By: Travis Allen

This summer has been a particularly quiet one for those of us into the Magic market. I haven’t gone digging through my bulk rare box for spikes once, none of the stuff in my spec box has moved, and Modern prices have stayed flat. Overall it’s been real boring for most of us, and everyone has been looking forward to the fall for some exciting changes.

Boy are we getting them.

Unforeseen Consequences

First off, read this article. Read every word on the page. Do it twice if you have to. It’s probably the most important words about Magic that have been written and will be written this year. (This entire article assumes you’ve read that one.)

I’m going to stick these here so that we can keep staring at them while trying to grasp what is happening.

This is clearly a massive change to the game. Not only will this affect things on the surface, such as length of format legality, card availability, and format demands, it will have smaller, quieter effects as well, such as design and development decisions, manabase concerns, and reprint ramifications. We won’t fully be living in the new world until the fall of 2016 which means it’s going to take years before we fully appreciate the impact this is going to have on the game and markets. We’re not the only ones that have to wait awhile to see how it all plays out either. Wizards will be watching closely, and like all major changes they roll out, expect some tweaking to the system after a few million players push it from every direction.

Given how long it’s going to take to fully get into the swing of the new system, along with the likelihood of Wizards making some additional changes along the way, we won’t really know how the markets will react for years. Myself and plenty of others will be making some educated guesses over the coming weeks and months, but I don’t doubt there will be plenty of fallout that will be nearly impossible to see from here. For instance, as I mentioned at the start of the article, typically the summer months have a drought of interesting market movement. Will a brand new block hitting in May change that entirely, or are people truly tied to the game seasonally rather than by a set release schedule? There’s no way to know for sure until we get to that point.

Another major unknown will be the way inference and speculation is conducted. Right now, everyone making decisions based on educated guesses about the future leans heavily on the known block model. For instance, take Ravnica block. Once we knew that we were going to be returning to Ravnica back in early 2012, you could make a fair assumption that shocklands would be in the block. If that was true, then the next leap was that the fetchlands wouldn’t be printed in Standard until at the earliest fall of 2014. Why? You quite reasonably figured it unlikely Wizards would print fetches and shocks alongside each other in Standard. Knowing that shocks would be in the upcoming Ravnica block in the fall of ‘12, it was clear then that fetches couldn’t be printed in the expansion the following fall, meaning that the earliest you could see them was fall of ‘14. For a sense of scale, this means that back when Delver of Secrets and Green Sun’s Zenith were legal you could have predicted the earliest date at which fetches would be printed again was two and a half years away. Knowing that, you could make trades and buys feeling confident that there wouldn’t be a major printing of the cards anytime soon. All of that information was derived simply from a thorough understanding of how the block structure worked, as well as experience with how Wizards treats Standard.

Those same types of logical inferences will be available to us eventually, but it’s going to take some time to figure out. For instance, is Wizards going to put a rare land cycle in every block? That would mean three big land cycles would be in Standard at any given time, which is a lot of mana. Are they going to do every other block? How are they going to approach flavor-specific reprints, such as Urborg, Tomb to Yawgmoth? What about cards whose power level they’re concerned with? In the past, some of the most dangerous cards are printed in the spring set because they have the least amount of time to potentially ruin Standard. That won’t really be a method of controlling overpowered cards anymore, since everything will be legal for roughly the same amount of time.

A great deal of information we use to make informed purchases and sales on a daily basis comes from understanding the block rotation model and what Wizards is willing to print where. With this major change that’s all getting turned on its head. Our ability to confidently make predictions about what will and won’t happen is going to be hampered for quite some time.

Moving on, let’s take a closer look at those animated rotation models to see what we can glean.

Conveyor Belt

Under the old system, there was a rotation every four sets that happened once a year in the fall. From fall to fall, the number of sets legal would slowly grow. Standard was at it’s smallest immediately after a fall set was released and at it’s largest immediately after a core set came out. (We’re currently in the largest Standard format.) 

This system meant that with each set released there was less and less of a chance it would have a major impact on the format. When Khans releases there will be a giant Standard shakeup, but that’s more of a product of Return to Ravnica leaving rather than Khans being added to the pool. As Louie and Dewey are respectively added to Standard, they are mathematically less and less likely to affect major changes. Because the Standard card pool keeps adding cards without removing them, the power level continues to rise and it becomes more and more difficult for new cards to have an impact. This effect is more pronounced in Modern, Legacy, and Vintage, where very few sets add more than a card or two to those formats. All of this builds until the following fall, where half the format drops out and it’s a whole new ballgame again.

In the new block model things are going to happen much faster. There will now be major format changes every other set. Twice a year, both in the fall and in the spring, a third of the format is going to disappear. With that many cards dropping away, established decks are going to lose huge chunks of their constituent parts. Even if any one particular deck doesn’t lose much itself, the loss of some particular predator may allow another deck to spring up that was not viable previously. For instance, when Good Jace was originally printed, it was alongside both Bloodbraid Elf and Blightning. Jace was mostly weak in that format because those two cards did such a great job punishing him. Once Alara rotated and took BBE and Blightning with it, Jace suddenly sprang into power because the cards keeping him in check disappeared. (Also other good blue cards were printed.)

We’re going to end up seeing faster, more dramatic cycles on a more regular basis. Every other set some several hundred cards will rotate and suddenly lose a large portion of value, and some previously underused gems are going to spring to the top of the heap. When Block D comes out, not only will it introduce a whole slew of new cards, but Block A will fall away. The cards in  Block B and C, previously influenced by Block A, will now be viewed in an entire new light.

Some particularly great sweeper in Block A may have supported an entire control deck made mostly of cards from Block B and C. When Block A rotates, that control deck is suddenly going to be missing a key component. Meanwhile, a great aggro deck hiding in Blocks B and C that was waiting for control to wane will become viable. The financial implications of this are pretty clear. That control deck is going to have wild price swings on not only the sweeper that rotates out of the format, but also all the other cards that relied on it. Meanwhile, those aggro sleepers are going to jump once the deck becomes tier one. All of this is happening with cards in Blocks A, B, and C, even though it’s Block D that just released.

Constant changes to the card pool are going to mean constant changes to card values. Format pillars will lose support and drop appropriately, while powerful cards kept in check by existing metagames will jump once their predator is gone. The resulting market will be a constant cycle of large drop-offs and big gains. This is as much a double-edged sword as I could imagine.

On A Rail

Another factor to all of this is length of card legality. Here is how long each set of Return to Ravnica is legal in Standard:
Return to Ravnica: ~24 months (Oct ‘12 – Oct ‘14)
Gatecrash: ~20 months (Feb ‘13 – Oct ‘14)
Dragon’s Maze: ~17 months (May ‘13 – Oct ‘14)
Magic 2014: ~15 months (July ‘13 – Oct ‘14)

Now let’s see how long sets will be legal in the new Standard:

Blood: ~19 months (Oct ‘15 – May ‘17)
Sweat: ~15 months (Feb ‘16 – May ‘17)

A few things immediately jump out when we look at these durations. We no longer have to endure two whole years of Standard dominated by obscenely powerful cards such as Sphinx’s Revelation, Thoughtseize, or Shocklands.The most powerful cards will only hang around in Standard for roughly as long as the spring sets dol now. Think about how long Voice of Resurgence and Blood Baron have been in Standard – that will be the longest period cards are legal for. 

The second set will be shorter for even less amount of time, about what core sets are legal for now. Sweat releases in winter of 2016, which is historically around February. Think Gatecrash and Dark Ascension. It will be legal until the following year’s spring release, around the time Dragon’s Maze and Journey into Nyx release. Core set cards with a similar lifespan have been Mutavault and Thragtusk.

Summing all that up, nothing will be around as long as Revelation has been. The longest a card will exist in Standard is about how long we’ve had Voice right now, or how long Vengevine was legal. The shortest a card will exist for is just a bit over a year, such as how long Mutavault has been legal. The longest time period a card can exist is a good bit shorter than we’re used to, and the gap between the longest lasting cards and the shortest ones has been narrowed significantly.

The smoothing of the duration of legality is going to push towards more uniform prices on cards across sets. Because most cards will be legal for about as long as any other card, the concern that you won’t get to play with card A as long as card B won’t be too much of a worry. It was much easier to justify buying into Revelations or Thoughtseizes immediately after their release because they were clearly format-defining and would exist for what felt like forever. Voice of Resurgence, on the other hand, was a harder pill to swallow because you had so much less time to use it.

Similarly, there will be less imperative to purchase those key AAA cards. Don’t feel like investing in the hottest format staple revealed in Khans? Don’t sweat it as much. It’s not going to be around nearly as long as it would have been without the change. Eighteen months isn’t exactly a short period of time, but it’s half-a-year less than it would have been. You also won’t see cards ruining formats in tandem nearly as much. If two cards together are format-warping (think Splinter Twin and Deceiver Exarch) and are from two different sets, they’ll be spending less time legal together than they would have. In addition to this, rapid format changes means that what is a format pillar today may not be a few months from now.

Interloper

The draft formats, just like format legality, are getting a good shake up as well. One thing that’s up in the air is what the draft format will look like in two years. For instance, Theros was a “traditional” draft model with a 6:2:1 ratio. An average Theros card is roughly six times less rare than an average Journey into Nyx card, not adjusting for set sizes. I can’t imagine the price on Thoughtseize if it was printed in Journey rather than Theros.

The upcoming Khans of Tarkir set will be a bit different, with the three draft formats looking like this: KTK/KTK/KTK, Dewey/KTK/KTK, Louie/Louie/Dewey. Here we see a 5:2:2 ratio that should close the gap a bit on the distribution between the first set and the rest of the block. Cards in Khans will be more available than the other two blocks, but the difference will not be as drastic as between Theros and Journey into Nyx.

Beyond Khans is uncertainty. We can be reasonably confident that Blood and Sweat will be drafted together without Tears getting involved. Our estimation then is that the two draft formats for that block (and most typical blocks after that) will be Blood/Blood/Blood and Sweat/Blood/Blood. That creates an unfortunate 5:1 ratio, where for every five packs of Blood opened, only one of Sweat will be, resulting in a similar distribution of rares as Theros to Journey into Nyx. That’s a severe disparity in the new Standard, so I’m wondering if we’ll see Wizards try and curb it somehow with a different draft model. Perhaps we’ll see Sweat/Sweat/Blood? That would bring the ratio to 2:1, which is a lot more balanced than 5:1. (Again, not adjusting for set size.) Obviously in a 5:1 ratio the prices on the small set can quickly grow to obscene levels while severely suppressing values on large set cards.

Hazard Course

Earlier I mentioned that the new block cycle is a double-edged sword. I say this because the new format is going to better reward those that pay attention and more severely punish those that don’t keep up.

Fall rotation is one of the most financially active periods of the game. Not only do all the cards exiting the format take a dump, you’ve got brand new cards hitting the scene with volatile prices and existing cards that couldn’t hack it in the old format get a new lease on life. Up until now, this has only happened once a year. Now that rotation will be happening twice, there will be twice as much time that prices will be correcting to meet the demands of the new format.

If you’re on the ball you’ll be moving your rotating staples ahead of the game, just as you’ve been doing now. You’ll also be targeting cards that are undervalued in the current format but could break out in the new one. Doing well will necessitate paying just as much attention to what is leaving the format as what is entering. Paying attention to what is leaving also signals what cards to sell off even if they aren’t rotating. When a Sphinx’s Revelation type card is about to rotate you’ll want to move your control staples ahead of that date, even if they aren’t leaving along with it. 

Individuals that don’t keep up are going to get hammered twice as hard. Those players are going to lose huge chunks of value in their collection not just once a year, but multiple times. With two rotations, that’s twice as many opportunities to hold onto staples too long and lose hundreds of dollars in virtual value as your Voices plummet. Not only will these players take a hit by holding onto rotating cards too long, they’ll also take a hit when they hold onto cards that while still legal, cease being major players in the format. The greater amount of turnover in Standard means that more often cards will fall by the wayside. We only have to look as far back as Boros Reckoner to see a perfect example. It was a huge player in the INN/RTR Standard because of the Aristocrats and Blasphemous Act. The rotation of most of the Aristocrats deck, along with the rise of Mono-Black, crushed Reckoner’s price. If you weren’t paying attention you lost a lot of money holding onto those Reckoners. (Meanwhile Lingering Souls, a card that kept both Nightveil Specter and Desecration Demon from being relevant, left the format and opened the doors for those two to terrorize the skies.)

Whether you’re paying attention or not, it will be more difficult to avoid sinking excessive disposable income into the game. Gone are the days where you’ll be able to build a tier one list in the fall then make small changes to it over the course of a year or two. The constant set cycling will be forcing you to make large changes to your decklist frequently, or even abandon the deck altogether, which means investing more money into the game more often.

There’s also the issue that your cards won’t be legal for as long as they were before. If cards are legal in Standard for less time overall, it means you have to refresh your collection more often to stay in the game. Over the course of maybe three or four years you’ll have refreshed your entire Standard binder once more than you would under the old system. There’s money in these more rapid changes, but again, only for those doing their homework to stay ahead of things.

One exciting aspect of all of this is that sleepers are far more likely to burst onto the scene. A card printed in Journey into Nyx is forced to live it’s entire Standard life alongside Thoughtseize. If that card can’t perform in a world with Thoughtseize then it’s never getting a fair shake. In the new system, a card two sets away from Thoughtseize gets time to shine without having to deal with the hateful card. A card printed in Sweat is never getting away from a card printed in Blood, but a card from Tears will have a chance to operate without either of those two sets in Standard, which it previously wouldn’t have had.

Not only will cards have less permanent housemates, the formats won’t be solved as often or for as long either. Even if the next Mono-Black gets figured out relatively quickly, it will only be six months at most before a major change. This is in contrast to the year or more it can take to lose oppressive decks in the current system. With formats in greater flux more often, there will be far more opportunities for brewers to take the world by storm. The next Battlefield Thaumaturge is going to be positioned much better two years from now than he would be today.

Apprehension

At the end of the day I think we see a smoothing of card prices a little bit overall, although the highs and lows are going to come faster, harder, and more often. Hopefully the amount of product opened for the first set of a block should be a bit more in line with how much gets opened for the second set. The rapid change of formats will cause more cards to rise and fall than they do now.

Overall, the average price of cards should mostly stay the same. We should roughly see the same amount of unique cards printed in 2016 as we see printed in 2014. Standard may feel more expensive though, since most individual cards aren’t legal as long as they are today. The greater flux of Standard prices may push some people away who are scared of losing money to the cycle. The flip side of that is that fewer players will be frustrated with decks such as Mono-Blue dominating the format for long periods of time, and are more likely to want to play Standard since the metagame won’t be nearly as stale.

Reading Twitter it seems like the reception to this is quite favorable. Nearly everyone I’ve heard from has been a fan of the change. More new formats means more exciting Magic, which is good for all involved. Some are a little peeved that it will be more expensive to keep up with Standard, which is a fair frustration. Not everyone wants to play the stock market just to keep up with FNM.

For you and I it’s definitely a good change overall. More turnover and more change means more opportunities to profit. Having said that, It will be a bit more challenging now for sure. We’ll have shorter timetables to work with, and it will take a little while before we figure out exactly where the best places on the calendar will be to buy which cards. I don’t believe we’ll know fully how the markets will handle all of this until we get there and start seeing what happens. If there’s one thing we certainly know at this point though, it’s that the future of Magic just got a lot more exciting.

By: Travis Allen

Did you ever tell a family member – any family member at all – that you were at all interested in art of some sort when you were younger? Painting or drawing perhaps? It’s pretty common for kids to be drawn to art early on, even if very few stick with it. It’s a creative outlet and a way to produce a lasting piece of work that they can feel good about days or weeks later.

If you ever mentioned enjoying artwork to an aunt, an uncle, or a grandparent, you know what came next for the following ten years. Art supplies. Every single year. Except they were crummy and unusable every single time. It’s sort of a catch-22. Anyone willing to spend enough money on you to buy you high quality pens or paint supplies would know you well enough that they would know better than to waste their money that way. And yet like clockwork, every Birthday and Christmas, some ten dollar set of markers would show up on the doorstep for you to toss into a box with other unused gifts while you went back to playing Super Nintendo.

While we may have considered this a complete loss of value when we were younger, time has provided us a perspective on the situation a bit more sympathetic with those relatives. To their credit, they were using their limited knowledge of our passing whims as best as they could to provide gifts they thought would be appreciated. If you’re somehow still bitter about this, ask yourself what you really know of the passions of your nieces and nephews, or hell, even your siblings. Providing someone with a meaningful gift that they will truly appreciate is damn difficult, even for those you are closest to.

In order to see what this has to do with us, just replace the word “art” with “Magic” and “paintbrushes” with “Magic cards.” When you’re a child, getting booster packs of cards is thrilling and exciting. I fondly remember cherishing every booster pack of X-Men trading cards I received back then, and getting an entire sealed box for my birthday is one of the few memories I have of early birthday gifts. These days however, gifts including Magic cards are far less special. The issue is that there’s no longer mystery or excitement in the gift of Magic cards. The veil has been pulled back, and as you sit there reading this article, you’re fully capable of going out and purchasing them for yourself. In the next ten minutes you could have any Magic card or sealed product you wish rushing towards your door. It may not be a financially prudent decision, of course, but still, the option is available to you. It’s sort of like ice cream cake. The age at which you can just go buy an ice cream cake for no reason whatsoever except that you want to eat one is exactly the age when you realize it is a terrible idea to do so.

And so we find ourselves the recipients of Intro Decks and booster packs from last year’s core set from well meaning relatives who know little more of our hobbies other than “that card game.” We say thank you, hug the relative, and tell them that it’s so great they provided such a thoughtful gift. Meanwhile you’re staring at that Celestial Archon in the front of the packaging wondering if Target will give you store credit for the intro deck without a receipt.

We feel bad. We really do. They obviously are trying. They mean well. They just…don’t quite get it. It’s like listening to your mom try and describe what you do for a living. How can you be upset when they mean well? It’s in everyone’s best interest if the Magic gifts cease though. They’ll stop spending money on something that’s going to be immediately returned or collect dust in a closet, and you won’t have to feign appreciation for something that is entirely wasted on you. That way you can all get back to giving and receiving the best of gifts: socks. (That’s not a joke).

Today I provide you with a tool. A letter. It is an open letter to friends and family that attempts to gently persuade them that their love can be better channeled. If you’re the non-confrontational (read: passive aggressive) type, just link it on your Facebook wall. For a more direct route, print it out and stick it in the envelope with a thank you card you most certainly haven’t already sent for the last gift they gave you. I’ve provided multiple selections on certain sentences to provide for the most personal touch possible. Feel free to edit and tweak as necessary.

 

 

Dear [Friend/Aunt/Uncle/Grandma/Parole Officer],

I hope this letter finds you well. I know we haven’t spoken in awhile, but my [mother/father/dog] tells me you are doing [great/terribly/cocaine]. That is [wonderful/a shame] to hear. I’d ask you what the weather is like there in ___________, but given that I have internet access, it feels a bit silly to ask. It’s funny how the medium of communication dictates how much and what is acceptable small talk.

My reason for sending this letter today is a tad delicate. I should preface the content with sincere thanks for all you have provided me over the years as a loving [relative/friend/parole officer]. I cherish the time we have spent together in the past and look forward to many more lovely [hours/outstanding arrest warrants] in the future.

This past [birthday/Christmas/President’s Day/Tuesday] you gave to me a heartfelt gift that included Magic: The Gathering cards. I was touched to see that you cared enough to purchase a meaningful, personal gift for me. Your love and affection shone brilliantly through your action.

It is this particular gift that I wish to speak about today. While the meaning and thought behind the gift were fully and truly appreciated, the actual content did not quite achieve the [excitement/sexual arousal] you may have hoped it would.

Magic cards behave as a commodity, just as gas, silver, and corn do. While silver and gold [and corn] make for some truly remarkable gifts, a simple few ounces of gold without form or function makes for a much less special treat. It is unlikely you would give someone gasoline as a gift, and Magic cards are not much different. Commodities make the world go round, but any particular instance of such is not particularly special or endearing.

One piece of silver lacks distinction from another until it has been crafted into a piece of jewelry. Similarly, there is nothing unique about this Magic card compared to another of the same name. Nothing exists to distinguish it as my Magic card. The result is that cards change hands often, and a card gifted today could be traded away to peers for something more immediately useful only days later. Furthermore, market shifts can and do happen in the world of Magic just as they do on the real commodities markets. A box of cards you spend $10 on today may be worth less than half of that by the time I actually receive it. The only person who wins on that day is the retailer.

This is not to say you should never purchase any Magic cards ever again. A single booster pack, retail $3-$4, is a pleasing trinket or accessory to another package. (Be sure to ask the retailer for the most recent set!) If you travel abroad, foreign booster packs of cards are much appreciated, not only due to their exotic nature, but as a token of a journey you wish to share. (Russian and Japanese especially so!) In general though, I ask for both our sakes that you mostly refrain from choosing Magic cards as gifts. While I know full well that you mean only the best, at the end of the day they lack the ability to strengthen emotional bonds in a way that many other gestures are capable.

My message today is not one of annoyance or complaint, but rather one of honesty and compassion. I look forward to spending many more enjoyable [holidays/nights in jail cells] with you.

[Love/Sincerely/Dictated but not read by],

_____________________________

By: Travis Allen

Money for Nothing

If you’re anything like me, you are constantly on the lookout for collections to gobble up. Your ears perk up when people talk about getting out of the game, you browse Craigslist for people offloading their kid’s old box of cards, and upon hearing someone comment that they used to play you immediately begin an inquisition into the whereabouts and age range of their cards. The end result of this is that you end up purchasing collection after collection. You strip it for the rares and foils then shove the boxes into a corner. Pretty soon, you have thousands, if not tens of thousands, of lands/commons/uncommons with which you don’t know what to do.

The last time this happened to me I listed the entire pile on Craigslist as a great casual starter kit. I was up front about it not containing any duals or money cards, and that there were probably close to no rares. What WAS in the collection was commons and uncommons that spanned the entire range of Magic’s history, from a few odd Beta cards right up through Theros. I listed it for around $400, and someone picked it up because he and a buddy had been playing again and wanted fodder for decks. They certainly got their fodder. (As an added bonus it was a birthday present, and the guy buying it planned to stack all 100,000+ cards up in his friend’s bedroom.) 

Before I listed it I did one final pass. I wasn’t looking for rares though; rather, I was looking for commons and uncommons. You see, the first time(s) through I was mainly looking for rares and money uncommons such as Lightning Helix or Kitchen Finks. The Zendikar box that had Explores, Expedition Maps, and Goblin Bushwhackers? I had skipped all that stuff. I left in the 30 or 40 Lightning Bolts and the multitude of Brainstorms that had accumulated through various eras. This time I pulled out any common or uncommon that looked remotely playable.

By the time I got all the way back through I must have pulled a solid 5,000 cards out, completely and utterly unsorted. I began plugging cards into MTGPrice to check their buylist value. Anything worth $.10 or more was kept, and the rest tossed back into the box. The work wasn’t all that bad really. I put on some ST:TNG and plowed through. Once I knew that the uncommon shard lands from SOA were worth more than ten cents, I didn’t have to look them up every time. Same with all the rest of the cards that kept repeating. After the first 1,000 cards or so, there weren’t too many repeats.

At the end of this process I had somewhere between 2,500 and 3,000 commons that were all worth at least $.10, and much of it worth more. The problem at this point was that it was still totally and completely unsorted, as there were easily over 100 unique cards in the stack. Furthermore, even if I did sort it, buylisting a pile of that size is sort of a nightmare. Sure HotSauce gives $.45 on Crumbling Necropolis, but what if they don’t want twenty of them? What if they only want twelve? Well now I have to see who pays the next highest amount and sell some to them. What if they don’t want all the ones I have left either? Onto a third store. You can see how this could get tedious, especially taking into consideration that unless I did every order in a single day, the buylist requirements could change as I worked through the pile. Then I’d have to ship everything, make sure they gave me how much they were supposed to, and so on and so on. On top of that, had I gone through all of this, I surely would have ended up with some amount of cards left for various reasons.

So I procrastinated. I let the cards sit there in my room for a few months. Eventually an SCG open rolled through town and I figured I’d bring them with me to see what I could get for them. I wasn’t holding my breath but I thought it was at least worth my time to find out. After taking my third loss in Standard on Saturday, I grabbed the boxes from my car and plopped them on the buyer’s mat. I was expecting him to groan and slowly begin ctrl+f’ing the SCG buylist, sorting the cards into various $.10 and $.50 piles.

He opened one of the boxes, flipped through a bit, and told me he didn’t feel like looking all of it up. After a quick scan of the other two 1,000 count boxes he made me a simple offer: $.25 per card. At the end, I pocketed $650 cash for a few thousand commons and uncommons in the span of fifteen minutes.

I’m well aware that I probably could have eeked out a bit more money had I buylisted the entire pile myself, submitting five or ten buylist orders to various websites. Maybe I could have even got an extra $100 out of it. But think about it like this – all of that would have taken time and effort. A considerable amount of it, in fact. I’d wager that I would have spent at least four hours organizing all of those buylists, if not more. If you consider that I lost $100 shipping the entire pile at $.25/ea instead of buylisting it individually, and it would have taken at least four hours to do, I paid myself at most $25 an hour. I am completely happy to make that exchange.

The reason I present all of this to you is to illustrate two things. The first is that all those decent commons and uncommons that aren’t quite worth lugging around in your trade binder are still completely worth pulling out of collections. The only thing you should be leaving behind are the bulkiest bulk C/UCs. (Of which, to be fair, will comprise a majority of the collection). Make sure you’re still pulling each and every rare too! This same weekend a pair of friends had accumulated bulk rares over the last few months from buying binders from people, and ended up getting a crispy mint pair of Revised Underground Seas for them. (I personally have been keeping all my bulk rares. They’re never going to be worth less than $.10, so I’m not losing money holding onto them, and every now and then when a card spikes to $5-$15 I get to dig through the box and pull a few copies out. Disrupting Shoal, Fist of Suns, Genesis Wave, etc).

Perhaps more importantly, it’s worth it to appropriately value your time. The amount of effort it would have taken to wring a few extra bucks out of all of that would have doubled, tripled, or even quadrupled the amount of time I had put into it. Screw that. Recognize that your time has value and that it’s perfectly acceptable to forfeit some amount of capital in exchange for your entire Saturday back. Whenever you’re thinking about investing a large amount of time into an activity whose sole purpose is to make you money, consider how much you’re making per hour. When it comes to things like sorting bulk commons, chances are it would be more lucrative to simply work a side job on the weekend.

Current Events

I’ve started trading my extra Liliana of the Veils. Her price has been fairly stable since early this year so I’m not expecting any big movements out of her in the near future. She may gain $10, but I don’t think we’ll see her climb above $80 or $90 TCG anytime soon. There are two reasons I’m looking to trade her right now. The first is that there were comments that she was initially in the file for M15. She was pulled for power level reasons (duh) but it shows that Wizards is looking to get her back into our hands. I don’t think we’ll see a reprint in Khans, but with MM2 looking so likely, and that being a perfect place for her, I’ve decided to start shopping her around. I’m not advocating any fire sales, but I’m happy to take Theros staples for her right now that are guaranteed gainers in the next few months.

People continue to clamor about fetches in Khans. Real quick, what I feel is one of the best reasons we won’t see them: Fetches came around last time with landfall. Both were wildly popular. Wizards wants to bring back both. Because of the five-tribe nature of Khans it can’t support landfall as a major mechanic. Since landfall wouldn’t fit well in Khans, they’ll hold it (and fetches) for a set that will better support both.

Buy Temples.

No, buy more.

Eidolon of the Great Revel wrecked my face in Legacy this weekend. Burn decks have always been tier 1.5 to tier 3 budget decks in Modern and Legacy. Eidolon is a big bump in power for them in both formats. Foils are around $20-$25 right now. At those numbers I’m happy to trade for them. I could see them at $30-$40 within a year. 

Nissa, Worldwaker is the truth. She’s hanging strong at $30+. I expect she’ll dip, but I also think it’s unlikely we see her below $20 before the end of the calendar year. If you want a set, go ahead and trade for her. I will be.

Finally, this isn’t necessarily finance related, but I have a platform so I’m going to use it dangit. Wouldn’t Leyline of Anticipation be great in those Modern discard-heavy decks people are always trying to make? Think 4x Thoughtseize 4x Inquisition type decks. They can frequently tear the game apart in the first three turns but often lose to a Tarmogoyf or Bob off the top of the deck while some one-mana discard spell rots in their hand. With Leyline in play, you can cast those discard spells at the end of their draw step just like you would Clique. Leyline turns all those awful late-game Thoughtseizes into much more potent spells, as you can actually nab anything they draw before they cast it. Those decks often run Liliana or Smallpox or something similar, and are constantly discarding their own stuff, so pitching redundant Leylines would be fine. Drawing a late Leyline when you already have one in play is obviously bad, but now instead of having eight to twelve dead top decks in the form of Thoughtseize and Duress, those are all live and only the three other Leylines are dead. That seems like a solid trade. I doubt this makes those decks tier 1 contenders or anything, but it just struck me as an unusual card choice that could actually do a lot to shore up the problems those types of lists tend to have.

By: Travis Allen

Did you catch Pro Tour Magic 2015 this weekend? It was Standard (inexplicably), and UW came out as top dog. The experience of watching the later rounds with Ivan Floch may have been familiar to those who watched Cifka win the Modern PT a year or two ago with Eggs, in which he had “won” the game but it was going to take ten to thirty minutes to execute the actual kill. Overall the entire thing was clearly defined by Sphinx’s Revelation and Thoughtseize. We didn’t learn too much useful information about what Standard will look like post-Ravnica, although it looks like Nissa is pretty legitimate. Ichikawa ran the full set with only nine forests in his deck to great success, so apparently the floor on how many forests you need for her to be good is quite low. Yet the biggest news of the Pro Tour wasn’t the cards or the decks, but rather, Organized Play announcements.

Helene Bergeot and the Organized Play (OP) team often use Pro Tours to roll out changes to the OP program, and this weekend’s Pro Tour was no different. The OP program encompasses things likes Grand Prixs, Pro Tours, Pro Tour Qualifiers, etc. This is the team that determines how many slots the PT has, how many pro points should be distributed on average at GPs, what constitutes silver/gold/platinum player levels, etc etc. At PTM15 there were changes made to GPs, PTs, and PTQs, with the PTQ change having the widest, most immediate effect on the most players.

Splitting the Baby

If you’ve been to a PTQ in the last year you’re probably aware they’ve been getting out of control. Qualifiers in Toronto have been easily clearing 200 players, and last year there was one that cleared 346 players or something obscene like that. Early GPs would have been easier to win than some PTQs are today. Clearly, a solution was needed. WOTC has decided that the way to tackle these monstrosities is to divide PTQs into two components, a local PTQ qualifier (PreTQ), and invite-only regional PTQs. Without just copy/pasting the article on the topic, the general idea is this:

1. Any local store that could run a GPT can now run a PreTQ once per season.
2. If you win a PreTQ, you qualify for a once-per-season regional PTQ. (There are sixteen in the US).
3. If you top four (or top eight if there are >128 players) a regional PTQ, you win an invite to the PT and the airfare to haul you there.

The local grinder is going to find themselves in a situation where they’re attending three to maybe nine or ten PreTQs a season, depending how many stores in their area are able to run them and how far the player is willing to travel. Keep in mind there are sixteen weeks each season. Between SCG events, GPs, GPTs, and the new PreTQs, the dedicated player could be competing in competitive REL events nearly every weekend of the year.

On a side note, for the first time ever, I’m personally finding that instead of my quantity of play being gated by the frequency of events I can/want to participate in, I’m instead concerned about the entry fees of so many events. PreTQs will likely be $20-$40 depending on whether they’re constructed or Sealed. Between ~$30 PreTQs, $40 GPs, $80 SCG weekends, and the expenses of travelling to all of them, playing Magic is getting brutally expensive. If you’re good enough to be regularly winning prizes at the events you should be able to come out ahead, but that isn’t going to be the case for the majority of players.

In conjunction with the frequency at which players will be able to participate in PreTQs, there’s another important component to this. PreTQ seasons are not tied to specific formats. That means that any time a store runs a PreTQ, they have the choice of making it Sealed, Standard, or Modern. Aaron Forsythe has said specifically that if they find the distribution does not line up with what they’d like they will take the reins of PreTQ formats, but for the time being it’s up to store owners to decide which format is best for their store.

Regional PTQs will still have their formats locked in by WOTC, but financially this is far less relevant than the free-form PreTQs. Because store owners can choose whichever format they like, there will be Competitive REL events in both Standard and Modern all year round. Gone is the Standard/Modern PTQ season and the increased scrutiny/prices they demand from the market. Instead, there is now going to be a much smoother demand for format staples year round.

If any random PreTQ can be Modern at any point, grinders are going to need to keep decks together and updated at all times. Instead of trading/selling singles out of season, they’ll be forced to keep them. Format staples like Snapcaster and Tarmogoyf aren’t quite as vulnerable to seasonal changes as role-players, but those role-players should become much more stable. You can see Spellskite’s price bounced around over the last two years as a banner role-player. With constant demand, these rollercoaster prices should be less frequent for well known quantities. You’ll still see wild price rides on flavors of the week that spike and drop drastically, but the cards everyone is already aware of should be much more stable.

Standard will see this smoothing as well, although less so since FNM and SCG events ask players to keep cohesive decks together with more regularity. The effect will be most pronounced in Standard after the spring set is released. During the months of May through August (aka now) Standard prices take a real beating for a variety of reasons, one of which is that there’s no real reason for most players to keep up on Standard decks just a few months before rotation. A handful of Standard PreTQs during the summer months will incentivize a lot more players to keep their important rotating staples. It won’t completely shore up drooping interest and rotation fears, but it will help alleviate it.

This new world of constant PreTQs doesn’t seem like the best scenario for those of us looking to capitalize on markets in flux. The old PTQ system rewarded the types of people that kept on top of the cycles and the best strategies to profit from them. In other words, me and you. Annual repetition has been one of the best ways to make profit on MTG if you have patience. Pick up rotating cards, grab staples during the off-season, then ship them when demand rises. With PTQ cycles gone it will be tougher to generate value in that way. It will still happen, of course. Standard staples like the Temples are dirt cheap right now but will assuredly climb in the fall. But those types of opportunities going forward will be less obvious, less available, and riskier overall.

Mirrorweave

Another large change in the OP we need to care about is the standardization of Pro Tours. Or should I say the Standardization. Going forward, all Pro Tours will be Standard.

I find this upsetting on multiple levels. Nothing but Standard PTs means that one PT to the next there will be far less diversity than we have in years past. The decks that do well at the Dewey Pro Tour will look an awful lot like the decks that do well at PT Khans. Does Thoughtseize crush PT Khans? Don’t expect Dewey to change that much. If all four Pro Tours last year were Standard, you can bet your sweet cheeks that Sphinx’s Revelation would have been in the Top 8 of all four. If you hate tier one Standard cards now, you are going to loathe them in short order.

Another facet to all of this is that we won’t be seeing superteams trying to break Modern once or twice a year. Putting twenty guys in a house for two weeks with a singular goal of finding the best deck in Modern is good for the format in moderation. They set the format, identify the pillars, and show the rest of us what to do. Then the general public tweaks the big decks over the following months, trying out new cards in their established decks until the next Modern PT when the pros reassess what the last few sets added. Even if it hasn’t felt like it lately, Modern PTs definitely have an impact on the format. There are eight cards on the Modern ban list that weren’t there at the formats inception, and all eight bans can be traced back to their respective performances in a PT. PTQs aren’t getting cards banned and changing the format. Without a Modern PT, the format is going to be considerably more stale, which will lead to less interest and less breakout cards. 

The most financially troubling part of all this is that we lose the Block Pro Tour. The Block PT has always been an odd duck, as it’s the only high level event that normal players never encounter. As removed as it is from the general player, watching it is a lot of fun and the information it provides is invaluable. Seeing what succeeds at the Block PT is a huge indicator of what the format will look like post-rotation. Without Block, we’re going to have trouble identifying which cards are the true key players in the upcoming Standard.

To see why this matters all we need to do is look back a few days. There were only a handful of unique M15 cards that showed up in the Top 8, and the painland cycle makes up roughly half of them. What M15 cards will matter beyond the lands and Nissa? PT M15 certainly didn’t tell us. If PT Journey had been Standard, we’d have no idea what this coming Fall would look like. PT Journey put Courser of Kruphix, Sylvan Caryatid, Kiora, and more on the map, giving us insight into what would be good once Khans hits. Obviously nobody expects those Block decks to translate, but it allowed Theros stars to shine without being drowned by Sphinx’s Revelation.

Without any of this information it’s going to be much more difficult to identify the fall pillars through the noise of the old set. Next year we are going to be a lot less sure about which Khans cards are going to be big role players once Theros rotates than we are sure about the Theros staples that will be good as Ravnica rotates. The silver lining here is that if you’re very good at predicting power levels you’ll be able to identify the Coursers when they’re only $2 and make an absolute killing when they inevitably hit $15+. Of course this is exceptionally difficult, and even the best don’t manage to identify the pillars consistently. Those that can read the format well will make even more money than they have been with fall rotations, but it will be much tougher for the average player to wring value from Block results.

The new PTQ system smoothes demand curves, removes annual price cycles, and obliterates many small vendors, leaving them with no good way to buy and no good way to vend. The PT change means we have less overall interest in Modern, less top Magic pros working on finding awesome Modern decks, and less information about fall metagames. Overall I’d say PT M15 was pretty bad for those of us interested in making money on cardboard.