By: Derek Madlem

Spoiler season is in full effect and Twitter is abuzz with the praises and condemnations of the masses. Preorder prices are being conjured from the aether and we’re left pondering whether or not we should be buying into the hype.

Walkers

Kytheon, Hero of Akros

Taking a look at the Magic Origins Planeswalkers has basically left me befuddled, I’m honestly having a hard time evaluating them in a vacuum because they’re templating is brand new to Magic. The best I can figure so far is to start with the creature, examine how easy it is to flip said creature, and then determine if the payoff was worth it.

So Gideon starts like this, an obvious upgrade to Elite Vanguard. Kytheon slots into a white aggro deck pretty easily and transforms easier than most of the other walkers in this cycle. Currently we really only have a couple archetypes that this just slots right into: Abzan Aggro and the Heroic decks, the latter of which has fallen out of favor recently.

The flip side of Gideon is more or less a mini impersonation of his previous incarnations. There is no “ultimate” ability so Gideon doesn’t force an opponent to care about his ticking clock but he does offer a variety of combat related tricks. Forcing an attack, making an unstoppable blocker, or wading into combat himself are all abilities that fit in a wide array of scenario. This card has a lot of flexibility.

Problems: it requires you to overcommit to the board to flip, something that’s going to be even harder to do with black getting ANOTHER board wipe in Languish.

So is this worth the $25 preorder price that SCG has slapped on it? I’m going to go with an emphatic “no” on that question. This is a conditional role-player in a sub-category of decks, likely a 2-of at most. Short term I see this card dropping into the $10-15 range quickly after release and ending up floating between $7-10 after that, relying heavily on casual appeal. The hardest thing going forward is evaluating how popular these characters are for casual players.

Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy

Merfolk Looter has rarely been a constructed playable card. Even on sterroids, Magus of the Bazaar can’t make too strong of a case for looters being constructed viable cards so Jace isn’t starting off on the right foot .

Is this a Jace you would put in a deck if you could “just cast” him? Probably not, so why would you want to jump through hoops to get to this? His “ultimate” provides the threat of defeat for your opponent without actually doing anything to hasten that defeat. Let’s put it another way, if you’re losing and you resolve this ultimate – you’re still losing.

For a meager $19.99 preorder this could be yours, This card seems less playable than Jace, the Living Guildpact and that saw basically zero constructed play, so I have a hard time imaging a world where this one feels much better. I’m betting on this card being sub-$5 within a couple months. Just draw one side of a pyramid and you should be able to find Jace’s pricing trajectory.

Liliana, Heretical  Healer

As purely a 2/3 lifelink for three mana, Liliana is a situationally playable card. Showing up to watch your other creatures die seems easy enough, though it might actually have the side effect of making some of your creatures unblockable. So Liliana’s starting off with potential, especially when you consider she starts off her Planeswalker career with a pet zombie.

Once flipped you realize that Liliana is an awkward place for deckbuilding; she only brings back your own creatures to the battlefield and the only way to keep fueling that engine is to keep discarding cards. So by including Liliana, you’re painting yourself into a corner playing a deck that wants you to dump your hand and play tons of creatures so that you can awkwardly return them to play once they die.

Mono-black humans seems like a place for Liliana, but is she any better than an Obelisk of Urd or a targeted removal spell in those decks? Liliana is often going to be an awkward scenario where you trade Liliana + another creature for a zombie + another creature, which is not exactly thrilling. The ultimate takes four turns to achieve and requires you to spend that time protecting Liliana, which is counter intuitive to the decks she would best fit into.

This is another card with a preorder price of $24.99, a price that just can’t be sustained being such niche card. I expect Liliana to make a run at $10 and then slump from there as she sits buoyed by casual demand.

Chandra, Fire of Kaladesh

Chandra is where things start getting interesting for me. Chandra is a pain to flip, but still easy at the same time. All you have to do is attack unblocked, cast a red spell, and then untap and tap again to that last point, of course this doesn’t take into account tricks like Titan’s Strength or Hammerhand that can push through that three damage pretty quickly.

So she flips and turns into this…

At this point Chandra becomes a ticking clock that’s going to ruin your opponent two points at a time. After three turns of this, there is very little reason to do anything other than pop the ultimate and ride out Chandra’s volcanic aspirations from there, This should leave your opponent dead in two turns or less.

In a strange twist of fate, Chandra’s price tag is carrying some baggage. At an $11.99 preorder price it’s pretty clear that Chandra has a long history of being the Planeswalker that couldn’t and this price reflects it. This seems like the easiest of the cycle so far to slot into existing decks without much hassle… I would almost call this price “reasonable” in comparison to the others, though I expect this card to settle closer to the $5-8 range because casual appeal for Chandra just hasn’t ever held her price very high.

Nissa, Vastwood Seer

In a world where Rampant Growth isn’t very rampant, the conditions for flipping Nissa become a bit harder to achieve, this is a turn three spell that you essentially have to keep alive for four more turns, or wait to play it. So after you reach this magical land where you control seven lands, you get this:

Nissa grants you an extra spell each turn for a number of turns until you get to alpha strike with six of your lands. Nissa does have the distinct advantage of her ultimate being capable of outright winning the turn it’s activated, the second ability is just “fine” in a pinch.

Nissa’s biggest advantage is that she is a serviceable topdeck in the late game: you can cast, fetch a land, flip, and then draw another card off the top of your library immediately. If you need to squeak in the last couple points of damage you can instead activate the -2 ability to send a 4/4 rumbling into the red zone immediately. But is any of this realistically better than the existing Nissa? I can’t see why I would.

Nissa is preordering for $19.99, a price that might seem reasonable if Nissa, Worldwaker wasn’t already under $14. When to cards occupy the same space, the price of the greater is going to put a ceiling on the price of the lesser and this seems like a compelling case for that. But then again, maybe people really just want a Borderland Ranger that only searches for basic forests.

The Catalyst

Is this card good? The design clearly wants to gut you of any advantage gained casting this card by giving your opponent the first chance to take advantage of the seven new cards.

The first thing that came to many people’s minds was Quicken, or Leyline of Anticipation, but at that point is the setup worth the payoff? If you’re building a deck around it, you really have to build a deck around it.

Then Craig Wescoe tweeted out asking about the following opening hand:

The idea being that Affinity could use this card to help them dump their hand and refill instantly… the debate erupted from every angle imaginable: Is this a playable card? Is this a valuable card? Is this a $5 card? No convincing of anyone was accomplished.

So here’s how I’m approaching Day’s Undoing, I’m making a list and checking it twice.

1. They obviously tested it extensively and determined it was not “entirely broken”
2. If it is ever demonstrated to be broken, it will be banned
3. A card in risk of banning doesn’t generally go up in price substantially
4. No “sorcery” card has been worth more than $20 in the last eight years of Magic other than Bonfire of the Damned, but you could argue that to be an instant
5. Time Reversal.

Maybe I’m a bit gunshy because I did preorder a playset of Time Reversals at $19.99 a piece, I have a soft spot for Timetwister effects. I love Timetwister so much that I refuse to build additional blue Commander decks unless I have additional Timetwisters to put into them. So I’ve clearly got mixed emotions regarding this card.

Let’s just consider it in best case scenarios, in Standard what are you going to do with this card? Most likely candidate is a 1 or 2-of in a Blue/X control deck to refill late game, but is taking a random seven and reloading your opponent better than Dig Through Time? I just don’t see it. It’s just not a card I want to cast late game, regripping your opponent is just not where any deck wants to be.

What about Modern? Three mana draw sevens scream “combo deck” but that whole “end the turn” part of resolving the spell sure doesn’t lend to any combos that I know. So that leaves us with a cute first turn by Affinity or teaming up with Notion Thief as our best options. Notion Thief is just a little too cute to be constructed viable, so let’s run with slotting it into that affinity list. Three copies? Two copies? What about those pesky Etched Champions and Master of Etherium? All of the sudden those expensive cards become a liability when we’re all-in on the low end of the curve, more Memnites please!

So likely what we have is a card that has a lot of raw power but doesn’t necessarily have any immediate home outside of decks banking on being able to dump and reload. I’m guessing this card has to follow one of two paths: it struggles to find a home and slips quickly to $10 and descends slowly from there until someone finds a way to break it OR it “breaks” immediately and the formats simply adapt and the price begins its natural post-release descent.

Either way this card is probably good for a $10 swing, I’m betting it swings south.

The first wave of cards in this set have been unusually difficult to evaluate. I still have a sinking feeling that I am “just not getting” something about the new Planeswalkers, but for the most part they seem like garbage to me. Day’s Undoing is another one that simultaneously gives me a million ideas, all of them sketchy at best… but it only takes one. I’d much rather avoid the risk on a card like Day’s Undoing in favor of more predictable targets.

Oh and this guy at $40? Come on guys, you can’t be serious.

By: Derek Madlem

“It’s probably a little late for that one Derek”
-some guy that hasn’t read this article yet.

Late? Or early? No, I think I’m proceeding right on track here. We’ve grown accustomed to the 24 month life cycle of Standard. When Theros hit store shelves, we knew that we could settle in for the long haul because this was going to be a part of Standard for TWO FULL YEARS. We also knew that one year into that two year term that Theros cards would likely hit their all-time high price as Return to Ravnica block rotated out and Khans of Tarkir rotated in.

Timing this price point was a time-honored secret for success for a long long time. We used to watch Block Constructed results from Magic Online and at the Pro Tour to help us determine which cards were going to be exceptionally powerful going forward. While these results helped us hone in on format superstars like the “Mythic” deck during the tail end of Shards of Alara Standard, most of these picks were painfully obvious like Stormbreath Dragon or Elspeth, Sun’s Champion.

We knew to pick up Elspeth’s when they bottomed out at $20 because we could easily unload them at a higher price once Khans of Tarkir was released (ended up being at $30). We also knew that the back side of that last year was a slow slide from the price peak to basically nothing.

It’s Different Now

Your Theros cards are worthless. Yes, basically all of them. Arguments can be made for cards like Sylvan Caryatid and Courser of Kruphix in Modern, but let’s not get too carried away because these cards certainly don’t see anything resembling “regular” play in Modern and there’s a metric ****ton of them in the wild right now.

But Theros is not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about Khans of Tarkir and Fate Reforged. Something that nobody’s really mentioned yet is the new economics of rotation. As Theros and Magic 2015 rotate in September at the release of Battle for Zendikar, Khans is already going to be rotting in your binders. Why’s that?

Six months to live. Yeah, that’s a thing. You might not realize this, but Khans of Tarkir was born with a birth defect common to all sets going forward: a shortened life span. While many of it’s ancestors lived to the ripe old age of 24 months, Khans is only going to see 18 and Fate Reforged is going to fare even worse: 15 months.

So that means we need to rethink cycles and card prices and we also need to acknowledge that in relation to when Khans is rotating, we’re already past the traditional “peak” of one year before rotation.

Seasons Still Matter…

… but not as much as they used to. Some of you may not remember this, but PTQ season formats had a real impact on card prices. Back when Extended was a thing for three months a year, there was a massive sell-off at the end of every season because these cards were simply useless for 95% of the population for nearly an entire year… could be longer because we didn’t know when a format would come back around.

Right now we’re in the middle of a PPTQ season that’s featuring Modern. This means that outside of Grand Prix’s and the SCG Open Series that there is little reason to keep an arsenal of competitive Standard cards, and many of the prices already reflect that sentiment. Take a look at one-time all star Whisperwood Elemental, this card has nearly halfed in value since it’s peak in March ($15-$8).

Modern Masters Effect

I would be doing a disservice if I didn’t point out the obvious: there’s only so much money available in the Magic economy at any given time and Modern Masters 2015 is drawing a lot of that water right now, both directly and indirectly. There were a lot of pent up desire for Modern cards. Many players were waiting for this set to “make their move” into Modern and they’re coming on board in large numbers, which is one of the primary reasons so many card prices are going ape right now (pro tip: it’s not speculators).

With MM2015 on the horizon, many of Modern’s card prices “locked in” because of the uncertainty of what was going to be reprinted. Nobody wanted to go out and drop $200 on a Tarmogoyf if it was going to get reprinted in a couple months. If Tarmogoyf was confirmed early to not be in MM2015, we’d probably be looking at $250+ Gofys right now, but that impending reprint kept that price in limbo. You can repeat this example with just about any card that’s gone up in the last month. Pro tip: it wasn’t a spike, it was a correction.

The Point

Ahh, finally we get to the reason for all these words: some of your Khans block cards are already dead and should be abandoned ASAP. Like what?

Like Dig Through Time for example. This card is the unbending backbone of blue decks in Standard. Dig is amazingly powerful, which is why we’ve seen it banned in Modern and watched as it makes a really strong case for being banned in Legacy as well. What’s that mean for those Digs you’re sitting on?

BULK BOX

Dig Through Time is going to be a bulk rare in the very near future. There are roughly a billion-kajillion of these in existence and anyone that needs them for Legacy already has them. Sure there might be some casual demand for this card in Commander, but it’s power is diminished substantially in 100-card singleton formats.

Whisperwood, as mentioned above, has fallen from grace. This card is clearly awesome, but it just exists in the wrong space and time. There is virtually zero chance this card sees Modern play after rotation as it’s simply outclassed by cards like Thragtusk. Legacy? Not a snowball’s chance. There’s also just too short a window for this card to curve out. While there’s sure to be casual appeal for this card for years to come, it’s not going to be enough to sustain a price above $3-4… if that.

Dragons are sweet.
Planeswalkers are sweet.

So this should be worth a million dollars right? That’s what we thought when he first showed up. We quickly figured out that he’s not really good in Standard and his price reflects it. Sarkhan, the Dragonspeaker is hovering around $5 solely because his card says “Planeswalker” on it. This is not going to show up in competitive decks past Standard so that demand is going to be tied to casual demand only. The good news is that he’s unlikely to go much lower without a Duel Deck appearance, but he’s almost certainly not going to go rise this fall.

Sorin, Solemn Visitor has a much better chance of mounting a slow and stable recovery as he’s replaced his previous self in all those B/W token decks in Modern. He’s still at a great risk of a Duel Deck reprint thanks to being a vampire and that whole tick craze still sputtering along. But how has Sorin fared in Standard lately? Yeah, exactly. Not exactly inspiration for a big investment. This is another card that’s not going to tank outside of a Duel Deck reprint, but it’s going to be a slow climb moving forward.

Anafenza, the Foremost is still a card that I feel suffers from “too much textbox syndrome”. People just forget that whole secondary clause about exiling creatures instead of allowing them to hit your opponent’s graveyard. I was very bullish on Anafenza as a Modern contender because she did a great job of hosing many of Birthing Pod’s shenanigans while still being a fairly insane addition to basically any Abzan deck that attacks with creatures. But as Fleecemane Lion leaves Standard in search of a new mane wig, Anafenza is going to be left behind with a short window and few allies to help her prove worthy of a higher price. Anafenza’s likely going to pull an impression of Thalia, Guardian of Thraben in Modern and possibly Legacy, only showing up in niche scenarios as an oversized hatebear. I’m not going to be surprised to see these as low as $2 by / after rotation.

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, Brutal Hordechief isn’t Hellrider. You can spend the rest of your life looking at the text box trying to figure out how this card never became a thing, but my bet’s on the fact that it’s a Hill Giant and nobody likes a 3/3 for four mana. You can lump Shaman of the Great Hunt in with Hordechief as a promising young athlete that failed to make it big in the NFL because they got drafted to the Lions or the Raiders. The lack of compelling teammates doomed both of these cards to mediocrity and there’s no chance for recovery. These are already on the cusp of bulk Mythic and I expect to them to retire as such, maybe they can open a car dealership or something.

Do you know what a $1 board wipe looks like? It looks just like a $6 board wipe except it’s rotated. There is not much hope for Crux of Fate after rotation because in a vacuum it’s pretty crappy compared to cards like Supreme Verdict or Damnation. These are already slipping as people figure out that playing mirror matches in the draw bracket all day is the very definition of Standard Hell, but you can still get out at $3 if you want to save a little of that value.

Everything Else

Obviously the fetchlands are pure gold. they’re going to retain the bulk of their value and continue to grow incrementally going forward. Tasigur, the Golden Fang, Monastery Mentor, Soulfire Grand Master, and Ugin, the Spirit Dragon are basically the only rares outside of the fetchlands that I don’t see cratering as they leave Standard. Even Siege Rhino is struggling to hold onto that $5 price tag and he was an absolute BOSS. If you have Standard cards that are worth more than $1 that you are not going to need in the next nine months, it’s time to ship them. There’s a very short window for recovery and most of these cards are unlikely to be lifted by it.

Except for maybe See the Unwritten – ELDRAZI!!!!

edit: I think people were missing the point of the article by a fair margin. I’m not saying that all of these cards are worthless now, I’m trying to point out that we have a new rotation starting with this set so we’re likely to see things behave differently this time around and you will not have as much time to divest from Khans block as you have had in the past. Couple that with the reality that most of this block has no life past Standard, you’re in for some Temple of Epiphany sized losses if you don’t plan ahead.