Category Archives: Casual Fridays

Casual Fridays

The Ground Floor

The spoiler for Modern Masters 2017 is here, and while it’s full of juicy speculative goodness, I’ll get to some safe picks in a moment.

I want you to understand that next weekend, when we can draft with this set, is going to suck the air out of Kaladesh block drafting, and Amonkhet is only six weeks away from prerelease events, so preview season for that starts in about three weeks.

Stay disciplined. Get your Whir of Inventions for pennies. Stock up on foil Metallurgic Summonings. Trade for all the Panharmonicons you can at $4 or less. If you don’t have them already, get your Fatal Push playset now, instead of waiting and watching the price go up. Don’t let the new shiny things distract you from what you should be doing: Getting all the last Kaladesh block cards you want now.

When a new set comes out, I have a two-step process. I figure out what cards I want to have, and the price I want to pay for them, cash or trade. That’s how I try to make sure I’m growing my collection’s value, by not overpaying when I get in on cards.

The sheer number of once-pricey rares in this set has me a little spooked about going too deep on a card. Going forward, I don’t want to be in on too many copies of a card, it’ll be better served to diversify what I’m holding.

For this set, I want to look not at the cards being played in Modern, but the casual stars that have been reprinted. For the most part, these are cards that can own the table in Commander or Cube, and since they are being printed right now, I think they are likely safe from being in Commander 2017 or some other supplementary product.

Probably.

These are the cards that I want to pick up, in anticipation of solid, steady growth.

Cavern of Souls – I need this to get cheaper. It’s not played in a lot of decks but it tends to be an all-star in a playset. This is the land that Sliver decks and Ally decks and tribal decks love most. I sold every one out of my Commander decks when it broke $40, and I’m really hoping this drops to the $25 range. At that point, I would get one for each of my tribal decks and I would absolutely sell them again when the prices go back up again.

Craterhoof Behemoth – Right now you can get these for $10 or less on preorder, and that’s a price I already like. If it drops lower, to $8 or god forbid $5, I’ll be all over this and sorely tempting my new ‘don’t go deep’ philosophy. This is a game-ender card, a stellar casual creature, and something that goes in lots of decks.

Temporal Mastery – Extra-turn cards are always going to have legs. This is a card I want to make sure I pick up a couple of sets of, and it can be had for $3 in preorders. I don’t think it will fall much farther, and this is why I love the card:

A couple of times there was an extra-turns deck that would pop up, but this graph is what I want to see. It’s in consistent demand, so I want plenty at a low buy-in.

Cyclonic Rift – I had expected this to be in another Commander printing before long, but being here means I want some at $4 or less just to hold. I hate the existence of this card, and I wouldn’t be shocked if it got banned in Commander.

Phantasmal Image – I’m hoping this makes it down to $1 or so, and I would pick up quite a few. I’ve seen it be recurred too often and do too much work to stay that low for long.

Venser, Shaper Savant – My target for him is $5. The FTV version didn’t dent him too hard, but this is too good in too many ways to stay $5 forever. He almost never shows up in constructed formats, but he’s very powerful in casual settings and I do think his price will go back up over time.

Stay away from:

Griselbrand – Being banned in Commander is the big strike against him. He’s one of the premier cards to cheat into play, making him a four-of in combos, but the supply is too high for me to get in.

Sphinx’s Revelation – No price movement for years and years. Observe.

That’s a card that isn’t going to recover from this printing.

Past in Flames – Nope, nope, never.

Thragtusk – Solid, dependable, reprinted into oblivion.

Zur the Enchanter – Before the judge promo, before this, I could have been talked into him, but now I think he’s going to drop to near-bulk status. I don’t even want to get in on foils.

Casual Fridays

Fetches and the Future

Today, the complete list of Modern Masters 2017 goes up, and I’m busy refreshing pages and going crazy just like you.

I’m keenly aware of some truly amazing cards and the higher distribution, and I can’t wait to find out how overpriced my shop is going to hold drafts at, but I want to focus on the fetches in MM17 and what the future holds for them.

We have a baseline for what’s going to happen to the enemy fetches from Zendikar, with their inclusion in MM17: The allied fetches in Khans of Tarkir.

Let’s look at Polluted Delta.

This was at more than $100, just from Legacy and casual demand. Going from Onslaught to Khans is an enormous jump in availability, but there was a new demand as Modern players could now add these to decks. A loss of half was immediate, and it’s halved again.

Notably, the demand hasn’t spiked since the KTK printing, though this is the Onslaught version we are looking at, the original. It’s lost a lot of value and hasn’t recovered, which is a bit of a surprise to me.

Let’s look at what the Khans version has done.

First of all, it’s at half the price of the Onslaught version. It’s much more common, yes, but this is a big gap for a card between its two printings. I think that with such a big difference in art and frame, I’m not surprised that there is a gap, which is consistent across all five of the fetches. People are willing to pay more for the old version.

I am surprised that the gap has held. We’ve got six versions of allied fetches for you to choose from, allowing you to balance your budget with your desire for the shiny or unique.

What this means for the enemy fetches is this: I’m expecting them to lose value immediately, down to the $15-$20 range. I expect them to recover somewhat at the start of Amonkhet, and start an upward creep…but not very far.

Reusing the art is a big deal for the fetchlands. These are going to be the same as the originals, except for the expansion symbol and other small frame tweaks, and that means the originals are going to be dragged down in price significantly.

If I had them, I might try to move extras but buylists might not be honored now, and I can’t imagine eBay sales are going to happen much. It couldn’t hurt trying to sell them now, but I don’t think you’ll get very far.

If you’re holding nonfoils, I think you’re going to simply have to hold onto them and accept that you’re going to have to wait some time to get much of your value back.

Foils, though, that’s a different matter. I doubt that the foils are going to recover effectively, given that there’s a super-chase-mega-rare one to go get, but my guess is that the foils take a hit of about 40% and then stabilize. Having the new foils look almost the same as the old ones is going to mean that the older ones come down toward the newer ones.

Modern Masters 2017 has a truly ridiculous number of chase cards, and I want to address what Wizards is trying to do: make the format cheaper and sell a bunch of packs. I don’t think this is a move of the desperate, but they are trying to goose player interest in the format.

Modern as a format has looked flat, but my goodness, we have a lot of toys to play with in this set, some of which harken back to other amazing formats, e.g. Mystical Teachings.

While I think that the fetches are going to stay stable, I suspect that this is going to lead to growth if the player base grows. Fetches are going to be the canary in the coal mine for Modern: If the players come to the format, the prices of the lands will be the first to show it. This set is gas and it’s going to get a lot of people playing the format because the cards will be cheap.

Make no mistake, this is going to torpedo some prices significantly. Stores have more product. Some stores are selling boxes for less than the MSRP of $240, and that’s a sign for how much product they want to move. There’s going to be a lot of Liliana of the Veil running around, a lot more Damnation and Blood Moon, and people want to play with their awesome new and expensive cards.

I think that Wizards is sending another signal here: Anything not on the Reserved List is fair game. The EV on a MM17 pack is ridiculously high, at least for right now. That won’t last, though, as packs get opened and prices crash. Remember that stores get boxes from distributors for less than retail, and they will open boxes if the price is right on singles. That pressure will keep the price of the non-chase cards super duper low.

In previous sets, they decided to cap the values of boxes, by only reprinting so many valuable cards. This is not the case in 2017, instead they chose both low-print-run cards (Liliana) to cards they have goosed a bunch (Tarmogoyf) and so on. Going forward, nothing’s safe. Please keep that in mind as we go forward into this brave new world.

Casual Fridays

Midranging Wild and Free

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When a set comes out, it’s easy to say that everything is going to go down in price. And it will. I aggressively trade/sell/rid myself of cards early in a set’s life.

Today I want to look at Aether Revolt cards, but instead of trying to pick the lowest, or the highest, I want to focus in the middle and see which of these cards are going to go up or down in value.

I’m picking Aether Revolt today, because the supply is much smaller on this set than Kaladesh, and we are all about to go crazy with Modern Masters 2017 spoilers.

Tezzeret the Schemer – $8.50 – He hasn’t fallen far enough to be an auto-pickup, but the deck that wants him is so very narrow. Also, he’s going to be 2UB to kill two creatures over two turns if you have enough artifacts (not a given). The plus ability and the ultimate seem underpowered to me, so I think he’s going to keep trending downward.

Ajani Unyielding – $6.50 – This is going to be his price for the length of his stay in Standard, I think. I like how clearly defined each of his modes are, but six mana means he’s never going to be a four-of as newest Tezzeret might be. Just leave him alone for now.

Disallow – $7.50 – What an interesting graph. This has gone up since release, and the reason is primarily the assorted Saheeli decks playing 2-4 copies of the card.

Playing this card in one of the rock-paper-scissors of this format means that it’s going to be pretty stable. The problem is that this deck is built around a two-card combo, and I’m not sure that the combo is going to survive until it rotates in the fall of 2018.

This card is an excellent control card, versatile enough to answer something that I thought was going to dominate Standard: an ultimate from Liliana, the Last Hope. It seems so easy to play her before counters are ready and protect her for a few turns, then let the Zombies take over. Disallow lets you not worry about that ultimate, or other problematic things.

I think this price should go down, considering it’s only a rare, but there are a lot of factors at play and I’m not going to get any of these right now. If control gets some new toys, then this is going to benefit mightily, but that seems unlikely at this time.

Fatal Push – $5.51 – Here’s my hot take: This is going to go up. I think the foils are a steady bet to stay around $30 for some time, but the nonfoils are seeing a tremendous amount of play in a range of formats, and this promises to be heavily played for the next 18 months. You can get them on eBay for a touch under $4 if you get it by the playset, and I am expecting this to creep upward now that are in the final weeks of opening the set.

I’m picking these up as I can, and I’m expecting to out them in nine months or so.

Rishkar, Peema Renegade – $5.37 – I also like this to go up, as value, as an enabler, and as a casually fantastic card. Please pay attention to how small the spread has gotten, because either the buylist needs to go down or the retail needs to go upward.

I love accelerating into a six-drop on turn four, and the fact that Standard doesn’t have a premier six means Verdurous Gearhulk gets to come down the following turn and you’ll be able to attack with one of those creatures. This is a card that’s also gained value due to the change to Planeswalker decks over Intro Packs, as this whole cycle of legends would have been contenders to be the foil.

As it stands, this is an excellent contender to be $8 or so by Christmas, and $10 in 12 months is possible.

Glint-Sleeve Siphoner – $2.48 – This is not Dark Confidant, it’s both better and worse. If you have alternate ways to make energy, this is a fantastic way to spend that energy. I’ve been really surprised at the decks which have so much energy laying around and nothing to do with it, but this is clearly designed to be an aggro card. If there was another energy set available, I would be all over it, but I need this to be closer to a dollar before I’m comfortable moving in.

Casual Fridays

Inventions: Time to Buy

Time to speak some truth: I’ve been buying Inventions and Expeditions whenever I can.

Part of it is that I have a magpie’s eye for shiny and unique things. I have written before that I think foiling out a deck is a worthy quest and a good financial plan at the same time. The Masterpiece series has grown on me and I think it’s worth acquiring.

Especially right now.

The market has set the price on these relatively quickly, and while the prices all started super high on the Expeditions, they settled to a more reasonable level within a few weeks. To be fair, we didn’t know exactly how many would be printed and how many people would want them. Some of the preorder prices turned out to be comically high, but that’s the nature of things showing up for the first time.

Let’s look at Polluted Delta.

 

What I love most about that graph is the dip at the end of 2016, when the Standard Showdown packs were announced and started being opened. Given the frequency of having an Expedition or Invention in those, the amount of supply added was probably not 20% more, but that’s how far it has fallen at that news.

To buy low and sell high is a prime tenent of Magic finance, and the slight falling of values means that I want to get in on some lands. I’m a bit more optimistic on the enemy fetches, but I’m also aware that the player base is clamoring for a reprint of those.

Intellectually, I know that the pack foil of Twilight Mire is more expensive than the Expedition version. I know that the pack foil versions of cards are almost always the most expensive foils, depending on reprints and arts.

It doesn’t take away from my enjoyment of owning these cards with the unique frame and appearance, which is why I pick up as many of them as I can.

The most important detail about the Masterpieces is this: They do not circulate a lot. People get them and put them in decks and leave them there. High-end foils are like that, and while the supply might be large, the number in circulation isn’t. Cubes and Commander decks soak up Masterpieces that get opened, and I don’t think they have a chance to lose that freshly-opened-pack smell before being double-sleeved and given a place of pride.

Normally, this is a good time to buy cards, at the tail end of a season. I wrote last week about some pickups I really like from Kaladesh. What makes this a good time for Inventions especially is that it’s going to take truly special circumstances for more of them to get into circulation.

I’m not ruling out a future edition that Wizards does, I think it’s super unlikely for them to release a significant amount of these again. It would be analogous to releasing a new batch of SDCC black planeswalkers, to my mind.

We are about to start spoilers for Modern Masters 2017, and I have a strong suspicion that it’s going to lower the amount of drafts done at local stores for AER-AER-KLD. We don’t know enough about the set or what’s in it, but players are fickle. We like new things, especially the chance to open something super expensive. Cutting back on the drafts done means that the supply isn’t going to go up very much, and so there’s a few Inventions with strong casual appeal that I really want in on:

Solemn Simulacrum – $66 – Universally good and has been reprinted a ton, yet still holding some value. The pack foils are not visually striking, while this is, and I like this to grow nicely over time.

Rings of Brighthearth – $55 – The card in regular nonfoil has apready risen recently, at at about $10 more than the pack foil, I’ve gotten two of these for different decks. There are not a lot of decks that want this effect, but it’s amazing when it’s good.

Chromatic Lantern – $55 – The gold standard of mana fixing, a card very popular in casual formats, and something that ought to go up over time.

Cloudstone Curio – $30 – Have you seen an Animar deck go off with this? Or an Elf deck? It’s a combo enabler, and those are the things that can really spike when a new card makes them good.

Gauntlet of Power – $31 – I’m not ruling out weird Infinity War crossovers or stuff like that, but with the nonfoil at $15, this is a great price for an auto-include in single-color decks.

Paradox Engine – $45 – Again, this is just a silly card that does silly things and is breakable even now. It’s also gorgeous, which is important.

Planar Bridge – $36 – It can’t go find the sorcery or instant you need to win the game, but it does tutor up a ridiculous number of broken things and that’s at the heart of Commander games. I love having these in long-term storage, because it’s got excellent potential.

Something that hasn’t happened yet to the Inventions or Expeditions is a spike in those prices. They have dipped a little and recovered to within a few percent, but they represent at least steady long-term growth, and the potential for a huge payoff should they ever spike. It might even be a Reserved List buyout, which we saw a few times this past summer, as some people attempted to clear out the market.

Torrential Gearhulk has seen a bump already, in all versions including the Masterpiece:

 

The bump from Pro Tour play affected all versions of this card, and that’s helpful to know if someone breaks Paradox Engine during Hour of Devastation.

Any chance you get to trade for a Masterpiece, you should at least consider. Depends on the trade and the percentage that someone is asking for, but they are fantastic trade bait, a sweet target for people to aim for and a financially stable card that you should seek to add to your portfolio.