Oh we are starting the Dominaria stuff slowly, with two great stories and some new frames. I like the slow release of information, it’s easier to process.

I don’t want to get distracted, though: Standard is four months from rotating, and that means it’s time to look at the supply of Kaladesh block vs. the demand of Modern/Legacy/other formats.

Specifically, today, I want to look at the Masterpieces from this set, the Inventions. The Amonkhet Invocations are more polarizing, some people LOVE them and other ABHOR them, but the Inventions were received well and have moved well. Supply on these is at their lowest (I’ve been giving them time to really trickle down) and now, before they move up, I want to look at a few of the lower-cost ones and see what’s worth it in the long term.

Champion’s Helm ($13 nonfoil/no pack foil/$27 masterpiece)

If you have a commander that needs to stay in play, this is a fantastic card. It is fighting with Lightning Greaves and Swiftfoot Boots, I’ll give you that, but the lack of a pack foil means that this is the only choice. I don’t think this is going to ever spike, but if you like cards on a slow growth curve, this is for you.

This is in really low supply, too. It was in the original Commander set, seven years ago, and now this printing is the only foil that exists. I won’t be shocked when it gets reprinted, but this is the only foil you’ll find until Eternal Masters 2: Eternal Harder.

Planar Bridge ($2.50/$5/$30)

The huge jump from pack foil to the Masterpiece is exactly the indicator I’m looking for. The casual appeal of a big mana card like this cannot be denied, and while it is restricted to permanents only, it’s still a very powerful card. This has kept the pack foil at a very reasonable price, and if you wanted to pick up something that undervalued I would understand. Just remember that the Masterpiece keeps the pack foil from getting too high in price. Why am I going to spend $15 on the pack foil if I can spend $30 on the Masterpiece?

Trinisphere ($38/$48/$52 Masterpiece/$17 FTV: Exiled)

This isn’t a casual pick, it’s based on the recent jump in Modern decks playing this. It’s gaining popularity in decks playing Simian Spirit Guide, as a way to wreck a lot of decks. Damping Sphere is on the horizon, but Trinisphere is a card that can really bring the game to a grind, especially in the Ponza decks which will then start destroying lands. The FTV is much less popular likely due to warping issues and being ugly.

Minds Eye ($10/$15 pack foil/$16 Commander’s Arsenal/$25 Masterpiece)

This is a hard card to draw lots of cards with, and that’s why it’s not super-popular. It’s not even 2x the price of the pack foil or the CA version, and those two foils are underpriced compared to the original. It’s a pretty unexciting card to add to a Commander precon, and that should keep the card from getting reprinted. Any of the shiny versions are good targets for slow growth.

Cloudstone Curio ($10/$19/$32)

It’s a niche card that enables all sorts of dumb combos in casual formats, but the appeal of these things cannot be overstated. The pack foil is underpriced, and that’s due to the Masterpiece. The Masterpiece has the price that I’d expect the pack foil to have, indicating the demand is there, pushing the pack foil down. I would like to think that the Masterpiece is rarer than an original Ravnica foil, but it’s got to be close.

Gauntlet of Power ($20/$28/$43)

For a card that seems so narrow, it’s in nearly 9000 decks on EDHREC. That’s a lot of mono-color goodness, and this is begging for a reprint. I don’t like being in on the nonfoils, but the pack foils and the Masterpiece both sing to me of slow, steady growth. I’m not sure why the foil multiplier is so low on this card, to be honest. I’d expect that the Masterpiece is holding down the price of the pack foil, sure, but given a regular price of $20, this ought to be in the $50 range.

Paradox Engine ($13/$21/$55)

Now that’s a hefty foil multiplier, as befits a card in 9600 Commander decks. There’s a lot of ways to abuse this card. I don’t need to list them, just add your favorite combination of mana rocks and card draw. My personal favorite is chaining Sphinxes with Unesh, but you do what works for you. Go five-color and go wild with Prismatic Geoscope, for instance. Keep in mind that this is one of the Aether Revolt Inventions, and the supply on that subset of Masterpieces is significantly smaller.

Rings of Brighthearth ($33/$43/$67)

This card spiked, hard, when Atraxa, Praetors’ Voice was printed. Just crazy, the amount of triggers to be abused, planeswalker abilities to be copied, and so on. This is 100% a ‘win more’ card, and that’s what Commander players love the most. We don’t want to do something awesome. We want to do that twice.

Another member of the 9000-deck club, I realize I’m recommending a $70 card as a prime candidate to climb in price, but I think this will be $100 by the end of the year. If you want one, go ahead and get it. Don’t wait around.

 

Cliff is an avid Cuber and Commander player, and has a deep love for weird ways to play this amazing game, as well as being guest host on MTGFF when needed. His current project is a light-up sign for attracting Cubers at GPs, so get his attention @wordofcommander on Twitter if you’ve got ideas or designs.

Here we are, the release weekend for Masters 25 and we’ve got an oddity: People have been able to draft this set online for a week now. Will that change the in-person experience? Hopefully not, but tell me how that goes.

Opening A25 packs is a real rollercoaster. There are, as of this writing, 18 rares and mythics that are at the MSRP of $10 for the pack. That leaves 50 of them that aren’t, so you’ve got a 26% chance of getting your money back from one pack.

For an equivalent set of odds, I need you to flip a coin, twice, and have it come up heads both times.

Then do that three times, for the three packs you’d open in a draft.

The format looks pretty fun, but from a financial standpoint, it’s terrible value. There’s stores offering you a free pack if you open a Tree of Redemption, and that’s nice, but there’s a lot of clunkers too. The nail in the coffin for the pair of Akromas, Prossh, yet another Armageddon, etc…

There’s really high variance on the foils as well, and take foil Prossh immediately.

What I want to look at today is the trend lines for some of the cards. All of them are downward, as befits a set that is going from pre-order hype to being opened, but some of these are really impressive and with only six weeks until Dominaria, it’s time to get the wallets ready.

Jace, the Mind Sculptor (price on 2/26: $140, today $105)

He’s down about 30% so far and clearly isn’t done as the market gluts this weekend with everyone tearing open their boxes. On eBay, I see some Buy it Now in the $90 range and even that I’m not big on.

This summer, we’re getting Signature Spellbook: Jace for $20 and that’s not going to contain JTMS. Let’s be clear about that. Wizards isn’t that crazy. I’m 99% sure they won’t. I’ll let you guess who it’ll be but that’s the last shot at Big Jace for some time.

JTMS is not immediately lighting up Modern. Is he good? Indisputably. Is he broken? No…..t yet. Early results are promising, though. It’s a powerful card that can take over a game, but it’s not a slam-and-win card. I expect Jace’s price to keep sliding, and as the headliner for Masters 25, that doesn’t bode well for the overall value of the set.

My prediction for his price at Dominaria’s release in six weeks: $75 on eBay will get you a copy. You’ll definitely be able to get a playset under $300.

Should you buy at that price: If you’re going to play it, yes. For spec purposes, no. Jace will tick up slowly from this new price point, but the growth will be relatively slow. Even winning a PT isn’t going to do much to his price, it’s not like Liliana of the Veil breaks $200 because it wins. I’d expect that if the price gets too high, he will get reprinted again.

Imperial Recruiter (was $75, now $60)

A Portal: Three Kingdoms card who’s enjoyed in Legacy Aluren, this has mostly been a Cube and Commander card. Let’s not overlook that there’s a judge foil of this already made, so it’s not like Masters 25 has the only reprinting or even the only foil. Yes, this has a sweet watermark but that’s only going to matter to a few people.

Recruiter plus sufficient mana means Kiki-Jiki combo. First one finds KJ, then it gets copied and finds the Pestermite or Exarch, GG. That’s been enough, plus the scarcity of P3K, to keep the price high but the really low demand has this falling and fast. Sure, there’s good stuff you can go find in your EDH deck, but there’s no shortage of tutors already for creatures.

Dominaria price: $40. Mark it down. People will buy one, if that many. The supply will be much greater than the demand. I wouldn’t be shocked to see someone sell a playset for $120 on eBay.

Should you buy at that price: Absolutely not. Get the one you need and then do nothing else with this card.

Rishadan Port (was $60, now $40)

It’s not done, people. There’s BIN on eBay for $35 right now, $30 on TCG, and this is not the . Yes, it’s a four-of in a tier 2 Legacy deck, but that’s it for the demand. The land is terrible in Commander, good in some Cubes, and is a real stay-away for me.

Dominaria price: $25. I won’t be shocked if it’s $20, either. This price was all due to a tiny supply that the judge promo didn’t do much to lower. Now we’re getting a large influx of supply, and this is on top of how most people that wanted to play Death and Taxes already got their Ports. Given the distribution to Wal-Mart and such, it might well be that the circulation of this card as a rare in Masters 25 in 2018 is equal to the number that was originally printed in 1999.

Should you buy at that price: I would get in at $10 a copy, but that’s it. I’d be understanding of the decision to set aside a playset in anticipation of Death and Taxes winning a large event on camera, but that’s a marginal case. There are just so few areas of demand for this card.

Thalia, Guardian of Thraben (was $14, now $10)

I’m excited about this printing, which came along at the perfect time. Thalia is a star in every format where she can be played, and that includes Commander. Put her in play and then watch the dirty looks people give you. It’s heartwarming. Even better, she’s almost always a four-of, which is what you want in a spec target.

Dominaria price: $6-$7. That’s about where she got to during her last printing and she wasn’t nearly as popular then.

Should you buy at that price: 100% yes. Even Jace will have to pay a Thalia tax, she beats Bloodbraid in a fair fight, and is possibly the two drop you want most in the ever-popular Humans deck. She’ll get back to $15 within a year and $20 not long after that. Be warned, though, that when she makes it up you need to let her go–Wizards is going to reprint her again.

Other quick hits: Vendilion Clique will migrate down to $15 and hold that price, in line with the other printings. Ensnaring Bridge will stop at $30. Blood Moon at $20. The filter lands will stay in the $10 range, except for the blue ones which will be a couple bucks more. Animar, Soul of Elements is an $8 card but the foil will be something ridiculous.

 

Cliff is an avid Cuber and Commander player, and has a deep love for weird ways to play this amazing game, as well as being guest host on MTGFF when needed. His current project is a light-up sign for attracting Cubers at GPs, so get his attention @wordofcommander on Twitter if you’ve got ideas or designs.

Every so often, Wizards of the Coast has something happen and some or all of an upcoming set gets leaked/spoiled/revealed.

Sometimes these are technical glitches, like the Dominaria leaks from yesterday. One Chinese website accidentally put up the release FAQ, then the world had it, and Wizards decided to make the document official.

Sometimes this is pure humans being greedy, as has happened where a worker at the printing plant removed a sheet of mythics and rares, then posted pictures.

Sometimes this is a combination of both, as when the MTGO Beta team got all of Judgment a few weeks early.

Spoilers will be discussed after you’ve logged in and scrolled down. I’m going to trust that you know what to do about reprints, and instead I want to look at one mechanic and see what we can see.

Also, because I don’t want the leaks to rain on my parade, there’s a couple of Masters 25 prices that we REALLY need to talk about.

My favorite story about leaks involves the Godbook from New Phyrexia. Guillaume Matignon, a writer for an honest-to-God paper French magazine about Magic (called Lotus Noir, and is only coming out a few times a year) had a PDF file with the complete visual spoiler of New Phyrexia a month before the set went into previews. It’s called a Godbook, and in an era (2011) when magazines needed that much lead time, it made sense.

It’s bad enough that a pro-level player had early info, but he shared it with a couple of other high-level players for testing purposes, and one of them inexplicably went into an open IRC room and bragged about it. I’ll let Caleb Durward tell the tale, but you should read it just for the pure idiocy.

We’ve had cards from the next expansion show up in the current prerelease, but with the rapid-fire pace of sets coming out, one leak inevitably will overshadow the newest set.

It’s a real pain, because we ought to be focused on Masters 25, but here we are, figuring out how to take counters off so that our Saga enchantments can keep doing good things.

The Saga cards tick up a couple of times and then get sacrificed. You put a lore counter on, then it has an effect, and at the third counter, you get a bigger effect and are forced to bin the enchantment.

We will likely not be able to break this effect in Standard, but in Commander, all things are possible. I used to play around a lot with Decree of Silence, a card that also cared about counters, and there’s a few cards that can favorably interact here.

Power Conduit (50 cents nonfoil/$2.50 foil) – I think this is the easiest card to use with the Saga enchantments, because it’s colorless and an artifact. If your playgroup allows for Giant Fan, By Gnome Means, or Hungry Hungry Heifer, great, but if you want to keep the Saga at one level turn after turn, this is your winner.

Chisei, Heart of Oceans (30 cents/$1.00 foil) – This will also get the job done for no cost, but as a creature, and a colored one, it’s going to be more difficult to utilize.

Hex Parasite ($1/$4) – This is the only way to get ahead on the counters. You can reset the Saga to zero if you wished, and do so for more than one enchantment. The downside is, you have to be able to play black cards. That’s restrictive, on top of this being easy to kill in so many ways. Ferropede needing to attack makes it pretty weak too.

As for Masters 25, and the events going on, starting next week, I have to side with the many folks who are leery of this at $10 a pack. There are reports that stores did not get their full amount, so Wizards either can’t meet the demand of hungry fans or they are artificially trying to create scarcity. I’m not sure which is worse, frankly.

Boxes are still selling in the $170 range on eBay, and that’s dangerously close to what your LGS is paying (likely in the $120 range) and to be honest, the boxes look like a Jace hunt to me. It’ll bum me out if it’s a fun limited set, because I don’t want to pay $35 to draft a set that doesn’t have a lot of payback.

There’s a couple of cards I want to discuss, on top of Blood Moon as I mentioned last week.

Thalia, Guardian of Thraben ($13 now, $17 original/$40 pack foil) – She’s likely to take a hit, and a significant one. Her price is a great confluence of strong demand and low supply, and the jump to $17 was from being a four-of in the Humans decks running rampant in Modern lately. While the new version will go under $10, it won’t go lower than $8. I’ll be watching to see how much product gets opened, because I think a buy-in at something like $25/playset on eBay is a great entry. She will rebound in time, count on it.

Eidolon of the Great Revel ($5, $10/$30) – Just ouch. This is going to be brutal if you still have excess copies around. Journey into Nyx wasn’t opened much at all, relatively speaking, and even though this is a four-of in both Modern and Legacy Burn, that’s the only place you find demand. The price of Eidolon was a financial barrier to burn, depending on if you wanted to play shocks/fetches/duals. This will help that deck stay a budget option.

Ensnaring Bridge ($34, other printings from $40 to $130) – The Invention printing means that this card will have a price ceiling, but this is a four-of in more than Lantern Control.

It’s also a mythic in this set, so we are going to see a small drop, and then prices will start to climb back up. This version will be $50 by Christmas, so if you want your copies, get them now.

 

Cliff is an avid Cuber and Commander player, and has a deep love for weird ways to play this amazing game, as well as being guest host on MTGFF when needed. His current project is a light-up sign for attracting Cubers at GPs, so get his attention @wordofcommander on Twitter if you’ve got ideas or designs.

Here’s the scenario:

You hear about a run of boxes where every 8th pack, there’s a $50 mythic. You travel to where those boxes have been sent, and you head to the counter, and start counting. Every time someone buys packs, you keep track, you monitor when the money shows up and now you count packs, buying a pack after seven others have been purchased.

You’ll make a lot of money that way but every other person is gonna be pissed. That’s called a fixed-ratio schedule. Every X trials, a desired outcome happens.

Humans figure that out really quickly, and it’s not a formula for success. What we would get is the box mapping scenario, or the peeking at packs: Some people figure out where the money is and then sell the loose boosters at slightly less. In the case of Masters 25, if you opened six good rares/mythics and were about even on value, you could put the rest of the loose packs on eBay or Amazon for $5 or $7 each and clean up.

Gambling (and I’m including opening Magic: the Gathering packs here) works on a variable-ratio schedule. With every trial, there’s a chance of the desired outcome. Because it’s random, you might get two really good packs in a row, you might have 30 bad packs in a row.

Weirdly, the longer the run of negative outcomes, the more likely humans are to keep trying. WE ARE DUE. This works on video games, slot machines, booster packs, etc.

I bring this up because Masters 25 is shaping up to be a really frustrating set to open.
It’s a truism that you should never buy loose boosters. Box mapping, peeking, weighing, there’s a lot of margins that people can exploit. Don’t do it for those reasons, but also don’t do it because it’s just bad value.

For instance, Rest in Peace was just previewed for the set yesterday. Right now, it’s a $10 card. At MSRP, you need to hit that card to break even. You have about a 1 in 3 chance (at current prices/spoilers) to open a pack with a card that has retail value of $10 or more. That’s better than a lot of other sets. Some data:

set	Cards worth > $4 or $10	# of rares + mythics in set	% chance of winning
RIX	13	65	20%
IXL	16	82	19.5%
IMA	15	68	22%
EMA	16	68	23.5%

These are only the cards that retail for the cost of the pack, so if we are talking about Eternal Masters, something worth exactly $10 (Maze of Ith) is as much as a win something going for $140 (Jace, the Mind Sculptor) and that brings us to how many we need to open.

You’ll have to open about five packs to get one worth $10, on average. You’ll spend $50 to hit one $10 card. At that rate, your numbers get much much worse. There’s only three cards in EMA worth $50, and that rate is so much worse.

Is there the potential for a three-Jace box? Absolutely. You might hit a Jace and a foil Force of Will, and you’ll feel like you hit the lottery, and it’s a great great feeling.

You’ll also open boxes with Balance, Worldgorger Dragon, and Sphinx of the Steel Wind, and which have foils of Nevinyrral’s Disk, Eight-and-a-half Tails, and Malicious Affliction.

That level of variance is a bad investment. It’s bad value. It’s not worth it, and Masters 25 is going to be worse, it seems. You will hear about amazing boxes, but people won’t be trumpeting their godawful mythic pulls the same way.

If there’s cards you want from Masters 25, just go buy them, about three weeks after the release. We haven’t seen the whole spoiler yet, but the early signs are that this set is going to smash a lot of prices.

Masters 25 appears to have a pair of card types getting a reprint: Multi-format staples whose prices will drop and slowly rebound, or cards which had a high price due to low supply, and those prices are going to fall off a cliff.

Sticky: Blood Moon

Blood Moon is a card that has had a lot of printings, including two Modern Masters printings, and it’s managed to remain a $20 card. That level of price retention is testament to its popularity, mainly in Modern as a backbreaking sideboard card in a lot of matchups.

Among the decks that get counted, this is the 12th most popular card in Modern, even though blessed few decks are playing it in the main. A full 1 in 5 decks has at least one copy in their 75, the average is between 2 and 3. That’s some amazing numbers, considering the popularity of Modern.

I wouldn’t be shocked if this trickled down into the $15 range, but it’ll get back to $20 within a few months. It won’t go higher and it won’t go lower.

 

Slider: Rishadan Port

Let’s be clear: Port is a powerful card in denial strategies. In the right deck, and god forbid in multiples, it can severly limit what a deck can do in Legacy matches.

Unfortunately, Legacy and Cubes are the only formats where this gets played. Yes, you can use this in Commander, but the benefit is pretty low, and a colorless only land has to be pretty awesome to be worth the addition.

Port is a 4-of in Legacy Death and Taxes builds, but not being Modern legal is a big knock. The only supply has been the original Mercadian Masques printing, and a recent judge promo. At a presale point of $50 it’s already lost nearly half the value. I don’t think the original will move much, but the new version will struggle to stay above $40, because not that many people need it.

 

Cliff is an avid Cuber and Commander player, and has a deep love for weird ways to play this game. His current project is a light-up sign for attracting Cubers at GPs, so get his attention @wordofcommander on Twitter if you’ve got ideas or designs.