By: Jared Yost

Pro Tour personality @TomoharuSaito has been a busy man. He  has provided the Magic community not one, not two, not three, but thirteen (at the time of this writing) decklists that players can use to get an idea of what Standard might be like until Khans is added to the card pool. He did this for Journey Into Nyx as well but I only found out recently about those Twitter posts he made in May. Some of his May ideas panned out while others did not. I think most didn’t pan out because the top tier strategies are pretty much set in stone at that point, at least in the U.S. Who wants to learn how to play a new deck near the end of the season? The decks did provide insight into several cards, however, and got people talking about cards like Prophetic Flamespeaker which was featured in some of the decks from his last batch. This time around, I’m going to dive deeply into Tomoharu’s decklists and see if we can’t glean any information about which cards might see play after rotation. I think posts like these are helpful in seeing future Standard possibilities.

He displays the decks in an elegant, simple way. He compiled the decklists together on a playmat and took a picture of each list that he thought would see play over the next couple months. Afterwards, a quick post to Twitter and all of a sudden everyone is buzzing around this news. Please check out his lists on Twitter, then come over to this Reddit post to get an idea about what the community is saying about the most recent batch of decks.

From my reading of the Reddit comments players seem to be very divided on how “good” the actual decklists are. Are these only Tier 2 strategies? Is he tricking the entire populace, listing all of these decks out and then going to decide to play something completely different? Could this be chalked up to the uniqueness that is the Japanese Magic scene? We’ll just have to wait and see when the results start rolling in.

From a financial standpoint, these decklists are a powerful tool to let us know the possible directions that Standard could go. Thirteen decks is a lot of data to go through. Let’s see which cards Tomoharu Saito thinks are going to be played the most based on the number of times they appear in each of the decklists. Lets run the numbers and see how many copies of each card are present in the decks.

* – Represents a card that we will see through rotation (commons excluded)

The decks were quite diverse and the card list reflects this. However, we’re also trying to glean some information as to what cards Saito values the most from Standard sets that aren’t rotating in the fall.

Top 10 Rares Appearing Across Decks Through Rotation:

Courser of Kruphix (16)
Sylvan Caryatid (16)
Temple of Malady (16)
Llanowar Wastes (14)
Thoughtseize (12)
Soldier of the Pantheon (8)
Battlefield Forge (8)
Mana Confluence (8)
Temple of Triumph (8)
Boon Satyr (7)

Honorable Mention:

AEtherspouts

If you’re a Standard player you will want to pick up your copies of these cards because they are the most likely to get played across several archetypes. You’re chances of being able to use the cards once Khans comes up are pretty high if you decide to pick up cards on this list.

Courser of Kruphix, Sylvan Caryatid, and Temple of Malady round out the top three. They appeared in both spike and fringe strategies (fringe examples include Maze’s End and BG Zombies), and when they did each deck contained a playset of them. Llanowar Wastes comes in at a close fourth with Thoughtseize to round out the top five. I would advise picking up all cards at the current prices if you plan on playing them.

Soldier of the Pantheon, Battlefield Forge, Mana Confluence, and Temple of Triumph all appeared as a playset in two decks. Boon Satyr appeared as a playset in one, and three copies in another. These are probably the best cards to spec on, and personally I would put my money on Soldier of the Pantheon and Mana Confluence as the breakout cards of the four. Boon Satyr and Temple of Triumph should also be solid going into rotation but I don’t think the gains will be as good as Soldier or Mana Confluence.

AEtherspouts appeared in control lists that utilized blue. I’m not sure how well these decks were tested, but it couldn’t hurt to pick up a a few copies for EDH or if you plan on playing one of them in something like UWR Control or a similar build.

Cards not in this list but still should be looked out for – Chord of Calling, Urborg, the other Temples, Painlands, Eidolon of Blossoms, Fleecemane Lion, Anger of the Gods, and Scuttling Doom Engine. They each are good enough to merit play as well.

Top 10 Mythics Appearing Across Decks Through Rotation:

Ajani Steadfast (6)
Polukranos, World Eater (5)
Sliver Hivelord (4)
Soul of Innistrad (4)
Kiora, the Crashing Wave (4)
Brimaz, King of Oreskos (3)
Pharika, God of Affliction (3)
Elspeth, Sun’s Champion (3)
Nissa, Worldwaker (3)
Garruk, Apex Predator (2)

Mythics are an interesting bunch. Due to Wizard’s policy of trying to create format staples as rares rather than mythics, we find that a large majority of mythics in this list are played in only one of Tomoharu’s builds. Ajani Steadfast and Polukranos buck this trend, but Polukranos only appears as a Chord of Calling Target in his mono green devotion list. It appears that he will be good in the new green deck based around Nissa.

Essentially, the takeaway here is that Ajani Steadfast probably has the most to gain from rotation if white weenie or green/white aggro becomes a dominant deck over the summer. Though I’m not sure if Ajani is the right walker to put in these decks – I feel like Elspeth, Sun’s Champion is much stronger and I would rather pick her up seeing her on this list. However, I also haven’t been a Magic Pro Player of the Year and everyone could be undervaluing Ajani because they haven’t tested him. Then again, I have no idea if any of these decks have been tested so it’s kind of a hard call at this point. $15 is a little rich for my blood, so if it starts going down towards $8 I think it would definitely be a good planeswalker to pick up. At the very least, if you’re playing white weenie you should be getting Brimaz which the list confirms. 

Sliver Hivelord only earns a spot in this list because people will try to make the Slivers deck work. I have no idea how good it might be but I’m guessing it won’t gain much traction from people outside of FNM. Plus, many of the pieces are rotating in the fall so I’m staying far away from slivers mainly for that reason.

Soul of Innistrad was the only soul mentioned to make it into any lists. Pharika and Keranos were the only gods to show up, and Keranos only showed up as one copy in the UWR control build. I’m not sure if the souls and gods are worse than I initially thought but this might confirm in many peoples minds that they are. I still wouldn’t discount many of them, especially Soul of Theros or Soul of New Phyrexia once rotation hits. Pharika is appearing in lists since she is such a cheap god so I would say getting in lower than $5 is pretty good for her at this point. I think she will see marginal play in the future.

Kiora was only in the Maze’s End list, which means that she doesn’t really have a home yet come rotation. Maybe something will pop up over the next few months. At $14, I don’t really see her going lower so you won’t be making a mistake buying in. I just don’t think she has that much room to grow unless another slow control deck like Maze’s End comes along.

Nissa and Garruk are tough to analyze at this point. Something tells me that somebody knows something about Nissa due to the recent price surge she has experienced over the last week. However, it could just be that a lot of casual players want her as soon as she comes out. Afterall her second +1 ability isn’t that great outside of a mono green deck. Based on these concerns I don’t think her current $35 price tag is warranted. Even Garruk, Caller of Beasts was only around $25-$30 at his peak and he suffered from some of the same issue (second activated ability only worked for green).

Garruk, Apex Predator can only go in those really controlling shells as a finisher from the looks of things. Even with all the ramp in Standard getting out a seven mana planeswalker is tough. Maybe it will be easier with the introduction of Khans but I don’t think it is going to pan out this way. Get rid of your copies for $25 now and pick them up later when they are cheaper.

Trader’s Edge

Twitter posts like these are exactly why you should have an account. Twitter in general provides valuable information to the Magic community and these posts especially can provide the right kind of value to the financial minded. The decklist pictures quickly give us an overview of the new Standard possibilities without each one of us having to do the leg work of putting a bunch of decks together. The hardest part is playtesting which will tell you which cards perform the best in their respective archetypes.

But at least we’re not fumbling around in the dark. At the very least, Tomoharu Saito’s decklists allow the community to have a vibrant discussion on the merits of each deck and which cards are the deck’s frontrunners. Which cards do you think will make the most impact on the upcoming Standard?

I’ll leave you with the notable uncommons that were found in the decks. I’m not one to speculate on uncommons (unless they are extremely undervalued) but these are the top uncommons that appeared in Tomoharu’s decks:

Stoke the Flames  (8)
Ajani’s Pridemate (4)
Altac Bloodseeker (4)
Erebos’s Emissary (4)
Nemesis of Mortals (4)
Spiteful Returned (4)
Sunblade Elf (4)
Wall of Mulch (4)
Dissolve (4)
Searing Blood (4)
Frenzied Goblin (3)
Drown in Sorrow (3)
Ulcerate (2)
Restock (2)

Jared is on vacation this week, so please enjoy this article of his originally from 12/23/13.

By: Jared Yost

Sometimes it feels like we are in the wild west of Magic: the Gathering when it comes to sudden price spikes and card buyouts that seem to affect the market on a weekly basis. It feels like every week I am hearing that this card or that card was bought out and the price has gone up 200%-400%. Just like a shootout, it seems as if the first person to draw their gun (or in this case, their wallet) and fire (click “add to cart”) is the winner. And it only seems to get worse as time goes on. 

Let’s ponder for a quick minute – who the heck is actually pulling the trigger on these calls like Disrupting Shoal and Phyrexian Obliterator (which even seemed to spike twice?) Is it individuals that have amassed enough ammunition (money) and have good enough aim (experience) to hit every single target faster than the rest of us? Are they the Billie the Kids and Jesse James of the Magic market? Is there a domino effect of casual speculators with more money than sense?

The answer is probably yes to both. As the popularity of Magic increases, it looks like the sky’s the limit for the prices on some of these cards when someone discovers that they are undercosted and acts quickly to drain the market. If you are one of these individuals, my hat is off to you. Congratulations. You have done your homework, discovered an undervalued asset, and have capitalized on that asset. I’m not sure if there is any advice I can give you except to avoid the trap of getting in on a card too late, which you’ve probably avoided in 95% of the cases (there is always the potential for the double spike, though it doesn’t happen often – Jace, the Mind Sculptor did it in Standard). Just remember to strike while the iron is hot: those Disrupting Shoals aren’t going to sell themselves.

But It’s not even Modern cards that are experiencing these price hikes. What about cards like Wheel and Deal and Forced Fruition? Nekusar hasn’t been out for long and isn’t even the flagship commander of the Mind Seize deck, so why did these random cards that only fit into a narrow strategy in a specific causal format go up in value? I might have an idea.

Those holding the bag of cards that spike and then quickly plummet are similar to the penny stock investor, who decided “investing” in penny stock assets would result in a great return. However, the asset in this case is not a random number on a roulette wheel or any single name in a list of penny stocks – the asset is actually something that all of us are emotionally invested in. The first reason that these spikes happen is because players and speculators are both emotionally invested in the game of Magic. 

Everyone that plays Magic is emotionally invested in the game to some degree. Otherwise, why play the game? There are literally thousands of other games that could be played instead, so what makes it so special? The answer is that playing the game is fun, the wonderful community is welcoming and friendly, the feeling of opening packs and sorting a collection can’t be beat, the feeling of chasing a collection and acquiring all of the particular cards you desire is amazing, the great feeling of putting a deck together and calling it your own is the best, and the support by the company that produces the game is fantastic. Without all of these factors, Magic would falter and slowly go away. It is stronger than ever now because all Magic players are able to get emotionally invested through all of these other aspects besides playing the game. There are hundreds of websites dedicated to Magic out there, whether they sell art related to the game (card alters), offer game accessories (dice, tokens, deckboxes, playmats, etc.), or are just reflecting on the community (Cardboard Crack). All of these factors help to cement good feelings in players’ minds about how sweet Magic is.

Right, so what does emotional investment have to do with price spikes? Well, when you get pretty emotional about something, it’s much harder for logic to factor into the equation. Do you want to buy those Disrupting Shoals at $10 because you think they’re cool and there is no way they could go down due to their awesomeness? If this is your train of thought, speculating might not be for you. Speculating requires a certain amount of cold logic and forethought that a lot players don’t want to apply to their favorite past time, which is supposed to be about fun.

Besides emotional investing, I believe another reason that these price spikes are happening is due to the rarity of the older cards compared to the newer ones (Wheel of Fortune anyone?). Back when Magic first came out, they had no idea how popular the game would be. They created the reserve list out of a fear of killing the game via reprints, and it seemed to work for a time. Because these cards can’t be reprinted, when a new card is released that synergizes or combos well with an old Reserve List card, that card can wind up spiking in value very fast. Even a rules change or unbanning could do this – Gaea’s Cradle and Time Spiral are examples of these cases respectively. With the Modern format Wizards can better control prices of newer cards, but older cards that are in Legacy and EDH are anyone’s guess. 

In addition to Reserved List cards that are never getting reprinted, cards that could also receive a reprint but have not gotten one yet are also targets for spikes. Specifically, cards in sets that are post-reserved but pre-Modern, like Masque’s (Rishadan Port), Invasion, Odyssey, and Onslaught – these blocks were printed in a time where the Magic community was only a fraction of what it is today. If a card from one of these sets is discovered to be very synergistic with a new card it, it will spike out of nowhere because the amount of copies that exist are marginal compared to the demand it will see from interacting well with a newer card. It is very hard to keep on top of all the potential combinations that exist without a good grasp on the community resources available to discover these interactions. So I will state that card rarity is always a factor in a spike, because even uncommons (Remand) can become grossly expensive without a reprint.

Just because because a card is rare or hard to find does not mean that its spike is warranted. Aluren would be a good example of this – it’s a card that has a legacy deck to its name and is a casual favorite that a lot of players remember having tons of fun with. It never sustained its price, though, because the deck failed to put up enough results compared to other currently existing legacy decks. Due to the lack of demand, it then dropped down close to the original price from which it spiked. In order to avoid buying high into potential scenarios like Aluren, you want to make sure you pick up the card before it has seen a massive increase in price, you want to make sure that it can fit into a deck that has proven results backing it up, you want to make sure that even if it isn’t tournament playable that it can be popular with casual and EDH players, and you finally want to make sure that it is from a set that had a relatively small print run compared to current sets (like the post-reserve list sets I mentioned above).

So in summary, the combination of emotional investing and card rarity are a recipe for a card spike. Whether the spike is real or whether it will ultimately become a bust can be hard to spot without extensive knowledge of the current tournament scene and correctly identifying the casual appeal of a card. With time comes experience, and I’m sure we’ve all made mistakes in the past in regard to cards and spikes – I certainly have. All we can do is to keep working at it and make sure that the characteristics of a card match up well with the reasons a card could spike. It can sure feel like the wild west at times with all of these card spikes, but realize that many of them can’t sustain those prices for very long and are mainly driven emotional investing and card rarity.

By: Jared Yost

Core Set History

As the years go on, we seem to expect more and more out of our core sets. The bar started with Baneslayer Angel when M10 was released. Its debut year in Standard was awe inspiring. I remember being at my local game store drafting M10 and cracking a Baneslayer Angel in a pack. Unfortunately, white was not to be my deck color and my draft went in a totally different direction. I only wound up going 2-2, which didn’t put me into the contention for any prize packs. Regardless, I wanted to get some value out of my mythic so I went up to the counter and wanted to know what I could get for it. “Yeah, we’ll give you $30 for that one” the guy says. I couldn’t believe it! Baneslayer went on to be a $50 card at its peak in Standard and was a significant force in the format.

Sadly, Wizards did not learn its lesson with Baneslayer Angel and instead decided to up the ante by releasing the infamous Titan cycle into Standard with the introduction of M11. Instead of just Baneslayer Angel, we now had to worry about Primeval Titan, Grave Titan, and/or Frost Titan, with occasionally Sun Titan and Inferno Titan making an appearance (how couldn’t they, the Titans are so much value!). The first three titans all saw prices upwards of $30 or more at their peaks (Prime Time being the most expensive at around $45 for most of its Standard life) while the other two hovered in the teens for their peaks. Standard was this time basically warped around these gigantic creatures – and it was even worse because Wizards reprinted them again in M12! We had to deal with these things two friggin years in a row. In my opinion it made Standard pretty stale.

Which is probably why they discontinued the Titan reprints in M13 and instead opted for Thundermaw Hellkite. Yes, finally red got some love! This was the next $45 Standard mythic and it was actually quite balanced considering. Sure, Thundermaw wrecked plenty of face but also remember that in this same format we had Thragtusk and Restoration Angel – the two-faced terror which I’m sure still haunts a few players nightmares. While this time around the mistake was a rare in Thragtusk, it still warped the format pretty badly albeit in a slightly different way than the titans.

Next came M14. Chandra, Pyromaster probably came the closest to being a $40 card but I don’t think it ever quite got there at least not on TCGPlayer. Similar to M13, another rare altered the course of the format. Mutavault is the first time a core set reprint (from the M{XX} sets) has made such an impact on Standard. I believe the intent here was to help Modern players out however I don’t think anyone got the memo that only Merfolk plays Mutavault in Modern. Theros and Return to Ravnica were not exactly tribal themed sets, so Mutavault couldn’t be that insane right? Well with the onset of Devotion it became quite clear that Mutavault was the card of choice to give the monocolored decks the advantage they needed to start becoming dominant.

M15 on the Horizon

Finally we arrive at the upcoming M15. Why did I just spend 500 words outlining past core sets? Because the most expensive rare or mythic in Standard has a good chance of coming from a core set. Wizards has been overpowering these core sets with at least one or two insanely good cards that will almost definitely affect the upcoming Standard. Since the introduction of new cards into a core set, it has become apparent that we need to pay extra close attention to these sets in order to stay ahead of the curve. Even reprints could significantly alter the format for another year.

Wizards brought back the big creature cycle of mythics to the core set but has nerfed it in a significant way. They’ve now replaced the Titan cycle with the Soul cycle which are a set of six avatars that represent the various planes in the most recent Magic mythos. They are all 6/6’s for six mana with an evergreen ability, which makes them similar to the Titans, however this time around you need to tap a bunch of mana to use their best abilities rather just have them come into play or attack. Even though a lot of people probably think this is rather weak, and lets face it we’ve been pretty spoiled with the Titans to not think so, I have a feeling that at least one or two of them will see Standard play. Whether it is significant or not has yet to be seen however the evidence in the past has shown that splashy mythics that see some play will be priced accordingly. Remember, the set release is a terrible time to pick up potential Standard staples so you should wait about a month or two after its release before picking up potential playables.

Perilous Vault is quite spicy. A new take on Nev’s Disk that exiles everything is pretty sweet. Could this be our new crazy Standard mythic? Or how about the new Nissa, Ajani, Jace, or Garruk? We’re getting a reprint of Chandra, Pyromaster and Liliana Vess so nothing new there since we already know the power level.

We’re also getting enemy Painlands and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth! An Urborg reprint is awesome for Commander players but why is Wizards only reprinting the enemy color painlands? Didn’t they just say not that long ago that they were intending to only print full cycles of lands in sets from now on after Innistrad? Wow, that has to be the quickest take back I’ve ever seen from them. It doesn’t bode well for fetchlands – those hoping to get Polluted Deltas on the cheap may be sadly disappointed when they only reprint the Zendikar ones. Keep an eye out for the painlands because even though they are only marginally good historically once they become Standard legal all bets are off. Players will utilize any land they can to get the best mana fixing, even if they have to play a bunch of Mana Confluences in addition to these painlands. Don’t think just because they were $1 before coming into Standard they will stay that low for long. At least one of them is going to spike at some point.

Phyrexian Revoker is making a comeback, which is cool and goes with the mythic Soul of New Phyrexia. This is also a new development since I had previously believed that cards which are very set specific would be fairly hard to reprint. Not that I think Spellskite is going to be thrown into a core set anytime soon but it still makes me more wary of going deep on something based on the notion that its flavor is too specific to see a reprint in a core set.

As usual, the core set is primed to shake things up. Wizards seems hellbent on proving that they are willing to make more and more drastic changes to the core sets as the years go on. First, it was upping the power level of creatures through the creation of powerful, yet cleanly designed, cards. Now it appears they have instead focused on adding unique new abilities and refining the core set to more align with the current mythos of Magic – instead of generic cards, they are now adding specific flavor to the core sets that pulls from recent and future sets. I’m excited to see how this core set pans out and I will be thinking hard about which cards are going to be the most influencing.