Category Archives: Casual Fridays

Casual Fridays

Lessons Learned

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One of the things that I like to do when I’m reviewing how the year went is to look for patterns in the spikes throughout the year. This can clue me in about what might be coming next, or the things I want to pick up in anticipation of future growth.

I’m going to look at the last three months, and see what stands out to me. First, some of the spikes that I or others mentioned ahead of time, some spikes I don’t think people predicted at some point, and then what I want to have going forward.

December:

The Chain Veil – The theme this month is going to be counters and proliferate, thanks to Atraxa. The Chain Veil is a card that many picked to eventually be awesome when it was spoiled, and a lovely target at $1. A new spike, especially in foils, is reminiscent of how Nekusar, the Mindrazer caused many cards to spike.

Contagion Engine – If activating planeswalkers twice is good, tapping six mana to +2 all of them is pretty great too. This dodged being in Atraxa’s deck, and should have been on your radar immediately as a result.

Bloodspore Thrinax – If you called this one, then you really do play a lot of counters with your creatures. I’ve got this in my Experiment Kraj deck, and frankly, I feel silly that I didn’t see this spike coming. It’s a fantastic way to power up everything you’re bringing into play, and now Atraxa can grow it! The synergy of Atraxa proliferating this, which will make everything else better,

Doubling Season – I felt silly when I saw this starting to climb. Sure, it’s had two printings plus a Judge edition, but this card defines the casual player’s experience. It’s ready to be printed again, and don’t overlook how hard it is to take this card out of a deck. The supply is low on this because the copies are seeing play, not waiting in storage.

Next up: Asceticism

Sure, it’s $10 right now, but if we are spiking creatures that have to stay in play to get better and better, we need protection for them, and this is a totally unfair card. As a bonus, the foils are not that much more than the nonfoils, and I always prefer speculating on casual foils.

November

Angus Mackenzie – This year, we’ve seen a huge part of the Reserved List go through spikes, and while some of those are pure speculation from individuals or groups, Angus is a group hug commander who can’t be replaced. Throwing a Fog every turn requires a lot more setup, and all he needs is three mana.

Koth of the Hammer – Skred Red strikes! This was a cheap planeswalker, especially with a Duel Deck printing, but it’s reflective of the relatively small supply, since that was four years ago.

Pact of the Titan – Maybe we should have seen this. The other Pacts, aside from the white one, have all seen some tournament play. Free spells are good!

Silas Renn, Seeker Adept – I love that this was less than fifty cents and then was up to $3 at one point. Cheap, powerful, and recursive. How did we not see that this would always be good?

Next up: Mind’s Dilation – Cheap mythic with a game-breaking effect, from a small set, and demands an immediate answer. This is a lot like Lurking Predators, and that’s one of the cards that really jumped me into the MTGFinance game.

October

Selfless Spirit – I played back in the day when Dauntless Escort was a thing. Picking this to be an expensive card wasn’t too tricky.

Foil Leyline of the Void – The rise of Dredge decks should have clued us in about picking up good sideboard options. This has always been a good sideboard option for graveyard decks, but this is powerful from the opening turn.

Torrential Gearhulk – We didn’t say that this would be a $30 card, which is what it spiked to. Six mana is a lot, but I dismissed it for only copying instants. The Pro Tour taught us different.

Next up: Metallurgic Summonings – It’s a fringe deck right now but it’s such an engine that I want to have lots of these. I’m trading for them in foil and not foil, because I don’t want to miss out on the next deck that will make it big.

Casual Fridays

A Better Gifting Guide

So this week, Wizards came out with their official gift-giving guide for people that play Magic or people that know people who play Magic. It’s nice, right?

Gifts for the new player, the experienced, and everyone on a spectrum between.

However, it’s mostly bunk. It’s either preconstructed and at a rather fixed value (Planechase Anthology and Commander 2016) or it’s some form of booster pack buying. Buying someone boosters is exactly like giving them a stocking full of scratcher tickets, only they won’t feel the same need to sort and store all the losing tickets the way most of us sort and file the chaff that comes into our lives.

Last year, at Father’s Day, there was a single $25 (or so, I’m not certain) pack of Modern Masters 2013 for me from a friend. I had to stop and think about what the pack had cost, what it was likely to contain, and whether I wanted to open it.

While I considered all of this, he got impatient with me and told me to open it. So I did. Hello, $25 Grand Arbiter Augustin IV! Hello foil Mothdust Changeling! Hello, not-valuable-uncommons and commons!

So this week, I want to give you all some buying advice.

Gift #1: Store Credit

Not all local stores do this, and not everyone has a store they can go to. But you should look at it for the Magic player in your life. Maybe they want a draft. Or a sweet foil. Or twenty sodas. Who’s to say? But you’ll be getting them what they want, and that’s the best sort of gift.

Really, that’s the best advice anyone could give. You’re supporting a brick-and-mortar store, you’re enabling in-person, healthy gaming. Whatever they end up spending it on, godspeed.

This also applies to big online sites. Lots of them offer gift certificates, and while you can’t buy drafts with such a gift, you can still enable someone to make their own financial decision, instead of the crapshoot of opening packs.

Gift #2: Etsy

Have you seen the ridiculously sweet things you can buy on Etsy for people who play Magic? I don’t want to link them, for fear of favoritism, but here’s a sampling:

  • Five colors of shotglasses
  • Magic-themed wall art
  • Deck boxes, 60 cards up to a whole Cube
  • Bags/Binders/Carriers
  • Dice (oh that’s a rabbit hole, is custom dice)
  • Apparel
  • And so on!

My point is that rather than try to guess what sort of accessories someone would want, simply enable them to get the ones that they think are amazing.

Gift #3: Time

If you’re someone who has no responsibilities, then this gift won’t apply to you. Me, I appreciate when someone close to me says, “I’ve got the kids tonight. Go draft twice in a row and sprinkle in a Commander game and some trading.”

That’s a gift. Maybe you want to help someone travel to a GP or other big event, and you offer to feed the cat or something. You’re enabling someone to take longer and have an experience–something we remember for a longer time and with greather satisfaction than owning a thing.

Gift #4: Things they hesitate on for some reason

I’m donating to two different Patreon accounts these days. Both have episodic content that I enjoy a lot and I want to support. Took me a long while to come around to that, though. It’s worth the price and it’s a worthwhile goal to support people who make content that I enjoy. Help someone else do the same.

Buy someone a membership at a site that will help them track prices, organize collections, and read great articles from some of the best financial minds in the business. ProTrader is only five bucks a month! What a deal!

 

My goal here is to get you thinking about more than just crass packs. There’s endless things to gift someone, and that doesn’t even take into account things you might make them. But do them, and yourself, a favor: skip Wizards’ promotion of boosters and go after something more functional or personal.

Casual Fridays

Reprint Mania!

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This year, we’ve had a tremendous number of cards reprinted.

In order:

February: Duel Deck: Blessed vs. Cursed

June: Eternal Masters

August: From the Vault: Lore

August: Conspiracy: Take the Crown

September: Duel Deck: Nissa vs. Ob Nixilis

November: Commander 2016

November: Planechase Anthology

This doesn’t count the reprints in regular sets or the Masterpieces in Kaladesh. Also, the Standard Showdown packs are adding to the numbers of cards in circulation.

Take a moment and think about this list. Every card you have, every card you purchase, runs the risk of a reprint. I’ve talked before about how hesitant I am to speculate on a large quantity of cards because the reprint train is never stopping.

We already know that next year has another round of Modern Masters in March, as well as a Commander anthology in June. The only truly safe cards are those on the Reserved List, and it doesn’t matter if you agree with the philosophy, it’s one they are sticking to.

I also admit that I’ve totally given up on predicting what they will do when it comes to reprints. Putting Iona, Shield of Emeria in both the FTV and the Modern Masters last summer is a move that perplexes me beyond anything else.

At the same time, we are back to one rotation per year, which conversely makes Standard a lot more appealing for speculative purposes.

So what’s an aware, educated Magic financier to do?

Rule #1: Keep Quantities Reasonable

Everyone who’s tried to make money off this game has their horror stories and a box full of cards that should have paid off but never did. I don’t want to highlight anyone else’s misses, though I can think of them. I confess to owning more than 50 Prophet of Kruphix, though.

If you have a spare playset or two of a card, your exposure is limited. If you want to go crazy deep and pick up a couple hundred copies, you’re putting a lot of money at risk, especially if it’s a card that might get reprinted.

Long-term holds are basically crapshoots. I traded for thirty copies of Thespian’s Stage when it was new and less than a dollar, and I had to dodge a reprint in every casual-oriented set for it to get to the $3 it’s at now. Believe me, I had confidence in the long-term appeal of the card, but I also knew how easily it would be added to just about anything.

Rule #2: Foils When Possible, Except in Standard

It’s a truism that Standard foils are a trap. Standard players don’t generally feel the need to foil out a deck as often as Cube, Commander, Modern, or Legacy players do.

If you think a card is going to have appeal in non-Standard formats, and you’re willing to get in at a higher number, then foils are far safer. It’s not a guarantee, not at all, but it’s harder to print foil versions. On the list above, only Eternal Masters and Conspiracy 2 had foil versions of cards, and the From the Vault foiling is so unpretty that many collector-players stay away.

Here’s the caveat, though: future Masterpiece sets are a dark cloud hanging over future prices. We’ve had lands, and we currently have artifacts. This leaves us creatures, spells, and enchantments. Perhaps one set will be instants, and another sorceries. Wouldn’t be surprising.

Picking up a Masterpiece version of a card generally puts a ceiling on the previous foil versions. Foil Chromatic Lantern from Return to Ravnica will never be more expensive than the Masterpiece version. I’m surprised that the Invention version of Sol Ring has a price so close to the Judge version.

Rule #3: Be Prepared to Lose

This is perhaps the most important rule when it comes to reprints. Sometimes, you’re going to get hit. Even when your card starts to show signs of growing, something happens and it stays worthless.

Accept this. It’s going to happen. It’s not just about a missed spec, it’s something that could have been amazing but instead it’s just cardboard that you can’t even light on fire effectively.

(pause to look at my stack of Prophets and sigh)

If you’re going to play this aspect of Magic: the Gathering, you have to be prepared to not just be wrong. That’s bad enough. You have to be ready for your card to start to take off and then circumstances change and your card craters.

Imagine having a stack of Ruinous Path, and then in Shadows over Innistrad, they decided to reprint Hero’s Downfall. That’s a gut punch right in the wallet. Strictly better reprints are rare, as are emergency bannings, but they are factors you have to be ready for.

Casual Fridays

The Return of the Curve

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Oh, what a good day this is. We’ve had a few weeks since the announcement that Standard is back to one rotation per year, and I couldn’t be more excited.

It’s not exactly the same as it was, and that’s going to be an issue going forward. Shadows over Innistrad and Eldritch Moon are going to rotate at the same time as Battle for Zendikar and Oath of the Gatewatch. My tendency is to assume that things are the same as they were, and that’s not the case. Rotation is not equal, some are 18 months and some are 24 months.

When the change was announced, there was a big winner: Gideon, Ally of Zendikar.

gideon

Gideon’s gained more than $10 since then, and I love seeing this curve come back. About a year after a card came out, there would be something to happen to trigger demand on the card, and here we are, seeing that increase in demand.

The increase in time really benefits Battle for Zendikar and Oath of the Gatewatch, which gained six months. So today I want to look at some cards from those sets which have some potential and can give us some strong gains. One of the things I really look for is a low buy-in price. If I’m not spending much, that means I’m at a low risk of losing value if these speculative picks don’t pay off.

Regrettably, some of these won’t pay but the ones that do are really going to make me look good and make my wallet happy.

Part the Waterveil – $3.64 – Every kooky blue deck tends to play this as a finisher. Chaining them together is generally good enough, but I think there’s going to be a Metallurgic Summoning deck eventually, and this is going to be the top end of that deck. If nothing else, it’s an extra turns card, and those have proven to have some long-term casual appeal. With the exception of Temporal Trespass, at least.

Ob Nixilis, Reignited – $4.58 – I don’t care that it’s a Duel Deck card. It’s got room to grow. It’s incredibly effective at any point in the game, it’s powerful, and it’s still got nearly a year to make a splash. People are resisting it, but remember how well it did at the Pro Tour.

Ruinous Path – $1.74 – Black decks have all the removal. Being able to spend mana and solve a problem on the board is incredibly powerful. I’ve touted this card before and while it’s not as good as Hero’s Downfall, it’s one of the best solutions to problems on the board. To the Slaughter has popped up in decks, and this is better by far.

Linvala, the Preserver – $2.42 – This small-set mythic isn’t going to be a four-of, but if Panharmonicon decks really take off, this would be a super fun addition, capable of three creatures and ten life! It’s good in control decks, as a top end and a card that can take a game you’re losing and turn it into a game you win.

Thought-Knot Seer – $5.85 – We haven’t been lacking for colorless lands, and with Aether Hub being one of the most popular lands around, colorless mana is going to remain a useful thing. Thought-Knot is one of the most powerful things you can do with this mana, and as a popular card in Modern, there’s a lot of value to be had still.

Chandra, Flamecaller – $7.04 – Don’t forget, there was a time that she was $35! She’s got the perfect first curve, as she was adopted initially. She has a problem where she doesn’t play well with the newer Chandra, Torch of Defiance, but that card is dropping fast and I think there’s good room for growth with the big-sister version. Imagine that at Pro Tour Aether Revolt, there’s a red deck that tops out at three of these. A double-up to $15 is the low end.

Eldrazi Mimic – $.91 – I have some high, high hopes for this card in the Metalwork Colossus decks. Barring that, as I’ve written before, I am optimistic about the Eternal potential of this card.