping cards after Draft and Sealed events, except for all rares and a select few uncommons. I find a kid at the store, or I leave them in a pile. I don’t want any more commons. I don’t want to sort cards. I don’t want to keep them in a box for years. I don’t want to hope that one day, these will be $2 uncommons.

Right now, at the same time, I’m sending out commons and uncommons from old sets on PucaTrade.

These two viewpoints might seem in direct opposition. I’m currently mining my old draft chaff for money commons and uncommons (good lord, did I draft a lot of Hedron Crabs and Blighted Agents!) but I’m not keeping them now? What gives?

I am going to walk you through what makes an old common/uncommon worth something, and why I think almost nothing in the modern day is worth it.

Criteria #1: Unique mechanic/keyword

For an older common or uncommon to make it to a $2 retail price, a lot of things have to go right. The first of them is that people have to want it years after it was printed. Very few commons and uncommons have enough power to be worth it.

Hedron Crab is worth it. Steppe Lynx is not. Both of these are one-drops with awesome landfall. I realize that the Crab is uncommon while the Lynx is a common, but it’s twenty cents vs. $3.50. The difference is that there will always be a place for milling someone out of the game, and just attacking for four on turn two is so boring. Lynx even sees more tournament play, but every casual player who sees the Crab, well, their eyes light up and their mind gets blown.

Criteria #2: Age/supply and reprints

Let’s face it: the game has grown enormously since Zendikar. It’s grown a whole lot even since New Phyrexia. There are tons and tons more packs opened in the present day, and while I wish I could give you exact numbers, I can’t. I know that every year, Wizards has bragged that the big Fall set was the best-selling set ever, and while I’m not sure how the new two-block model is going to fit in, that’s a lot of growth over five to seven years. We know that in talking to investors, there’s percentages of growth thrown around each year, but that’s inexact. So I’m not going to try and pull real numbers out, I’m content to say that the game is a lot bigger.

The simple truth is that there’s a lot less of older cards around, but I’m not even talking older as in Odyssey, I mean even Scars of Mirrodin block. The 6:2:1 model also applies, making third-set cards especially in demand sometimes.

Here’s an example: Stasis Snare vs. Journey to Nowhere vs. Silkwrap. The Journey is a whole white mana cheaper, and that’s big, big, super important. Removal used to be a lot stronger, and now we get conditional where it used to be universal. Silkwrap is interesting, as it got up to $3 at one point but now it’s back to a dollar.

Reprints are another big factor in a card’s price. Let’s look at the graph for Worn Powerstone:

Powerstone

It was in Urza’s Saga, and then one duel deck in 2010 (right at Magic’s renaissance) and it was $5, until it got three years straight of reprints: Commander 2014, 2015, and then Eternal Masters. Even with all that, the original is still $2 and in case you didn’t know, I love picking up the foil in the $12 range. Very safe and it’s got excellent growth potential.

Criteria #3: Powerful then and now, high demand

Finally, a card has to be good. Not just good. Great. Interestingly, removal spells aren’t always in this category, though Lightning Bolt is fascinating. Thirteen printings (with three of those having foil versions, two different promos, a range of arts!) and it was almost always a common!

I’m willing to listen to discussions about the most printed cards to keep a price, I think this is #1 on the list. It’s good, it’s cheap, it’s versatile. This is what I use to determine if I should keep an uncommon or common at the end of a draft.

 

So with this in mind, what am I keeping after a draft?

Duskwatch Recruiter: Could have been a rare easily, great on either side.

Erdwal Illuminator: Unique effect, will spike when they use Investigate again.

Geistblast: It’s a Fork stapled to a Shock. Gotta love it.

Graf Mole: Cheap and good blocker.

Heir of Falkenrath: cheap and aggressive, not as good for discarding as Oona’s Prowler but unique.

Lambholt Pacifist: Proven as a cheap and big creature.

Neglected Heirloom: I’m betting on casual Werewolf decks here.

Rise From the Tides: Huge payoff for spell-based decks.

Geist of the Archives: Good blocker and very relevant ability.

Graf Rats/Midnight Scavengers: I love all the Meld cards, long term. When are they going to have a chance to do these again?

Haunted Dead: Two-for-one on one creature that can bring itself back at instant speed.

Lone Rider: Lifegain decks are going to love this jerk.

Noose Constrictor: It’s going to be a $2 uncommon in six months.

Weaver of Lightning: Nothing else does this, so I’m interested.

That’s pretty much it. I don’t bother with anything else anymore, because the time and energy of sorting and storage aren’t worth it for me. Today’s sets aren’t going to be rare enough to be worth it in six years. And even if they are, and I find myself paying $10 for a set of Thermo-Alchemist, then I’ll think about sorting a 5000-count box and sifting through and thinking “Man, I’m glad I didn’t waste the time and energy.”