A few weeks back, I openly pondered whether Eternal Masters would be able to serve as a better reprint vehicle than something like Commander or Conspiracy- each set prioritizing what makes it unique, rather than trying to fit “staples” of each format into three sets. While we haven’t seen what the Conspiracy or Commander offerings will look like yet, it’s fair to say that EMA has quite a few cards in it that are not strictly masters of eternal formats. We are also going to discuss the distribution issues surrounding this set, and how it might be best to approach acquisition early and in the long term.
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So we are still waiting on some spoilers to roll in, and I’m sure that there will be a few more winners and losers worth discussing once we have the full 249 revealed. I’m confident that we have enough so far that I can make a full length article out of it, and that makes me very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very *checks word count* very very very very very very… very happy.
WINNER: MERFOLK! Merfolk was actually the first big winner with this set, because the first two cards spoiled (Force of Will and Wasteland) are THE financial gatekeepers to playing this deck in Legacy. Merfolk is not the best deck in Legacy, but only because there isn’t a best deck in Legacy. Merfolk is a strong, linear archetype that doesn’t require Alpha duals, is able to win large tournaments, and largely comprised of Modern cards. The difference between ‘optimized’ and ‘budget’ lists has always been the inclusion of Wasteland and Force of Will (moreso the latter than the former due to the need for UU consistently), but any permutation seems to have its advocates. Merfolk was one of the more popular decks at the beginning of the Legacy boom a few years back, and it has only gotten better tools since (Master of the Pearl Trident is much better than Coralhelm Commander). Daze is another big piece for the deck, although Wasteland, Mutavault AND Cavern of Souls probably encourage shaving copies down. Fish just won a Modern GP, so its possible that there are people scrambling to build this for that lesser format, but know that this is a known player in Legacy, and probably one of the strongest decks that is not difficult to cobble together. I expect representation to be high for the next year or so, or however long it takes for EMA to totally dry up.
Legacy events will be like Jimmy Buffett concerts- fins to the left, fins to the right.
LOSERS: THE PEOPLE GETTING HYMNED IN EMA LIMITED! Oof, good luck. There’s a reason why people still stand by the old adage of “Hymn, Hymn, I win”. And now it looks like they have Sinkhole to back it up! EMA block constructed looks like one of the most fun formats, maybe that should be the new Legacy? I’m in if y’all are.
WINNER: DREDGE! So Dredge itself is not an archetype in EMA, but Ichorid, Cabal Therapy, and some lesser/formerly played pieces (Chrome Mox, Entomb) are all getting reprinted. Expect Golgari Grave-Troll to continue disappearing off shelves (as we discussed here previously!) and keep your eyes peeled for that Izzet v Golgari box.
LOSERS: EVERYONE BUT DREDGE! Look, I am the biggest supporter of Life From the Loam that there is, but I’m not going to call myself a fan of the Dredge deck. I don’t think we will ever see this archetype hit quite the same saturation numbers as Merfolk (because it is harder to play and easier to hate), but I do worry that on those weekends where it’s Dredge’s tournament to lose that we will see more than the one player that ran hot to get to Top 8. If there is ever a Legacy Top 8 with three or more Dredge lists, the world will become a foul and miserable place.
“But Loam’s freedom came at a price – him.”
WINNERS: POPULAR CARDS WITH LOW SUPPLY: A lot of the cards that we are getting reprinted come from Magic’s very distant past, and are therefore bound by the scarcity issues that come with wanting something that hasn’t been made in nearly twenty years. This also includes more recent, but otherwise limited release cards such as Shardless Agent. Having new life entering the market is going to allow people more opportunity to snag what they want, while simultaneously buoying price on high demand in the short term. It is still possible that many of these cards increase in price when all is said and done, which I think we now all know as the “Tarmogoyf Principle”. The interesting thing is going to see how it plays out across rarity and format (Legacy vs Vintage). Sinkhole is a popular card in the Mono Black decks that lots of new Legacy players gravitate towards. Even though the card was originally a COMMON, it has since been (perhaps rightly) upgraded to rare. The more Sinkholes there are, the more people will sleeve up Dark Rituals, Hymns, and whatever the 2016 version of Phyrexian Negator is. Water finds its level.
Prices on cards you and everybody else like will be in outer space in two years. Buy now!
LOSERS: NARROW CARDS WITH LOW SUPPLY! Mana Crypt at Mythic means that we won’t see so many that supply skyrockets, but this is a card only played as a 1x in Vintage (and possibly in Commander? Is it banned there also?)- how much demand is there? Mana Crypt and an Island is still a turn 1 Tinker, which is a good opening turn in Vintage, but how many people will willingly start to play without Power? Water finds its level, and I think that cards like Crypt that have been high because there are so few of them will drop when supply tiptoes past demand. Say we (the royal ‘we’) get 10,000 new Mana Crypts (a number that I totally made up)- are 10,000 people one Mana Crypt away from playing Vintage? Maybe a few are, but the rest of those are going to get sloshed around vendor tables for a while.
WINNERS: ART LOVERS! This may be the most aesthetically pleasing set in Magic’s history. WotC commissioned a very high percentage of new pieces for this set (partially, I assume, because they had lost the rights to many older artworks1), and they are all stunning. The new Winter Orb is probably my personal favorite, just because it captures the eerieness that the card has always had, while simultaneously looking like an album cover for some sort of sweet symphonic metal band.
“WINTER ORB”, the new album by MYTHRIL PROPHECY.
LOSERS: ANYONE WHO OPENS A BRAGO! I can handle a lot, and I didn’t mind that a lot of cards got rarity upshifts due to Limited, but seeing THIS card in THIS set really irked me. Blue White blink could be the best draft deck in the format, and I’m still going to be miserable taking this card. It’s a good thing he’s already dead, because I’d kill him myself.
WINNER: ANYONE WHO DRAFTS BLACK! Windmill slam that Braids, even if the foil is good. This color is insanely deep at the middle rarities, and has some pretty strong commons also.
LOSER: ME, FOR CALLING BERSERK! Wow, this was a real shocker. I thought Berserk was as good as in, and it looks like its not. This just makes the call for Fish decks look even better, as trying to respect an optimal Infect list requires some resource commitment, and now they don’t have to do as much. Buy your Lords of Atlantis!
WINNERS: PAUPER PLAYERS! Now, Pauper players are already awesome, super-smart, and overall great people, but they got some major rewards with EMA. There are going to be some commons in this set with extremely high foil multipliers (I’m looking at you, Man-O-War!), even though they aren’t “traditional” staples. Let’s close out today with a list of foil targets, prioritizing high multipliers and low visibility.
Yavimaya Enchantress: First time at common, basically an archetype unto herself (and GW Enchantments is already kind of a thing in Pauper!)
Nimble Mongoose: Sweet art, foils are currently insane- this is going to be respectably expensive.
Emperor Crocodile: Once a rare, now a common. This is more of a foil spec, but definitely a long-shot. Maybe one of the green stompy decks wants this?
Duplicant: Okay, not a common, but Duplicant has only had (compared to today’s standard) low printings, so foils always garner a high margin. This art is not the worst that the card has had, and the original is not necessarily iconic. I don’t this printing will cause foils or non-foils to bottom out, but they will briefly be cheaper.
Mistral Charger/Elite Vanguard: There are a lot of people excited about these? I don’t know how good either one is, but I wanted to pass the word along.
Rally the Peasants: This was an uncommon before, right? Makes the WR decks a lot better if it was.
Swords to Plowshares: Not too many opportunities to get this card in foil, so always take the chance when you can.
Peregrine Drake: Cloud of Faeries was banned in Pauper, and I think this was only ever an uncommon, so maybe it makes that deck better? Tough call, because the curve was much lower originally.
Man-O’-War: Still played in a large percentage of cubes, never previously available in foil. Make up a price, and someone will probably pay it.
Innocent Blood: Second time this card has been available in foil, and it’s a VERY popular card.
Night’s Whisper: First time that this art has been available in foil, and it’s also the first time the card has been printed at common.
Prowling Pangolin: Originally an uncommon, this could sneak its way into some of the black pauper decks.
Baleful Strix: Has this card ever been available in foil? I don’t think it has.
Beetleback Chief: I know this card was never available in foil, because I would own 100 of them.
Crater Hellion: Never before available in foil.
That’s it for now, have fun poring through EMA, and I’ll see you next week!
THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN UPDATED TO REFLECT NEW SPOILED CARDS! Scroll to the bottom! Most recent update: Wednesday Morning.
Okay, okay, so today was supposed to be the continuation on analytics, and in truth, I got that piece pretty far along before I decided to switch gears. That article is still going to happen, but something happened this week, and time is really of the essence here, so the analytics piece got bumped.
These were the five cards of the week on DailyMTG this week, billed as an homage to cards that were once banned in Legacy, but have since been unbanned. It was stated that this was in honor of Eternal Masters, although previews do not start until the coming Monday (so you see why we need to discuss this now!). Of those five cards, we have a pretty wide range of reprintability, and we are going to use each of them to explore the possibilities of the upcoming release. There is going to be a slow roll-out of the set, so I plan on updating this article over the course of Week 1 of spoilers (I assume we will have two weeks total). Make sure to check back each day next week! Okay, so I listed the cards up top in the order WotC posted them in, but I’m going to go in my own order now:
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Going with a bunch of small topics today, rather than one big one. You know the drill by now.
ANALYTICS VS PERCEPTION: One of the biggest differences between Magic and other sports (YES, I SAID IT JOCKS. COME AT ME.) is that Magic has a fear of analytics. This is not a new phenomenon; WotC actively tried to obscure information as early as Alpha, putting an Island on the rare sheet and not publicly disclosing set lists or rarities. Currently, Wizards is throttling results coming from Magic Online as a means of slowing the solution of constructed formats (that we are also in a downturn in large paper events is coincidental, but adds to the issue). Sports, on the other hand, is experiencing a renaissance of sorts based on analytics-driven content and the ubiquity of fantasy sports.
Fantasy sports WOULD be cooler if Monster Manuals were involved.
The major difference, of course, is the pieces that are used to play the game. Professional athletes are playing mostly-solved games (“score more points!”), with differences in strategy and philosophy that are largely just nuance compared to the classic match-up of Red Deck Wins versus Blue-White Control. There is also a large industry built on the generation, analysis, and applications of the statistics generated by games played, both internally and among the public. In the case of Magic, the crunching of those types of numbers is believed to have a teleological outcome of winnowing down the viability of various archetypes until the format in question is “solved” (either in the case of there being only one “REAL” deck, or there being an equally unfavorable ‘Rock-Paper-Scissors’ scenario). Also, whereas sports teams and leagues are selling the product on the field, Wizards is more accurately selling the players. It’s in WotC’s best interest for you to think that there are lots of good cards available, and know nebulously that some are better than others, but once there is a clear best, it diminishes sales, attendance, and interest (or so they say).
What is interesting to me right now is what fills the void in this circumstance. Esper Dragons had a Top 8 spot in the Pro Tour, and just won the GP in Canada. Sounds like a good deck, right? Except that those two results are actually outliers in the broader context- of ten Esper Dragons players at the PT, the Top 8 deck was the only one to even make Day Two. Similarly, the Esper Dragons decks that didn’t make the Top 8 in Toronto did terribly. The perception that this deck is good, heck even just playable, is backed up by perceived results and simultaneously refuted by analytics.
Is Dragonlord Ojutai elite?
Those of you who remember Ghost Dad1 from Ravnica standard will see the correlation- a deck that was over-represented relative to both its quality and power level (even in relation to similar decks such as Hand in Hand). Of course, Magic’s community is much more connected and communicative than it was back then, so these incongruencies are likely to be solved, but it is an interesting quirk to the current system.
Let me know what you think about this- is Esper Dragons just bad, or is it yet to be optimized? How much should WotC allow in terms of information that can be mined for data? Is it better or worse for the game?
DREDGING UP THE PAST: Today is the absolute last chance to buy in on Golgari Grave-Troll, Bloodghast, and any of those other Modern staples if you haven’t already. I’m not sure that this is one of the best decks in the format yet (more on that later), but when Dredge is good it is GOOD.
Here is your real target right now- Duel Decks: Izzet vs Golgari.
Duel Decks: Overrated Guild vs Underrated Guild
Check and see if your store has any of these left floating around (this is not the one with Remand, so your odds are better of stumbling across them). This box has Life From the Loam, Isochron Scepter, Eternal Witness, Golgari Grave-Troll, Golgari Thug, a FOIL Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind, as well as a bunch of cheap but playable in casual rares like Doomgape and Gleancrawler. Buying these at $20 is a steal, considering that the Loam and GGT are about to put you even already. Golgari Thug is often a 4x in Dredge, and I’m pretty sure you get two of them. There are even Pauper staples in here!
Sadly the only supplemental product with a Bloodghast in it also had Verdant Catacombs, so you probably won’t find any of those anywhere in the wild (if you do, look for Rat’s Nest also).
Some of these Dredge decks appear to also be playing Prized Amalgam, but that is probably going to be one of the last things to tick up as there are no other real points of demand. It also doesn’t seem like the deck NEEDS that card to succeed, so it could possibly be cut (the deck doesn’t need a threshold of black creatures since we don’t have access to Ichorid).
Now, here’s the next level play- memorize that set symbol.
Wait, Stinky is in this set too?! Holy cow!
It’s unlikely that your local [BIG BOX RETAIL STORE] has any of these in boxes left, but it’s POSSIBLE that the cards are still available there. Most national big box chains don’t actually buy product from WotC, they instead deal with middle-man distributors, who are in charge of managing the supply. These are the folks who stock and restock, and who often remove old product that gets repackaged or otherwise reintegrated into their system. One of their ways of moving this repossessed product is through clear boxes that typically contain 4 opened pre-constructed products. These aren’t official WotC offerings, but are instead the distributors unloading stuff that they don’t have a use for. If you keep your set symbols list handy, you are likely to see that maybe a few of these are left in the mix.
WHAT IT TAKES IN MODERN: This is somewhat related to the last two topics. How many decks are there in Modern? According to my preferred Top 8s aggregator (MTGDecks.net), there are exactly fifty listed archetypes (one of which being the catch-all classification of “Rogue”). If we assume that all of these decks are equal in both their quality of construction and pilot AND equally represented in a given field (they aren’t),then each deck has a 2% chance of winning [TOURNAMENT X]2. But given that that isn’t the case, it is important understand that the decks that are higher than 2% are pulling away from other decks, rather than staying at an artificial floor of 2%.
Barring extreme examples like the Eldrazi decks from PT Oath, Modern decks are not going to have the same high percentages of Standard decks, just because there are so many more options. If there are ten real decks in Standard (some formats have had more, some have had less), then your theoretical floor is 10%. For a Modern deck to reach 10%, it would have to entirely invalidate four different archetypes to the point that they are effectively 0%.
Smashing reality AND the status quo.
The best case for us as finance-minded folk is for that wobbling top of 2% equity to not topple over- meaning that the most amount of cards have at least a percentage of the market as a whole. Of course, this also reinforces my personal philosophy of not buying too deeply into Modern, because you’re either betting on new decks to enter into the pie chart (further reducing that percentage), or upsetting it by causing one deck to overtake points from so many others and spiking (which can, as recent experience tells us, result in a significant banning).
Let me know what you think about this last topic, as we are going to be going pretty deep into it next week. For science!
Best,
Ross
1A deck name that has only gotten worse given current events.
