All posts by Ross Lennon

I've been gaming MtG finance since artifacts were brown. Longtime magic player and TO. Loving husband and father. Cube > Commander.
Accumulated Knowledge

PROTRADER: Vintage Set Reviews- Invasion Edition

Howdy! And welcome to… VINTAGE SET REVIEWS: INVASION!

Invasion is one of those sets/blocks that I have a personal fondness for, even though it predates my competitive involvement with Magic. On a larger scale, Invasion was a big hit for Wizards, coming off of two previous blocks (Urza’s and Masques, respectively) that did some serious damage to the game’s reputation capital. It was largely the same kind of effect the first Ravnica block had1, although I think Ravnica was a much cleaner and better designed set overall. This is also around the time where Magic was “famously” featured on ESPN2, a sort of Magic culture meme that has largely died out (along with other favorites like “mise tings”).

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Accumulated Knowledge

PROTRADER: The Fall

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What I want to talk about today falls more under the realm of Magic economics, not Magic finance. I want to explore a couple different concepts that may turn out to be farfetched, but have nonetheless grasped my attention. This is going to be largely theoretical at first, as there is a wide-range of stated positions even within the involved parties. Lastly, this is not an indictment (yet) of any political figure, organization or belief; although my personal views are probably somewhat apparent. My goal here is not to insult or inflame, merely to play out some scenarios that could have a tangible impact on Magic. I realize that in the grand scheme of things that a card game is not the top priority on everyone’s list, but perhaps you can apply the thinking to other aspects of your life. What I’m building towards is evergreen information, but the potential causes are in this case shaped by recent political events.

Make Dominaria Great Again!
Make Dominaria Great Again!

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expensive cards

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Accumulated Knowledge

PROTRADER: Technically Commander 16 Part 2

Okay, so this is going to TECHNICALLY be the second half of my CMDR review, but instead of just mercilessly roasting the remaining terrible cards, I want to do something productive with (most of) my time. So instead of saying what these cards AREN’T, we are going to go into the lab and talk about what we were looking for in the first place. Then we’ll do some quick hits or whatever.

So there is this feature in sports video games where you can create your own player. This is either an opportunity for you to insert yourself into the action, carefully calibrating your own strengths and weaknesses to get a true-to-life experience, or you can BECOME A LIVING GOD. It’s really got a lot to do with personal projection, I suppose. Anyways, we are going to take that concept and apply it to these supplementary products. Because Commander products (henceforth including things like Planechase, Archenemy, Conspiracy, etc) don’t allow new cards to enter Standard or Modern, their only real tournament constructed outlet is Legacy1. Now, even though Legacy is a very deep format, it’s possible to set some basic benchmarks. These were the things I was looking for, but we will mention a few other elements as well:

A very serious feature.
A very serious feature.
       

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expensive cards

ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.

Accumulated Knowledge

PROTRADER: Quick Hits, CMDR16 part 1

Today is another round of quick hits, since I don’t plan on doing a true Commander set review, and I didn’t want to do a Vintage Set Review. I still kinda feel like Kaladesh just came out (because it did), so I don’t want to keep inundating you will set analysis. I do want to talk about some of the new cards, but I’ll uh… try to keep it relatively uninformative.

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expensive cards

ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.