By: Travis Allen

What’s old is new again.

Let’s begin by looking at some statistics to get a feel for the metagame at large.

Top 8:
3 Abzan Midrange
2 Burn
2 UR Twin
1 Amulet Bloom

18+ Point (6-4 or better) Modern Decks
30 Abzan Midrange 26%
17 Burn 15%
15 Infect 13%
8 Affinity 7%
6 UR Twin 5%
5 Amulet Bloom 4%
4 Scapeshift 3.5%
4 GR Tron 3.5%

So that I don’t have to repeat myself over and over, keep in mind the following blocks are NOT eligible for reprint in Modern Masters 2: Innistrad, Return to Ravnica, Theros, Khans of Tarkir.

The Results Are In

It doesn’t come as a surprise to many that Abzan, aka Nu-Jund, was the most important archetype of the event, even if it didn’t actually take home a trophy. When it constitutes a quarter of the room on Saturday and nearly half of the top eight, plenty of excellent Magic players recognized that it has a very high power level. That’s not surprising either, considering it gets to play some of the strongest cards in the format.

 Most of the Abzan lists were very similar. Liliana of the Veil, Tarmogoyf, Abrupt Decay, Tasigur, Siege Rhino, and Lingering Souls make up the core of the deck. Sprinkle Scavenging Ooze, discard, maybe a few more removal spells. Shake well and serve tepid at a lifeless soiree where half the attendees are on so many prescription drugs they are incapable of experiencing emotion.

Tarmogoyf is completely saturated in value at this point. I can’t find copies at less than $190, and even then there aren’t many below $200. If any card is going to be reprinted in Modern Masters 2, it’s Tarmogoyf. Stay well away here. Liliana is also quite pricey, having risen to $80, with a floor of $85-$90 just a day or two ahead of the PT. With the Regional PTQ reprint already well-known, it seems unlikely that she’ll make another appearance this year. We know that she was originally in the file for M15 and was pulled for power level reasons. Wizards was looking for a reprint venue, and I’m assuming the promo is what they landed on. Assuming that’s true, we probably don’t see her again this year.

Abrupt Decay is likely the best bet from this deck. Copies are still floating in the $10-$12 region, which I find hard to believe is the correct price for the premier removal spell in both relevant eternal formats. Tiny Leaders growing in popularity recently also bodes very well for a card that will destroy any non-land card in the format. Looking back at Maelstrom Pulse it doesn’t look like it ever got much more expensive than $15, but I can’t find data all the way back to Alara. Other than that, I can’t think of any piece of removal that’s ever consistently sat at $20. No other piece of removal has ever been so prominent though, especially one with no other printing. I’d assume $15 is the cheapest real price for this card, and numbers pushing $25 wouldn’t surprise me in the least. The only thing that scares me here is a reprint somewhere. I’m not saying it will show up in Standard, but Wizards has a way of sneaking cards into places you wouldn’t have guessed it. Tectonic Edge showing up in the recent Commander product, for instance. I don’t fault anyone for stockpiling Abrupt Decays right now, just be aware that Wizards is also aware of how real this card is.

Lingering Souls has been printed four times. (Three of those reprints after I bought eighty or ninety copies.) Without even more reprints this will eventually hit $2, but we’re a ways away from that.

Siege Rhino and Tasigur are jumping into Modern with both feet, but the supply on these guys is still growing. They also feel exactly like the type of card Wizards knew ahead of time would be popular and wants to make available – how many supplementary products has Courser of Kruphix shown up in at this point? Two? The laws of supply and demand should keep the prices on these two suppressed for at least a little while longer. Revisiting them will be our goal around MM2/MTG:Origins. At that point drafting will have dried up, people’s attention will be elsewhere, and we’ll be entering the seasonal lull.

Expanding our perspective to some other G/W/B decks, we see some other hot numbers. Wilt-Leaf Liege is $30 now. Unsurprising as it’s from one of the least-printed Modern-border sets in Magic, and it’s exactly the type of card aspiring players want to use so they can “get” all those jerks playing Liliana of the Veil. A price tag this high is only possible because of the extremely low quantity available. One reprint will crash the value here.

Alongside Wilt-Leaf we saw a lot of Voice of Resurgence and Gavony Township. Voice’s future in Modern was tenuous in the eyes of many, with Pod finally having been shown the door after long overstaying its welcome. This weekend the little elemental that could proved that he (she? it?) has what it takes. Prices are hanging around $15, and as we get further from Dragon’s Maze, I wouldn’t be surprised to see this break $20, especially with Twin being as popular as it was. Gavony Township also came out in force, and strikes me as having a real future. John Stern’s Friday feature match showcased just how silly the card is in concert with mana dorks and Lingering Souls tokens, two types of cards that are never going out of style. As a rare from Innistrad it’s got a fair bit of supply, so I don’t think we see it rush towards $10, but it could easily be $5 by year’s end. Take a look at the four pages of 18+ point decks – there were a lot of Townships.

Burn made up the next most popular archetype in day two, a fact that makes only Lee Sharpe and other libertarian sociopaths happy. In fact, the first Modern feature match of the Pro Tour was a burn mirror, with commentary by Rashad. This is the Magic coverage equivalent of burying the lede.

Side note: I can’t fathom why Wizards keeps putting Rashad in the booth. Every single Pro Tour, without fail, my feed is filled with people pleading to have him removed from coverage. I understand that he started GGS Live, and I respect that. He seems like a very pleasant individual and I’m sure he’s a great guy to be friends with. The problem is that he is just in over his head at these events. When compared to the commentating of even the mediocre Randy Buehler, Rashad is clearly outclassed. Given that Wizards tends to listen to their playerbase, all I can imagine at this point is that he’s got a contract.

The most exciting card in burn (and I use the word exciting very, very liberally) is Eidolon of the Great Revel. Vexing Devil is over $9 and that’s entirely on casual demand. I’d imagine Eidolon has comparable casual demand, and is also the second best red card in both Modern and Legacy to boot. Follow that up with the fact that he’s from Journey to Nyx and you’ve got a real winner on your hands. Goblin Guide, the other premier red burn spell in eternal formats, is a good $20, and would possibly be higher if people weren’t expecting a MM2 reprint. I see Eidolon breaking $10, perhaps even in this year, and $20 by the end of 2016 is on the table without a reprint. Beyond Eidolon, little in these decks is exciting, whether from the perspective of a player or investor.

Infect, like burn, is a pile of barely-playable commons and a handful of rares. Wild Defiance isn’t played in enough numbers to move the ticker more than a dollar or two, and isn’t even necessarily the best choice for the deck. I’m staying away. What I do like from this deck is Inkmoth Nexus. It was in an event deck, but it’s still only got a single printing. Infect has been growing in Legacy at the hands of Tom Ross, and with this many copies in Modern, it may have cemented itself as a solid tier 1.5 contender. Given how hard infect is to put in Standard, I’d say this is safe for at least several months. With so much of the deck relatively inexpensive, all the value will be shoved into the few rares that round out the package. Noble Hierarch is saturated and also slated for MM2, and the rest of the manabase is old news. Inkmoth Nexus is the card best positioned to gain on Infect’s success. It could technically appear in MM2, but I doubt it. Putting in Inkmoth means including Infect as a draft strategy. I’m guessing Wizards doesn’t want to go down that path quite yet.

Affinity had a rather poor showing, likely due in part to the soup de jour midrange deck now having access to white, and subsequently Stony Silence, a stone-cold killer of weird metal hats. With Metalcraft confirmed for MM2, I’m staying the hell away from this entire deck, with the sole exception of Inkmoth Nexus.

As the winner of the whole shebang one would assume UR Twin is well positioned to pick up some value dollars, but like half of Abzan and most of Affinity, everything is pretty well saturated at this point. I’m a bit surprised Splinter Twin is “only” about $17, but that may be due to expectations of a MM2 reprint. Most appealing in the deck is Snapcaster Mage. He’s crept up towards $35 after a fall to nearly $25 a few months ago, and I expect that trend to continue. Without a reprint this year, which I wouldn’t count on, I suspect he’ll be $50 by year’s end.

What was clearly the breakout deck of the event, Amulet Bloom, garnered a remarkably odd reaction from the market given both the success and screen time it got. Amulet still hasn’t managed to crack $8, and Hive Mind is still under $4. Both of those are solid gains, but if you had asked me last week to predict the price of each if the deck took second at the Pro Tour, I would have told you they’d be much more expensive than they are. Are we finally seeing the Magic community at large start to wisen up? Is it because the deck is so damned tricky to pilot that Gerry T called it the most difficult deck he’d ever played? I’m not sure. It’s also possible that sometime within the next week people decide that those prices are just too low and they end up bought out. It did happen with Azusa after all, who is now nearly $50 a copy on TCG. This isn’t too surprising given the exceptionally low supply available, combined with her utility in both EDH and TL. Prime Titan picked up two bucks or so, but has otherwise similarly reacted with restraint. If the titans don’t show up in MM2 I like him as a trade target. $20 each isn’t hard to imagine.

Worth considering is the possibility that some component of this deck gets banned. While I don’t believe it’s possible to win on turn one, you can end the turn with your opponent at something like four life while you have multiple karoo lands and a titan in play. Turn two wins are possible and turn three wins are reasonably common without disruption. Considering Wizards wants this to be a turn four format, I’d say the deck is pretty heartily in violation of a major rule of the format. Technically Wizards does let decks capable of faster wins exist – Goryo’s Vengenace can turn one you and is still legal, and Storm and go off on turn three – but it has to be infrequent and inconsistent, even without disruption from the opponent. With no disruption from the other side of the table, Bloom can fire on turn three somewhere in the neighborhood of 20%-50% of the time I’d guess. I’m not entirely sure what they’d ban if they did hit something, but my best guess is Summer Bloom itself. Everything else in the deck is capable of doing something else interesting, and Azusa is far more fragile than Bloom, while the card Summer Bloom is essentially just a combo piece at this point. Its also miserable to watch go off, as Cohen’s multiple ten-minute turns were proof of. I’m not sure it’s too fast, or too powerful, or takes too long of turns, but it does seem to hit on all three metrics that Wizards is not a fan of.

I don’t know. Maybe they do hit it, maybe they don’t. I know the deck will be under the microscope now more than ever after that performance.

While we’re on the topic of Amulet Bloom, I’m compelled to mention that you should 100% be shipping any Leyline of Sanctities, a card often found in the sideboard of combo decks. Sanctity is the card I least want to have to own a playset of, but am forced to if I want to play filthy combo decks. Both Sanctity and Fulminator Mage have absolutely no business being as expensive as they are, and are easily reprintable in many places.

Where does all of this leave us?

Well…I’m selling. Nearly everything. Tarmogoyfs, Lilianas, Affinity staples, Twin pieces, Vendilion Clique, Wilt-Leaf Lieges, Gavony Townships. There’s a few reasons.

The first reason is the most obvious one: Modern Masters 2. We have no clue what’s in it other than Emrakul, Etched Champion, and some Metalcraft cards. Popular opinion is that Tarmogoyf will reappear, and quite possibly Dark Confidant and Vendilion Clique as well. Beyond those three big targets, there’s still piles and piles of Modern staples that are viable such as Goblin Guide, Bloodghast, Arcbound Ravager, and more. You don’t need to remind me that the first Modern Masters run ended up pushing prices up on several key cards, such as Tarmogoyf and Cryptic Command. With a stated print run four times greater than the first MM though, I’m not sure that’s going to happen this time around.

My second, more general reason for wanting to shift so many cards is that beyond MM2, there are reprint haymakers everywhere. For instance, I had about fifty or sixty Tectonic Edges I had piled up from purchasing collections, and was planning to out them this month. Then they showed up in the Commander decks this past fall, which I never expected. Oh, whoops. There goes $300 in profits. Courser of Kruphix showed up in two supplementary products, as did Hero’s Downfall. Between Event Decks, Clash Packs, and Commander precons, there’s always something around the corner waiting to bite your specs in the ass. I’m particularly concerned about two-color cards later this year. A few paragraphs back I was talking about Wilt-Leaf Liege and Gavony Township. Township in particular looks so good as a spec, but consider the last few years of Commander decks. First there was wedges, then shards, then mono-color. We’re set up for two-color Commander precons this year, and Gavony Township and Wilt-Leaf would fit very well into the GW one. Those thirty or fifty or one hundred Townships you had picked up for between $1 and $3, expecting them to hit $5 to $6? Not if they’re in an EDH precon buddy.

This may sound odd with MM2 on the horizon, but another reason I’m looking to move a lot of product and avoiding buying into any cards from this Pro Tour is because I expect that we’re at peak Modern excitement right now. Remember last year when Scalding Tarns hit $100 ahead of a Modern GP that was right before the start of the Modern PTQ season? I held on, expecting the PTQ season to push the fetches and many other Modern staples even higher. Rather than keep climbing, they crashed, and Tarns are just $60 now. More and more, it seems like Modern is a format not driven by competitive seasons or waves of interest, but rather single events that stir everyone into a frenzy, and then interest crashes afterwards. Yeah we’ll hit MM2 in a few months and that will get people talking about the format, especially with three Modern GPs immediately following MM2’s release, but then what? Nothing to really drive demand again until next February at the following Modern Pro Tour. Remember, there’s only one of those a year now. The average player might get to a single Modern GP this year. Beyond that, where is he or she going to play? There’s no Modern PTQ season, and something like 87% of North American PreTQs are Standard. Even if WotC takes the reins on that, most players are only going to have local store events and maybe one or two SCGs to play much Modern.

Tie this concern that we’re at the peak of Modern’s excitement right now into the fact that January and February tend to be the highest tide for Magic cards in general, and you can see that we’re probably in the 95th percentile of any given card’s price for the year on over 90% of the Modern index.

I’m not foolish enough to ignore the fact that some cards will still manage to climb. Liliana is reasonably well positioned, and I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see her crest $100 or more during the MM2 hype. Snapcaster is similarly well-positioned. Those are only possibilities though – neither is guaranteed. What if Liliana falls to $60 between now and June, and the MM2 spike only brings her back up to $75? Without a doubt, there will be Modern cards that gain value throughout the year and make people money. Those cards will be the minority though, and most will be lower in three months or six months than they are now. If your portfolio is diverse, the answer here is to move most of your product, take your profits, and look for greener pastures. Yes, you may miss on $120 Lilianas or $90 Scalding Tarns. But you’ll hit on $30 Wilt-Leafs, and $70 Confidants, and $200 Goyfs, and $70 Cliques, and plenty of other cards that will collectively lose a lot more money than the few cards that gain in price.

I’m not selling everything. I’m holding onto my Snapcasters, as that’s safe enough that I consider it worth the risk. I’ve still got a bunch of Goryo’s Vengeances and Through the Breaches, and lots of Scars fastlands. Perhaps against my better judgment, Vengevines remain stashed. I’ve got a bunch of other stuff under $10 that I’m holding onto as well because their prices haven’t yet risen enough to be worth selling, and if they get reprinted I don’t stand to lose that much on each. After a quick count, the number of Modern-legal cards in my spec box worth at least $10 that I’m holding onto is five, and there are probably more than fifty or sixty unique cards in there.

A point of clarification: all the prior advice is through the lens of investing, in one capacity or another. If you’re looking to play Kibler’s GWb deck, don’t hesitate to pick up the Wilt-Leaf Lieges. If you want to play Affinity, trade for Arcbound Ravagers. You shouldn’t feel bad about grabbing a playset of anything you actually want to play with, save perhaps Tarmogoyf. This is a game first and a trading platform second. If you want to play with certain cards, buy the cards. If your only goal is to make money, why are you here and not in the stock market?

Springjack Pasture

I’ve told you that I don’t like holding onto anything worth double digits and that I’m looking for greener pastures. Exactly what are those cards?

Scavenging Ooze: Relatively low print run, even with the Steam promo. Was all over the place this weekend in Abzan decks, and anything that makes green mana is likely to want some number of copies. At $5 or so a copy, this could be an easy double up. 

Eidolon of the Great Revel: Way underpriced for how good this card and burn in general are in Modern and Legacy. I’m slightly worried it shows up in a clash pack or something, but even then I’m not sure it will be enough to stunt growth. After I move some of the pricier things I’ve still got kicking around, I may drop some cash on these guys. 

Thalia, Guardian of Thraben: I said last week it feels underpriced, and I still feel that way. 

Khans Fetches: Most of these are at or near their lifetime floors. I’m trading for these all day long. They’re the closest thing we have in Magic to currency other than, well, currency. As for purchasing… 

Foil Khans Fetches: Return to Ravnica shocks were (universally?) the cheapest they were within a few months of release. Make no bones about it, the buy-in here is damn expensive. The upside is that all of them could gain 15%-50% of value within a year, all with basically no fears of loss in price. 

Crazy Specs: This topic was broached recently. The short version is that if you miss, you don’t lose much, and if you hit, it more than makes up for your misses. Take for example Faith’s Reward, of which I currently have around 100 copies. I paid $.25 each, for a total of $25. If it completely tanks and is reprinted eight times, they’re still worth $.10 each and I lose $15. If it hits it big and they reach $8, I just made enough to cover having missed on other specs several times over. You can’t do this with just any card – you have to find ones that are in low supply with high power level. It’s not for everyone, but when you hit, you hit hard. Another one I’ve picked up a lot of? Magus of the Bazaar. 

Rattleclaw Mystic: Buy-a-Boxes rarely miss. When Theros rotates we lose Sylvan Caryatid, Voyaging Satyr, and Elvish Mystic. 

 

Sliver Hive(lord): Guaranteed risers that are reasonably safe from reprints, and cheap to boot. 

Modern has become far too financially volatile a format for me to want to have any large investment in right now. With a major reprint outlet a few months away and very little else driving players at the local level to become emotionally and financially invested in Modern, I’ll sit out for a bit. It feels sort of odd since it’s been such a large percentage of my investment strategy for the past two years, but for now it’s time to leave it be. Maybe this August after all the MM2 price swings settle down I’ll revisit it. 

I’ve no doubt plenty of people will disagree with my strategy and calls here, but I don’t mind. When people are talking about how they slam dunked Abrupt Decay or Liliana it will be easy to feel like I sold out early. What’s important to remember is that we see the highlight reel when people hit home runs, but we won’t be hearing from the guys who lost hundreds of dollars after going deep on Gavony Township when it’s printed in Commander decks later this year. Rather than chase cards with big price tags and big targets on their head, I’m going to avoid being greedy and instead go after cards with low risk profiles that are less sexy. 

Except for Magus of the Bazaar. That’s sexy.

---

 

By: Travis Allen

This was originally shaping up to be a rather bland Pro Tour. With Treasure Cruise having completely overtaken Modern, resulting in massive shifts in the metagame, it was looking like we were going to get an answer to a question nobody really wanted to ask: “what’s the best Cruise deck?” Thankfully Wizards saved us from this outcome, and in fact gave us more than we could have hoped for.

I’m sure at this point you’re probably sick of reading about the ban list changes, and that’s fair. Sell Grave-Trolls and Worldgorgers, buy everything, blah blah. You’d think it was the only thing that happened in Magic that week. Yet it would be foolish to ignore the fact that we haven’t yet fully felt their implication. Since the announcement there’s been a paucity of Modern events. We’ve seen a handful of dailies, two SCG Modern Premier IQs, and a lot of untested lists posted on Reddit. With very little in the way of results, and some of the world’s best brewers keeping quiet until after the Pro Tour, there’s no way to truly know what is possible in a post-Cruise, post-Pod world. For three glorious weeks we get to pretend Seance is playable and anyone can win any event with any seventy-five, so long as there’s a megathread about it somewhere.

Seven days from now reality will rear it’s uninvited head once again, reminding people that Cranial Plating is still legal, Thoughtseize is still the fun police, and Snapcaster Mage targeting Cryptic Command is why you quit this bullshit format the last time.

Since Khans of Tarkir released card prices have been out of whack, and they’re just now starting to re-align with what we would expect. While Liliana isn’t $40 anymore, plenty of cards still have room to grow, and the Pro Tour results this weekend are going to be a big part of it. Let’s run through some of the cards to watch this weekend.

Liliana of the Veil
Now: $75
Post-Tour Potential: $90-$100

Liliana was a card I pointed to a few days after the B&R update as a definite gainer. She’s at her best when she’s grinding your resources into dust, which is damn near impossible in a Cruise-infested meta. Now that the fear of your opponent top-decking Ancestral Recall is gone she’s back in a big way. Before the update there were copies as low as $45 on TCG. As of Tuesday afternoon, you’re looking at $75 each on TCG. Clearly people were not waiting for the results of the PT to roll in; they knew she was going to be good again and they didn’t want to wait.

For just under two months she was $90 on MTGPrice, and for about eight months she was at least $80. We’re close to those numbers again, so there’s not too much room for her to grow, but I think we could definitely see a higher ceiling than last time. If Abzan decks featuring Thoughtseize, Tarmogoyf, Liliana, and Siege Rhino make as strong a showing as is to be expected, that will at least account for a $5-$10 bump in price.

Where she stands to really gain is during the Modern Masters II boom. We know that Innistrad doesn’t fall within the range of MM2 sets, so she’s safe from a reprint there. We also know there are going to be promos distributed at regional PTQs, but those are going to be in very limited numbers relative to the Modern-playing population. With that RPTQ printing on the horizon, I highly doubt we see more copies this year. Between the possibility that Abzan takes over Modern, a near-zero likelihood of more copies entering the market this year, and another explosion in Modern interest thanks to the upcoming MM2 release, I’d say $100 is well within reach.

Vengevine
Now: $20
Post-Tour Potential: $30-$40

Now that Golgari Grave-Troll is on the loose there’s renewed interest in funneling a stream of creatures into your graveyard again. If this strategy is successful, it’s almost definitely going to include Vengevine. He’s been relatively quiet in Modern for the last few years, but that’s been more of a result of the metagame than a lack of power. Deathrite Shaman meant that any Vengevine strategy was DOA for quite some time, and if it wasn’t DRS suppressing the thing from little shop of horrors, it was decks like Birthing Pod flat out being a better choice. Pent up demand for Vengevine to be relevant has already driven his price from $15 to $20 in the last two weeks since the update. There’s more to this than just fevered dreams of madmen, too: this past weekend two Dredge decks placed in tenth and twelfth at the SCG IQ, each running a full set.

If anyone shows up on camera at the Pro Tour and puts a Vengevine into their graveyard, he gains $5. If it actually wins a few games, we could easily see this break $30, and $40 isn’t out of the question in the short-term. Original copies are now several years old, and with the only other printing a limited-run WMCQ promo, there will be a real constraint on copies if there’s a spike in demand. Remember, though, that Zendikar is on the table for MM2. It’s hard to predict whether a card like this will be reprinted or not, but if there’s a large spike due to PT fervor, ship hard and ship fast. Take the guaranteed money instead of being unnecessarily greedy.

Bloodghast
Now: $10
Post-Tour Potential: $20

As goes Vengevine, so goes Bloodghast. It’s hard to imagine one showing up without the other. Bloodghast has been treading water around $8-$10 for awhile now, and it feels like it’s juuust on the edge of spiking. Any camera time at the PT could cause a buy-out. Like Vengevine though, Bloodghast is liable to be reprinted in MM2, and he seems much more reprintable than Vengevine is. Regardless of what happens this weekend, I’d sell all my excess copies after the Pro Tour.

Snapcaster Mage
Now: $30
Post-Tour Potential: $50

Remember this guy? He sort of disappeared a few months ago. Don’t worry though, he may have been forgotten, but he’s not gone. Unlike Liliana though, Snapcaster didn’t suffer as much after Khans, nor has he rebounded after the update. One may think that this means he wasn’t impacted by Cruise, and therefore his price won’t budge much. One may be wrong.

Even if Snap didn’t take a price hit, the decks he performed well in certainly did. UWR lists were beaten into submission by the brutal efficiency of Cruise. Now that that’s all behind us, I expect UWR decks to come back in a meaningful capacity, just as they were prior to Khans. With them will come a surge in the number of Snapcasters played, which will only help his price. The fact that his price didn’t drop over the last three months mostly indicated that players were unwilling to accept the fact that he was irrelevant, which kept his price shored up. A meaningful return to the metagame would simply increase the strength of people’s beliefs.

What really stands to serve Snap well this time around is that like Liliana, he too is out of contention for MM2. With no reprint visible on the horizon, his price may spiral out of control. That isn’t to say we won’t see him again at all this year, but we know that it at least won’t be there. He’s been $40 in the past, and there’s no real reason he couldn’t be again. PT excitement could well push him towards a $50 price tag in the near future, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see that price be relatively sticky for a format staple.

Primeval Titan
Now: $12
Post-Tour Potential: $20-$30

Amulet Combo is most likely to drive Titan towards $30, although there could be other vehicles that get him there as well. In Amulet decks he’s a consistent four-of, and central to the strategy. If only Amulet wants him in Modern, maybe he’s in the $20 range. If it turns out some other deck is in the market for that effect as well, he could clear $25 without a reprint.

Amulet Combo is no joke, by the way. It won this past weekend’s SCG IQ, and recently put up three 4-0 results in a Modern daily. Matthias Hunt had a good run with it a few Pro Tours ago as well, which caused the initial run on Amulet of Vigor. If the pilots can find a reliable way to beat the metagame, this deck is very capable of winning the whole shebang. On that note,

 

Amulet of Vigor
Now: $3
Post-Tour Potential: $5-$8

Hive Mind
Now: $2
Post-Tour Potential: $5-$10

One is the card the deck is named after, and the other has become the de-facto irreplaceable alternate win condition. Amulet already had its day in the sun and spiked to $10 after the deck’s previous performance, but there’s no reason it couldn’t double in value from here. Hive Mind never saw much of a price bump, but if the deck performs well again, I’d be surprised if this didn’t hit at least $7 or $8. Hive Mind is a very unique card that is just begging to destroy any format with Pacts. It’s currently a solid win condition in a format where you have to pay six for it. Imagine some sort of enabler that sneaks it into play on turn three or four? Pfft. Rocketship.

Abrupt Decay
Now: $10
Post-Tour Potential: $15-$20

Abrupt Decay has been a solid investment for over a year at this point. Possibly the best removal/utility spell in both Modern and Legacy, it’s a wonder this is still only $10. It’s been creeping up for months, little by little, and with Abzan poised to dominate the PT metagame, the time for a true price correction may be due. Even better is that Return to Ravnica falls well outside of the realm of MM2.

I don’t know if this will be the event that pushes Decay up towards $20 where it probably belongs, but it’s certainly possible. If it does break $15, I’ll be considering selling my extra copies. I can’t shake the feeling that Wizards wants to reprint Decay this year but maybe that’s an unwarranted fear.

Restoration Angel
Now: $7-$10
Post-Tour Potential: $15-$20

I don’t need to sing the praises of Restoration Angel; you’re all well aware. Instead, let me point out the newcomer in the room, Siege Rhino. Boy that would be one hell of a card to blink in response to a Path, wouldn’t it?

Knight of the Reliquary
Now: $5-$6
Post-Tour Potential: $10+

We’re now two years past the third printing of Knight of the Reliquary. She’s lost some of her former $20 glory, but there’s no reason she couldn’t reclaim some of it. I’m not exactly sure what shell will be best suited to take advantage of her abilities. A list with Dredge elements would certainly supercharge her stats. Perhaps it will be a more traditional Zoo list. I don’t know where we’ll see her, but I know that she’s only got one direction go head from here.

Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Now: $4
Post-Tour Potential: $10+

Prime Poobah Jackass of the H8BEARZ clan in both Modern and Legacy. You’re legally allowed to hit anyone that casts this turn two on the play. Any deck with real camera time featuring Thalia should be a catalyst for an overdue price correction. Remember the entire Innistrad block is outside of the MM2 range, which means there is no event on the horizon that would keep her in check.

Geist of Saint Traft
Now: $20
Post-Tour Potential: $30+

As UWR lists are back in vogue with the departure of cruise, so too is Geist. He’s already up from a low of $12 or $13, so there’s less gravy on this train at this point than there was before. Still, a strong performance in a deck like Tribal Zoo or a UWR tempo deck would send him above $30. He’s the WMCQ promo this year, but I don’t see that doing too much to dampen a spike should he perform well at the PT. What seems more likely to be a drain on his success is the growth of Liliana and Thoughtseize decks that have been absent the last several months. Nothing is as debilitating as your turn three Geist being met with a turn three Liliana.

Grove of the Burnwillows
Now: $35-$40
Post-Tour Potential: $45-$50

GR Tron plays both Karn and Oblivion Stone in Modern. Guess which card is both of those, and is already making an impact in Standard and Legacy? Everyone’s favorite ancient dragon Ugin, of course. Tron is the most immediately obvious home for Ugin in Modern, and the work he does there is no joke. Tron always picked on Jund in the past, and the ability to slam Ugin on turn four to clear out Tarmogoyfs and Lilianas in a way that the deck couldn’t before is just savage.

Most of the other pieces of the deck already seem to be value-saturated. Karn and Oblivion Stone are already at basically lifetime highs, Wurmcoil was just reprinted, and Emrakul is on the horizon in MM2. Grove was over $50 this past fall, and a top eight performance could very well get it there again.

 

Goryo’s Vengeance and Through the Breach

Will a better Dredge enabler finally break one of these two cards? Turn one Thought Scour flipping a GGT, turn two dredge GGT into Griselbrand, cast Vengeance, alt-cast Fury of the Horde is a potential two turn win. Is this the year???

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By: Travis Allen

She wanted to leave for the airport by 7am. I preferred 9. After modest debate at her parent’s dinner table, I acquiesced.

As I put my watch back on, having removed it for the security check, I saw that we had three hours to kill in the terminal before boarding would begin. I took the opportunity to bring this to her attention. She said something unpleasant.

After firing off a run of Binding of Isaac, I closed my laptop while I used the airplane bathroom. Upon returning, Steam asked for my login credentials, apparently having decided to forget that just an hour before it started in offline mode. Without internet access to reauthenticate, all of the games I had downloaded to pass the time with were walled in behind Steam’s authentication process, a lock temporarily without a key. 

There were eleven hours left of a thirteen hour plane ride. Stowing the laptop with the inflight magazines on the back of the seat ahead of me, the occupant turned around. “Please don’t shake my seat, thanks.” Ten hours, fifty-nine minutes to go.

I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting when I stepped off the plane and into the hallway. There obviously wasn’t going to be a torii (one of those traditional red Japanese shrine gates) and a cherry blossom tree in the middle of the terminal. Yet somehow I expected it to feel more Japanese. I can’t tell you what that actually means.

While waiting for her to use the restroom, the wall started speaking to me. Things felt a little more Japanese.

Arriving at our friend’s place, it was all we had not to just crash right there on the floor in the middle of his modest 8th floor apartment, nestled inconspicuously in a unexceptional apartment building, on an unexceptional block, in Itabashi, an unexceptional ward of Tokyo.

Tokyo isn’t just a city, by the way. It was described to me sort of like New York state and New York City, except moreso. There’s the Tokyo prefecture, but also the Tokyo Metropolis, not to be confused with the Tokyo Metropolitan Area. It’s possible there’s more distinctions as well, I’m not sure. I didn’t quite follow it all. The metropolitan area has more people than Canada.

Hunger begins to set in. It’s hard to eat much on a plane. Our local hostess suggests an unassuming restaurant across the street. One of us says “at this point, I’ll be happy with anything.” Tokyo wasted no time setting out to challenge that claim.

Food is delivered via a conveyor belt that snakes around the restaurant. Patrons take the small dishes off as they pass, each containing two bites of various sushi, or a small bowl of soup, or green tea covered mochi. Colored rims on the small plates indicate the cost of that particular dish, with prices ranging between one dollar and five. Raw fish after a long plane ride is probably not one of our wisest choices, but when in Rome, right? Our host converses with the chef quickly, then tells us we’re really going to enjoy what he ordered for us. Shortly thereafter we’re each presented with two slabs of raw horse meat laid over rice. Just in case people may find that unappealing, there’s a dash of garlic spread on top to finish the presentation. She and I exchange looks, our stomachs protesting before even having it balanced tenuously on our chopsticks. We agreed before arriving that we’d try any food set before us.

In his defense, it was not unenjoyable. Repeated exposures would almost certainly render the meal pleasurable. Now, tonight, it’s simply tolerable.

Mount Fuji is visible on the horizon the next morning. Living in central and western New York most of my life, this is unfamiliar terrain. I’m reminded of a trip to Seattle two years ago, which affords its populace a similar experience. Fuji fades behind the clouds as the morning progresses, but it returns each morning.

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Kawagoe feels a bit like a quaint town, although it’s actually a city located in the Saitama prefecture, which is of course located in Tokyo. Aged buildings line the major street, sidewalks nonexistent. Most of the buildings have small shops on the first floor. We wander into a knife store so I can pick up a gift for my father; a chef in a past life. I have to double check with our host that I’m not reading the price of a cleaver wrong. It’s more than four times the cost of my plane ticket. I don’t buy anything in that shop.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but our trip to Kawagoe that first day is one of only two times in eleven days I’ll see pre-war buildings. US firebombing of Tokyo during WWII lasted nine months. Operation Meetinghouse, conducted over two days in March of 1945, was the single most destructive bombing raid in history. As a result,Tokyo is glaringly, frustratingly modern.

Our second full day, a drizzly grey morning, finds us headed towards Chiyoda, the location of TokyoMTG. I’m hoping to meet up with Heiko Sonoda. We converse occasionally on Twitter, his insight into the Japanese Magic scene valuable and intriguing. Most recently he told me that Whisperwood Elemental had skyrocketed from ~$5 preorders to ~$15. That night I bought several playsets on eBay at a little less than $6 a copy. A week later they were $12 here in the states. Foreign markets occasionally provide indicators of where a local market will move next.

His store is reasonably spacious for Tokyo, a luxury I will find very few other stores to possess. Rather than sacrifice extensive and expensive square footage to large, mostly-empty glass cases, Heiko has adopted the system put into place by Saito’s shop. On a small table in the corner are three computers, each with a browser open to the TokyoMTG website. I require assistance switching the keyboard from Japanese to English. Rather than browse glass cases, customers simply browse the site’s inventory, and after placing an order, walk four steps across the room to pick it up from an employee that fetches it from the back. It’s effective for sure, although I can’t say I’m not a bit disappointed. For someone looking to browse inventory, with no clear desired product in mind, cases are perfect. A website is excellent for finding a specific card, but hardly appealing for the window shopper.

A brief discussion with Heiko sets the stage for my Magic related experiences for the next nine days. Right off the bat he tells me that Japanese players tend to engage with Magic in a very different way than Americans. Tier one staples such as Force of Will or Tarmogoyf are at least as expensive as they are in the states, if not considerably more expensive, for any language. Days later I have every reason to believe him. Every Force of Will I encounter in Tokyo falls within the $130 to $150 range. Dual lands are similarly expensive.

Perhaps most distressing is something he told me months before my arrival, but which I was unwilling to believe. The Japanese are not unaware of the demand their product enjoys overseas. While free Wi-Fi is far less common there than it is in the states, most citizens are in fact capable of accessing the internet, and are not unaware of eBay. English comprehension is lower in Japan than some European countries, but many are still completely capable of utilizing English web services. Since many players are competitive, they’re also more in tune with pricing – which means nearly every player knows how much foil Japanese cards are worth overseas, or at least is aware that they’re more expensive than most. In fact, Heiko tells me that at one point he pulled his Japanese foils from international sale and relisted them in Japan, since the prices were actually higher locally than America or Europe.

None of this really makes sense to me. He ends up being right, of course. Hearing it strikes me as nonsensical though. Isn’t sealed product still roughly the same price? If the average card coming out of a Japanese box has a multiplier of 1.1x to 5x over its English counterpart, isn’t the value wildly better when opening a Japanese box? How isn’t it lucrative to just crack Japanese boxes all day and sell them internationally? The first question sticks with me the rest of the trip. I never do get a clear answer on the second one. I’m guessing it has something to do with the effort and overhead involved in shipping internationally.

Even being told all this, you hold out hope. He must be wrong. There’s got to be stores that are just goldmines for JP foils. I’ll show him.

Later that day a shop has a foil Japanese Monastery Swiftspear on display for around $40. Dream’s time of death, 1:47pm.

While I’ve been almost immediately locked out of shopping for awesome JP foils to later trade away at infinite value at large events, all hope is not lost. While competitive format staples are noticeably more expensive, the opposite is true for most casual product. EDH and kitchen table cards tend to be cheaper than in America by enough of a margin that they’re worth the arbitrage. My trip ends up bearing this out, as I end up with nearly no competitive cards in my possession when leaving the country.

Hobby stores in America typically focus on some combination of Magic, tabletop gaming such as Warhammer, and board games. Yu-Gi-Oh is the next most popular card game, although its presence in every shop I’ve ever visited ranges from “we sell it, but Magic is more popular” to “Yu-what?” Card games other than those two are relegated almost exclusively to online orders and the clearance section at Target. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen someone, in any store anywhere, buy or play a card game that isn’t one of those two.

One will find that here in Tokyo that couldn’t be further from the truth. A seemingly infinite number of other card games exist, many more popular than Magic, if case real estate, signage, and register exposure is any indication. I never catch the name of any them. Visually the cards are gaudy and of low production values. Most remind me of DeviantArt. Some remind me of the worst parts of DeviantArt. I’m pretty sure at least one had artwork that consisted solely of exactly the type of material people are publicly shamed for having on their basic lands when they show up to Magic events in the states.

No shortage of alternative TCGs exist in the Japanese market, and with many of them seemingly more popular than Magic, it’s no surprise the casual scene of our favorite game is far less robust. A dazzling variety of TCGs means that the pool of Magic players is shallower. Those that would play casually are easily drawn towards any number of other TCGs, or even other activities altogether, such as the arcades that seem as common as Starbucks does in the states. The end result is card prices falling quickly once they leave the competitive stratosphere. Perhaps best illustrating this point is my purchase at Saito’s store later that week. The order contained thirty-eight Black Markets. Clocking in at $12 on MTGPrice, it’s a black EDH staple. I paid under three dollars each in Japan. If TCGPlayer ever starts allowing the listing of foreign cards, I’m in business.

Before we leave Heiko’s shop, I purchase a pack for her to open. Even though she knows only as much as is required by someone who happens to sit in the same room as shelves of cards, she enjoys the process, the thrill, the gamble. At about 300 yen, two dollars and change, it isn’t even expensive. She sniffs the pack as she opens it, a behavior learned from watching me. Savor the experience. Pausing on the third uncommon to let the suspense build, she rips it away to reveal a Sage of the Inward Eye. I say something unpleasant.

I thank Heiko for his time and explanation of the Japanese market, and he gives us a set of custom tokens as a gift. Though my obstinance holds strong and I have yet to ingrain everything he’s been kind of enough to share with me, it will only be a few more days before it becomes evident he was entirely truthful. Our conversation foreshadows perhaps the most poignant lesson I will learn during the trip. Globalization revitalized national economies, pulled entire countries out of poverty, and dramatically changed the world in ways that none could have predicted. Globalization has also partly ruined the experience of international travel.

---

Packed window to window, we board the rail line. It’s the busiest car we’re in all trip. It would pale in comparison to the crowds we’d see later that day. A quarter of the people on the train have with them rolling hard suitcases. Upon inquiry, I’m informed that that’s where cosplay outfits are stored until the individual reaches Comiket, at which point they change in a large communal changing area, one for each sex. “Why don’t they just put the costume on at home and wear it on the train?” “They’d look ridiculous!” I can see a fifty-foot-tall Gundam statue out the window of the train car. Something tells me nobody would care.

Have you ever been to Times Square for New Years? Seen the masses packed in, shoulder to shoulder, huddling in the freezing temperatures to be a part of what I assume is the largest and most famous NYE celebration in the world? Upwards of a million people show up each year to cram into a few city blocks worth of space. It’s lunacy. Somehow Comiket manages to be worse.

We’re over a quarter mile from the entrance and have already instituted a “hang on” policy. Spacious courtyards outside the building are packed, elbow to elbow. All except for the space saved for cosplayers, in front of which lines snake back and forth, with no one exactly sure where it actually stops. At the end of each line is a cosplayer, most of them women, and most definitely freezing in the chilly December air. Photographers wait their turn to take photos of the cosplayer, and the cosplayer hands out business cards with the intent of selling DVDs of photos of themselves. It’s a practiced affair for everyone involved, completely obtuse to an outsider. Strict rules of pageantry and etiquette are involved, although I’ve no clue what any of them are. The whole thing feels sleazy, mildly abusive, and generally makes me uncomfortable. We haven’t even made it inside yet.

Seething is the best description I can come up with, although that still doesn’t do it justice. I’ve never stood in a crowd like this before. I imagine that this is what escaping a burning building with inadequate safety standards must feel like. I have to wait for a lull in the mass before I can get my arm up from my waist in order to scratch my nose.

Our host’s friend wants to go check a particular booth. As we head in that direction, the various booth signage on display rapidly turns from “anime,” to “hentai,” to “why is Hitler a bare-breasted woman,” to “incontrovertible hardcore pedophilia.” She handles it quite well. Probably better than I do. By the time we leave this portion of the hall, my distaste for anime and its fans has only grown deeper. I’m thankful I didn’t see anything Magic related. Two hours later we depart. I’m glad to have had the experience, but like several things that will occur on this trip, it’s not something I’d do again.

---

Akihabara, if you are unfamiliar, is sort of the nerd mecca of Tokyo. Buildings are adorned, from ground to roof, with anime and video game advertisements. Arcades are everywhere. You can’t find a spot in the street where there isn’t one visible. Video games and anime and every facet of nerdom smashes together here, all dripping with the saccharine facade of moe.

Of every subway station we will pass through, Akihabara’s is the only one with posters on the escalator warning women of attempted upskirt photos.

“How many Magic shops are in Akihabara?” “There are four. On this block alone.” We see a lot of Magic cards.

Days go by in a blur. Itabashi, Nakano, Shibuya, Shinagawa, Shinjuku. Ginza, Odaiba, Shinbashi, Harajuku, Takadanobaba, Ueno, Ikebukuro, Akihabara. Tokyo Skytree, Disney Sea, Daiwa Sushi, Robot Restaurant, Comiket. Our attempts to canvas the city only serve to prove how futile the effort is. If the term “urban sprawl” wasn’t invented for Tokyo, it should have been. Standing in the middle of Shibuya crossing one night, an intersection reminiscent of Times Square, famous for its pedestrian-scramble crossing in which all traffic stops and people pour into the intersection headed every which way through the crux of five major roads, one is reminded of Blade Runner’s dystopian cityscape, a valley of buildings, brilliantly lit screens disembodied against the dark night rapidly flipping through advertisements like a bored teenager suffering the ennui of life. Riding those trains as much as we did, the landscape never changing, you sometimes wonder if the city ever ends.

We lose track of how many Magic stores we visit over the course of the trip. Nearly all are claustrophobia-inducing. Crouched down or bent over, peering into the back row of one case, your back is pressed to another. I must have muttered “sumimasen” – roughly “pardon me” – more times in eleven days than I’ve spoken her name aloud in all of the last year. It doesn’t take long to start noticing patterns in pricing and keeping an eye out for specific cards.

Aside from Black Market, Avacyn, Angel of Hope and Rhys the Redeemed are probably the two cards of which I bring the most copies home. EDH and casual all-stars here in the states, it seems that nobody in Japan has any use for them. I find Avacyns for 1700 yen, which with the exchange rate is about $14. I found a few Rhys at under $5, and most were under $7. Sliver Legions are usually worth buying if the store has any in stock. I grab a few piles of Marchesa, It That Betrays, and Nirkana Revenants. Most everything is under 50% of what I would pay in the states.

Finding deals on Japanese foils doesn’t come easily, but I find a few. An Odyssey Decimate for $5. A playset of Ashioks for around $38 a copy. (Still trying to sell those.) Cogwork Librarian. Four copies of Plea for Power. Rounding out the top end is a Rofellos, a Marchesa, and an Academy Rector I picked up outside of Saito’s shop after stepping outside with a local whose binder may have been the most impressive I’ve ever seen in person. (If you live in a house right now, there’s a good chance his binder could have paid off the entire mortgage. I wondered how it was safe to carry that around. “Japan.”)

Did you know you can’t trade in stores over there? Continuing in the trend of my arrogant obstinance, I had heard this but for some reason decided it wasn’t true. Turns out, it is. Here in Buffalo there’s a store that doesn’t allow trading. People at GPs don’t believe me when I tell them. “How could a store not allow trading? How does that work?” I don’t know buddy, but there’s an entire country that subscribes to that theory.

Rector has already found a place in my EDH binder. I’m pretending I haven’t already decided to keep Rofellos and Marchesa. Both were under $70. There’s good profit to be made, but if I sell them, I’ll have ended up with almost nothing for myself. Keeping at least a few cards should be allowed, right?

Any English copies of cards I picked up are by now basically all gone some three weeks later. Everything Japanese is sitting on my desk, waiting for someplace better than eBay to sell them.

Boxes end up the bulk of my Magic expenses. Seven JP Khans of Tarkir and six JP Conspiracy. Every single store I walked into I asked about Khans, hoping to find just one that would give me a great price. About half the time the employee would scan a single Khans pack and start multiplying it by thirty-six. Saito’s shop was reasonable, and after offering to buy a case they said they’d knock $20 off, but it still wasn’t cheap enough. For ten days I held out for a 9,000 yen box. I never did find one, although I’ve no doubt they exist somewhere. 10,500 is how much I end up paying for each of all seven Khans boxes. Just about $90 after my credit card’s 3% international fee. There is no world in which I have a right to complain about paying $90 for Japanese Khans boxes, but I still find a way. She doesn’t care.

Conspiracy boxes were a “oh, well, yeah I guess I have to.” One store’s singles collection was paltry at best, a single half-case amongst ten full display cases, and it was getting late. Heading past the register towards the door, the price of a Conspiracy booster caught my eye. I forget exactly how much it was, but it was cheap enough to give me pause. Remember, Conspiracy is a purely casual product. Geared entirely for the crowd that enjoys the kitchen table, EDH, and maybe cubing. Aside from the very small handful of overlap with competitive players on Council’s Judgment and one or two others, Conspiracy is aimed squarely at a demographic that barely exists here. I inquire as to the cost of a box. 9,000 yen, or about $74. Checking eBay, I see that there are sold listings in the $130 range. This portable Wi-Fi spot I’m carrying around has earned its keep multiple times over during our trip. I buy them out of their three boxes. I thought I was done with Conspiracy until I wandered into one last store, our second-to-last day. Six boxes of Khans are being wrangled into a bag by the cashier when I notice the Conspiracy box on the shelf behind her. Given the reasonable price on the Khans boxes, I ask about the Conspiracy. 8,000 yen. $66. “You’ve got three more? San? Hai hai hai. Arigato.”

Between my thirteen boxes and her diabetic shock worth of candy, we had to pick up another cheap suitcase to get it all home. It was worth it.

---

After several days there I’m able to put my finger on what it is about Japan that is underwhelming. Years ago while she was studying abroad in Italy for a semester, I found a double-layover, twenty-hour round-trip ticket for $550 to Rome over spring break. After begging my parents to shell out, I was on my way. You’ve seen The Colosseum, and the Fountain of Trevi, and whatever other ancient italian landmark the discovery channel is blabbering about when you flip by. Let me tell you, dear reader, the images on your television or computer screen do not do those structures justice. One of the subway stops lets out right in front of The Colosseum – you walk up a flight of stairs, and there, right there, it towers over you, destroying all preconceptions and notions you may have thought you had. History bears down on you with weighty significance, rendering you breathless at the magnificence and size of the structure. Days of exploring the city and being exposed to history through such a living and breathing medium leaves a deep impression, and not for one second, not for one second on those winding stone streets that lead surreptitiously across a city whose history seeps from every porous brick, do you forget that you’re in Italy.

One random afternoon in Japan we’re on the street, and I’m looking around. A beef noodle place, a tanning salon, a bookst-wait, how am I reading all these signs? English is everywhere. No kidding, there’s more English in Japan than there is in Montreal. With English subtext on so many signs, and unreasonably often the only text on signs, and a cityscape all built in a post-war rebirth of the city, with virtually no buildings old enough to remind you of the millennia of history that exists here, the American visitor is struck with the unmistakable sensation of standing in New York City. It’s an always lingering, nagging thought that chases you along their ridiculously clean streets and into the massive shopping centers that span ten floors. You’re just a few extra white people, a lot more darker-skinned people, (seriously I think we saw maybe twenty black people in eleven days, out of what had to be tens of thousands of faces), and much worse candy away from being in New York City.

This is it. This is the globalization that afforded me the opportunity to be here, and it’s the same globalization that’s making it impossible to find an authentic Japanese gift for my parents. I can’t find anything of substance that feels native because it seems there is so little left – or at least, so little that can’t be obtained in America one way or another.

Heiko told me that several years ago, the arbitrage between the Magic markets was good enough that you could probably have paid for your entire trip with money to spare. Magic hadn’t experienced its renaissance quite yet, and large gaps still existed. Japanese foils were dirt cheap locally, and American cards sold for bundles. A savvy traveller could have brought $10,000 in English foils to Japan, turned that into God knows how much in Japanese foils, and then outed that for even more back in America. Today though? Today you pick up Rhys the Redeemed for $6 and you’re pleased with that.

In descending order of time spent on them, the two activities that consumed the largest portion of our trip were standing in line and shopping. Not just for Magic cards, but anything, anywhere. Local shops that the owner lived above. Street vendors. Tourist traps. Department stores. We stepped inside every category of shop imaginable. My litmus test for determining whether I should buy something was simple – “can I get this on Amazon?” A question whose answer was affirmative so frequently that my luggage was 65% Magic cards and 30% the clothes I brought over.

“Join the Army, See the World” was the slogan for the Army at one point. Decades ago, poor American kids knew that the only way they’d ever be able to see other countries was on the government’s dime. Commercial flight was still far too expensive for the average citizen. Enlistment benefitted both parties. The Army got a soldier for a few years, and the soldier got an experience he’d never be able to afford on his own.

Listening to the radio a few years back, someone was talking about how they had to change that iconic slogan. With flights as cheap as they were, any schmuck could hop on a plane and see any country in the world. Why would someone volunteer four years of their life in order to get the chance to visit Europe when they could just plunk down $1,000 and go on their own? “See the World” was no longer the powerful motivator it once was. 

Globalization has given us opportunities our grandparents never had. Any one of us can travel to any country in the world, almost on a whim. Seeing Spain or Egypt or Thailand or Brazil isn’t some decadent dream with no hope of reality, it’s just a question of budget. With accessibility has come homogenization, though. I love Amazon. I love what it does for me. I don’t go to actual brick and mortar stores anymore. My Prime account is well worn. And at the same time, it has spoiled a component of travel. Wandering the streets and stores of Tokyo, little strikes me as inaccessible. Nearly every department store has an international presence, which means any of this can be purchased from the comfort of my home office. Browsing wares in smaller shops doesn’t afford a much better experience. Most is made in China or Taiwan, and none of it is something I’d be excited to gift to another. I don’t return home with wild stories about a far-off country with exotic customs. I say things like “we couldn’t get any great photos from SkyTree, just Google it and you’ll get a better view.”

Magic has suffered the same fate here. Small edges do exists – the $90 Japanese Khans boxes – but there’s hardly anything awe-inspiring. There’s the good prices on casual cards, and you can bring over in-demand Force of Wills. But overall, Magic is no different than sweaters or silverware. Certain pieces are cheaper in Tokyo than they are in America, but nothing is unattainable. Everything that we bring back could be purchased at home. Sure, we got a slightly better price on some of it, but none of it is exotic to the point of remarkability. Even the Japanese merchandise isn’t necessarily cheaper than it is in the states. I saw a lot of $45 foil Japanese Swiftspears.

The lesson here is one oft repeated in many aspects of life. Ignore the material goods. Avoid spending too much of your money on material things. Take photos – but not too many. Pay for experiences. Eat well. See sights. Now more than ever, those are the souvenirs you will savor most in the years after.

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Travel between Toronto and Buffalo defies any navigation service to produce useful directions. Leaving Toronto Pearson airport, it only takes two or three minutes before we’ve gotten on the wrong road, forcing us into a Tim Horton’s parking lot in search of Wi-Fi. We both say something unpleasant.

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There’s a single refrain going through my head Monday morning.

At 10:52 am EST the new banned and restricted list went up, and here’s what went down:

Modern
Banned: Treasure Cruise, Dig Through Time, Birthing Pod
Unbanned: Golgari Grave-Troll

Legacy
Banned: Treasure Cruise
Unbanned: Worldgorger Dragon

Vintage
Restricted: Treasure Cruise
Unrestricted: Gifts Ungiven

Before we discuss changes at all, let’s get one thing straight: sell all Golgari Grave-Trolls and Worldgorger Dragons now and don’t look back.

Now that Ancestral Recall, Demonic Tutor, and Survival of the Fittest are finally banned in Legacy, we can star…oh, they were banned in Modern? Huh.

Immediately obvious is that Wizards realized that reprinting Recall was probably a bad idea. Anyone that has played with the card outside of Standard certainly would have had no doubts about this. Drawing three cards on turn two is unsurprisingly powerful. Dig Through Time is similarly busted. DTT’s strength was muted in the face of Cruise, but it was quietly showing up in combo decks all over the place. Had DTT been allowed to stay, it would have replaced Cruise everywhere, and I’m guessing some combo deck would have become insurmountable eventually. Finally, Pod is exiting Modern amidst the joyous revelry of many. It was the industry standard best deck in the format for a very long time, and the recent addition of Siege Rhino made the deck even stronger. Survival of the Fittest was banned in Legacy many years ago, and all that did was tutor the creature. Pod tutored and gave you a big discount on mana. How was it ever fair?

A good bit of grumbling is going on in the community right now that Pod, a major pillar of the format, has been erased. Some are complaining that their favorite deck is gone with no clear replacement, and others are just walking into stores and selling the whole seventy-five. If we’re being completely honest, I don’t feel too bad for anyone that ate a loss on this. Wizards has made it clear, time and time again, that this is a format they are going to shake up often with frequent bans. Birthing Pod has clearly been on the watch list for well over a year at this point. Discussion about it being banned came up every three months like clockwork. This announcement shouldn’t have caught anyone with their pants down. In fact, aside from the Pods themselves, what have you really lost here? One Orzhov Pontiff? The deck is value creatures that are good anyways. That’s the point of Pod, isn’t it? It’s not like they’re all useless cards today. Cut the pods, move up to four Siege Rhinos if you haven’t already, and head off to your LGS’s weekly modern event. This stands for those that foiled the deck as well. “Oh no, I have a bunch of foil Birds of Paradise and Kitchen Finks. I’m ruined!”

Moving on, our goal is to figure out what the post-announcement landscape looks like for Modern and Legacy in order to identify cards whose play value has risen dramatically. If we can find cards that quietly get much stronger with this change, we can sink our money into them and watch them rise in price.

We’ll start unpacking Modern. The TC and DTT ban is actually reasonably easy to understand. Both are very new additions to the format, and if we rewind back to September of 2014 we can see what a pre-KTK Modern looks like. If this was the only change we’d know exactly what to expect. We’d take pre-KTK, add Monastery Swiftspear, and that would be your format. It’s not quite that simple though, because the change isn’t just TC and DTT. We also have to account for banning Pod (big change) and tossing GGT in (small change).

What has risen dramatically since TC and DTT hit the scene? Chalice of the Void certainly has. It’s tripled in value, mostly as a way to combat all the cheap spells that were used to fuel TC. While Chalice was a reasonable card before KTK, and will continue to be so afterwards, the supervillain he’s been chasing was just put in jail. With a lot less work to do, we should see prices slowly settle closer to $10.

Other than CotV, there haven’t been a lot of dramatic Modern risers. TC and DTT pushed small spells such as Gitaxian Probe, Forked Bolt, and Serum Visions. Fatestitcher jumped a few bucks I guess, but that’s a niche card. Orzhov Pontiff has risen hard just recently, although he hasn’t even unpacked in his new office and already he’s out of a job.

Jeskai Ascendancy was a card I expected to be banned this time around if both TC and DTT didn’t eat it. They did, and so it didn’t. I suppose Wizards is hoping it won’t be degenerate enough, while still providing gas for Young Pyromancer and the soon-to-be-legal Monastery Mentor. Both major JA lists ran TC and/or DTT, so the deck definitely has to change. Thankfully Wizards has seen fit to provide us with a humble little card drawer. He’s not as cleanly powerful as TC or DTT, but the ceiling on how many cards Humble Defector can draw is much higher. Just keep responding to the triggers at instant speed and you can go bananas. Yes, you don’t get the cards from any of the Humble triggers until you lose control of him, but instant speed cantrips and JA looting means that you can easily trigger him two, three, or six+ times in one shot. I just drew twelve cards, here’s your Humble Defector idiot.

Financially, foil Jeskai Ascendancies are more appealing now, as they’ve survived their most tenuous ban window. Other than that it’s tough to say. Foil Humble Defectors for sure, but we already knew that. Without seeing some lists it’s hard to know exactly what could rise. Pay close attention to sleeper rares in any successful JA lists.

Let’s try going the other direction. What has taken a beating since the printing of TC and DTT? Thoughtseize and Liliana of the Veil stand out to me as cards most directly benefiting from these bans. Each plays an attrition game that is attempting to strip their opponent of cards and then grind them down with Tarmogoyfs. An opponent topdecking Cruise meant that all the work Thoughtseize had done was irrelevant. GBx has all but disappeared with TC and DTT going way over the top of discard. With those card drawing powerhouses now absent, both Thoughtseize and Liliana are much better positioned. It also turns out that both have pretty depressed prices at the moment. Liliana was between $70 and $90 last year up until late October, but has since crashed towards $50. We’ll almost definitely be seeing her climb back up towards $60 at least. Dark Confidant is also part of that trio, and his price on MTGO has doubled or so since the announcement. The paper copy won’t see that type of movement, especially with the threat of a reprint hanging on the horizon, but I could see him getting $10 back.

Losing TC and DTT isn’t the only reason Thoughtseize and Liliana get better either. Siege Rhino has proven itself in Modern as a powerful, game-ending threat that is nearly impossible to race. Up until now it’s been a growing Pod staple, but with that deck out the door as well, Rhino will be looking for somewhere to go. A return of GBw is nigh-inevitable, with Thoughtseize, Liliana, and Rhino leading the crash. Here, I’ll define the first week of post-ban Modern for you: Thoughtseize, Murderous Cut, Tasigur, Dark Confidant, Abrupt Decay, Tarmogoyf, Liliana of the Veil, Siege Rhino, Restoration Angel.

Another archetype that seems to have fallen off the map in recent months is UWR variants. It still pops up from time to time, but seemingly far less than it did. UWR mainstays such as Celestial Colonnade, Snapcaster Mage, and Restoration Angel all gain some traction with the loss of TC and DTT as well. Restoration Angel is appealing with Siege Rhino leaving his hoofprint on Modern in a big way. Snapcaster is also as close to a slam dunk as you can get. He’s been quiet the last few months with everyone eating their own graveyard seven cards at a time, but with TC and DDT gone, he’ll be back in a big way. Just as important is the fact that Innistrad won’t be in MM2. I don’t see how Snapcaster doesn’t hit at least $50 this year.

How about the loss of Pod though? What’s that do to Modern? This is a much more complex question, since we don’t have a recent save file without Pod.

Right off the bat a few cards lose steam. We already talked about Orzhov Pontiff. Voice of Resurgence doesn’t really have any other homes in Modern outside of Pod right now, so we’ll see the price slide on that in the short term. Voice is still an objectively powerful card though, so don’t count it out entirely. As the format shifts around, it’s entirely possible he pops back up as a four-of in a different top tier deck. Snagging a playset from a dejected Pod player wouldn’t be a bad idea if you don’t own any. After all, if that GBw list picks up steam, he’s a great counter to the UWR lists I also expect to grow in popularity.

On a metagame scale, Pod tended to prey on other creature decks. Trying to beat Pod with dudes was nigh impossible between Voice, Finks, Rhino, Linvala, and finally the ability to occasionally combo out and win on the spot. With Pod out of the format, we may see an increase in creature based decks. Is the banning of Pod the actual unbanning of Wild Nacatl? It certainly may be. We haven’t seen traditional Zoo in a while, which would probably come to the party with Knight of the Reliquary and Baneslayer Angel. What I’m more interested in is Domain Zoo. Most notably Domain Zoo brings with it Wild Nacatl and Geist of Saint Traft. Domain Zoo lists are typically quite powerful, being able to curve Nacatl into Tarmogoyf into Geist, and they pack plenty of removal to make sure they’re getting through. Even better is that they’re technically able to play any card they need since all five colors are represented in their manabase. Geist of Saint Traft has been low for quite some time, and this may be his chance to shine. Most likely to stand in his way is that as the new elbow room in the format that Geist occupies is the same space Liliana of the Veil is in. Will the loss of Birthing Pod put Scotty Mac on the Pro Tour? Time will tell.

Scapeshift and Tron picked on Pod, so with their main prey suddenly absent from the food chain, life is more difficult for them. The rise of Thoughtseize and Liliana will be especially hard on those two decks. Even worse for Scapeshift is the loss of DTT. After casting DTT for UU, going back to Peer Through Depths for 1U is going to be a bitter pill to swallow indeed. While Tron is fairly resilient, wasn’t affected directly by the bannings, and is about to gain access to Ugin, Scapeshift just got a lot softer. It may be time to step away from that list for the time being if discard and attrition comes back in a big way.

How about Golgari Grave-Troll? Does that bring anything to the table that didn’t exist before? He certainly makes Vengevine look a lot more tempting. Vengevine has taken a beating in price the last year, and is now hanging around south of $15. A breakout performance would change that rapidly though, so if that’s the type of card you like to play, a personal playset may not be the worst idea. I was recently thinking about Sidisi, Mesmeric Orb, and Vengevine. GGT would be a welcome addition. Other cards that play well with Vengevine are graveyard heros Bloodghast and Gravecrawler, which are both quite reasonable right now. Those two pop up from time to time in Modern anyways, so if you’ve been on the fence, now is the time. Life from the Loam is always on the table as well, although with three printings under its belt, I’m not buying in.

In all honest, GGT doesn’t really do that much for us. Stinkweed Imp and Golgari Thug both exist already, so what does GGT give us that we didn’t already have? It’s a better dredge rate than we had before, sure, but is that what was holding back dredge-based decks? I’m guessing it wasn’t, but time will tell. Dread Return is still banned but Unburial Rites is legal. Maybe with more and better dredgers we see a more dedicated Unburial Rites/Goryo’s Vengeance list? It’s certainly possible. Goryo’s has always felt like it’s on the cusp. A turn two EoT Grisly Salvage flipping any one of GGT, Imp, or Thug, then untapping, dredging, and going off with Goryo’s, Griselbrand, and Fury of the Horde may be the new hotness.

While writing my Fate Reforged set review I discussed the possibility that if both TC and DTT are banned in Modern, Temporal Trespass becomes a bit more real. It’s now the only relevant blue delve spell in the format, which means there may in fact be a place for it. That turboturn deck would almost definitely play it as a four-of, and I could see any Cryptic Command deck considering a copy. After all, Scapeshift loves a good Explore.

I can’t talk about Modern without touching on Affinity. With the format in flux, Affinity will be well-positioned for a few weeks. There may be some growth on key players like Mox Opal, but the impending Modern Masters 2 will and it’s inclusion of Metalcraft as a mechanic means a lot of those cards are capped on growth until a spoiler list is out. I’m not going near any of that right now. After the MM2 spoiler hits watch for cards not on it to spike though. This should also be a warning bell for Affinity. Cranial Plating may be the strongest card in Modern right now, and the deck has always floated near “too good.”

Over in Legacy, things are a bit simpler. Again, we know exactly what the format looked like pre-TC. Just like in Modern, expect to see a lot more attrition come back in week one. Suddenly Shardless Bug and some of the *Blade decks are relevant again. Shardless Agent will likely see a rise in price after having gotten soft over the last two months. Wasteland gets better.

Of note is the fact that Dig Through Time didn’t go. Up until now it’s been much quieter in Legacy than Modern and Standard. While any Cruise deck may choose to play DTT instead, I have a sneaking suspicion that the real winner here is Omnitell. The deck has been doing well lately, as DTT provides the deck a huge amount of gas. DTT also plays well against the incoming onslaught of attrition decks. Omniscience and Show and Tell stand to gain from this announcement, and this may be what pushes S&T to the brink of bannability. That, or they just kill DTT two updates from now.

More obviously, the Worldgorger unban has some impact. For those that don’t understand why it was banned in the first place, it’s because of the interaction with Animate Dead. Without any other creatures in any graveyard, casting Animate Dead on Worldgorger results in an infinite loop. Animate brings Worldgorger back, who then exiles Animate, so Worldgorger dies, causing Animate to come back into play, animating Worldgorger, who then…you see where this is going. This loop is capable of acting as a win condition too. All your lands constantly being exiled and put back into play allows you to make infinite mana, so any instants in your and possibly your opponent’s hand are live. An instant-speed fireball is a simple kill, or if Nephalia Drownyard is one of your lands in play you can mill your opponent out and then stop the combo on one of the creatures that ended up in their graveyard.

Aside from Worldgorger Dragon himself rising in price, it’s unlikely this will do a lot for anything else in the format. Reanimator is already very clearly a deck. Unless Worldgorger ends up pushing the power level of the deck way higher than before, which is rather unlikely, nothing much changes. Worth noting though is that Show & Tell is usually in Reanimator lists, which already stands to profit from these changes.

Between now and the end of February there will be a great deal of flux in Modern, especially with the Pro tour not far away. What we’re seeing now is only the first few ripples of what will be a long causal chain with impacts that are hidden to us behind the veil of time. Will Abzan Attrition rise to top dog? RUG Twin? Is Amulet Bloom the future? Will popular opinion be that Griselbrand should be banned by this summer? What do you think will happen?

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