By: Derek Madlem

This last weekend saw the world of competitive Magic pause while big stupid monsters flooded out of hedron-lined crates to do Battle for Zendikar. Every social media channel was jammed full of Expeditions #humblebrags as players showed off their newly unearthed wealth.

Frequency

When we were introduced to the concept of Expeditions in that now infamous Wil Wheaton conducted train wreck stage show. During that deluge of faux-enthusiasm and butthole jokes we were given the approximation of “slightly more common than premium Mythic rares” which equaled out to roughly one per case. Initial reports from the field have these showing up at roughly 1 in 100 packs…a far cry from the “one per case” that we had all anticipated and based our theorycrafting on.

For now we can probably just ignore all the conspiracy theories about loaded prerelease packs, higher occurrence rates in the first print run, or reptilian illuminati overlords. While we’ve seen that it is incredibly easy for Wizards to manipulate print runs and collation, there isn’t much incentive for them to make a set less desirable to consumers. They’re in the business of selling packs of colored cardboard, not in bamboozling their clientele.

This heightened occurrence rate is going to put MASSIVE downward pressure on singles from this set as retailers are going to be incentivized to open more product during the initial scramble for competitive staples. This isn’t even taking into account the number of misguided mouthbreathers that conspired to buy case upon case of sealed product to cash in on the Expedition lottery.

Numbers

With the release of Expeditions into the wild, we’ve got real numbers to look at. TCGPlayer and eBay are both providing actual real world data for the actual selling prices of these cards. Here’s a rough breakdown of what these things are selling for:

Tango lands:
Smoldering Marsh – $50
Canopy Vista – $55
Cinder Glade – $55
Prairie Stream – $65
Sunken Hollow – $65

Shock lands:
Temple Garden – $100
Overgrown Tomb – $100
Godless Shrine – $100
Sacred Foundry – $110
Watery Grave $120
Blood Crypt – $125
Breeding Pool – $125
Stomping Ground – $140
Hallowed Fountain – $145
Steam Vents – $180

Fetch lands:
Marsh Flats – $170
Bloodstained Mire – $170
Windswept Heath – $170
Wooded Foothills – $175
Arid Mesa – $220
Verdant Catacombs – $260
Flooded Strand – $335
Polluted Delta – $375
Misty Rainforest – $375
Scalding Tarn – $440

There’s not too much surprising about the initial price spread on these lands. The tango lands are a little higher than I would have guessed while pretty much all the shocklands with the exception of Steam Vents are spot on. I expected the lower fetches to be a lot closer to $100 than they ended up, but the market is still in flux on all of these cards.

The average price of an Expedition land comes out to roughly $170, this is a number we’re going to use going forward but it’s important to note that the average is heavily skewed by those blue fetches at the top end of the spectrum.

Wholesale

A huge piece of the puzzle that is aggregate pricing for Magic cards is the wholesale price that retailers pay. A booster box costs most retailers between $75 and $80 each. We’ll just call it $80 a box because it’s a nice even number that equals out to $480 a case.

With a case containing 216 packs and a frequency of one Expeditions land per 100 packs, we can expect two Expeditions lands per case (three Expeditions lands in every sixth case) providing an average value of $340 to retailers. This means that retailers only have to make up $140 out of the remaining 216 rares/mythics, 216 full art basics, 6 foil rares, 1 foil mythic, and some quantity of sweet full art foil basic lands to break even.

When you average the EV of the Expeditions across every box, it’s basically adding $56 in expected value to every box, or 70% of the wholesale cost. Factor in another $18 just off of selling full art basics at 50¢ a piece and you’ve got that booster box nearly paid for without selling a single rare. I know there’s a subsection of you out there getting ready to point out that the full art lands will not sell for that much, but if these weren’t already in high demand how is SCG preselling fat packs for $60?

With Expeditions contributing this much EV to booster boxes, it’s a doomsday scenario for individual card prices after the first week or so – nothing makes it out alive this time folks.

Demand

Right now (Sunday night) on eBay, there are a total of 16 total Scalding Tarn Expeditions lands for sale (U.S. only) and only 7 “completed” listings. What do I take away from this? That even the people in the market for these cards are not quite in the market for them at current prices.

Here’s the thing about people with disposable income – outside of lottery winner and trust fund babies, there isn’t a large number of stupid people with boat loads of money…it’s a self correcting ship. So those avid collectors know that now is not the time to buy into Expeditions, which may be a portent into a future where the price on these pornographic landscapes comes tumbling downward. In other words, $400+ Scalding Tarns are likely unsustainable.

Balancing Act

Ok, we’re likely looking at decreasing Expeditions prices. Why doesn’t that mean that we’ll see other prices holding up better? Well, there’s twice as many as we expected for one and we’re not likely to see the prices drop THAT much. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your perspective, we’re not likely to see this set’s flagship cards take the big hit.

We previously predicted that this set wouldn’t retain much value thanks to the one Expeditions land per case. With two Expeditions land per case that outlook hasn’t changed even if the Expeditions lands end up at half their current value, which is unlikely. I expect to see all of the Expeditions lands to dip in price, but that decline won’t be spread evenly across the entire set. We’re much more likely to see the blue fetches take a minor hit while we see the tango lands and lesser demanded shock lands take more significant hits to their value.

Something like this:

Tango lands:
Smoldering Marsh – $30
Canopy Vista – $30
Cinder Glade – $30
Prairie Stream – $35
Sunken Hollow – $35

Shock lands:
Temple Garden – $80
Overgrown Tomb – $80
Godless Shrine – $80
Sacred Foundry – $80
Watery Grave $110
Blood Crypt – $80
Breeding Pool – $90
Stomping Ground – $90
Hallowed Fountain – $110
Steam Vents – $150

Fetch lands:
Marsh Flats – $140
Bloodstained Mire – $140
Windswept Heath – $140
Wooded Foothills – $145
Arid Mesa – $175
Verdant Catacombs – $200
Flooded Strand – $300
Polluted Delta – $350
Misty Rainforest – $350
Scalding Tarn – $400

This is all purely hypothetical, so don’t hold me to these numbers, but in this scenario the average value of an Expeditions land is still around $140, which still provides $280 in EV per case. At that rate, the expeditions are still covering nearly 60% of the EV in a case, add in those basic lands for an easy 80%. With Expeditions soaking up this much value, we might be entering a world of unprecedented low prices for standard cards.

Ignore everything I said last week (you probably did already), it’s looking like the value of paper Battle for Zendikar cards might end up being so low that it’s not even economically feasible to redeem MTGO sets.

The Grand Experiment

If anything’s becoming apparent, it’s that Wizards is leveraging popular cards to line its own pockets while making standard cards more accessible. Modern Masters is a glaring example, but even the event decks and clash packs are becoming regular value bombs. We used to look at these decks as “almost worth it” and now they’re basically free money.

What are we getting this time around? In case you missed it:

Warden of the First Tree
Whisperwood Elemental
Tasigur, the Golden Fang
Hangarback Walker
Llanowar Wastes
Evolutionary Leap

That’s six quality rares for one low price, plus you get all that other crap along with it. This pattern of reprinting Standard staples and leveraging powerful reprints to depress the prices of other cards is definitely something Wizards is keeping an eye on…will increased accessibility make tournaments more appealing to a larger audience? Does the average Magic player really care how much “value” they get out of a booster pack as long as they have a chance to get something they personally value out of that booster?

If the Expeditions lands weren’t enough downward pressure for BFZ prices, we can almost count on Standard’s most popular cards showing up in the Oath of the Gatewatch clash pack in just three short months, so just the looming threat of reprints is enough to keep me from going deep betting on any Standard cards going forward. Tasigur was a sure thing right? Hangarback was right up there with him. Now neither of these cards look like too great an investment.

The End

During Worldwake people bought booster after booster just because they had a chance to open a $100 card. We saw the same behavior with Modern Masters and Modern Master 2015 (to a lesser extent) packs. With Battle for Zendikar we have the same thing all over again. Whether foil Scalding Tarns end up at $400 or $300, they’re still a big shiny carrot that’s sure to appeal to the degenerate gambler in all of us, even after every last bit of value is sucked out of the regular cards in this set.

There’s even a good chance that we’ll continue to prefer Battle for Zendikar once Oath of the Gatewatch comes out because there’s frankly no land cycle that’s going to be more appealing to open as an Expeditions card than the fetch lands.

By: Derek Madlem

We’ve theory crafted the hell out of this set already and said time and time again that there’s no good investment targets in this set. This is the tune we’ve all been playing since the Expeditions were spoiled, and it’s been said across pretty much every #mtginance article about Battle for Zendikar. But now that we’ve seen the entire spoiler there’s a grim truth to acknowledge: something has to be worth money.

Expeditions

The easiest place to pile on the bulk of the set’s value is on the altar of Expeditions. We don’t really have any reasonable idea where the value of expeditions will land, but it’s unlikely that we’re going to see $350 Marsh Flats and Blood Crypts any time soon so that means the rest of the cards in the set are going to need to soak up some of that value. But there’s just soooooo much garbage.

Hard Garbage

Anyone that’s been paying attention to the talking heads for very long will quickly point out that we all said pretty much the same thing about Dragons of Tarkir, but sure enough value materialized there. What’s the difference this time? Well sit down kid, I’ll tell you:

Hard garbage.

What’s hard garbage? Hard garbage is a term defining those rares that only exists in bulk boxes and have no competitive prospects. Hard garbage is a level of bulk rare that’s not debatable, these cards are barely playable even in limited. Like what?

Face it, nobody is going to run four colors to live the dream of a 6/6 Vigilance Trample creature. How many would run this in a three color deck to situationally power out a four mana 5/5?

For this price, I would want the tapped creature to stay tapped as long as Prism Array remained on the battlefield. For all five colors of mana I want a little more bang for my buck than scry 3. Is there a world where we drop this in a three color deck to tap three creatures? Nope.

This has been compared to Phyrexian Plaguelord. I got news for you, I’m a close personal friend of Phyrexian Plaguelord, and this is no Phyrexian Plaguelord. Is this card good in limited? Probably. Is this card playable in constructed? Have at it. I can think of better things to do with five mana in constructed, most of which already cost a dollar.

Are you kidding me? Mind Control was five mana and basically unplayable in constructed and now you want to make it a five color spell with an upper limit? Get the ____ out. Seriously, out. This card is the prime example of hard garbage. Unless we somehow stumble upon a format full of two power indestructible creatures, this is not playable in any sense of the word. Hard garbage.

“What if we took Cone of Flame and made it bigger?”
“Cone of Flame? You mean that uncommon that was only played in limited?”
“Yeah, except there’s a twist! We’ll make it colorless!”
“Brilliant!”
-overheard at Wizards

Seriously, who comes up with this crap? I know this set is supposed to be durdly, but for seven mana a rare removal spell should just straight exile three creatures. Requiring three targets is a downside, not an upside. Exhibit A:

Remember when this card was good? Me neither.

Soft Garbage

Beyond the hard garbage, we have mountains of soft garbage. These cards are just clones of cards that we’ve seen before with a twist. What’s the twist? They’re worse. There’s a chance some of these see play, but their not going to hold any value because there are just better options in eternal formats.

Remember when Awakening Zone was all the rage? It was a cute way to get a creature into play for Polymorph, but that was the extent of it’s usefulness during its reign. Well, it’s back! But it costs more! Oh wait, this has a sweet tutor ability so you can search out your best eldrazi! Just think, you can tutor up a seven mana eldrazi and play it on turn six!

Remember Firespout? How about Slagstorm? Anger of the Gods? What do these cards have in common? They’re all more reliable than Radiant Flames. Sure, there’s a corner case scenario in some format where you would like your Anger of the Gods to only deal two damage because that’s enough to kill all your opponent’s creatures but not enough to kill all those sweet three toughness creatures you’re playing…but that’s not a compelling reason to play a less reliable sweeper spell.

We’re all going to try it and we’re all going to pretend that the flexibility is better, but given the current state of Standard…we’re just going to play Abzan Charm instead, aren’t we? At three mana in one or two colors we get to draw two cards with zero drawback, if we’re going to play three colors we should get to draw three cards with no drawback. This card is symptomatic of everything wrong with Battle for Zendikar, it’s power level was pushed…in the wrong direction.

Beyond these examples, there are a number of cards that require cards in exile to have any effect. These cards are depowered to make the ingest mechanic matter in limited, but that ultimately means that these cards will be nigh-unplayable in constructed unless we see a whole new slew of delve cards that we can’t live without.

The Crossroads

Between the foundation of garbage and the beautiful vistas we’ll find on our Expeditions, there’s something; and something is still going to be worth…err, something. We’ll start with the obvious:

These are your best bet for holding some of the set’s non-catastrophic real estate. The tango lands are going to see heavy play at least until the fetch lands rotate (and beyond if we’re lucky and Zendikar fetches get reprinted). There is potential for these to soak up all the remaining value equity in the set, but there’s a couple other contenders to consider:

Ob Nixilis is a solid card advantage engine that can protect himself with targeted removal. He can easily slot into an Abzan or Esper Dragons decks without much hassle and the absence of Hero’s Downfall is only going to make him that much more powerful contextually.

Gideon has appeal. I personally don’t like this card as a constructed player, but there is a huge subsection of casual players that are getting ready to sleeve up allies like it’s going out of style…and that’s not to mention all the Gideon fans that would follow this guy right into Kozilek’s rectum if he asked them too.

I’m not excited about Kiora’s prospects in constructed, mostly because Sultai and Temur have been steaming turds for the bulk of Khans of Tarkir’s run in Standard thus far. There’s a chance that the format gets slowed down enough that Sultai is able to grind out the long games again, but the loss of Whip of Erebos is going to put a major hurting on that strategy. The good news for Kiroa is that she’s a two-color planeswalker and players identify strongly with their favorite guilds…especially those Simic kids.

Those Commander kids love their Time Walk effects and this card would be an auto-include in those decks even without the awaken portion of the text box. At Mythic rare, this is going to hold some value, though likely only around $5.

Quarantine Field is a card that has potential to give us all headaches. This sort of utility effect at Mythic rare can leave us all cringing if we end up seeing optimal builds running four copies. While I’m not excited to pay four mana for an Oblivion Ring, getting two for six mana is pretty much average, and getting three for eight mana is just #value.

I’m placing my bets on this seeing a similar amount of play as Silence the Believers, a sporadic one-of.

This brings us to the manlands. If you were around the last time these cards graced Standard, you’ll remember that their prices varied greatly with Lavaclaw Reaches on the low end and Raging Ravine and Celestial Colonnade splitting the upper tier. We can expect that some of these will be duds while others will excel. Shambling Vent feels like a loser to me.

On turn four you can activate this land to block a two power creature or you can cast a real threat. This is the weakest offensively of all the two color manlands printed to date. Even Lavaclaw had the ability to dump additional mana to accelerate the clock. Shambling Vent has no evasion and very little body to talk of.

Lumbering Falls has the dubious honor of being the best of the new manlands, but only because we’re only getting two with Battle for Zendikar. At three power, this at least matches the clock provided by Stirring Wildwood, a card that was playable but not amazing during it’s day. The big bonus for Lumbering Falls is hexproof; this allows the Falls to take the role of solid finisher for a control deck as it dodges board wipes and spot removal and, for now, larger manlands. Being a playable land is usually a good start when it comes to being worth money.

We’re also likely to see some of the rare and mythic eldrazi soaking up some of that value equity, kids love big stupid creatures.

The Crux of Fate

As a master of hyperbole, I can spot hyperbole. The thing to remember is that something HAS TO be worth money. Nearly all of us #mtgfinance writers have been saying that nothing in this set is going to be worth money outside of the Expeditions, and that’s probably not going to be the case. I think we’re better off saying that we’re not excited about any of these cards as investments.

We’re entering uncharted territory when it comes to #mtgfinance. We don’t know what the upper limit for “super users” is when it comes to pricing these lands. I really don’t think there are that many $500+ Scalding Tarn buyers out there waiting in the shadows to unload their cash in exchange for shiny cardboard, but we’ll know soon enough.

While many of you will be Battling for Zendikar at your local prerelease, I’m going to be checking eBay for that first wave of expedition lands…this is going to be the real starting point in the conversation about the financial value of BFZ. The completed listing prices will ultimately determine what everything else in the set is going to be worth and even lower value expeditions only leave room for just a small handful of cards to be of any value.

By: Derek Madlem

Rising from the ashes like a phoenix this fall, we have the return of Zendikar…one of the most popular planes of recent years. In mythology, a phoenix appeared and reappeared infrequently with great spectacle and awe inspiring destruction following in it’s wake… after all it was a giant bird made of fire and lava and ash flying across the sky; how can that not be epic?

Here’s how:

Why does this suck? Well let’s take a stroll through Phoenix Memory Lane to see where we’ve come from and the high and low points of this underperforming tribe.

In the beginning there was Firestorm Phoenix, it was awesome purely because it was the only phoenix in the game and it did something neat. This certainly wasn’t the most aggressively priced creature at the time, and it basically died to everything that had the same mana cost…but from a design standpoint, it did everything you would expect of a phoenix. We’ll also cut them some slack because card design hadn’t become real refined yet…1994 was pretty much the wild west, you never knew who or what was going to turn up.

Fast forward a few years to Visions where we first met the Bogardan variety of Phoenix. This phoenix returned to play automatically, but not repeatedly. They got a little more aggressive with the casting cost and made what was a surprisingly reasonable card for the time.

Shard Phoenix is arguably the most powerful phoenix ever printed. Showing up in Stronghold, this not-so-fiery bird was a board wipe tacked onto a recyclable threat. This is pretty much the top of the phoenix design game for the Magic’s 22 year history.

By the time Urza’s Legacy rolled around, Firestorm Phoenix was on the reserved list; this mean that you couldn’t print a functional reprint of any existing card… but that didn’t stop Wizards from printing strict upgrades like they did with Shivan Phoenix. The design for this bird was simple and reasonable. It just came back. I’m going to go ahead and quote that here because it might be relevant later:

“It just came back.”
-Me, just now

After this, it would appear that R&D simply forgot about phoenixes for the bulk of a decade or so. When we returned we ended up with an attached guild mechanic:

Did I forget that the guild mechanic was also a conditional requirement for returning the phoenix to it’s owner’s hand? Yeah, it doesn’t just come back. Skarrgan Firebird had the upside of potentially being the biggest phoenix ever printed if you were fortunate enough to get that sweet sweet bloodthirst trigger, but it was also the most mana intensive of the entire species.

From there we went to a color shifted alternative in phoenix design. This card originally appeared in white, and looked a little something like this:

While Molten Firebird was far from the best phoenix, or even playable really, it was at least a derivative of being a color shifted reprint. Phoenixes were seemingly back on the design table now, and after taking Lorwyn off, we were given this pipedream in Conflux:

While it was unlikely to ever happen, Worldheart Phoenix did have the intent of being a pretty sweet recurring threat in all those five color draft decks that just never really happened at the time. From a design perspective, it was at least a refreshing twist on an old trope.

Magic 2010 and Zendikar gave us no phoenixes, but in Magic 2011 we got a pretty reasonable likeness to Shard Phoenix. Its stats were pushed a little further, but it didn’t have the ability to self-destruct, thought it did pose some really great judge calls when equipped with a Basilisk Collar…hint: it works out in the best way imaginable.

This is where the designers started to get themselves into trouble. Phoenixes were to be a regular thing, but realistically how many ways can you recreate the flavor of a 3-4ish power bird that comes back from the dead. This left design with a problem that had a clear and terrible answer: block mechanics. They had already done it once with the Gruul phoenix to a lesser extent, but this is where it began in earnest.

That next summer we got what is arguably the most playable phoenix ever printed. Chandra’s Phoenix has a conditional return clause, but it’s about as conditional as water being wet. The low casting cost and haste also made this creature not only annoying, but also a reasonably priced threat. It’s all down hill from here.

Yay! We made another phoenix! Ravnica and Innistrad didn’t feature lame block mechanics that they could tack onto a mediocre flying body in red, so it wasn’t until Born of the Gods that we got to see another phoenix (though Chandra’s Phoenix did make another appearance in Magic 2014).

Tribute, a truly terrible and unplayable mechanic. Giving your opponent the choice will always result in you not getting what you want out of a card. Always. At this point it’s really time to just open the floodgate with rapid-fire mediocre birds!

See what they did there? Block mechanic. Ashcloud wasn’t the worst phoenix ever printed, but it rarely felt like the right thing to be casting while your opponent was dropping Siege Rhinos.

What’s this? Another block mechanic, Ferocious! As you can see with that landfall trigger above, phoenixes might just be steaming turds from here on out…and there’s a good chance that turd is a going to take up a mythic slot as well. Here it is again so you don’t have to scroll up to see what treasure awaits you in Battle for Zendikar:

The real problem here is how “safe” all of the designs we’ve seen in Battle for Zendikar are. I’m sure Battle for Zendikar will be a compellingly epic limited format. Rise of the Eldrazi was one of the most revered limited formats of all time and most of that set is pretty durdly, just like we’re seeing this time around…but we need SOME cards to peak their heads above water, it can’t be all bulk rares.

What do I think about what’s been revealed since last week?

I think Shambling Vent is easily the worst of the cycle so far. Yes, even worse than Lavaclaw Reaches…at least THAT had firebreathing so you could dump a boatload of mana into it and end the game. Shambling Vent is a tired uninspired design. Lifelink on a black/white card?! Never saw that one coming!

Here’s another great example of R&D dialing back design to “make the limited format more dynamic.” What’s the solution to making it so that rares don’t decide who wins a limited game? I guess it’s to make rares into uncommons. Last time we came to Zendikar, we had Rampaging Baloths. They started bigger and gave you a freaking 4/4 for every land you played. You want to know a secret? We never played it either. Why would we want to play a bad hydra?

While this is seemingly an irrelevant uncommon, it furthers my point: we’re at a state where design is getting very stale. What’s between Mind Stone and Dreamstone Hedron? I’m really looking forward to the eight mana artifact that taps for four and draws four cards when you sac it!

Taking a look over the rest of the spoilers we see more of the same, reprints, or even more sweet “devoid” reprints or existing cards. But these are totally different because their devoid, right? Right?! Did the world really need Dragonmaster Outcast and Felidar Sovereign brought back? It’s becoming clearer and clearer why they chose to include Expeditions in Battle for Zendikar: the design team turned in their assignment and when the number crunchers finished grading it, they had a big fat F on their hands. Add in some hundred dollar bills randomly and you can slide the grade up into the D+/C- range. Congrats Wizards, you passed.

Let’s hope this level of design is temporary and not phoenixical™. Yeah, I’m trademarking that word…so what?

Silver Lining(s)

Void Winnower has received a lot of “that’s interesting” nods from the collective peanut gallery, but this card does have one legitimate use: reanimator decks. “Winny” might have a place in eternal metagames as a sideboard card against combo decks, or as an Oath of Druids target. Shutting off roughly 50% of the spells your opponent could cast is a good way to keep them from comboing. Here are some classic combo finishers that Winny voids without going too deep:

Is that going to be enough to make this guy worth a million bajillion dollars? Unlikely. BUT…IF…the price of FOIL versions of this card dip below $10 at any point, I’m going to feel pretty safe picking up a few copies to stow away. Niche play in eternal formats + being an absolute nut-kicker in Commander seems like a combination for long-term success to me. I’d love to see a world where we could reanimate this in Standard…but any such spell would most likely have converge and be all but unplayable.

See you next week, hopefully with some cards worth talking about!