By: Jared Yost

This week I would like everyone to take the opportunity to check out the the MTGPrice 50 biggest gainers and losers of the week. I like to utilize this page in order to keep on top of weekly trends for Standard cards because Standard tends to be the most volatile format from week to week. By having an easy-to-reference list, you are able to clearly spot trends that you may otherwise miss just watching an official Wizard’s stream, Starcity live stream, or becoming occupied reading the countless other deck tech articles that exist.

Take a look at this list that was generated Friday 12/13/2013 of the week’s Top 15 losers in terms of price:

In the top 15 losers of the previous week, 13 out of the 15 are mythic rares. The other two cards in the list are Hero’s Downfall and Boros Reckoner. Hero’s Downfall is experiencing a price drop because more and more Theros packs are being cracked, so copies are entering the market every day. I will remember where Hero’s Downfall ultimately settles because it will be a good indicator for similar removal in the future. Since Wizards seems to be moving much of the good removal to the rare slots rather than uncommon, it will be important to know what to expect. Boros Reckoner is experiencing a shift downwards this week because it is seeing less and less play in Standard as the metagame moves away (at least for now) from red based devotion. Both blue and black devotion prevent Boros Reckoner from reaching his full potential (battling in the red zone.)

Outside of the two rares that made a guest appearance, I would like to draw your attention to a phenomenon I am calling “the mythic downgrade.” This event happens a few months after a set release, during which the mythics in Standard are currently being oversold and the market is in the process of readjustment (due to several factors, which I will elaborate on). With 13 out of the top 15 losers being mythic this week, it’s clear the mythic downgrade is in full swing.

Elspeth, Sun’s Champion

Elspeth has received a downgrade from the previous week mainly because she typically only appears as a single or double. Even though she appears in about 20% of the current Standard decks, she only averages slightly below two copies. With many lists only needing a single copy, there isn’t nearly as much demand to prop up her price, as we see in cards like Sphinx’s Revelation or Thassa.

I expect this trend to continue because she is prohibitively expensive mana-wise for a Planeswalker. The only other Planeswalker that costs six that is seeing play is Garruk, Caller of Beasts, and for green decks that high mana cost can be ameliorated alongside of Nykthos. U/W Control is not making crazy mana like that, and until it does I don’t see Elspeth appearing in quantities of 3 or 4 in decks any time soon.

Stormbreath Dragon

Alas, my favorite dragon in Standard is seeing a decline in price as well.  As opposed to Elspeth, Stormbreath Dragon regularly sees play as three or four copies in the same deck, so that isn’t our culprit. The reason that Stombreath Dragon is dropping (for now) is because of that pesky “protection from white” clause. Not that it’s a bad card, but like I mentioned above, black and blue right now are the colors to beat. Stormbreath Dragon’s pro white doesn’t do much against Gray Merchant triggers and a sea of elemental tokens, so until the metagame shifts to white being a dominant color again Stormbreath Dragon will continue to see only moderate amounts of play.

Xenagos, the Reveler

Ah, Xenagos – the Planeswalker spin on Gaea’s Cradle. In my opinion, Xenagos is so close to being good but is outshined by Garruk. Since Garruk is mono-green, he is much more efficient in devotion builds as he is so much easier to cast with all green mana from your Nykthos activation.  Xenagos has been dropping since the release of Theros because he doesn’t have a deck that really synergizes well with him, unlike Garruk. Similar to Elspeth, you don’t need many copies if you are playing him – two to three at the most. Making free Satyrs with haste is pretty awesome, but I think Garruk will need to rotate before Xenagos will really start to shine. The floor for Xenagos hasn’t approached yet and I would expect him to go lower as more Theros is released.

Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver

Ashiok has certainly fallen from the highs that she saw when Theros was first released:

Unfortunately, there just hasn’t been a good deck to fit her into except for Esper control which isn’t even seeing a lot of play right now – Ashiok is currently found in less than 5% of the field. Under the right circumstances Ashiok can be a real beating, but the popularity of the devotion decks has pushed her to fringe play. I would expect the price to continue to go down for a little while longer (since we currently have the blue/black scryland, and even this isn’t enough to make her see play) until a more viable control deck is able to exist in Standard.

Purphoros, God of the Forge

Purphoros was talked about last week on this blog, and I agree with the reason for the price drop – a God that has plenty of potential but no way to realize that potential yet. Continue to expect his price to go down until that potential is realized. On the more speculative side, I believe that Purphoros’ floor is not far away and once the price drops down so far as to make you scratch your head – that will be the time to start getting them. Clearly a casual and EDH all star, (and possibly the Gods being the next Eldrazi a few years from now?) in the long term you can’t go wrong.

Heliod, God of the Sun

I’m still reeling from the initial buy-in that I made for Heliod when Theros was first released. I was wrong about his role in the early Theros metagame, and the price has readjusted to show me the error of my ways. Heliod continues to drop from $8 and I expect it to bottom out around $3-$4 the way the price is trending.

However, new sets produce new opportunities and I think that within their Standard life each God will have his or her time to shine. Like Purphoros, Heliod can be a great casual target if you want to start picking them up when they get really low. Just don’t wait too long, because I still have high expectations that one day, hopefully one day, Heliod might be good…

Domri Rade
Voice of Resurgence

I’ve mentioned both of these mythics in some of my previous articles, but back then I portrayed these mythics in a positive light. Looks like I need to reevaluate my stance on these Standard staples.

For their respective decks, both Domri and Voice are played in droves – hardly do I see a list that plays fewer than four copies of either card. So, why are they going down in price? I believe the answer lies in the fact that those players that want to play Domri or Voice already have them (the cards have been out for far longer than the Theros mythics I mentioned,) and aren’t doing anything particularly new or exciting. Standard has been pretty stale lately, with little innovation of the full 75. Grand Prix Dallas-Fort Worth didn’t give us much good insight either because many players had to cancel their travel plans due to the humongous snowstorm that pummeled the area on the weekend of the tournament. This allowed some fairly crazy decks to get into the top 8 of the tournament such as this R/W Burn list.  So until more demand presents itself for these cards, either through 1. more players wanting to play Standard and the rise of the Magic player community or 2. the establishment of greener deck strategies, it could take a new set to be released before Domri or Voice are shaken up price wise.

All of the cards here have changed fewer than 1% since the previous week, so I will go through them all and see why they have been stagnant.

Chandra, Pyromaster – Chandra has stagnated in price for now because she currently sees play at most as a single or double, just like other Planeswalkers in the losers list. Until she starts putting up more impressive numbers, I don’t expect an increase in her price any time soon. She seems to have leveled off until a new strategy capitalizes on her.

Trostani, Selesnya’s Voice – Trostani has experienced several jumps and dips in price throughout her life in Standard, so her stagnation could signal the beginning of another price dip until a G/W populate strategy shows up again. A great target for the long term, but I wouldn’t expect a huge price jump soon unless G/W populate breaks out with a new set release.

Archangel of Thune – Archangel of Thune has tried to work in so many decks, but at the end of the day it is mainly a casual card which is the primary buoy of it’s price. I would expect Archangel to stay around $15 throughout the rest of its Standard life and increase in price if another strategy next year can fit it into the deck. Otherwise, stay away unless you absolutely must have them.

Obzedat, Ghost Council and Blood Baron of Vizkopa – Both of these Orzhov titans have seen their price increases happen already. Blood Baron went from $8 to his current $18 and Obzedat went from $7-$8 to his current $10 in the fall. Both have flat lined since then. For Obzedat, this is because there are only a few strategies he can fit into well and thus his price is mainly held up by casuals and the EDH crowd. Blood Baron is a tournament staple, so the reason his price hasn’t moved much in spite of that is because most everyone who wants them has them and often he isn’t played as a playset. In control shells, Blood Baron is typically played as a two-of and occasionally you’ll see three, barring B/W Control. As Standard plays out over the next year, I can definitely see Blood Baron possibly going up again. Obzedat, until a better deck opportunity presents itself, will continue to hang out around $10. There is definitely still time for Obzedat to pan out if he can find the right deck though.

That’s a wrap! Hopefully this article gives you some insight to the current prices of many mythics in Standard and why they seem to be dropping or stagnating in price. Also, check out the Top 50 list on MTGPrice regularly so that you won’t be behind the trends from week to week on all the best Standard cards. The list gives you an idea of cards headed in either direction, so keep watch!

This week I would like to delve into both the new cards and reprinted Commander 2013 cards to see the monetary potential of new commander staples, reprinted commanders, and reprinted commander staple cards that are found across a myriad of decks and archetypes. I will try to pick out cards that I feel are either undervalued or have dropped so much in price that now would be a good time to pick them up if you are so inclined. I’m going to avoid talking about True-Name Nemesis because it has been covered quite well already (see here, and here) and I don’t have much else to add to the conversation.

Toxic Deluge

Speaking of TNN, Toxic Deluge is a great answer to him! Outside of the TNN hype though, I think that Toxic Deluge has a lot more going for it than first meets the eye. Let’s compare it to similar spells that can be played in Legacy:

• Perish / Nature’s Ruin (Perish is strictly better due to the no regeneration clause)
• Virtue’s Ruin
• Pyroclasm
• Cave-In
• Terminus
• Supreme Verdict

I will argue that Toxic Deluge is better than all of these cards because:

• Its effect is stronger than similar cards (Perish, Nature’s Ruin, Virtue’s Ruin)

• It is cost efficient (cheaper than all other options for mass creature removal except Pyroclasm, Cave-In, or miracled Terminus)

• It gets around protection, particularly dealing with TNN and Sword of Feast and Famine

• -X/-X can deal with indestructible , regeneration, or other effects that are seen from time

I have a feeling that as creatures become more powerful and players are left looking for answers to cards like TNN or various protection effects, Toxic Deluge will become more and more popular. With popularity will come an increase in price. For $14 I believe that Toxic Deluge is undervalued.

Unexpectedly Absent

Though on the surface Unexpectedly Absent appears to be marginally good, this card has more going for it than others give it credit for. In Legacy, the option to remove any nonland permanent for a turn should not be underestimated. Combine this with the use of fetchlands and other shuffle effects that are found in the format and it can be a real beating if played at the right moment. Though Swords to Plowshares in my opinion is still a better card, Unexpectedly Absent does not give your opponent life back. This could be important in a deck like Death and Taxes where not only could you get rid of something later in the game, but you could use your mana denial resources to make it harder to play that spell. I’m not sure if $14 is the right call for this card but I will be watching its price as time goes on.

Baleful Strix

Baleful Strix has seen a large drop in price since its reprinting – it can currently be had for around $9 from many vendors. A very popular casual card with a small following in Legacy, Baleful Strix will continue to have a significant level of demand moving forward. I don’t think Baleful Strix is quite done dropping in price, since C13 will continue to be restocked going into the next year. His popularity will be enough reason to keep this as a prime target to watch moving forward. Once it gets down to the $5 price range it will be time to get in.

Primal Vigor

I would like to say that Primal Vigor is the next Doubling Season and that you should be actively picking them up, but Primal Vigor has two huge drawbacks against it.

One, it affects all players in the game. In the way that Caged Sun is slightly better than Gauntlet of Power (though Gauntlet does cost 1 less mana, but work with me), Primal Vigor is slightly worse than Doubling Season because it allows your opponents to take advantage of the effect before you can most of the time*.

*As an aside, I find it interesting that Wizards gave this enchantment a global effect since many of the new cards that they have been printing have moved away from this design philosophy and have instead focused upon only granting the abilities to things you control. A prime example of this are the M14 Slivers compared to “classic” Slivers from Time Spiral, Legions, or Tempest. Though I can understand in Primal Vigor’s case, since the card was in a multiplayer product and having cards that can take on a political role adds another element to the game.

Two, the second ability only utilizes +1/+1 counters rather than any type of counter. The fun part about playing Doubling Season is all the non-P/T counters: Planeswalker loyalty counters, charge counters, and many other types of counters. (Cool trivia fact – did you know that there are over 90 different types of counters that have been created for MTG cards over the years? Many of them are used only on a single card, but because of Doubling Season, casual players have the option to to expand their usefulness). Restricting Primal Vigor to just one counter type takes away the other cool options Doubling Season offers.

That being said, I still believe that Primal Vigor is undervalued right now and in the future I can see people wanting them in order to have a “cheaper” Doubling Season. Pick them up while they are still fairly cheap because I think this enchantment has room to grow.

Karmic Guide

Karmic Guide has never been cheaper! Now down to as low as $4 per copy, Guide has quite a bit of casual appeal. It might go a bit lower as more C13 is released, but I think Karmic Guide has almost reached the floor of its price. It can’t go too far though, so I recommend picking up your copies before C13 goes out of print and they become harder to find.

Sydri, Galvanic Genius

I think that Sydri is undervalued right now but that she has not reached her floor yet. I will compare this general to Animar, Soul of Elements. Currently sitting at around $7 and rising, Animar needs a deck to be built around him similar to Sydri, and is in a popular slice of the color pie for commander decks. At his low point, Animar was almost at bulk status for a long while but then this year he really started going up in price to match his popularity as a commander. Sydri will follow a similar path since she is Karn 2.0 with a little more flair that players will love to build around. I’m going to wait for her to reach her floor and then will trade for them.

Bane of Progress

Bane of Progress is probably one of the more powerful cards to be created for the C13 product line. By having an ETB ability that destroys all artifacts and enchantments, this creature can be abused very easily through reanimation, blinking, or other effects that get him into play cheaper. While he is amazing in Vintage, that format is not really a driver of prices and I will be looking at the casual crowds and possibly Legacy to start adopting Batman’s latest villain. I think that he is undervalued at $3 and should be picked up in trade whenever possible. It will be interesting to see how high this card can climb.

Other Specs

For a quick roundup, I think the following cards should also be watched going forward because they definitely have the potential to be popular casual cards and in addition may shakeup an eternal format from time to time:

Derevi, Empyrial Tactician
Ophiomancer
Marath, Will of the Wild
Serene Master
From the Ashes

Also, the following reprints are now super cheap and can be picked up for quite a discount. Until their next reprinting, I can only see these cards going up from their floors:

Strategic Planning
Sol Ring
Command Tower
Decree of Pain
Propaganda
Thraximundar
Sharuum the Hegemon

EDITOR’S NOTE:

We have also been “asked” to remove Starcity prices form our site. We have pulled the prices for now.

The reason for removing the prices was simply that it wasn’t worth the time and effort required to keep up with their constant attempts to hide the data and they were almost NEVER the lowest prices vendor so the added gain to our users was very minimal.

On average, Starcity was 12% more expensive than almost every other vendor for almost every other card we looked at. Since each vendor is selling an identical good, sending people to SCG seemed silly.

That being said, some people still want SCG prices for comparison. Since mtgprice.com has some funding, we’re fortunate to have some excellent IP and Internet lawyers available to us (www.dlapiper.com). Rough advice from them follows (note: this is NOT advice to anyone else, it’s just me paraphrasing our own personal legal situation):

1. Price information is simply a statement of facts. You cannot copyright it. This is a 1991 Supreme Court decision. Relevant case law is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural

In my opinion, for the C&D author to claim “such action may also constitute an infringement of SCG’s intellectual property rights” implies that one of the following statements is true:

a) They are a terrible lawyer that doesn’t understand basic case law.
b) They are lying.
c) They think the word “may” means “doesn’t in any way”.

2. Terms and Conditions on a website need to be affirmatively agreed to to be binding. If I added to the T&C on mtgprice.com “Anyone from starcitygames.com that visits this site owes me $1 Million USD per visit”, it would be irrelevant. (Even if they DID agree, it would be unconscionable but that’s besides the point). Importantly, we have been careful to never accept these terms and conditions (which is why we stopped offering buylist prices earlier this year).

3. The recent 3Taps/ Padmapper/ Craigslist ruling CAN make “circumvention” unlawful, however the exact definition of circumvention is hazy. The EFF has a nice writeup of this case here: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/08/court-rules-accessing-public-website-isnt-crime-hiding-your-ip-address-could-be

For us, we decided that the simplest possible thing to do would be to use Amazon Turk to crowdsource the pricing data. In other words, get real humans to connect to starcitygames.com and simply tell us how much they are charging for each card. Using Turk, we estimate that we could get every modern card’s price for less than $10/day. If there is demand for this, we will probably go this route since it both avoids all of the technological measures SCG are using and it’s 100% legal.

Please note: We have repeatedly offered Starcity free advertising for their data. We are also willing to pay directly for it, or to take any reasonable steps needed to limit any server load they may encounter.

Ultimately, we doubt this is about server load. We feel that Starcity simply don’t want people to be able to compare their prices as SCG prices are so frequently much more expensive than their competitors.

This is something we are willing to fight if it’s of benefit to our users. If you’d like to continue to see SCG prices on our site, please let me know at webmaster@mtgprice.com or post below.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE:

By: Jared Yost

How much power does Magic market information have when it comes directly from a market leader? To what extent are we willing to go to make sure that we are getting the best price for the cards that we trade or buy? To what extent are companies willing to go to protect their business data from being used in ways which they may not approve? A controversy has come to light surrounding these questions.

Recently, an interesting post has appeared on Reddit about Starcitygames (SCG) locking down the information on their website. A brief history of dawnglare is as follows. Reddit user dawnGlare created the website http://mtg.dawnglare.com, which is a price scraping tool used to display card prices for Magic cards. Some of you may remember the website ark42, which is what Dawnglare is based upon. It was the original Starcity price scraper that was used to quickly lookup sell prices, and was quite popular to boot. The owner of the ark42 website seemed to have a falling out with their local Magic community, which is explained in his monologue that has replaced the original website. I don’t think Starcity had any hand in ark42 shutting down like the current dawnglare situation. It operated for quite a while before it was shut down and it was a shame that such a wonderful contribution to the community is now dysfunctional because of a few bad apples.

Dawnglare is the replacement for the ark42 tool, with both of the websites utilizing similar, if not the same source code to display card names, prices, and mouse-over pictures of the cards. The tool has not been available too long; a few months at most. Like ark42, Dawnglare utilizes Starcity prices, and in addition have stated that their goal is to incorporate TCG mid prices for cards as well. The website is still functioning with only Starcity prices because it appears that the owner is seeking community input before they move forward with either improvements to the service or shutting it down.

This article is not providing input on whether or not they should keep the website, but rather analyzing the situation and providing commentary.

A summary about the case against Dawnglare:

• Starcity sent a cease and desist letter to the Dawnglare site admin, which means that they are utilizing legal representation in order to enforce their data policy (in other words, they aren’t playing around once they get lawyers involved.)

• Starcity quoted their website’s terms and conditions in the letter, which state that ANY type of information on starcitygames.com cannot be scraped programmatically

• This point is important, because information defined here also includes the sell prices of the cards, not only just the buylist prices. Many people on the Reddit post were confused on this point because Dawnglare reads only the sell price, not the buylist for Starcity, which specifically carries a set of terms.

• Starcitygames.com’s terms and conditions state that the user must agree to them

• This is interesting because there isn’t any agreement page that you need to go through before accessing the main website in order to see sell prices, unlike the buylist. However, though this may seem unintuitive, it could actually be the case that just using the website makes you subject to the Terms and Conditions. It could be argued either way.

• Starcity stated that dawnglare has committed a breach of contract with the website for its automatic scraping

• Staricty claimed that the sell price data on its website are valuable rights of the organization

• Starcity gave the Dawnglare site admin until December 2nd, the date of this article publication, to comply with their demands or face legal recourse

• Starcity mentioned that legal disputes can only be fought in a court in Roanoke, VA, where their physical store is located

• I’m not sure about state law in regards to the internet, though it would definitely be weird to go to court with this if the Dawnglare site admin is not located in VA

Let me say this now – I am only providing my opinion on this controversy based on the details outlined by Dawnglare on the original Reddit post. I have no idea if the Dawnglare site admin altered the letter Starcity sent them in any way nor do I have any way of knowing if Starcity will continue with their legal recourse for the Dawnglare price tool. I simply wish to start a conversation with players about how far organizations are willing to go to protect their data about real-time card prices, even if the data seems innocuous. Moving forward, this can also lead to implications about access to financial data of cards.

First, let me address one issue at hand – Starcity wishing to protect their data from a technological perspective. As an organization, especially one with a detailed terms of service expressly forbidding certain actions, they have a right to protect their business interests if they feel it will affect them in a negative way.

How can a price scraping tool affect Starcity negatively? A major concern is that external sites could cause a massive strain on server resources for Starcity, such that if several tools like Dawnglare are scraping their website for information it could hamper the website’s response speed. If any of you have used the Starcity deck database search or advanced card search, you can already see that their searches are somewhat slow. It can take quite a while to return a results from an advanced search. With so many users already searching the database, adding a scraping tool that is constantly pinging the database only stands to make things worse.

Of course, you could argue that Starcity should upgrade their servers and increase their bandwidth to the website to eliminate these problems, which would negate the effects from any tool that would also scrape the information (think Google, Amazon,or any other big name retailer – programs scrape their information all the time and it does affect the website’s speed). Unfortunately, Starcity is either not in the position to do this or is allocating their budget elsewhere, which means trying to cut bandwidth costs in other ways.

If Starcity uses legal recourse to cut server bandwidth overutilization rather than put the funds towards upgrading their server capacity, which could be argued to be the cornerstone of their business then there may be other motivating factors at work. This leads me to believe there are business considerations for going after tools like Dawnglare. I am not alone in this analysis of the cease and desist letter.

The other reading of the situation is that Starcity is not only protecting their data from a technological perspective, they are also protecting their data from a business perspective. This issue is centered around whether or not Starcity went too far in persecuting Dawnglare for creating a tool to scrape their prices. From a legal perspective, could you define any type of data on your website as “valuable rights of the organization”? Is the information considered public or private if anyone with an internet connection and the website address can access the information? Whether or not it is public is not up to me to determine, only someone with a better understanding of business and internet law can make that determination. When looking at the website though, anyone can access Starcity’s sell prices- all you need to do is go to starcitygames.com and and start typing.

Even this set of questions brings up another question – does this mean that you are already agreeing to Starcity’s terms of service just by executing searches against the information that they make available on their website? Since you don’t have to actively agree to anything in order to just search for the sell prices, this could definitely be contentious when arguing whether or not issuing a cease and desist is the right call.

After considering all the information as we have it, the next issue is whether or not a programmatic search through a tool like Dawnglare, even though it may execute hundreds or thousands of searches per minute, has the same rights and merits as a manual search executed by a single user. It could actually boil down to the rights of the user to access a particular amount of data on the website, measured in kilobytes, which is really the only difference between the tool and a normal website user. If the tool really is causing negative harm to Starcity (for example having them complete extra server maintenance due to all the extra searches from a single source) then there is an argument to taking down the tool – after all, DDOSing a website is a real thing and can wreak massive havoc on any web service.

From the community’s perspective on all this, Starcity does not appear to be operating any slower than usual, so there must be something going on behind the scenes that Starcity does in order to balance out the extra load from the scraping tools. Maybe not though. It could just be that they are trying to protect what they perceive as their business model.

Circling back to the cease and desist, the real issue is that Starcity is trying to stop application scraping of their website through third party applications and whether or not their outlined legal explanation (as per user dawnGlare on Reddit) is powerful enough to stop this type of behavior in the future. Since I a not a lawyer, I can’t give a grounded legal argument for continuing or discontinuing the scraping of information that is outside of the website’s terms of service, but it is interesting at this point in time that Starcity is cracking down on applications. I’m not even sure if Dawnglare is the first site they’ve contacted about this issue. There could be others out there who have decided to shutter their applications once they received the letter.

In addition, I think it is intriguing that Starcity is choosing to enforce their rights against someone who is not just scraping buylist prices, but sell prices as well. I’m not sure why the sell price in particular needs to locked down. In order to access buylist prices for Starcity you need to log into the website and agree to their terms by clicking a specific button. This can easily be linked to agreeing to their terms of service – the terms are on the prompt before the buylist. Whether or not this information should also be heavily protected behind this type of agreement can also be debated, since the buylist information can also technically be accessed by anyone because technically anyone can create an account with Starcity and access the buylist. Starcity most likely put that road block in place in order to easily shut down accounts that were created strictly for applications that intend to scrape buylist information.

The real root question here is why does Starcity care so much about people mining its sell price information? Do they have so much sway that if they change their sell prices it could possibly create a market-wide shift, ultimately interfering with their business practices? I will definitely be following this case in the future to see what happens, because the outcome could have major impacts on the way that people access card price information if other organizations follow suit.

The outcome of the Dawnglare website cease and desist notification will have implications for buylists and possibly more going forward. It might even spark conversation on the power that Starcity wields over the market and the lengths that they will go to protect their market position. It could also mean that in the future other stores may start locking down their website information, which further and further separates the movements of big box Magic stores from the community. I’m personally against restricting access to information, however with private organizations my opinions don’t matter and at the end of the day. It comes down to the fact that an organization should have a way to protect their data.

But how far is too far? I think that is question that everyone is trying to answer, in order to find a happy medium between Starcity operating as a business and other third-party tool creators wanting to use their data in order to create more valuable applications for the Magic community. After all, we all love this game – we all want to see it succeed both through Wizards and the stores that support them. I hope that both parties are able to resolve the dispute amicably and in a way that still benefits the Magic community at large.

By: Jared Yost

This week I would like to take a look at current trends in card prices and determine why spikes or gradual increases for particular cards are occurring.

Fast Movers

Splinter Twin

Splinter Twin exploded in value Friday. As of the time of this writing, it is currently sitting around $8 TCG Mid with many vendors selling at that price or higher. Before Friday, the card could easily be had for $4-$5. Players are starting to speculate on Splinter Twin because it is one of the core components of the aptly named Splinter Twin combo deck in Modern. At this point, is it still pure speculation or will the price hold?

If we look at the last Modern season, there was also a price spike on Splinter Twin. Once the Exarch/Twin deck made its debut in Modern, Splinter Twin immediately skyrocketed (like many other Modern staples, such as Karn and Fetchlands) and stayed at that price throughout most of the previous season. Since then it has slowly trickled back down to around $4. Now with the recent spike it is currently trending upwards again towards the previous highs of $10+ dollars.

It is entirely possible that without a banning Splinter Twin could see even higher prices than the previous Modern season because a reprint has yet to occur. I am going to keep a close eye on this card moving forward to see if continues to trend upwards.

Griselbrand

Let the rise begin! I’ve mentioned Griselbrand previously so I really hope you followed my advice and started picking them up before everyone else realized that he has true staying power, both in Modern and other eternal formats.

Even with all the hype, there could be potential downsides moving forward. Wizards can be very fickle with Modern as a format, since they can and will ban cards at any point. They also can and will print cards as needed to satisfy the increased demand. Even taking these two points into account, I still think Griselbrand is safe for a while from both of these potentialities. Expect this guy to reach Emrakul levels eventually; however you could also take advantage of this year’s Modern spike to cash out early if you felt so inclined.

Phyrexian Obliterator

Here we have a Modern card that has had a major price spike that currently isn’t a format staple. I believe that Phyrexian Obliterator is purely a speculative increase due to unrealized potential in Modern. This is because many people are trying to get Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx to work as well in Modern as it does in Standard. With cards like Phyrexian Obliterator, I can see why.

Other cards that could pump up the power in this deck include Garza’s Assasin, Gatekeeper of Malakir, Demigod of Revenge, Geralf’s Messenger, Phyrexian Arena, and even… yes, Gray Merchant of Asphodel, that common that stomped you in limited. Hmm, there might be something to this card after all. Phyrexian Obliterator already has an awesome casual following, which has buoyed the cards price at $10-$15 until recently. However, I can’t justify jumping in at this point because the price has already started to climb as high as $17 per copy. My advice would be to be to sell or trade any copies you are sitting on because this card is too risky for me at this point.

Slow but Steady Gainers

Ajani, Caller of the Pride

Did you know that Ajani has currently reached around $8 TCG mid and is sitting at $10 or higher retail? In the shadows, Ajani has been slowly ticking up in price since this summer when he was sitting around $4-$5 per copy.

Why the sudden uptick in price for this version of Ajani? He is only played in about 5% of the current standard decks and at an average of only two copies per deck.

My opinion are twofold – first, players are starting to brew with white aggro decks in Standard more and more, perhaps hoping that Born of the Gods will be able to make the archetype better. Second, Planeswalkers are popular casual cards that derive part of their price from their appeal to casual players.

Considering both these factors, it appears that Ajani is slowly climbing in price as the Standard tournament season is approaching. I’m not sure if Ajani will go up higher or maintain his price because right now it appears to be going up somewhat speculatively since he currently doesn’t have much of a home in many decks. However, this is certainly a card to watch out for moving forward because people are buying them whether for Standard or otherwise.

Mutavault

I believe that Mutavault will continue to be a slow, steady gainer and as we approach Standard season in January. It has been slowly gaining since the middle of October and has gone from around $14 per copy TCG mid to $22 per copy.

It is a popular manland that will continue to be a tournament staple as long as players push devotion with Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx. Even if this strategy falls out of favor, control players will want to play Mutavault because it gives of the utility it provides in the land slot. I would be surprised if Mutavault dropped in price during the Standard PTQ season.

Garruk, Caller of Beasts

Garruk was down to around $14 in the middle of October and has since gone up to around $22 per copy. He has followed a similar pattern to Mutavault, which is strange to me because he is a mythic rare. Either he should be sitting at around $25+ due to tournament playability or he should be around $10 like most of the other Planeswalkers in Standard.

In Garruk’s case, I think the majority of his price is due to the role he plays in the mono-green or R/G devotion strategies. Domri Rade seems to be played side by side with Garruk when he is paired with R/G, and with mono green devotion there is no better Planeswalker than Garruk. This slow but steady gainer should maintain his price throughout Standard season. He could spike if mono green devotion somehow becomes a Tier 1 deck but I think his price will still rise anyways because he is the most powerful green Planeswalker in Standard.

Sliver Legion

I’m not sure a lot of people realize this but Sliver Legion’s average price is around $35! Similar to Kozilek, Butcher of Truth, that is a ton of money for a purely casual card. Not that he has spiked recently – the card is a slow, steady gainer that yields results. Last year Sliver Legion was hovering around an average price of $25 and has slowly crept up from there.

Moving forward, I can’t see how this card will ever go down in price barring a mass reprint in a Commander product or other type of deck that Wizard’s releases. Definitely keep an eye out for this card at the trade tables, because if you can pick them up for your undesirables, or if you can trade them into Modern of Legacy eternal playables, you won’t go wrong.