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: Masterpiece Theater

2 Comments

Okay, so just a little programming note here at the top- today’s previously scheduled set review has been pushed back a week in light of recent events. You know exactly what I mean. Today is going to hinge on the announcement of Magic’s new Masterpiece Series, the various impacts it has had and will have moving forward, and then we will talk about the offerings in the Kaladesh edition in particular. My expectation right now is that future Masterpiece editions will not require an entire article, but we will see how that shakes out in a year from now.

 

Okay, so… wow. The Masterpiece Series. Huh.

This is probably the best way of verbalizing something I have been grasping at for a while, and I don’t think I quite got it myself until now. The market system that we have been operating has been changing over time, and I think it has reached the point where it is categorically different. The printed supply of new sets for the last year or so has seemed to sufficiently saturate the market, and the addition of Masterpiece sets seems to be intended, at least in part, to push sales. Per MaRo’s announcement on Monday:

Challenge #1: Keeping Standard Accessible

Standard is the most-played Constructed format. It’s designed as an entry point for players who wish to play Constructed Magic. Through market research and social media, we learned that many of the players who were interested in playing Standard felt it was something beyond their reach. We had to find ways to address this.

…

…we found that Zendikar Expeditions drove more players into the Battle for Zendikar block, which resulted in greater accessibility for all the non-Expeditions cards. Zendikar Expeditions actually made it easier to play Standard. Hmm, a way to address challenge #1.

I don’t want to pull too much from my original piece for this week, the Standard Set Review, but I think its important to realize that a major driver of the Masterpiece Series is pushing more people towards participation in Standard. It makes sense, given that Standard has the most impact on WotC, while serving as perhaps the best form of advertising when healthy. While depressing the value of singles makes for a player-friendly format, it only benefits dealers if it generates new or lapsed former players for the market. Even if we see an increase in new players, I’m not sure it will be immediate, nor do I think we can expect the kinds of huge gains that were happening over the last several years. It’s unlikely that another set will sell out the way RTR did, even with the added incentive of potentially opening a sweet StarGate Crucible of Worlds.

It kinda looks like a StarGate.
It kinda looks like a StarGate.

Enough people have talked about the short term effects (cheap Standard) by this point, so let’s go ahead and sim forward a few years.

5 YEARS OF MASTERPIECES: My guess here is that outside of a very few cards (design or development flaws, a la Collected Company), we are not going to see many new cards hold much value after rotating out of Standard. Masterpieces will slowly be “normalized” in the sense that focus will trend more towards a few inclusions rather than the appeal of opening one at all. I expect player growth to be plateauing by this point.

10 YEARS OF MASTERPIECES: At this point, it’s likely that the Masterpiece Series is suspended OR has evolved over time in ways that are difficult to predict. The Kaladesh Series only includes 5 cards from the set itself (the marquee “titans” of the block), but I suspect that that ratio of new cards to old cards may shift as the viable reprints winnow. WotC is likely going to have to swing harder as the years go on, just because pricing will likely become normalized. Preorders for Zendikar Expeditions were wild because it was new territory, in 2026 it’s likely that the financial algorithm is largely solved. Call me crazy, but it’s possible that Hasbro and WotC slowly start to peel back Reserve List restrictions and that in a theoretical distant future there are Masterpiece Underground Seas. This is assuming that player numbers REALLY suffer to a point where the game has contracted significantly.

We’ll see how all of that shakes out down the line, and I do think it will be worth examining the success of the series this time next year. For now, let’s talk about what we know of Kaladesh Inventions and what it tells us about Masterpiece philosophy:

  • This is an ‘Artifacts Only’ set.
  • There are 24 inclusions in Aether Revolt, 2 of which are Swords, and likely 5 of a new cycle.
  • WotC is not afraid to include constructed staples (Aether Vial) or otherwise unsupported mechanics (Metalcraft).
  • Flavor is a meaningful factor.

So we can expect very straightforward themes, at least in the short term, hinging on things that are both easy to boil down while staying in theme with the world. Kaladesh is an artifact-centric plane, so the Masterpieces are literally exhibits at the county fair or whatever. Some of the cards were re-flavored better than others (isn’t Brighthearth a place?), but mostly everything fits in well with “artifact only subset” and “Kaladesh County Fair Exhibit”. There can and will be split cycles, even though WotC probably messed up by putting two of the worst swords together by themselves in the second set.

I'm not saying that this is the worst sword, but it's not the best.
I’m not saying that this is the worst sword, but it’s not the best.

Just as Oath had some REALLY spicy Expedition lands compared to BFZs straightforward cycles, I expect to see some more aggressive printings there as a means of bolstering a smaller set. Aether Vial is an interesting choice because it is almost exclusively played in formats where it is at a 4x. Just as utility spells (like Char) were singled out as “mostly going to stay at rare” when mythics were announced, it is interesting to see that not all Masterpieces will just be EDH upgrades. This creates a situation where some Masterpieces are wanted in multiples, compared to things like Mind’s Eye, which will be wanted as individual copies. Expect much higher prices here as people compete to complete sets. Flavor and commitment to theme kept out things like Phyrexian Metamorph and Arcbound Ravager, but Metalcraft was not an issue. This means that as long as the textbox is the only restriction, it’s likely that cards that otherwise wouldn’t make the cut are able to fudge their way in.

I’m not sure its worth speculating on what may be in Aether Revolt (other than the two swords and some number of currently nonexistent cards), but is it fair to say that I expect it to be the “better” of the two?

Also, I don’t think it is going to be wise to try and bet on what will and what won’t be included in a set. My advice is to just avoid any big risks until this problem is solved.  Ironically, this means gravitating MORE towards Reserve List staples and smaller newer stuff with a higher sale velocity.

Let me know what you think about these, and your thoughts on the Masterpieces in general. We’ll talk about the REAL Kaladesh set starting next week, including this card which seems to have a rejected Paramore album cover as the artwork.

That's what you get when you let your heart win.
That’s what you get when you let your heart win.

Best,

Ross

PS- I’ve been on a big MST3K binge literally since the announcement of Servo tokens, and Club-MST3K.com has every episode for free with no commercials. This is my way of circulating the tapes in 2016.

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Accumulated Knowledge

PROTRADER: Champions of Kaladesh

Okay, so I’m going to say something that is going to sound a little extreme and “hot take”-sy, but hear me out, okay?

Kaladesh looks to me like another Kamigawa block.

This is not a slight. The Kamigawa block had a lot of issues, but the crux of a lot of them was that the block, from a development perspective, was extremely insular. Even though Spirits became a somewhat supported tribe1, things like Arcane, Samurai, and …Fox Offering (!) have yet to be seen again. Now, with regards to Standard, this does not mean that Kaladesh will not be able to have a robust impact- R&D has gotten MUCH better since CHK, so I trust them to take big swings on new blocks. This DOES mean that we are not likely to see Kaladesh mechanics have a wide impact on larger formats. What that means is going to be our focus for today, but I want to start with a couple crucial definitions that I just made up.

The Three Degrees of New Card Impact on Existing Cards/Decks:

The First Degree: Direct Support, or ‘More of a Thing’. The best example of what I’m talking about here is “tribes”. If you like to play Elves in Modern, then any new set featuring cards with elves on them is giving you new potential options. The other most common instance here is when WotC brings back an existing mechanic.

The Second Degree: Indirect Support, or ‘Similar/Related Things’. Okay, so think about Become Immense in Infect. Technically, Become Immense (or any other Giant Growth effect) is not an “Infect card”, but any new version of that type of effect is at least a consideration in Infect. This is where we are looking for related characteristics of effects, not literal uniformity. We get more second degree impact than first degree impact.

The Third Degree: Minimal Support, or ‘Standalone Things’. So this is where things get sketchy, just because most things at least interact with something. This is where we are going to plug in Energy (the new Kaladesh mechanic), because it is a fundamentally new form of resource management that has almost no relation to anything prior in Magic’s history2. Vehicles probably also fit in here, even though they are a new innovation on a long-existing card type. This is also where plane-specific tribes wind up, like the aforementioned foxes of Kamigawa, the Cephalid of Otaria, and the Gremlins of Kaladesh.

So I think that by just laying out those definitions I somewhat made the point about Kaladesh. I don’t expect Vehicles (and their associated mechanic ‘Crew’) or Energy to become evergreen staples in the Magic vocabulary, and they have little application in the world that they are entering into. The result, as it was in Kamigawa, will be that individually powerful cards will thrive outside of Standard only in instances that maximize their essential uniqueness (Gifts Ungiven, Kiki-Jiki, the Mirror Breaker). What’s nice for us on the finance side is that artifacts still play a major role on this plane, and cool and flavorful artifacts can have appeal in formats as disparate as Commander, Cube, and Vintage. Foils of Ceremonious Rejection, for example, could be very rewarding long-term holds in Vintage circles while simultaneously hitting both Tron and Eldrazi in Modern.

Good card is good.
Good card is good.

It’s possible that some cards involving Energy Counters could be playable in Commander, but expect them to be higher rarity and essentially standalone cards. Take, as a perfect (and potentially only) example, Aetherworks Marvel:

This doesn't take any work, which is all you want.
This doesn’t take any work, which is all you want.

Because this card is able to eventually produce the effect on its own, the Es essentially operate as better Charge Counters that don’t go away when the card is destroyed. If you are able to get it back into play again later (or make a copy), then it may actually start off ahead of schedule. The checklist here is going to break down as the following:

  • The card in question can make Energy counters on its own.
  • The card in question has a desirable effect independent of Energy Counters.
  • The card in question is unique enough to warrant play over existing options.

Aetherworks Marvel is probably best compared to Temporal Aperture, although it is able to function without any additional mana investment (although it is likely much slower). Because cards like Temporal Aperture are very few and far between, it’s likely that this is worth consideration, but be wary of something with much more mainstream comps.

I’m not going to do a “traditional” set review for Kaladesh, partially because of the reasons we outlined today, and partially because I think that WotC is printing enough product now that a card REALLY needs to be a hit in Standard to maintain a good mid-term value. So come back next week for my Standard-Centric Kaladesh Set Review, starting next week.

In the meantime, FOOTBALL IS BACK!!!!!!!!!!

DUUUUUUVAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLL,

Ross

1Although not really outside of UW, and that was only after Innistrad.

2I think you can technically proliferate Energy Counters, but let’s not be too nit-picky.

Accumulated Knowledge

PROTRADER: Reprinting Modern

1 Comment

Before we get too deep into today’s topic, I want to briefly touch on some of the more intellectually-scintillating and nuanced response I had immediately following yesterday’s “Announcement Day”:

EGYPT WORLD EGYPT WORLD EGYPT WORLD EGYPT WORLD EGYPT WORLD EGYPT WORLD EGYPT WORLD EGYPT WORLD EGYPT WORLD EGYPT WORLD EGYPT WORLD EGYPT WORLD EGYPT WORLD EGYPT WORLD EGYPT WORLD EGYPT WORLD EGYPT WORLD EGYPT WORLD EGYPT WORLD EGYPT WORLD EGYPT WORLD EGYPT WORLD EGYPT WORLD EGYPT WORLD EGYPT WORLD EGYPT WORLD EGYPT WORLD

Pictured: Egypt World
Pictured: Egypt World

I am really excited about Egypt World.

Coming off of a year of story-driven retread planes, it is exciting to have two extremely evocative and unique worlds that everyone will be exploring for the first time at the same time. I think one of the hidden traps for more enfranchised players going into a returning plane is that the focus goes largely towards things like “what reprints are we getting?”, “how will the draft format compare?”, and “what related mechanics could appear?”. I don’t know anything about Kaladesh or Amonkhet going into them, and that is such a cool feeling.

Also, from a flavor standpoint, WotC’s progression of “Scary Halloween world” into “Steampunk Indian World” into “Egypt World” makes me wonder if they are just going down a checklist of Gauntlet: Dark Legacy levels. This is in no way a complaint.

YOU HAVE FOUND A RUNESTONE!
YOU HAVE FOUND A RUNESTONE!

I could talk about this kind of stuff all day, but we really do have some other stuff to get to, and it’s jumping off of the ProTrader Forums supplement that went up last week. If you aren’t checking the forums, make sure to change that- and if you are somehow not a ProTrader, definitely start subscribing.

Last weekend was a triple Modern GP weekend, and the results are very promising. Three different archetypes won, and there were about twenty different decks represented in the combined Top 8s (Top 24?). From a broad player perspective, this is appealing in that it creates a sense of opportunity. Although it is often preferable to Spikes to know that there is one clear deck to beat, that creates a feeling of exclusivity to less dedicated players that drives them away from participating in events. If Modern was JUST Burn or JUST Infect1, the interest in the format for players who don’t own the Burn or Infect decks and/or who are not confident in their ability to beat them will dissipate. If a wide variety of players feel like they can play Modern without being laughed out of the room, then more people will be inclined to play Modern.

On the finance side, we want as many people playing Modern as the room can hold, ESPECIALLY the ones playing more fringe/casual decks. WotC’s commitment to ramping up supplemental products and reprints is going to put an end to the “Wild West” phase of Modern’s life cycle within a couple of years- don’t expect the days of wild price spikes and buyouts to last forever2. While I doubt Liliana of the Veil and Tarmogoyf will ever be “cheap”, I do think that a significant amount of the format will become more accessible to a larger percentage of players. If Modern is a format where most of the cards are $8-$20, with a few $50-100 cards, then I think we see a format with more churn in terms of singles sales. This is good in the sense that people will be more likely to experiment and build multiple decks, rather than struggle to trade up into one list and then sit on it. A higher transaction rate is probably better for stores than a high singles rate, just because it gives more opportunities to build on those transactions (If one player spends $100 on singles and you upsell them on sleeves or packs, you’ve added $X to that one sale. If ten players spend $10 on singles, you are adding $X to ten sales!).

The exceptions in a new, “fixed” Modern card economy are going to be the true development outliers. Now, this exercise is going to be imperfect, but let’s look at some of the types of things that will be harder to get reprinted.

  • Iconic Planeswalkers: Magic has really recommitted to story in the last year, and so there are serious concessions made in both Standard sets AND supplements towards storytelling. We are no longer in the era of “just print the Lorwyn Five3 again”, and returning characters are almost 100% likely to just receive a new “form”. There are only a handful of planeswalkers that are Modern viable currently (an incomplete list includes: Elspeth, Knight Errant, Liliana of the Veil, Domri Rade, and uhhh… Ajani Vengeant?), and the only realistic pipeline for them moving forward is a [FORMAT] Masters installment. If you can think of any good Planeswalkers Post-Avacyn Restored, you have at least two years before a potential reprint. If you like an “under the radar” target here, be advised that the card needs to be played in enough numbers and high-profile venues to raise its visibility- not just spike your local events.

    Bet you didn't expect to see him today.
    Bet you didn’t expect to see him today.
  • Double-Faced Cards: These need to be printed in sets where there is a sufficient amount of design space and reason to incur additional production costs. The interesting nuance here is that currently a majority of all DFCs are too heavily-flavored to be dropped in any future world. Magic’s history makes it pretty clear that werewolves are pretty rare outside of Innistrad, and the five Origins planeswalkers are going to be almost impossible to make again. I can’t think of many appealing targets here for Modern outside of Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy, who could realistically not be printed for another several years (Modern Masters 2021? 2023?). If there is something you see here that you really like, go for it.

    Free money.
    Free money.
  • Development No-Nos: If you could go back in time thirteen or so years and tell a Red Deck player that someday Circle of Protection: Red would essentially be scoured from the face of the earth, they would probably kiss you on the mouth. If you told them that the price would be losing Stone Rain? Well, I don’t know how I would handle that kind of news. Anyways, the point is that the shifting scale of what is acceptable to development is something that we discuss a lot because it is so critically important. In the case of things like Circles of Protection, we have enough disgusting looking white-bordered copies to keep people happy for a long time. A lot of these are going to be at lower rarities, and therefore easy to stuff into Modern Masters editions in high quantities, but that is going to be the only real pipeline. Ask yourself when you see a card: “would WotC honestly print this again?”- make sure to try and weight your answer more often towards “no”.

    Disgusting.
    Disgusting.
  • Flavor Orphans: These are things like Mishra’s Bauble, Karplusan Forest, Gaddock Teeg4, and anything involving a specific world’s reference (Merrow, Boros, etc). Magic has promised to revisit worlds more often, but as we learned with Innistrad, that does not always translate into more straight-forward reprints. The best example of the opposite here are the “Ravnica” shocklands- all appropriately named to be able to appear on any world. While this happens a lot with lands, it hasn’t taken over in the spells department, which means there is more room to move in on there.

    Even if we return to Dominaria, this won't be there.
    Even if we return to Dominaria, this won’t be there.

Did I miss any major categories? Let me know. To close, here’s the Modern list I’m playing in an upcoming SCG Open. Special thanks to Carlos Sousa for helping me get the last missing cards.

PROTRADER ZOO

4 Goblin Guide

4 Experiment One

4 Kird Ape

4 Wild Nacatl

2 Vexing Devil

1 Goblin Bushwhacker

1 Dryad Arbor

4 Burning-Tree Emissary

3 Flinthoof Boar

4 Relentless Bushwhacker

2 Ghor-Clan Rampager

4 Lightning Bolt

4 Atarka’s Command

2 Mutagenic Growth

4 Winswept Heath

4 Wooded Foothills

2 Stomping Ground

2 Sacred Foundry

2 Copperline Gorge

2 Mountain

1 Temple Garden

No Sideboard yet

If you’re looking for a deck that leaves you with plenty of time to cruise vendor booths and still maybe win the actual tournament, give it a try!

Best,

Ross

1I have said in the past that Modern IS essentially just Burn and Infect, but more on that later.

2Except for formats where the Reserve List is still a factor. All of those cards will spike eventually.

3Not to be confused with the Greendale Seven.

4Really, pretty much every Legendary creature fits in the same category as planeswalkers, although they have the additional benefit of maybe sneaking into a Commander product?

Accumulated Knowledge

PROTRADER: A Game of Crowns, Part II

So my Conspiracy “set review” is going to be something a little bit different, just because the set itself is very unique. We are going to center the discussion not around individual cards, but the dividing line in the set between constructed-focused cards and group-play focused. Commander is a set that straddles this dividing line from a format perspective, just as Show and Tell does from an individual card perspective, but I think you’ll understand once we get started.

Let’s start with why this card is “bad”:

en_RfLLcp8FCz

Kaya operates on a functional axis that is very different than any form of constructed 1v1 Magic. Playing Kaya is a means of residual card value (in the traditional sense of “card advantage”, which is more accurately “card economy”), rather than a means of simply “this card is a threat to win the game”. Dividing Magic cards into two camps (“Threats”, meaning things that will kill people, and “answers”, which negate threats) leaves a very large undefined portion of cards (think Rampant Growth). These remaining cards are best classified as “materiel”, the resources gained or developed to accomplish the task at hand.

In traditional constructed formats, materiel is prioritized based on immediacy and efficiency- Brainstorm is not better than a Braingeyser for 7 in a vacuum, but the former is a Legacy staple. This is because materiel serves only in the deployment of similarly efficient threats. Put another way- Tournament Magic is about spending resources efficiently, whereas Commander (and associated forms of group Magic) are simply about acquiring more resources1. Kaya is going to draw you a card on two of your next three turns (and also force your opponents to discard, which is probably just so they will actually bother to attack her), and that will essentially be a loop until she is removed or the game ends. Over nine turns, she will draw you up to six cards, which is really impressive. In Legacy, she would likely draw you a card, and force your opponent to discard two cards (one from her ability and the Lightning Bolt that kills her). Tournament Magic compresses the number of turns in a game, where group Magic (by nature of higher life totals, higher converted mana costs, and the intrinsic haze of group game politics) has more turns. Kaya, by virtue of being a card that scales in quality with the amount of turns in a game, is better in formats that are not tournament sanctioned2.

The financial impact here is an interesting wrinkle. Although Commander is not the only multiplayer format, it is currently the de facto multiplayer format. If future generations come to appreciate things like Emperor, then the following rationale may change, but as is we are going to see most of Kaya’s “demand” be in the form of single copies. If a playset of a card can meet the demand of four players rather than one, then the supply can very quickly meet and outstrip demand.

In the case of conspiracies (the card type) and other draft-reliant cards, the overall demand for these is so low that it is hard to see any of them becoming more than curiosities long term.

With all that out of the way, let’s look at what Conspiracy 2 has worth mentioning:

  • Show and Tell/Berserk: Thanks to everyone that pointed out that CNS2 WILL be sold in big box stores AND printed to demand. All of that leads me to conclude that these will be the lodestars for the price of this set as a whole. I am not sure if there can be too many copy of either of these cards, just because Berserk is really the most important card to bridge Modern Infect into Legacy, and because Show and Tell does something in every type of format. Honestly, if everyone had a set of Show and Tells, the checks and balances in the game would correct themselves (and more people would play that angel from Guildpact!). I have worries with too much Infect skewing the health of Legacy, but strangely I don’t think Show and Tell could do that.
  • Sanctum Prelate: This is probably intended to be a constructed card, but it’s not quite Chalice of the Void. In the grand ouvre of white hate bears, this only feels mythic in that it’s not cleanly flavorful. It also only shuts down non-creature spells, making it risky to play maindeck. I guess you name “four”? I honestly don’t know- it’s got to be either that or “two”. This card seems over-hyped and going into a bad offensive scheme; making Sanctum Prelate 2016 RG3.
  • Recruiter of the Guard: This is interesting in a theoretical sense. Is Aluren a really good deck that was underrepresented due to Imperial Recruiter? Or was it a deck that is only decent, but had a quantifiable ADVANTAGE by being so scarce that people never prepared for it? Aluren has had a long reputation in the finance community for being a card/deck that could never really maintain it’s price increases because Imperial Recruiter throttled the amount of potential players. It’s possible that this new Recruiter (which can’t do everything its red cousin can- Painter’s Servant3, for one) creates a brief surge in Aluren decks that then gets normalized by consistent exposure, thereby “solving” the Aluren question posed at the beginning. My bet is that the Aluren deck is good, not great, and people knowing when to time their Abrupt Decays will largely end its time in the sun. They still just have to kill the harpy, right?
  • Followed Footsteps: Another great example of what I was talking about with Kaya. This card is bulk, though.
  • Forgotten Ancient: I helped design this card! Technically.
  • Inquisition of Kozilek: Make no mistake, this card is going to have to claw its way back up to $10, but black is so good in Modern that this will still be the third most expensive card in the set.
  • Burgeoning/Desertion/Phyrexian Arena: Good cards that are not constructed contributors anymore, so their price drops will seem harsh. New Arena art is sweet.
Koth is alive!
Koth is alive!
  • Burning Wish: Better than the three cards listed above, but really only good in one already expensive deck.
  • Stunt Double: Anywhere that you were playing Clone, you are now playing this. Unless your Clone is Alpha, Beta, or Onslaught JP foil.
  • There are a lot of really crappy rares in this set.
  • Serum Visions: Trade these for a pack with anyone who will let you. At uncommon, these are likely to sit below $3 for a long while. This card was really only expensive because it was so (relatively) scarce- the blue decks have so many other expensive cards that this won’t suddenly lead people to build U/x control decks in Modern.
  • Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast: This seems like a definite include in most cubes, especially Powered ones, but I’m not as sure if it is able to slot into Vintage as cleanly as Dack Fayden did. The +1 isn’t great, and the ultimate is largely just a “win more”. This could easily be the most expensive foil in the set, even if it ultimately underwhelms in cube and Vintage.
  • I really looked for a card that might be Legacy or Vintage playable that contains the word “monarch” in the rules text, but it seems like everything that fits is priced too conservatively. That’s unfortunate, because there are a few matchups in Legacy where there is so little creature combat that it could easily snowball games in your favor. Maybe that’s why? Also, Goad is essentially blank space.
  • regicide

That’s all for today! Also, make sure to check out NPR One “The Next Wave” in the ProTrader forums. Let’s say it’s required reading for next week.

Best,

Ross

1Aaron Forsythe has before said something very similar, and I’m not going to say that I came up with this independently.

2I will always and forever exclude Commander pods as actual “tournaments”- they are more accurately WotC-endorsed ways of meeting new friends.

3Painted Stone- the Tennessee Titans of Legacy decks (because it is terrible and I hate it).