All right, everyone, the full spoiler is out this morning, and while I’m sure there’s a couple of doozies that they’ve been holding out on, we’ve got most of the set known and it’s time to make some plans.

The set goes into prerelease next weekend and full release after that. Let’s keep in mind some basics, and then get into what we ought to be doing, using other Modern releases to guide our thinking.

So the set is the same size as a Standard release, but the big differences are going to be the price and the size of the print run. There is no MSRP on this product, but with boosters being $6.99 on MTGO, that’s a reasonable starting point. As usual, there’s 36 packs to a box, and with a distributor price higher than normal, the box prices are somewhere in the $200-$240 range, often depending on is the Buy-A-Box NONFOIL Flusterstorm is included.

If you look at the preorder prices for the set, you’ll notice that there’s a whole lot of pricey cards. That’s to be expected when the pack price is nearly double: a higher cost associates with higher prices in general.

The other key logistical detail is that we’ve got Core Set 2020 releasing on July 12. Traditionally, previews for a set start three weeks before prerelease, as they did with Modern Horizons. That schedule means that preview season would start on Monday, June 17…three days after Modern Horizons was released.

I would guess that the preview season for 2020 will be shorter by a week, but that’s about the most they can do, short of dumping it all on us at once. I’m not ruling anything out, though.

So we have a more expensive set, only relevant to Modern, and with an abbreviated run. This is a formula for some incredible profits. We know that this set is going to increase interest in Modern by adding new cards and hopefully new archetypes. Modern Masters sets have had a predictable price curve:

This is for Noble Hierarch, one of the most-played creatures in Modern, and a card with multiple printings. Every additional printing the price has gone down right away…only to creep back up again. For fun, let’s look at the graph for the Conflux version:

Oh yes, that means I love buying cheap Nobles right now. The high-end ones are a ceiling on the price, but the box topper especially has room to grow to the $150 range.

This is the pattern: Everything from Modern Horizons is going to get somewhat cheaper as the set gets opened, but within a couple of weeks of Core Set 2020 coming out, supply will be mostly maxed out, and that’s when it’ll be time to buy.

I don’t know which of the cards are going to make the biggest splash in Modern or Commander, but there are a few that I’m targeting.

Foil enemy Talismans (no price as yet)

We’ve got a couple of folks preselling these on eBay in the $10 range, and I think that’s fairly reasonable. I’m hoping to come down to the $5 threshold, as they are only uncommons but we are not getting one foil in every pack. These are slightly worse than the Signets, but this will be their only printing and the only foil. This is a long-term hold.

Scrapyard Recombiner (currently about $3.50)

There’s 140 Constructs in Magic, but the most relevant for us are Walking Ballista, Steel Overseer, Hangarback Walker, Kuldotha Forgemaster, and if you’re feeling spicy, Metalworker. That’s a list of some of the best artifact creatures you could have in Commander, and if this gets as low as $2 I’m going to pick up quite a few.

Echo of Eons ($38)

This is the card that I think will get broken first, in Legacy or Modern. This is just ridiculous, to be able to discard it and have the Timetwister effect ready to go. They just gave us Narset, Parter of Veils to go with this! I wish this was cheaper, because I’m not sure how far down it can go. I hope it becomes quite cheap, especially in foil, but it won’t. I’m likely to pick up a couple playsets when it (hopefully) hits $15-$20.

Plague Engineer ($4)

I’ll be interested to see where the foils of this land, and how many copies get played in assorted sideboards. Being three mana is a real drawback, but it’s instantly lethal to Thalia and Hierarch in the Humans deck, which is likely the best tribal deck in Modern right now. Being able to kill relevant cards and develop your own board is a formula for success, and I’m going to want a healthy supply of these going forward.

Goblin Engineer ($5)

There is a lot of talk about this being a fixed and shifted Stoneforge Mystic, and that’s not far off. This is an amazingly flexible card, and one that’s only a rare. Getting Swords of whatever and whenever is always going to be fun in Commander, but the Modern card that loves this guy is Ensnaring Bridge. Having this range of freedom, getting one thing back over and over, is going to have a lot of game for some decks and i’m a big fan.

Foil Everdream (no price yet)

This is quite likely to be the card I buy the most of from this set. I’m hoping it’s a dollar foil, though I’d be content at two bucks. It’s breathtaking to play with. How about 2UR to deal three and draw a card? Or 2UU to draw a card, scry 2, and then draw a card? 2UW to exile target creature, they find a land, and you draw a card? This is a card that will have you gnawing at the table in frustration because the spells player is so amazingly far ahead in terms of cards and you’ll never ever be able to keep up.

I think that people don’t yet know how good this is, or they recognize that adding three mana to stuff in Modern is bad. I can’t wait to see this in every Commander deck that runs lots of spells, and that makes it a solid long-term investment.

Snow-Covered Lands (fifty cents to $1.25 or so)

Finally, let’s talk snow. There’s not a lot of reasons to go heavy snow, but if you freeze all your basics, you can add some very powerful effects. We have one ETB tapped cycle of allied snow lands (did we get more this morning??) and that makes it difficult to go ham on cards like Dead of Winter. We know Gates Ablaze is good and this is better. I’m not sure that there will be some awesome snow deck in Modern, but the good news is that when you go to your store and do a draft, you’ll be able to trade for these pretty easily or even scoop them up in the leavings if you go to the MagicFests where this is the Sealed format.

Pick up all the spare snow lands you can. Don’t forget the people who like to maximize their advantage by playing snow lands in a Commander deck and then using Extraplanar Lens to great effect. You’re stocking up to feed their needs later.

Cliff (@WordOfCommander) has been writing for MTGPrice since 2013, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the official substitute teacher of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at a GP and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.

One of my guiding principles in buying, trading, and selling cards has been the belief that attention and new things can really distract us from potential profit.

For instance, right now we’re all loving the new Standard format and Modern Horizons is making things go absolutely bananas. This is wonderful, because there’s a lot to look at and some profit to be made.

I want to look at the last two sets especially, because they have more than a year remaining in Standard. There’s two characteristics that have to be true for me to want to buy a card at this point:

First of all, I have to be content with the card as a long-term hold. It’s entirely possible that none of these hit and I’m stuck with copies for a long while. This is tricky for me, because generally, I like foils a lot more for long-term holds, but being able to put them in the long term box and move on with my life is important.

Second, I have to believe that the card does something relatively unique in Standard. This can mean good removal, or a planeswalker that’s being held down by the current environment. To put it another way: What might be better when Ixalan/Rivals/Dominaria/Magic 2019 rotate out in four months?

One pitfall I want to avoid: A great selection of cards was added to the Challenger decks this year, so I want to stay away from stuff like Conclave Tribunal (easy $2 uncommon) or Experimental Frenzy (buy the foils!) so that’s ruling out a few cards right away.

March of the Multitudes ($4 nonfoil/$9 foil)

A banner mythic and the quintessential ‘win more in Commander’ card, I love a relatively low buy-in point. The foil multiplier is lower than I would have expected, but I have a big sticking point: Finale of Glory. Being an instant is a very good thing, and Convoke basically means you’ll double the number of creatures in play, but Finale is just better when you get to it. The creatures are bigger, and should 12 mana be hit, it’s hard to imagine the game’s not over.

If March falls to a dollar or so I’ll get in but the price is a bit too high for me right now.

Risk Factor ($5/$8)

That’s a really low foil price compared to the original price, and I have to admit that I’m surprised to see that this isn’t seeing any Modern play at this point. This is not a good Commander card, so what I’m asking myself is “What deck wants this at rotation?” Mono-Red is basically gone when rotation hits, but losing the low-curve threats might open up a little more midrange in red, and that’s when this can shine.

I’m in for a couple of playsets, hoping for the spike to $10 by Christmas.

Expansion // Explosion ($5/$9)

There’s an infinite combo in Standard, and it’s convoluted as heck. You need Ral, Storm Conduit in play, and two of these, or Ral used his -2, and you’ve got an instant on the stack plus one Expansion in hand. Basically you’re copying the copy spell infinitely, and dealing that damage with Ral.

I also like picking up Ral in the $2 range, because any deck that wants to combo off will want four of each of these. Explosion will always be Standard-legal with Wilderness Reclamation, which is a nice fallback position. Someone’s going to spike a big tournament with this wacky combo deck, and I want to be ready to sell the pieces of that deck.

Deafening Clarion ($1.50/$3)

Fiery Cannonade is good, but this is better and right now, we’ve got nearly-perfect mana for any color combination. We have all ten shocks and all ten checklands, which makes some decks run no basics at all. Jeskai Superfriends did very well the last two weeks, and this is one of the cheapest cards.

Even a minor bump will pay off quite nicely.

Thousand-Year Storm ($3/$8)

We’ve seen some decks trying very very hard with this card, and I always appreciate those willing to go the extra mile to get ten Shocks on the stack.

It looks like the red and white aggro decks will lose most of their good cards at rotation, so a janky combo card like this might be exactly what’s ordered. Plus, lots of decks have some random enchantment hate due to Search for Azcanta, and if TYS stays in play it’s going to be quite difficult to lose.

This is also great long-term, as being able to get 5+ Time Warp on the stack is exactly what Commander decks are looking for.

Trostani Discordant ($2.50/$5)

The good news is that this is a mythic card that is pretty cheap. The bad news is that as a legend, very rarely will the full four copies make it into a deck. Even the Selesnya Tokens lists would only run three.

However, picking up the foils at $5 is a pretty easy grab. Long-term, this has too many abilities not to be Commander-relevant and the foils will offer a much higher rate of return when they hit.

Ionize ($1.50/$4) and Absorb ($1.50/$5)

Right now, we have the mana to make three-color decks pretty easy. When Dominaria and Ixalan rotate in October, we lose the checklands, and I don’t know if we’ll get replacements in Magic 2020.

Control decks are also going to have Dovin’s Veto (an $8 promo right now, trade for them as soon as someone wins it at your FNM) and Sinister Sabotage as possibilities. What these decks want most, though, is a way to have the counterspell do something to help them win while keeping card parity.

I like Ionize best, because there’s a lot more copies of Absorb out there. Losing Teferi, Hero of Dominaria is a huge blow, though, and I wish I knew which flavor of control deck will be the go-to after rotation.

Cliff (@WordOfCommander) has been writing for MTGPrice since 2013, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the official substitute teacher of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at a GP and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.

We’ve had War of the Spark in our hands for a couple of weeks, and while a lot of attention is rightfully on the ME3 fiasco, uncut apology sheets, and alternate art, we would be remiss not to take a look at what is making waves in assorted formats.

Unbelievably, we start Modern Horizons spoilers on Sunday, so prepare for two weeks of absolute madness and rushing to buy things before other people realize what’s going on.

Just so we’re clear: I don’t want you to get caught up in buying hype. It’s very difficult to buy a card while it’s in the process of spiking and still make money on the transaction. If you find some cards at your LGS before they can catch up, that’s fine, but the Internet is about to become a wild-ass place with each previewed Modern Horizons card.

Your best bet is to stock up on staples of Modern now, and make sure your collection is organized enough that you can raid it as needed.

Teferi, Time Raveler ($13)

Teferi’s newest incarnation has been just the super-irritating thing that a lot of control decks want: an early way to ensure they get to do what they want. It breaks the mirror open quite well, and has a great game against Nexus of Fate decks, which aspire to abuse the end step.

The price is on the rise from his low of $9, but considering that the price at the start of the format was $20, there’s a lot of room left for him to move. I’m definitely going to want to have some of these before they go back up to $20.

Nicol Bolas, Dragon-God ($22)

Someone else with a whole bunch of cards named after him, Nicol Bolas’s (hopefully-but-I-doubt-it) final form is tough on the mana but is awesome on the field. His price is going down, though there’s a Grixis control deck that’s stubbornly playing the full four copies. The choices are many for the other planeswalkers you can have in play, and you get to pick the flavor(s) that you like best.

The ‘have all the abilities’ clause is pretty amazing. Note that he’s currently legal with Jace, Cunning Castaway, so if you really want to go hog wild, you have my blessing. The Commander demand would be higher if he could fit into Atraxa Superfriends decks, but really, there’s a lot of ways to tackle this. The price of the Dragon-God ought to stabilize right around $20, so no buying quite yet unless you want to play the deck a bunch.

That deck is also playing four copies of the M19 version, Nicol Bolas, the Ravager, and with that card hitting $35 you need to sell, sell, sell. I even went so far as to take copies out of Commander decks and ship them off. At worst, I’ll rebuy them in October (at rotation) for $15-$20 ish, and have an extra $20 in store credit per copy.

Ral, Storm Conduit (now $2.50)

Given that there’s an infinite combo in Standard with Ral, Expansion // Explosion, and some other spell, you’d think this would be higher. Problem is, countermagic is everywhere, and if you’re not playing Negate or Dovin’s Veto, you’re likely playing a red or white aggro decks and killing the poor durdler.

I’ve got Ral pegged as someone to buy once we’re all buying Modern Horizons. Ideally, I can get in under $2 and just be patient. At a price that low, I don’t need him to win games on stream (nice as that would be) because I’m very unlikely to lose out. Almost no planeswalkers are $1, but that doesn’t account for their presence at rare and uncommon.

Narset, Parter of Veils (up to $2.50, foils $30, and the JP alternate art foil is $250-$500 on eBay)

I think this is going to be one of the first new cards in Oathbreaker to get banned, as Narset + Windfall (or some variation thereof) is disgusting. Leovold is extremely powerful in Legacy, and now we have this easier-to-cast version!

Narset’s price has gone crazy in these two weeks, as Modern and Legacy and Cube and Commander players try her out and find that it’s just plain silly. Spirit of the Labyrinth is symmetrical and that’s why it’s not busted. Narset plainly is, and is even in the color with the most versions of a ‘we all draw’ effect.

You can imagine that I’m trying very hard to build some form of Narset/Notion Thief deck, playing all the Vision Skeins. Heck, in Standard, we have Emergency Powers and that’s super tasty indeed.

God-Eternal Oketra ($14)

You may or may not have seen it, but two weeks ago, the first streamed SCG Open had two Bant Aggro decks, nearly the same 75 but both with three copies of this card. Oketra is pretty bonkers, even one more creature gives you an extra 4/4 and that tussles with just about everything in the format currently. For extra spice, pair with Vivien, Champion of the Wilds and get bananas at instant speed.

It’s hard to feel like this isn’t a buy right now, but I’m being patient. Yes, it’s $2 more than it was a couple of weeks ago, but it’s an all-star in Commander and if you made me choose between this and Lyra Dawnbringer at the five-spot for White Weenie decks…I don’t know where I’d land.

One more good on-camera performance and this is a $20 card. The casual market is soaking up spare copies and preventing a lot of them from going into the greater market, a force we can’t quantify but we can notice by observing how the price doesn’t go down.

Cliff (@WordOfCommander) has been writing for MTGPrice since 2013, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the official substitute teacher of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at a GP and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.

You can name any number of words in the English language to delineate an activity that should be organized but isn’t. The flaw can be fundamental, or accidental, and all those words apply to such a situation.

The sale on Wednesday of War of the Spark Mythic Edition was all of those words and then some.

Let’s recap what happened, and then think about where the prices might go, and toss in a few ideas that clearly no one at Wizards is going to listen to but I’ll feel better for screaming into the void.

 

I knew it would be bad, let’s get that straight. ME1 was atrocious because Hasbro’s site went down every time the SDCC planeswalker sets went up, and that wasn’t nearly the demand of this set.

ME2 was done via eBay, a platform designed to take all the slings and arrows, robust architecture and proven to hold up in the face of Internet swarms.

I hoped that it would be a simple process. Log on at 11:55, cross my fingers that it sold out in minutes and not seconds. The 12,000 promised units would sell out, and I’d get mine or I wouldn’t. Concert tickets are often this way, and while I didn’t like it…it made sense.

What we got was:

The Hasbro Toy Shop crashed as an eBay page. I don’t know which part of the infrastructure failed on that, but it did and I’m sure they are figuring out why.

I had a tab open set to a search for the product with that particular seller, so when it came up, I was ready. I had my order in within 30 seconds.

I got the confirmation screen but no confirmation email.
The product was marked as sold out by 12:03.

Now let’s pause and reflect on how I felt. Disappointed, yes. I’d liquidated my last Ultimate Masters box, I’d moved some other things, I was ready and it didn’t matter. The bots beat me, I guess? C’est la vie.

And then, a few minutes later, courtesy of the MTGPrice Discord, which was full of “I got it…didn’t I?” posts:

So it was restocked and I got there on two boxes. Victory!

Five minutes later, orders can still be placed. So I got in there for two more! DOUBLE KILL

Email confirmations arrived, Paypal took my money, and no one paid attention to the page that said 40,000+ had been sold.

Then came Thursday and the waves of RIP and ‘F’ posts as cancellations started flying. I got my cancellation emails about 26 hours after payment went through. I hope you get yours, I truly do.

One more layer to go: the cancellation emails have a quippy bit about ‘Jace and his buddies crashing the internet’ and this is not the time, not with $500+ of product you’re cancelling on me. The other type of email, the ‘We think you’re still getting one, just be patient’ is less gallows humor but still nervewracking.

I said it twenty times yesterday: Nothing is confirmed until it’s in hand.

I truly hope that all of you get what you ordered. I wrote it before, that these are luxury goods and just upgraded versions of cards that exist, but let’s take a moment and examine why this is worse as a customer experience than just about anything else: That rollercoaster of emotions.

It is stressful to have an experience like this. To go from disappointment to euphoria to cautiously hopeful to utterly crushed takes a lot out of someone. We’re all breathlessly waiting for what eBay and WotC are going to give us to make us less outraged, but it likely won’t be on the level of the Box Toppers as with ME1.

When someone is unable to get a thing, they are disappointed and move on without too much fuss. If you give that same someone that thing and then take it away, that’s a whole other level of anger and betrayal.

A metaphor: Imagine a child at the park. Kid sees the ice cream truck go by and says, “I want ice cream!” and sees other kids going to the truck too. You don’t have any cash, so you tell them no, they cry some and you console them, but life goes on.

Now imagine that the kid goes and buys an ice cream sandwich, takes a couple bites, and then like a monster you swoop in, take their ice cream and give it to another kid right there. You’d have a nuclear-level tantrum, and you might get the cops called on you because your child is screaming up a storm in the middle of the park.

We thought we had this, and it’s been taken away. That’s the terrible customer experience, and it’s the first thing to avoid.

How could this be done better?

Well, lots of ways. First off, improve the web experience so that we don’t get sold-not sold-sold-not sold loops. That’s basic level.

We can do better, and frankly this is a topic that has been explored more than once on MTG Fast Finance: Wizards has a trove of data about customer habits but can’t/won’t use that data. The only thing you get from looking at your DCI history is a set of points worth approximately as much as a Schrute Buck.

I apparently have to accept that Wizards isn’t going back to the Magic Player Rewards system, but why not use our data in good ways? Let us link online accounts to physical DCI numbers. Reward us with one free Arena draft for every five live ones, or vice versa.

The best idea came from our own Travis Allen:

Everyone who’s played in an event in the last six months is automatically entered and given a chance to buy ONE box. If they don’t reply to the congratulatory email within 48 hours, move on to the next person till they are all sold.

Know what makes this great? You draw out the experience. Rather than everything happening today, you get a week or two of people exclaiming their good fortune AND you get an extended rollout of people opening their product. Instead, next week, we’re going to be treated to the sight of some extremely lucky people all getting it within a day of each other. Sigh.

Let’s pick ourselves up here. We didn’t lose anything but future nebulous profit or a chance to play with some of the sweetest versions of awesome cards…I’m not helping you or myself. Let’s move on.

There was a LOT of money chasing this set. 12,000 at $250 each, but let’s be conservative and say they accidentally oversold that to the tune of 24k. Could easily be more, especially if eBay’s counter said 48k, either way that’s a boatload of money. Will Wizards print more next time? Possibly. Twelve thousand sets in in line with the other ME editions.

The price trajectory on this is going to follow this pattern: In a week, people will be dumping their copies in the $450 range, to make the quick buck. Selling one in that price just about pays for two, leaving the second box to appreciate or be opened. I would be a buyer if I saw copies at $400. Very unlikely.

I think a lot of collectors, not speculators, are going to push this high, though. The first wave will sell fast and you’re going to see a few $550-$600 sales in about 10 days. I’m much less sanguine about buying in there, because you’re going to have quite a wait to get to flip that box.

I’m a much bigger fan of moving in on the individual planeswalkers. Ugin and Jace are going to get all the attention, and you’re going to see a glut of the lower-end ‘walkers as people crack a set, keep the ones for their Commander deck, and sell the rest.

I don’t want to use the current sales data to predict prices, as the waves of cancellations impact the downstream resellers who aren’t getting a set after all, but two weeks ago I talked about this exact topic.

If you got cancelled on, take a breath, put the money aside for War of the Spark specs, or the many goodies that are coming for Modern Horizons. Buy the planeswalker singles you want, they are solid and should hold value.

Be pissed, be upset, leave some godawful feedback and then take a breath. And try not to loathe the still-lucky ones.