Life is funny sometimes. You can go weeks at a time feeling like (relatively) nothing is happening, and then suddenly a torrent of activity upends your malaise. The consensus regarding Magic Origins during the front half of spoiler season was that the set was largely unexciting, and many people (Jason E. Alt) were perfectly happy to settle for some strong, if uninspiring, reprints (Birds of Paradise).
We are going to jump around a little bit this week, but not too much. There is a lot of ground I want to cover, so let’s dive in.
The Tragedy of the Commons/Uncommons
Don’t worry, this section of the article is not going to focus on feudalism or agrarian economics in any way, I just really loved the title. I want to hit first and foremost on something that seems pretty weird, and that is the spiking of commons and uncommons in Modern.
When a rare or mythic spikes, it isn’t terribly surprising, since they are usually either out of older, underprinted sets (Blood Moon) or are multi-format staples that have just left print (Abrupt Decay). When demand exceeds supply, the cost has to go up to compensate.
You can even understand it in certain situations with uncommons—Kitchen Finks was north of $10 once, and it looks like it will be again soon. Kitchen Finks only exists in Modern Masters (underprinted compared to demand), Shadowmoor (underprinted versus current small set printings), and FNM promos (given out before at least a few of you were even playing Magic).
Terminate, though? Terminate is a common in Planeshift and Alara Reborn (both small sets prior to the Zendikar Boom), has had two promotional printings (Magic Player Rewards and FNM), and has been featured in three different supplemental printings (one of the original Commander decks, one of the Archenemy decks, and the Sorin vs Tibalt Duel Deck). I can understand the promos increasing, especially the MPR version—those have been very popular in the last year or so, and I am almost entirely out of mine (even the bad cards!). The supplemental copies make some sense too, since the first Commander run was kind of small, and I don’t know anybody who purchased Archenemy or Sorin vs Tibalt.
All that being said, I’ve found about ten copies of Alara Reborn Terminates lying around my house since I started typing this sentence. Am I just rich, or is this price unrealistic?
The problem with commons is that their base price is essentially free. The price you typically pay for commons in a store is the fee that is involved with actually going through the inventory to find it for you. Commons also have a much lower ceiling than any other rarity due to as-fan: I may only get one mythic in eight packs, but I’ll get eighty different commons. Khans and Dragons of Tarkir each had 101 commons, while Fate Reforged had 70. if I opened eight packs, it’s possible that I’ve gotten the vast majority of KTK/DTK commons, and every single FRF common (with repeats!). By contrast, Planeshift, featuring the first (and superior) version of Terminate, only had 55 commons in the set. Alara Reborn had 60.
Playability can drive the price of a common, but in general, the rarity is limited in power level due to its prevalence. A draft will feature 240 commons, and by making commons too powerful, you warp Limited.
So what do you do when a common card spikes? Well, the first thing you do is make sure that you have a neat and organized system for finding cards (or you swear to change your ways during the next available long weekend).
The next thing is you look for the best buylist price. Since Terminate has “spiked,” I have not been able to move any at the new price (be it through sales or PucaTrade). I was able to move one foil Alara Reborn copy, but it was on PucaTrade and at a discount. Currently, the best buylist price on the non-foil Alara Reborn Terminates is $1.78 from Strike Zone, which feels like an absolute steal. If you find you have a stack, then out them to a guaranteed source and let it absorb the risk.
If you have a regular game store that you shop or play at, I’d let them know of any that you come across, but I wouldn’t buy them for pennies with hope of a quick flip—you aren’t going to make very much, but there is potential to damage your relationship with the owner/operators. Typically, stores that don’t have all of their inventory electronically categorized can be places to find lots of unpicked longboxes, but you are likely to get more out of going through them as a helper than as a hunter. My LGS is staffed only by the owner, and he has more longboxes than he has time. I pull out things that I come across in his boxes when I’m bored and looking for something to occupy my ADD, but I get more in karma than I do in value.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention some of the true corner case scenarios, like Serum Visions. In the case of certain cards, the avenues for a reprint are limited. Serum Visions, Daze, Brainstorm, and Preordain are the kinds of cards that can grow reprint equity at common (they are also all blue), but can’t be reprinted in a Standard expansion. Fortunately, WOTC is doing more supplemental products than ever before, so there are means to see more copies printed, but I think you have to be realistic about which ones offer the best possibilities. This is all speculation, but Wizards put reprints in products where they best fit (things like Flusterstorm aside). Serum Visions is a pretty lousy card in Commander, so I wouldn’t expect it in one of those types of products as opposed to Modern Masters 3 or a Modern Event Deck (are we still doing those?). I’d expect Rhystic Study to appear in a Commander set instead, even if it isn’t a better card for people wanting new copies of particular blue commons.
Moral of the story: Don’t bother chasing the vast majority of these spikes. There isn’t enough action to be hard, and the margins are probably too small. If you find that you have a pile of them, enjoy your trade-in credit.
Planeswalkers and Design Philosophy
My academic background, if I haven’t mentioned it before, is in history. One of the most important things you can learn with regards to history is that events are always influenced by their causes, and so you have to take the context of those causes into account whenever you are analyzing a given event. The new planeswalkers in Magic Origins, most specifically Jace, are being looked at the wrong way, and I think it is because WOTC is trying to change the way planeswalkers are used. I’m going to use the history of planeswalkers (both as a card type and as a, uh… fantasy… thing?) to make my point.
I’m not a very good Vorthos, but here is the history of planeswalkers in a nutshell. In the beginning, WOTC’s creative team made planeswalkers into basically indestructible, omnipotent gods who could make and destroy entire worlds at whim. This, surprisingly, is a terrible character type to try and build meaningful storytelling around. WOTC realized that planeswalkers were too powerful to be compelling (note that this is around the time that WOTC started looking into a potential movie deal), so the story was steered toward the Mending, where planeswalkers sacrificed much of their power to heal the fracturing of Dominaria or something.
The Mending, which occurred during Time Spiral block, meant that moving forward, planeswalkers wouldn’t make Emrakul, Aeons Torn look like a plant token and that they could be more realistically represented on cards! It is no coincidence that the first planeswalker cards appeared the following year (after being pushed out of Future Sight because of development concerns—the empty green card slot became Tarmogoyf!). The first five planeswalkers (known sometimes as the Lorwyn Five) were hugely resonant successes, and they all saw various amounts of constructed play (Chandra the least, Garruk and Jace the most).
For the first few years, however, planeswalker cards were somewhat lacking in terms of broader developmental context. A lot of the appeal was “shiny new things!” and without as much concern to whether they were good or not. I think for a little while WOTC was just glad they seemed to be working, but eventually R&D moved forward into new design space. Few colors had more than one planeswalker, so the good ones (think Elspeth, Knight-Errant) were played and the much less good ones (think Liliana Vess) mostly just weren’t. In a way, Jace, the Mind Sculptor represented what planeswalkers were like before the Mending: he went into every deck that played blue, and encouraged you to play blue if you weren’t already. JTMS wasn’t a nuanced, situational chess piece—he was a nuclear bomb. You either played Jace, or had to have a really compelling reason not to.
Designing planeswalkers is difficult for WOTC, since there are only a few printed during each given year. This low amount over time means that it takes longer for changes in design philosophy to manifest. Since Worldwake, there has been a push for planeswalkers to be more situational, rather than a pass/fail test of quality.
For example, is Ashiok good? Ashiok isn’t played as a four-of in the main deck of every list that could run it, but the card is also crucial in control mirrors. And the new Jace is very similar to Ashiok in that way. Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy comes down before most countermagic comes online in the control mirrors, and unlike Ashiok, it creates a difficult sideboarding decision for your control opponent: how much creature removal can they sideboard out and not be worse against an early Jace? Historically, looters have certainly been playable in control decks. Jace is a looter with high upside, including being a potential finisher for no additional mana investment. There are a lot of matches, however, where a 0/2 looter for two is going to be nothing more than eventual Shock fodder. The downside to being a situational star is that not all situations are favorable.
The finance lesson here is that planeswalkers are likely to be more specialized moving forward. This means that on the whole, they will be more consistently playable, although there will likely be much less crossover. Even though they are popular, WOTC doesn’t want a lot of Elspeth, Knight-Errants or Jace, the Mind Sculptors, because they narrow the range of the card type in general.
And just to take it a step further, this push isn’t unique to planeswalkers. Take a look at what Sam Stoddard had to say about Languish:
This really seems to be WOTC’s design and development philosophy moving forward, and I think it probably means a stronger, more active market for Standard. I’d much rather be trading and selling in a format with lots of “sometimes really good” cards than just a bunch of “good” or “not good” ones. If future formats can be as good as the one we have now, I think this means a lot of potential for the future. Make sure you have a diverse standard stock moving forward!
Moral of the story: planeswalkers, and Standard as a whole, are being developed in a way that is conducive to a wider format. I expect most of the future formats to be like Ravnica/Time Spiral in the sense that there are several good decks, but no overtly oppressive ones. These wider formats have more good cards, but fewer staples. If that’s the case, you can expect prices to be a little bit more even, as opposed to boom or bust. Tip: in these types of formats, the safest bets, as they always are, are the lands.
That’s all for today. I’d love to hear your thoughts on these topics, especially the second one. It was kind of a hard concept to put to paper, but I’d be more than happy to flesh it out in the comments. See you next week!
Today’s article is going to be the first in a series of semi-related subjects. The theme of the next few weeks is something that gets kind of lost in talks about Magic finance: how to weigh decisions and opportunities as a Magic player, and not just as a finance person. Today, the subject is going to be making the best financial decisions regarding tournaments.
The best example of what I mean is taken from a recent tournament experience that I had with a friend of mine. The two of us were going to attend a TCGplayer Platinum event (a Standard 1K, but it also gave out playmats and points down to top 16) that was being held in Orlando. That’s a little bit of a drive, so I got up pretty early to make sure I was packed and able to eat a decent breakfast. My buddy texted me at 8:00 a.m., half an hour before I was supposed to pick him up, to tell me that there was a Modern PPTQ being held much closer to home later that day. I’m not sure how I was able to develop my response so quickly, but it was (verbatim), “I’d rather pay $30 and win cash than pay $25 and win Dragons of Tarkir packs.”
Choose Wisely
There are a lot of Magic tournaments happening on a lot of different levels in the US right now. While central Florida has always had a strong Magic offering, even in the game’s lean years, it has never been as popular as it is today. This creates the situation of occasionally having to decide which tournament is worth attending. Even if you are not a competitive player and are only looking for trades, the following breakdown should have a lot of information to consider. The type of tournament can often tell you a lot about the other people that will be in attendance, which is a good predictor of whether or not you will find desirable trading partners.
First, what type of tournament is it? This is the most obvious question to ask, but you have to make sure that you unpack the answer fully. Obviously a Legacy and Vintage tournament is going to draw some high-rollers with big collections, but if it is scheduled against a large Standard tournament down the street, it may not even fire off.
More important than the format (because that stuff you can probably figure out on your own) is determining who is involved in running the event. Take the example I discussed up top: my choices were a Standard cash tournament (backed by TCGplayer) or a PPTQ (which is run solely by a local store with the PTQ invite coming from WOTC). In order for a store or event organizer to run a TCGplayer tournament, it has to buy a package from the company and adhere to the rules set forth (the same is true of SCG events). The TCGplayer Platinum event only had 20 players, but because TCGplayer mandates that any tournament run in its name always honor the advertised payout, the tournament organizers couldn’t flake out at the last second (although I’ve seen some try). This means that the TO is required to give out the full $1,000 plus the playmats, points, and other crap that they promised it would, or risk never being allowed to do another one again (although, with only 20 people showing up, that may not be a bad thing).
The PPTQ, on the other hand, had over 50 players, crammed into a much smaller location (needless to say, we were extremely lucky we picked the event we did). The PPTQ tournament organizer didn’t have to pay the upfront cost of a “tournament package,” nor was he beholden to any guaranteed prize support beyond the PTQ invite (which is of no cost to the TO). Both tournaments cost $30, but the winner of the 1K got a guaranteed $400, while the winner of the PPTQ got a box of Modern Masters 2015 and the chance to play in an even larger tournament to make the Pro Tour. If we can assume the price of a Modern Masters box is $200 to $225 (which is what most are clearing for on eBay), then the invitation needs to be worth roughly $200 for the tournaments to have equal payouts (the invite, to be fair, does include that Liliana promo; also, I am ignoring the potential of selling the playmat and point cards for the 1K winner). And while I don’t have written confirmation of what the prizes for second to eighth place were for the PPTQ, what I’ve heard anecdotally doesn’t stack favorably against the payout from the 1K. Also, apparently the AC broke at one point (which is not a good thing to happen to a room filled with Magic players in June in Florida).
In all honesty, I knew that the cash tournament would likely be pretty small, but I didn’t expect it to be less than half the size of the PPTQ (which I did expect to be at least somewhat larger). The cash tournament, as part of TCGplayer’s package, was advertised on the front page of TCGplayer, and got mentioned in some of the constant contact emails that TCGplayer sends to Florida subscribers. Beyond that, in order to know anything about the event, you had to follow the organizer (a small game store outside of Orlando) on Facebook. When TCGplayer offers advertising in its packages, many game stores, especially those who don’t have a large presence in the greater community, just assume that they are paying someone else to do the hard part for them. The truth is, most people don’t bother to read the constant contact emails, or they have tuned out the tournament feed on the right side of the TCGplayer website since it works as basically a cork board for the entire US.
The PPTQ system, on the other hand, is not advertised in the same way, but has the stronger backing of the Wizards website (which isn’t very good, but it has more reach). Since PPTQs are more “official,” and the PPTQ system is very important to players right now, they are more likely to seek them out. Because the current PPTQ system only offers a PTQ invite to the winner, there are a subset of competitive players who will seek out and play in every PPTQ possible, hoping to take one down. Whereas cash tournaments once supplemented a yearly schedule in between PTQs, now PPTQs are often held in competition with each other or one-of cash events.
So far, it seems as though players are valuing PPTQs extremely highly, likely due to their inherent scarcity and the idea that they have variable difficulty. A lot of people end up thinking that if a store that they’ve never heard of is holding a PPTQ, then it will be smaller and therefore easier to win—except that it appears as though they are going to draw a crowd regardless. The only PPTQ I’ve played in was a few months back, in a store with a small local crowd, and they were turning people away the day of.
This is another big factor to consider: is the tournament being held outside of the store’s physical location? PPTQs, especially those being run by stores without a lot of non-FNM tournament experience, are reaching the point where they often include a friendly visit from the fire marshal. The PPTQ the other week had 52 players in a somewhat small store, whereas the 1K was at a hotel (there was also a comic and toy convention the same weekend). The 1K, in addition to the package price that the TO paid TCGplayer, had to pay rent for the space for the day.
When tournament organizers have to pay rent, they usually let other people help, and this means that there was vendor space available! Yes, the twenty-player, cash tournament had two vendor booths (the store hosting the event plus one other). Vendor booths are a delight unto themselves, and if you know the store doing the vending, you can typically play to its strengths. I knew the alternate vendor at the event (I have a friend who works there, although he wasn’t present at the tournament), so I was able to unload a lot of Standard stuff I didn’t want into a Taigaand an Ali from Cairo1. Most stores are not going to have the space to have a second vendor come in, even if they wanted to (and they don’t), so this cooperation is something you’ll only experience when a TO is shelling out a couple grand in rent for a day.
I’ve only played in one PPTQ so far, and my guess is that the quality trends overall with the quality of the store and its tournament history. I’ve read some horror stories about events being understaffed, although now that local stores aren’t hosting actual PTQs, those stories have seemed less severe.
A Little Self-Examination
Ultimately, you need to make the decision that best compliments your goals. If you want to play on the Pro Tour, then you need to play in a lot of PPTQs (and probably a healthy amount of Grands Prix, if we are being realistic)—there is no other way to get there.
But if you are like me, then you typically want to maximize your tournament opportunities. I don’t play in Magic tournaments every weekend, so when I get the opportunity to, I like to play in the one with the single biggest impact. Look at the value of first place compared to the value of eighth place, and then try to figure out what a top eight split would most likely be. This is the primary reason I am down on PPTQs: the most important part of the payout cannot be split eight ways.
The Star City Games IQ tournaments, by contrast, have fixed this problem by introducing a point structure into the mix. I’d like to see WOTC adopt this technology for the PPTQ system, but the company has publicly stated that it doesn’t want Pro Tours to be too big, which is a problem SCG doesn’t need to consider for its Invitationals. The IQ tournaments also have a guaranteed cash payout. Any time a tournament is giving out cash, it is nice to know that there is another name (SCG or TCGplayer) behind the TO making sure things go off without any snags.
Small Tournaments, Ranked
My personal hierarchy of (small) tournaments is as follows:
TCGplayer 5K (Diamond)
SCG Premier and Elite IQ (5k and 3k, respectively)
TCGplayer 1k (Platinum)
SCG IQ (the other tiers)
Not play Magic and have a lovely family game night
Money Draft with friends
Money Draft with enemies
PPTQ (Standard)
PPTQ (Sealed) – because nobody would show up!
PPTQ (Modern) – because everybody would show up!
Do that thing with my hand and a knife from Alien
SCG Open Trial
Grand Prix Trial
Throwing my cards into the sea while somberly reflecting on life’s pains and sorrows
SCG Game Night
Closing Thoughts
It’s quickly worth mentioning that while the SCG IQ events have a pretty high value, the Open Trials and Game Nights are basically playing slot machines that pay out in playmats or animal-themed trinkets. I never calculate the “value” of a playmat into my expectations of a tournament result, because so many of them are hard to move (this is because the tournament package mats have a higher distribution and less importance than one-off playmats, like GP mats).
TCGplayer points sell well because they can be used for byes in events, they can buy you into the big invitational that just happened, or you can get, like, Frank Lepore’s autograph. The typical value is 1.5 to twice the point value of the card, but sometimes you can negotiate for less. Then again, on the day of a 5K, I’ve seen people pay three times or higher.
Hopefully you enjoyed this first installment on tournament and player finance! And as always, if you know somebody who wants to buy a pile of ugly playmats, point them my way.
1 I blame Sigmund for making me want to buy old stuff.
Do you listen to a lot of podcasts? I do1. Most of them are Magic-related, and the rest are mainly football, news, and finance. I was listening to Freakanomics on Monday (or as I like to call that program, “Game Theory, Who Knew?”), and I instantly got an idea for something I wanted to write about. My original plan for this week was to finish up the Mirrodin block in our Modern set review series, and we will take some time to go through Darksteel, but that series is not terribly time-sensitive, so I say we ride with the hot hand.
The program I was listening to was about “Homo economicus,” the fictional character/species which embodies the “ideal” human in economic models. Basically, when economists say, “Well, X should happen, because people will know that it is the best option,” they are assuming that all humans know at all times what is best for them, or are able to quickly and cleanly compute the best fiscal course of action.
This, as anyone with a humanities background will tell you, is absolutely not true. Many economic theories and models are predicated on Homo sapiens acting like Homo economicus, which is why some academic economists can seem out of touch with how the world really works. Meanwhile, the entire field of advertising is intended to make us do the opposite of what Homo economicus would—the reason why new cars are literally always on sale is because nobody needs a new car. The Freakanomics program was interesting and you should check it out if you haven’t already.
Talk About Magic Now
What I want to discuss today is whether Magic finance has its own inaccurate views of how the market works compared to our expectations. For the sake of me needing a title for this article, let’s call our little best case scenario straw-man Homo magiconimus.
I’m going to tell you a short story about how Magic finance finally “figured out” casual Magic, with some brief justifications why Homo magiconimus missed out on it.
It may seem crazy today, but for a very long time, the casual Magic community got no respect. Even though Wizards “discovered” the Invisibles during Time Spiral, it really took a while for the community as a whole to embrace them (and for Magic finance to adjust to their needs). At the time, cards that only saw casual or non-sanctioned play didn’t command high prices. For example, during its time in Standard, I bought a couple of foil copies of Woodfall Primus for 25 cents each. They weren’t bent-up copies tossed in a vendor’s foil box at a PTQ, and they weren’t scummy trades where I ripped off some doe-eyed little kid—these were NM copies listed on the website of one of the largest Magic retailers on Earth (to protect that company’s privacy, let’s just call it… “Pool Stuff Games”). And honestly, I wouldn’t have even thought to buy them, except the non-foil copies were out of stock, and I needed them because I was starting to get into Type 4. Homo magiconimus would have bought one copy (even though he probably doesn’t like foils as much as I do), but it’s unsure if he would have grabbed the second one. My gut instincts on getting both were a combination of “mise” and thinking, “I can always give it to a buddy for his Type 4 stack,” two sentiments a “strictly upside” sentient being isn’t likely to be moved by. In the end, however, I was able to move the cards for about $30 each, which is something Homo magiconimuscan get behind, so hopefully he used that quarter for the foil rare and not jelly beans.
At the time, dealers and finance people weren’t as diversified as they are now. Their goals mostly revolved around making sure they could meet the needs of the tournament players, as well as learning what they could from that group to know what the good buys were.
“Casual staples” at the time weren’t things like Primus, they were just Extended and Legacy staples. I remember trading Mutavaults (which were about to rotate) for Maelstrom Pulses to a friend/vendor (who later went on to open a couple of Florida’s best Magic stores), because I knew I would need the Pulses, and that he would have better luck moving the Mutavaults at a GP booth or something out of state. Was this the correct trade to make? The prices at the time were similar, but I had extra utility in trading for the card with the longer lifespan in Standard. Homo magiconimus, or at least those of the “plays a bunch of Standard” tribe, would have likely taken the deal, since the ability to roll the upfront investment made on the Mutavaults into two more years of Standard is a great way to avoid continuing to spend money.
Prior to the explosion of popularity for Commander, most dealers had a very poor idea of what cards were popular with casual players. This is likely due to the lack of a uniform format (which we got with Commander), so cards that were good in Emperor but not massive Free-For-Alls didn’t seem to garnish a premium. The only card that sticks out in my mind from that era is Underworld Dreams, which was the de facto casual staple. It seemed that anyone who wasn’t interested in playing “real” Magic just wanted to try and kill people with Megrim.
Cards like Wrath of God were obviously still good (more so when you are killing seven other players’ creatures), but most of the price there was because of Standard, or so I assumed. As a low-level binder grinder at the time, I wasn’t exposed to the casual community as much as I am now, even before factoring in great equalizers like PucaTrade. It wasn’t worth servicing the casual community at the time, because so few people understood that there even was a casual community worth serving!
Lorwyn was when WOTC was first getting its data back on Time Spiral, and when Maro and the gang were just figuring out that the Invisibles existed. Time Spiral’s failure in terms of mass appeal spurred the change to New World Order design, which first manifested around Zendikar, which led to the Zendikar Boom, which led to unprecedented player growth and grew the casual base, too. It’s easy to know all that now, but those are a lot of factors (some private) that led to the discovery and growth of a previously unknown market. Homo magiconimus is an animal that acts on rational thought and logic, but he can’t tell the future. This is the reason why so many financiers and dealers were completely surprised when Commander and casual Magic took off, and why I sold all my Tarmogoyfs at $25.
Enough of that for today—let’s hit Darksteel.
Darksteel
Something that gets thrown around a lot is the “death” of Magic. Newer and less enfranchised players claim that Magic‘s expensive secondary market and rapid product releases will be its imminent undoing. Tournament veterans assert that a broken format, a woeful Magic Online offering, or greener pastures (Hearthstone, SolForge, poker) could possibly mean the end of MTG. Of all of these doomsday scenarios, the “broken format,” has probably come closest. There have definitely been some close calls, but the impact that Darksteel made could have very likely become a killing blow.
The set’s salvation was very likely its namesake: Darksteel introduced indestructible, which is something that reads very well to all levels of players. Something like scry or cycling may or may not immediately make sense, nor does it excite younger or newer players the same way that, “THIS ROBOT IS INDESTRUCTIBLEEEEEE!!!!!!!” does. The set sold pretty well, despite tournament attendance driving off a cliff Thelma and Louise-style about a month after release.
Non-Foil Cards of Note
Sword of Fire and Ice: This is the most expensive card in the set by about $20. This card was actually a Legacy staple for a long while, but Batterskulland Jittenow get higher billing. This is still one of the better Cube swords, and the limited printings it has gotten in the last eleven years have only helped bolster it as a chase rare. The judge promo is gorgeous.
Aether Vial: This uncommon clocks in at about $27, although it’s been in the twenties for a good long while. Like Sword of Fire and Ice, it has really only gotten reprinted in Modern Masters, along with a very small promo offering (an early From the Vaults in this case). Any tribal deck in Legacy or Modern is going to need four of these, as well as the deplorable Death and Taxes archetype (seriously, that deck is dumb). These trade well though, and are a “four or zero” card much like Tarmogoyf is.
Sword of Light and Shadow: According to the free market, this sword is worse than its in-set cousin by about twenty bucks. That sounds about right, as this card really doesn’t see the same kind of play that Fire and Ice does, which in today’s Magic is pretty limited anyway.
Arcbound Ravager: I am shocked that this card wasn’t in Modern Masters 2015. I will talk about this card in the analysis section at the end (spoiler: it’s pretty good!), but here is a little financial nugget for you: since most of the non-Ravager pieces for Affinity were in MM2, you can expect that deck to be out in large numbers at Modern PPTQs. Plan on selling many Ravagers in the near future.
Mycosynth Lattice: MTGPrice has the Fair Trade Price listed at $21 for this card, but that number has been there for a long while, and I had a copy that I felt like I couldn’t give away for years. The $12 buylist price is tempting. I really don’t know how much demand there is for this card.
Blinkmoth Nexus: Reprinted twice, and the higher price here is likely for the original art. Don’t expect these copies to hold a premium when people still need Mox Opals to play the deck.
Memnarch: One of the best mono-blue commanders, which is saying something. I can’t wait to see what his foil price is… $25… huh. That… seems very low.
We talked about this card already recently, so I won’t rewrite last week’s article, but notice that the blue line (the most important one!) has barely moved at all, and that the only vendors selling foil Retract at this absurd new price are eBay and Amazon vendors, which means they are speculators and financiers trying to cash out on their (soon to be failed) spec.
Leonin Shikari: I wasn’t sure which section to put this card in, but I went with foils because its foil multiplier is higher than two. The price on this card is impressive, considering I had forgotten that the card exists shortly after I stopped opening Darksteel boosters. It also sees zero competitive play, so this card is only being kept alive by casual players. I wouldn’t even consider it for Cube. I’m trying to figure out if a “Shikari” is a thing, or if the creative team got this name by switching the “i”s and “a”s in “Shakira.”
Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer: Commander. Not sure if you really even want this guy if you’re playing a mono-red deck, but whatever.
Sundering Titan: This card sees a little play in Modern and Legacy,and is somehow banned in EDH, most likely for being a card that I like. The Commander banned list is very dumb.
Trinisphere: Somehow only $13 for a foil that is restricted in Vintage. I bet they’re super hard to find, too.
Skullclamp: FTV foils are pretty controversial (unless they are the only version available), but the set foil of this card is still just shy of $20. Impressive, given how insanely broken this card is. Speaking of insanely broken…
Noteworthy Standard Decks
Ravager Affinity: It is important to remember that the Magic hive mind (or “cultural zeitgeist,” if you’re a pretentious jerk) existed in 2004, but not in the same way that it does now. There were not nearly as many tournaments as there are now, Magic Online was still fairly new, and the lack of modern social media meant most discussions of Magic were still relatively private. This is why it took about a month or so for Arcbound Ravager to be “discovered” by the Magic world as a whole. Sure, some people may have known on day one, and others (like myself) found out when the card shot up to $20. Ravager would go on to be banned in Standard, along with seven (!) of its closest friends, all of which were commons. The majority of all decks before that point were either Affinity or “Beats Affinity.” It was a dark time.
Literally Anything With Skullclamp at One Point: I mentioned that it took longer to figure stuff out, which was at least in part because Skullclamp was Standard-legal for three months, which seems about four months too long. For the brief time that this card was legal, it made seriously every deck—good, bad, or otherwise—playable. Factor in that some of the strongest decks from the previous block (Onslaught) had small, aggressive creatures, and you can see how out of hand things got.
Beats Affinity: Literally there where decks with just a bunch of Shatters and Oxidizes. It was awful. No wonder so many pros went over to poker.
Analysis
Ultimately, Darksteel is going to be remembered more for its failures than its successes. There are a few cards worth money in this set that I didn’t mention, but many of them are Commander (Savage Beating) or eternal (Serum Powder) cards with limited upside. Ravager, Swords, and Aether Vial are going to buoy packs of Darksteel for the foreseeable future, which are $11 a pop, and there is not much else to be had besides those headliners.
Darksteel was also the first small set to have 165 cards, and trust me when I say they aren’t all winners. To put it bluntly, Ageless Entity (foil) and Steelshaper Apprentice are probably the two cards with the most potential (although this is largely because they are basically free).
Thanks as always for reading, and let me know what you think of Homo magiconimus—I have a feeling we’ll be seeing him again.
1Hopefully you do too, because [REDACTED] with [REDACTED] is going to be [REDACTED] [REDACTED].
MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY
