By: Travis Allen

Journey Into Nyx is upon us with prerelease events just a few days away. Does anyone else feel like we just did this for Born of the Gods? I’m still nowhere near knowing all the cards in the BTT draft format, and here we are adding a whole new pile.

A few words before we jump in. First, the dynamic of this block structure is familiar to veterans, but may actually be new to a good deal of rookie players. The big/small/small structure is the “normal” structure, but the last time we saw it was actually Scars of Mirrodin! We’ve added a whoooooole bunch of new players since then, so things are going to be a bit different.

Cliff talked about it in the past, and I’ve mentioned it as well, but it bears repeating: the ratio of packs opened for Theros:BoG:Journey will be 6:2:1. That means that (roughly) for every six of a rare opened in Theros, only one will be opened in Journey. This will have a real impact on the price, although by how much remains to be seen. Keep this in mind as the prices unfold over time. What would have been a bulk rare in the past may actually hold a price tag of a few dollars. I tried to accommodate for this effect in my pricing, but I may have been too conservative. Watch the prices closely, and if things aren’t dropping by as much as you or I thought they would, then we know it’s having a dramatic impact.

Speaking of bulk, everything I put there I expect to be about a dollar or less. Some of it may end up doing a little better because of casual markets (Dictate or Erebos) or the metagame may shake out in a way that it’s actually reasonably represented (Setessian Tactics.) I’m not dismissing these cards out of hand, I just think that it’s likely most of them won’t end up doing enough to matter in the next six months.

I’ve only given prices out through six months because I’m not prescient. What the format looks like after the fall rotation will be so different that it’s impossible to know at this point which meta-dependent cards will thrive and which will fall by the wayside. We’ll reconvene after the block Pro Tour and see how things are looking at that point.

White

Bulk:
Dawnbringer Charioteers
Dictate of Heliod
Launch the Fleet
Skybind

 

Aegis of the Gods
1-2 Months: $1
Rotation: Bulk

Aegis of the Gods looks a lot more exciting than it is. True Believer has been in Legacy and Modern for quite some time and sees no action, so Aegis isn’t bringing much to those formats they don’t already have. Yes, Leyline of Sanctity is awesome, but that can be cast for free and doesn’t die to Bolt. That leaves only Standard to drive this guy’s price. If your opponent plays with Thoughtseize and has reason to fear this guy, they can still fire it off on turn one of either the play or the draw to make sure they nail your whatever.

Aside from not really solving the Thoughtseize problem, there’s still not going to be a lot of decks that would want this ability on a small body. He may show up here and there, and may even float around a dollar or two instead of bulk, but only from the barest casual support. Mostly narrow, single-format demand will keep his price low.

 

Deicide (Day-ah-side, not dee-side.)
1-2 Months: $1-$2
Rotation: Bulk – $1

A lot of people were very angry when this card was spoiled. “What of our gods?” they cried. Their lamentations filled Twitter. “Why punish us for worshipping?”

This is a safety valve, the same way that Grafdigger’s Cage and Glaring Spotlight and Renounce the Guilds were. Wizards has plainly proclaimed that they are keeping cards like this in formats at almost all times to ensure that nothing runs away with Standard entirely. Their goal is that the cards shouldn’t be consistently maindeckable, but if certain strategies get too strong they can be temporarily promoted to the front line. That’s exactly what we’ve got here.

Grafdigger’s Cage didn’t stop Birthing Pod from being played. Glaring Spotlight and Renounce the Guilds couldn’t stop Geist of Saint Traft. Deicide will occasionally punish people leaning hard on their god, but it isn’t going to mean the end of Thassa entirely. Athreos will still be entirely playable.

This is definitely reasonable enchantment removal, and may even see play as a one- or two-of in certain builds. It answers things like Courser of Kruphix or Herald of Torment nicely with an occasional added bonus. It doesn’t do squat against Desecration Demon or Polukranos though, so it’s not going to be saturating the format. It will see more play than Renounce the Guilds did, but not enough to matter. It will hang around a dollar or two for awhile as people grab their copies, but it will slip by rotation.

 

Godsend
1-2 Months: $4-$7
Rotation: $2-$3

Godsend looks pretty awesome but won’t play nearly as well as it reads. Any of the “Sword of Yin and Yang” are going to be better in Modern and Legacy, so that leaves us with Standard and EDH. +3/+3 isn’t the most threatening thing to tack onto a creature, so blocking is only going to be done in dire situations. Admittedly it makes a great rattlesnake on defense. But at six mana, does it matter? It’s expensive to play and equip, and offers no protection except against maybe Mizzium Mortars.

The preorder is high now because it’s splashy looking and sounds exciting. Lack of results will send the price crashing. It will likely hit “mythic bulk,” which is $1-$3. It may not be a bad idea to grab them at that point though. There are going to be very few copies in the market in general, and there should be enough casual demand after rotation (next year) to see it become a slow, sure gainer.

 

Blue

Bulk:
Daring Thief
Hypnotic Siren (unless it breaks out in Mono-Blue)
Polymorphous Rush
Scourge of Fleets

 

Battlefield Thaumaturge
1-2 Months: Bulk – $1
Rotation: ???

This guy is a real unknown for me. Will he break out, which is a very real possibility, or will he falter and fall flat on his face? He’s a got a reasonable cost and a reasonable body to go with it. 2/1’s are completely capable of doing work in constructed, as Snapcaster has proven. The real question is the unique ability that we haven’t really had much of in this fashion before.

Making your spells cheaper is always worth a very close look. The difference between 1B and B or 2U and 1U is pretty severe. Imagine Hero’s Downfall at BB and you’ll begin to appreciate what he’s capable of. How about this spell? “2U, Return three target creatures to their owner’s hands and Scry 1.” That’s limited all-star Sea God’s Revenge with Thaumaturge in play. Much more appealing at 2U rather than 5U, isn’t it? The secondary ability is probably mostly irrelevant. It will serve as a potential way to protect him from spot removal should the need arise, but right now there isn’t a lot in the format that would really make this silly. We’ll see what the fall brings.

I don’t think Thaumaturge will take off right away. There isn’t anywhere he belongs yet so it will take time for him to find a deck. Delver took some time before he had a proper home, after all. We may even have to wait for rotation and the subsequent cardpool/metagame to undergo a major shift. He’ll require the right enablers for sure. If we get the right mix of spells he’ll be a format role-player, but if we don’t get the tools he’ll be filling boxes of shame nationwide. His best chance today is probably going to be with Young Pyromancer.

At the end of the day, I’m pretty confident in predicting that he will matter at some point before fall of 2015. He’s got a reasonable body and a potentially absurd ability. With the quantity of JOU that’s going to be in circulation it won’t take much to push Thaumaturge into the $10+ range with only mild success, and $15-$20+ if he’s a rare Delver.

 

Dictate of Kruphix
1-2 Months: $1-$2
Rotation: Bulk-$1

Howling Mine effects have a history of being fairly popular. Font of Mythos is an $8 card. Dictate is a Mine with upside on the timing. You can hold up counters or removal or whathaveyou and only pull the trigger if you deem it appropriate. It’s certainly the best Mine effect we’ve seen since Temple Bell in M11.

However, Temple Bell is currently well under a $1 and was that cheap even before it was printed in Commander 2013. That’s pretty damning for Dictate. Temple Bell is very similar in that it’s the same CMC and your opponent doesn’t get the first card. On top of that, Bell also has the advantage of not requiring colored mana and is capable of being turned off if things get out of control. You need to ask yourself why the average player would ever pick Dictate over Temple Bell. I’m not coming up with much, how about you?

In Standard there isn’t too much in the way of flash decks floating around, so there’s not a whole lot looking for this effect. Control decks have things like Sphinx’s Revelation to play to, which are much safer when you’re trying to take control of a game.

 

Sage of Hours
1-2 Months: $3-$4
Rotation: $2-$3

First, the best part of this: in Standard, you can go infinite with Sage, the new Ajani, and Vorel. Ajani dumps three counters on Sage, Vorel doubles them to six, and then Sage gives you another turn. Rinse/lather/repeat. There’s typically a three-card infinite-mana combo floating around Standard, but there’s always the question of what to do with it. A three-card infinite-turn machine is another story. It’s clunky, but at least if you assemble it you actually win the game instead of passing turn with a billion mana in your pool. Of course with Thoughtseize in the format this is probably all irrelevant. Still, it’s at least worth being aware of if you spot some way to streamline the process and possibly make it competitive.

Outside of Magical Christmas Land, Sage should behave similar to most extra turn effects. He’ll preorder high, as the weeks after release roll by and the card doesn’t break the format it will sink towards a bit above mythic bulk, and then it will slowly gain from there on out. Make no mistake about it, without a reprint this card will be $10 or more by the end of 2016. If this guy gets down below $2, he’s a slam dunk so long as you’re willing to wait. Take a look at Temporal Mastery. See that tiny uptick at the end there? That’s not going to stop.

 

 

Black

Bulk:
Dictate of Erebos
Doomwake Giant
Extinguish All Hope
King Macar, the Gold-Cursed
Silence the Believers
Worst Fears

 

Master of the Feast
1-2 Months: Bulk – $2
Rotation: Bulk? $10?

Master of the Feast is a curious one. It’s easy to compare him to Herald of Torment and Desecration Demon. He’s inexpensive, a real threat in the air, and comes with a drawback tacked on. This formula isn’t new to us. The real question is how rough does the drawback have to be before it’s too much to deal with? Herald of Torment’s one life per turn is not preventing anyone from casting him, although he’s not quite as abstractly powerful as the other two. Desecration Demon’s seems pretty severe in text form, although it quickly becomes irrelevant when the guy with the demon also has fifteen pieces of removal. Master of Feast’s drawback seems to be the worst of them all.

When you’re the guy trying to kill people with a 5/5 flyer for three, you’re racing their ability to answer him. Giving your opponent more tools to deal with your threat isn’t something you’re pleased with. If they gained two life each upkeep or returned a creature from their graveyard to their hand or something that you could mostly ignore it would be fine. But an entire unrestricted card each turn is always going to have a chance to matter .

The flipside of this is that the way he’s worded it isn’t as punishing as it could be. They don’t draw the card until your upkeep, which means that if they kill him with sorcery speed removal then they either offed him before they drew the card or they took five in the air. The basic tradeoff is that without an instant speed answer, for each card they get you also get an attack phase. That can add up to a lot of cards, but it’s a lot of attack phases for a 5/5 flyer as well.

Master of the Feast is going to be an all or nothing card. Either the drawback is going to be too much and he’s going to end up at total bulk, or he’s going to pull a Desecration Demon and climb to $10+. Either way, I think he’s hitting $1 before he gets his chance to shine so you’ll have some time to make a decision either way.

 

Red

Bulk:
Bearer of the Heavens
Dictate of the Twin Gods
Harness by Force
Spawn of Thraxes
Twinflame

 

Eidolon of the Great Revel
1-2 Months: $2-$3
Rotation: Bulk – $1

Probably more important for Legacy and Modern than Standard, Eidolon is a Pyrostatic Pillar on legs. In Standard your opponent can get a two-drop down ahead of this on the play and stall until they can take the game over with cards with four CMC or more. On the draw it will be more painful, but an otherwise vanilla 2/2 will be awfully vulnerable. If you’re the guy casting the Eidolon, remember that your opponent isn’t just going to jam small spells into it over and over. If they cast a spell that shocks them, they’re doing it because they think it’s worth more than the two life it’s going to cost them. On average I’d say you’re likely to get an average of much less than two damage from their ability for each Eidolon cast in Standard.

The Legacy and Modern implications will be different. Both formats are packed with small spells so he’ll have much more relative strength. He’ll die more often for sure, but at least anything that’s killing him is probably going to shock it’s controller.

The biggest issue financially is that there’s going to be exactly one deck in each format that wants to cast him. This isn’t like Courser of Kruphix that can go in any deck that makes green mana. Eidolon only goes in the most aggressive of red lists, which means the overall demand for him will remain lowish. I see him slipping towards bulk prices, but I don’t think he’ll get too far below $1 or so. I don’t believe that he’s a Vexing Devil or Goblin Guide, but he’s still better than Firedrinker Satyr. If he has a very slow descent or even seems surprisingly resilient after the honeymoon period is over, that probably means the casual market likes him, which will make him safe as a long-term pickup regardless of his tournament success.

 

Prophetic Flamespeaker
1-2 Months: $4-$7
Rotation: $8+

I’ll get this out there: I’m a big fan of Prophetic Flamespeaker. Any mythic that isn’t huge, flavorful or splashy warrants attention because it means it may be mythic due to power level. Prophetic Flamespeaker falls into that latter category. He’s got non-square numbers (a sign of significant balancing in development) and a lot of potential power. The hook, of course, is making use of it.

It’s easy to look at Flamespeaker and think that turn three feels late, or that he doesn’t win a lot of battles without help, or that his ability can miss. I think that it’s just as easy to do this as it was to look at Desecration Demon and see all the ways he would fail his owner and do nothing. Cards don’t exist in a vacuum though, and the support you pack your deck with has a huge bearing on how well they do. Sure, Flamespeaker is relatively unexciting when staring down Courser of Kruphix. What about when you slap a Madcap Skills on him? Or have RG up representing Ghor-Clan Rampager? Or you played Imposing Sovereign on turn two and their turn three play can’t block? Or you just Lightning Strike their X-3 and get in? Or you manage to get him down on turn two?

In case you missed it, that ability does in fact trigger twice if he gets in unblocked. That’s two temporary cards drawn for the turn. Here’s a scenario for you: Untap on T4 with Flamespeaker. Use two mana to slap Madcap on him, get in for eight damage, and exile your top two cards. One of them is a land, which you play, holding the land in your hand for next turn. The other is a Lightning Strike, which you use to kill one of their creatures or even point it at their face since you won’t be able to cast it next turn anyways.

Prophetic Flamespeaker doesn’t hand you wins, but he has a lot of raw potential to work with. A little bit of work is going to pay you handsomely. The only thing that is really holding him back is the RR in the casting cost. At 2R, he’d be the breakaway mythic of the set. At 1RR, he’s good but a little narrow. Hopefully he will be good enough to get away from only being viable in Mono-Red. If the mana can support him he could easily show up in any type of R/X aggro deck. Being a mythic from a small spring set as this, it won’t take much to get his price up. I think he’s going to come down from his roughly $10 preorder price in the near future, but will climb above $10 again when people start realizing how much power he puts on the table.

 

Green

Bulk:
Dictate of Karametra
Hero’s Bane
Hydra Broodmaster
Pheres-Band Warchief
Setessan Tactics

 

Eidolon of Blossoms
1-2 Months: $2-$4
Rotation: $3-$7

My windows are a little large, but bear with me. What are we working with here? Well, first of all it’s the Buy-a-Box promo. I spoke about this in my Theros review, and the sum of it is that BaB promos are usually pushed for constructed. If a card is a BaB promo, we need to pay attention.

So how good is it? Elvish Visionary is 1G for a 1/1 that draws you a card when it comes into play. Solemn costs four and gives you a card on his way out, but he’s got a pretty sweet front side too. Both were fixtures during their time in Standard and see play in other constructed formats, so we’re in good company on “ETB:Draw a card.” Blossoms is obviously not as amazing as Solemn off the bat, but few creatures will be. In Blossom’s defense it’s at least guaranteed to draw you a card and has the potential to get out of hand.

A turn two Mana Bloom gives you a turn three Blossoms with a guaranteed enchanment in hand for next turn and Bloom is repeatable cycle for G each turn after. That alone is fairly tempting. Courser of Kruphix is another excellent green enchantment, and Boon Satyr isn’t bad either. You’re likely not playing Mono-Green, so there will be other options as well. Hey, you know what got reprinted in Journey? Oblivion Ring. (Sort of.) The double green in the casting cost is also probably a good thing since it powers up Nykthos quite well. I recall really wanting a four mana draw spell when I was playing Gr Devotion after PT Theros, and this is pretty close.

I expect Eidolon of Blossoms to very slowly dwindle towards $2-3 but it may be sticky due to people wanting to try it out and likely needing three to four copies. I don’t think it will really get a whole lot lower than that as some people will always be interested. Beyond that, if it does turn out to be solid it will behave like Courser of Kruphix and Sylvan Caryatid. I wouldn’t get rid of these at the Prerelease, and if it’s the type of card you see yourself playing, don’t feel bad about trading for a playset. The worst that happens is that you trade for them at $2-$3 and they end up at $1.

 

Gold

Bulk:
Revel of the Fallen God

 

Ajani, Mentor of Heroes
1-2 Months: $17-$20
Rotation: $9-$13

Domri Rade has been a four-of in a tier one Standard deck for basically the entire time he’s been legal. He also sees light Modern play. Currently he’s about $25, his peak was $30-$35, and his floor was about $10. He averaged maybe $20 for the last eighteen months.

Ajani is not as good as Domri.

I’m not going to ramble about the nuances of his Standard applications because as the banner Planeswalker of the set plenty of other people can do it better than I. Suffice to say that he’s not going to perform as well as Domri. He won’t perform as well as Elspeth either, who is about $20. There will be your typical honeymoon period while people grab their copies and he gets tried in bant Planeswalkers, but for the most part when he does manage to show up it will be as a one- or two-of. As Xenagos has shown us, even mild play isn’t enough to keep the price of a Planeswalker over $10.

The one thing Ajani has going for him will be his relative scarcity. That may push his price a bit higher than we would normally see for a fringe Planeswalker. If he does about as well as I expect, he should mostly be in the low teens and even under ten. If he sticks around $15, it will be because of the spring set bump.

 

Athreos, God of Passage
1-2 Months: $20-$25
Rotation: $14-$18+?

Hoo boy, now that is a God. He’s aggressively costed, revives a previously-successful Standard archetype, and will be popular in EDH. Those are all markers of a hefty price tag. The only reason I’m not expecting $40+ is because there is a little too much else going on in this set for him to turn into a Voice of Resurgence.

People think Athreos is good, and for good reason. Because of that his price will be slow to fall. If he sees very little Standard play, I don’t think he can get much below $10-$13. If he’s part of a major Standard deck, expect him to stick closer to $20, or perhaps even more depending on how pronounced the small set effect is.

 

Iroas, God of Victory
1-2 Months: $12-$15
Rotation: $6-$9

Iroas is pretty threatening, don’t get me wrong. He’s got a huge front end and he makes blocking miserable for your opponents. My concern is that he’s not terribly versatile. He’s got the Koth thing going on where there’s only ever really going to be one deck for him, and even there it’s unlikely you’ll want the full set. People will play him, and there will be some casual appeal, but it won’t be enough to keep him inflated with several other spicy mythics and rares in the set. The small set effect should keep him above Nylea and Heliod, but not by too much.

 

Keranos, God of Storms
1-2 Months: $8-$10
Rotation: $6-$9

On the one hand, Keranos has the best or second best text box of all the gods this time around. He is always doing something that matters, whether it’s putting cards into your hand or draining your opponent’s board/life total. On the other hand he’s a little expensive and it will take some time for his ability to really take a game over. I think he’s nearly as playable as Athreos is, but unlike Athreos will likely not be a four-of wherever he ends up. We also don’t have a home for him to slot into right away which makes it tougher for him to maintain his current $10-$15. The best advice I can give on Keranos is to expect nothing in the short term, but pay close attention to the block Pro Tour.

 

Kruphix, God of Horizons
1-2 Months: $5-$6
Rotation: $3-$5

Ugh.

 

Pharika, God of Affliction
1-2 Months: $5-$7
Rotation: $4-$6

Pharika is preselling on Channelfireball right now for a whopping $7 so there obviously there isn’t a whole lot of hype surrounding her at this point. Most people are relatively unimpressed, but I’ve heard from a few intelligent people that there’s some silver lining here. She’s cheap with a nice fat body. She’s in green, so we can see her come down on turn two, potentially allowing you to put four colored mana symbols into play on turn three and swing for five. She recycles your dead bodies into threats, which is great in attrition decks, a common theme for GB. Perhaps most importantly and mostly under the radar, those snakes she puts into play are enchantments. That means they trigger constellation, such as on Eidolon of Blossoms or Underworld Coinsmith or Doomwake Giant.

Will any of that be enough to keep her above bulk god prices? Honestly, probably not. She’s going to slip before she rises again, and if she ever does make it back above $10 I don’t think it will be overnight. You’ll have time to react if she sees an uptick in play and price.

 

Artifacts

Hall of Triumph
1-2 Months: $1-$2
Rotation: $1-$3

Honor of the Pure, Glorious Anthem, and the colorshifted Gaea’s Anthem are all $1-2. This is considerably easier to cast at the cost of being a tad more narrow and legendary. Being legendary hurts, but being an anthem effect in colors that don’t normally get one is important. Mono-Blue could possibly be in the market for two of these, and decks running Prophetic Flamespeaker could conceivably be interested as well. I believe this will always manage to stay a little above bulk, and will probably climb towards $5 in the months and years after rotation.

 

Lands

Mana Confluence
1-2 Months: $10-$15
Rotation: $9-$12

Comparisons will be drawn to Cavern of Souls, but I think Nykthos is more appropriate. Cavern of Souls is used in Modern, Legacy, EDH, and Casual. Outside of Standard Mana Confluence is irrelevant to all but dredge players, so we’re not getting any real extra demand. Casual players hate paying life for mana, so there’s not much of a market there either. The price is basically completely driven by Standard. Those players will definitely want the land, but this isn’t an auto-four-of by any means. Aggro decks will max out but midrange and control lists aren’t going to be eager to pay that much life.

Nykthos sees mild play right now and hangs around at $7-8 so that’s probably Confluence’s floor. There will be considerably less copies of MC around, but Nykthos enjoys a bit of extra demand. Overall MC should hang out at a bit more than Nykthos if it sees comparable play. I’d say we’ll see this in the $10-$12 range for the most part, but it may take some time to get there. If it ends up overperforming we’re probably looking at it being $15+. If Thoughtseize can’t break $20, I don’t think MC can.

 

 

The Temples
1-2 Months: $5-$6
Rotation: $7-$8+

Most of the other Temples are in the $5-$6 range and there will be considerably more of those than there are of these. Lands nearly always rise at rotation and there’s no reason to expect ones with such a strong effect to behave any differently. Don’t hesitate to trade or buy your set now. You pretty much can’t lose. Hoard any you can get in trade because it’s likely enough that they break $10 that it’s totally worth risking them being $4-$5.

By: Travis Allen

Journey Into Nyx spoilers are in full swing. In another week or two we’ll have the full list, and at that point I can give you guys a complete rundown of the set and what we’re looking at. In the meantime though, I figured I’d double back to my Theros review and see how I did. It’s been just about seven months, which is plenty of time for us to understand as much as we will about these cards before rotation.

Chained to the Rocks

Chained to the Rocks is poised to be one of the strongest removal spells in the format, especially with how good decks with Sacred Foundry look at the moment. I see it available for about $2.50 on TCG Player as of 9/23/13, which likely is fairly close to its floor. Mizzium Mortars never really sunk below $2 retail, and I think Chained compares pretty well. The ceiling on this card isn’t particularly high though. While it’s quite a powerful effect, you still need to have actual Mountains (and a good deal of them) to use it, not just lands that tap for red, such as Clifftop Retreat. I can’t imagine this breaking $5 for longer than a week or two, if ever. The best strategy regarding this card will simply be picking them up in trade for $1-$2 and trading them away at $3-$4.

This feels like a pretty reasonable read. They’re about $1 to $1.50 low on TCG, which is right about where I expected them to be. My advice on how to trade them seems to have been appropriate to. I’m putting a check mark in the success column on this one.

Elspeth, Sun’s Champion

Elspeth is still in that Planeswalker honeymoon period of $30+. Given her high mana cost, I anticipate it may take a little longer before she starts showing up in decklists. I’m guessing she may pull a Gideon Jura though, where people are lukewarm at first, playing only one copy, but then adding more and more. I’ll be keeping a close watch on her price and quantity of appearances in T8 decklists. If she shows up as a one-of in the maindeck of a winning list and the author talks about how great she was, expect positive movement. Like most Planeswalkers, if she dips below $15 it is time to start seriously considering picking her up in trade.

I didn’t really give you guys a specific price, but overall I thought she was powerful and relevant. I wasn’t entirely sure if the rest of the Standard community would pick up on that immediately, but in hindsight they clearly did. Overall I think this was a pretty reasonable evaluation, if perhaps a bit prudent.

Fabled Hero

I would expect his price to typically hang out in the $1-$3 range on any given weekend, but spiking an event could jump him to $6+ pretty easily. If Brave the Elements targeted, then we’d be in another ballpark. Even still, I think this is the type of card that can oscillate pretty easily. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him dip, jump, dip, and jump again all within his journey through Standard.

Fabled Hero is about $1 on TCG, which is on the lower end of my expectation. I was a little more bullish on this guy than the rest of the world was, but I also didn’t foresee the format becoming a wasteland of Hero’s Downfalls. I doubt rotation will change too much since all of the excellent removal is in Theros, not Ravnica. I’m hesitant to call this a miss, but it’s certainly not a success.

Gift of Immortality

Intro deck rare. I love the card, but do not buy into this with the intent of profit.

Bingo.

Heliod, God of the Sun

Heliod reads to me as the second weakest of the five gods…The gods are a little tricky financially. They’re almost-sorta a new card type, and subsequently I don’t feel like I have a good gauge for how their casual support is going to be. If I had to take a guess (which I suppose I do since I’m writing this article), it’s that the gods in general will be more popular with the casual crowd than the average decent mythic. I feel like the floor on Heliod – and all the gods – is probably around $5-7…My opinion on the gods, and other cards in general of which I’m not confident in my predictions, is to ship them early and wait until I understand them better.

I was pretty accurate in regards to the power level here, although Heliod is arguably the weakest at this point. I set their floor a tad higher than it turned out to be, but not by much at all. I’m glad to see I advised caution when considering what to do with them early in their life span. I guess my call on the floor was a little high, so I’ll mark this as a miss that I don’t feel too bad about.

Soldier of the Pantheon

Boy, Savannah Lions has come a long way, huh? Remember that we just came out of Ravnica, so “Protection from multicolored” reads a little better now than it will in a year. It will still probably be in discussion for any Modern white weenie deck, so if you can find Craig Wescoe, you know you’ve got a buyer. Other than that, your white one drop has to see heavy, sustained play (think Champion of the Parish) to maintain a $4+ price tag.

I told you that he looks better immediately after a mono-multi block, and then I told you it’s unlikely he would maintain even a $4 price tag. I’m pleased with this summary.

Artisan of Forms

Artisan seems very weak to me. These days, a ton of the value in good creatures is their ETB effect, which Artisan doesn’t get you. You also have to do a lot of work to even get the clone effect. Bulk rare; trade away accordingly.

Spot on.

Bident of Thassa

Release promo. Bulk.

Yep, I completely missed on this one in terms of playability. It is clearly better than bulk, having been in Mono-Blue for the better part of six months. Still, the price is well under a dollar. I was way off on how playable it would be, but still right on the price. Half miss, I suppose.

Curse of the Swine

Bulk, unless they reprint Aether Flash.

Good, good.

Master of Waves

I have a lot of trouble seeing Master accomplish much. Blue token makers are fairly rare, but creatures that die when their Master dies just seem miserable. Given the current state of blue, what permanents do you have in play that give you a healthy amount of devotion that are not already putting the game away for you?

Welp. That’s a big ol’ stinky miss. I completely under-evaluated how powerful slamming even two or three tokens into play would be, much less five, six, or even more. What I should have said was that for four mana you get a bare minimum of two 2/1’s, one of which has a very relevant protection, and that the rate isn’t embarrassing at all when you consider how well he scales up. Instead, I focused on how little blue was playing to the board at that point and made a sweeping generalization. I understand why I said what I said, but clearly I need to be a little bit more welcoming of powerful effects that I don’t see an immediate application for.

Prognostic Sphinx

THE TEEF will never be a four-of. I’d say $2 at his absolute best.

This is satisfactorily a success.

Thassa, God of the Sea

I believe Thassa is quietly the best god in the set. Purphorous and even Erebos are getting a lot of chatter, but most Thassa discussion has been less high-energy. However, I believe this is due in part to people underestimating the power of scrying every upkeep. In discussions with other players, the common opinion seems to be that the fair yet still playable cost for an enchantment that was just the upkeep scry would be 1U. That effectively means you’re getting the entire rest of the card for one colorless mana. Not competing with Jace or Supreme Verdict on the mana curve is also a great position to be in. When you finally do get Jace down, all it takes is UU somewhere to suddenly be within range of closing the game out fast. Notice that Thassa is capable of making herself unblockable.

Of all the gods, Thassa is the one I’m most interested in financially. If she ever does get below $10, I’ll start grabbing as many in trades as possible. I think it will take time for the format to begin including her, so there will hopefully be a window where she’s under-priced.

I feel pretty good about this one looking back at it. I was basically completely correct, with the sole exception that I was hoping she may get cheap before people realized she was the real deal. What in truth happened was that she hadn’t really gotten much cheaper than maybe $18 when the Pro Tour happened and she skyrocketed to something like $25 or $30.

I didn’t really give you a long-term plan on her, but I don’t feel too bad about that. I knew she would go up, and after that it would be all metagame. In any case, I think I gave a pretty good evaluation overall. I’ll take this success and be happy with it.

Agent of the Fates

This card seems fantastic to me…Agent of the Fates is $2 on TCG Player while I write this, which is almost low enough for me to just start buying copies. If he gets under $1, he will be a major trade target, and under $.50 I’ll start in with cash.

Hot off the heels of my great Thassa prediction is my rather shameful outlook on Agent of the Fates. I was clearly wrong about this, as he’s done nearly nothing since the format’s inception. There are indeed copies on TCG for around $.50 and I’m not rushing out to buy them, so I certainly am not as big a fan as I used to be.

There’s a silver lining here, and that’s that Agent of the Fates feels like a victim of the metagame. Mono-Blue and Mono-Black just poop all over his face for a variety of reasons, but he’s still rather powerful in a vacuum. Wizards gave us all sorts of great BW heroic things such as Hero of Iroas, Nighthowler, and Herald of Torment, the latter two having already proved their mettle in battle. I’m not purchasing any today, but I’ll be keeping my eye out to see if he pops up anywhere before rotation. I was wrong up until now, but I’m keeping a candle lit for this one.

Erebos, God of the Dead

Erebos has been the second most popular god so far, and I’m pretty sure that is due entirely to people not realizing how high of a cost his draw is. Two life is not an insignificant amount of life to pay to draw a single extra card. Yes, it’s repeatable, but the toll adds up fast. The ability is strongest late in the game, when both players are already limping. I don’t think the ability worthless, but I get the impression people read the words “draw a card” and ignored everything to the left of the colon. On top of that, his static anti-lifegain clause goes from “highly disruptive” to “niche ability” with Thragtusk rotating.

Erebos seems poised to see a pretty heavy drop off in demand. I’d get out now and not look back.

Erebos was an easy $12-$15 at release, and he’s a weak $8 today. The absolute best circumstances for him has been realized with Mono-Black being the best deck in Standard, and he’s still only a one or two-of. I’m happy with my review of this, especially in noting that the card draw ability isn’t as strong as people thought it may be.

Murderbore

Domri Rade is going to find himself on the business end of a minotaur hoof frequently in the coming months. Hero’s Downfall will be a major factor in the forthcoming Standard landscape. Murder was always “almost,” and adding ‘Planeswalker’ to the card text will definitely push it over the edge. That said, I don’t see much of a reason for this to deviate from the Mizzium Mortars/Dreadbore path. I expect it to spend a very stable life hovering in the $2-$5 range. Your profit here will be trading for them at $2 and then trading them away at $4. If black ends up being the best color in Standard, the top end here may be as high as $6 or $7. (There is also no chance I call this anything other than Murderbore for the next two years.)

I was completely right that this would be a major player in Standard, although I was way too prudent about the price. In my defense I don’t think we’ve ever seen rare removal get that expensive before. It’s down to $4-$5 now after a few months well over $10. I was right about how playable it would be, but wrong about how expensive it could be. I’ll take this as a miss I’m ok with, and be well aware of just how expensive Standard rare removal can be these days.

Nighthowler

Possibly playable card that I doubt will ever crest a dollar. I bring it up because it’s the Game Day Top 8 promo, and it looks super sweet. The promo will likely hold value better than it’s playability would have you believe because of this.

Nighthowler is still under a dollar, but he’s been creeping up for the last week or two. Regardless of where he ends up in the next year, I think I was a bit too shy on his power level. My comment about his promo copy being a harbor of value was accurate though, with copies easily over $6 right now. If Nighthowler does indeed break out harder, the promo will just keep on moving up.

Thoughtseize

There’s really not too much to say here. Thoughtseize is and will be a Standard, Modern and Legacy staple. Expect Snapcaster-esque prices for the next two years.

I was clearly right on the power level. I’m not entirely sure how much I like my financial prediction, as Thoughtseize has gotten cheaper than I probably would have guessed it could in September, but I suppose Snapcaster behaved quite similarly. This is a success, but perhaps not as strong as I would have liked it to be.

Whip of Erebos

Cool card that’s in an intro deck. If it hits the Standard scene, don’t look to profit on this, but rather the other cards it will be dragging out of graveyards. And yes, it does work as well with Obzedat as you’d like it to.

This is entirely non-committal and really tells you very little, so I’ll call this a miss. For Journey Into Nyx, I’ll try to provide a little more concrete expectations.

Anger of the Gods

Possibly a better Slagstorm depending on what you’re in the market for, and an effect we have been desperately in need of. (Take that, you lousy Burning-Tree Emissary decks.) This has bonus points for being impactful in Modern. I see no reason to expect much price behavior different from Murderbore.

While I was correct about it being a strong card, even in Modern, I was definitely wrong on the price. Why? Well, for starters, I come back to the metagame. Both Mono-Black and Mono-Blue shrug this card off entirely, meaning it’s seen more play in Modern since it came out than Standard. Between my expectations that this would see more play than it does and my failure to predict $15 Murderbores, I gave you faulty pricing information. Sorry guys.

Firedrinker Satyr

Maybe it’s because I’m not a Jackal Pup kind of guy, but I really don’t care for this much at all. I’d ship these fast and avoid down the road. People tend to remember old cards, or new cards similar to old cards, a little too fondly in vastly different formats than when they were originally good. Remember when Nantuko Shade was like $8 preorder or something?

Currently at about $.50, I feel good about this one.

Hammer of Purphoros

Solid looking card, but falls into the Koth trap of mostly being only good in really heavy red decks. Even if the card is fantastic, how many Hammer of Purphoros decks can there really be? I wouldn’t take the risk of trying to make money here; there’s better places to put your gaming bux.

I’m pleased with this as well. I correctly identified that the mana cost was going to be far too prohibitive for meaningful growth.

Purphoros, God of the Forge

I will say right now that I am less enthralled with Purphoros than many others are…I wouldn’t be surprised to see him alongside Boros Reckoner and Stormbreath Dragon in the near future…I don’t doubt that he’s very powerful, but $25 will be a very difficult price tag to maintain amidst a lot of other very competitive-looking mythics such as all three Planeswalkers, Stormbreath Dragon, and Thassa…In any case, I’d be trading these away ASAP. The odds that he loses a lot of value are far greater than he gains any. If he slips towards $10, feel free to start grabbing them, because someone will probably give him a breakout performance at some point.

Overall I’d say I did pretty well here. I was correct that he didn’t end up being as powerful as others thought he would be. My recommendation was that he couldn’t maintain his price, and to get rid of them. I told you to come back around once he got down to around $10, and I would still be comfortable telling you to trade for them today now that he’s around $7. I think in general I expected the god’s floor to be a bit higher than it has been, but on the whole I think I did a good job with Purphoros.

Stormbreath Dragon

This card is the real deal…As I see it, Stormbreath is poised to step in and assume Thundermaw’s role without missing a beat. Preorders have jumped from $15 to $25, and I don’t think that’s an unreasonable number for him to hang around at. Thundermaw hit $50 for a period, and if Stormbreath comes out of the gate terrorizing heros, I would expect no different. At this point he’s too expensive to buy into to spec on, but if you want a set, I wouldn’t hesitate to trade for him. I doubt you stand to lose much, and his upside is very high. If he dips below $15 again, I’d start snatching them wherever possible.

I was quite bullish on Stormbreath. Perhaps a hair to bullish, I admit. He has managed to rule the skies since Theros though. Dodging Archangel of Thune and Detention Sphere has in fact been relevant, and I can’t help but think he would have been even better than he has been if it weren’t for the menace of Blue and Black. I think I was afraid of telling you he’d “only” be $20 and looking timid when he hit $50, so I left the door open on that. I suppose I could have tempered this prediction a little bit more. He maintains a solid $20 price tag though. I like where I left you with this one.

Boon Satyr

Even though there’s a lot of chatter about Boon Saibot, he’s still only $2 right now. Keep in mind that Loxodon Smiter has seen significant play in Standard and has even broken into Modern yet is still currently only about $4. There’s a real limit to how expensive an in-print rare can be. It will be tough for Boon Satyr to maintain a price over $4-$5 while he’s in the current set even if he’s seeing excessive Standard play. However, if he is consistently putting up results over the next year or is prevalent at the Theros Block Pro Tour, look to start snatching them up next summer when he’ll be at a low.

I was right that he would have a heck of a time maintaining a price upwards of $4, but I didn’t tell you just how cheap he could be. I don’t feel like my prediction was wrong, but I didn’t give you enough information. I’ll call this a miss.

Nylea, God of the Hunt

Nylea is widely considered to be the weakest of the gods. I’m not entirely convinced that is true, but she certainly has an uphill climb to prove otherwise. On the one hand green decks that will want trample are likely to be strong devotion enablers, and she’s a solid beater herself. The activated ability feels very weak to me however. She’s $9 right now, and I expect that to start slipping very quickly. I’d say $4 is her absolute floor though, so if she gets that low don’t be afraid to grab a few sets. Even if she never gets there in Standard, it’s likely the gods will always maintain solid casual demand.

This was spot on. She managed to show up just a little bit in a heavy green deck, but it faded away in the face of darker devotion decks. The $4 floor prediction was perfect, with several of the cheapest copies on TCG at exactly that number. Homerun.

Polukranos, World Eater

Polukranos is a powerful card that is going to be responsible for a lot of dead 2/2s and 3/3s. He’s in the Duel Deck though, so his price has a firm ceiling. While I’m seeing copies under $5, I’d guess is floor is around $2.50. If he slips under $3, there’s a lot of room for potential profit there with little downside. I also wouldn’t hesitate to trade for a set now for personal use, as again there isn’t that much to lose.

And then I come crashing back down. While I was technically correct that his price had a ceiling, I was thinking he would be much cheaper than he ended up being. I guess I didn’t explicitly tell you he would be $3, just that if he got that low you should grab some. At the end of the day this feels like a miss though.

Sylvan Caryatid

[Exposition about Buy-a-Box promos]…A lot of people expect Caryatid to be a major part of the standard landscape, and I agree. She (?) is currently right around $5, which sounds a tad high. Like Daniel Boone, I expect there will be money to be made on Caryatid next summer.

Correct that she (?) would see Standard play, but too prudent on the price. $5 is the lowest Caryatid has been, and she even hung around $7-$10 for awhile. Part of my read was that they would get destroyed much more frequently by sweepers, especially Anger of the Gods. With Anger not being too common in the format, it meant there was not a lot going on that could punish Caryatid. I was correct that the card would be frequently played, but wrong about the price. I’ll take my lumps here.

Ashen Rider

Probably won’t be too expensive, but foils will command a premium. If it ends up being a 4-of in Obzedat’s Aid/Erebos’ Whip type decks, the price could quintuple very quickly though.

Sounds about right. There’s still a 5x multiplier on the foil too.

Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver

Many players I’ve spoken to are not wild about Ashiok, but I am quite confident Ashiok will be a part of the Standard landscape…Ashiok is still rather pricey at ~$18. I anticipate Ashiok cratering pretty quickly, as it may take time for Ashiok to find Ashiok’s way into lists. Once the number is below $10, I will gladly start picking up Ashiok in trade.

Hrmph. I was a big fan of Ashiok, and I guess I still kind of am. She’s shown up here and there, but not enough to move the price much. To be quite honest I’m a little mystified here. Ashiok seems like she would be playable in variations of Mono-Black or even Esper. I like trading for her right now as well. I suppose this isn’t a miss per se, but certainly not a success. I’ll just say the jury’s still out.

Daxos of Meletis

If a single thing on this card was missing, I’d be proclaiming it bulk. As is though, Daxos seems to have a lot of intriguing puzzle pieces…At $2, I’m not interested. If Daxos slips below $.50 though, I’ll definitely consider acquiring aggressively depending on if he’s appeared in any results. When a card ends up below $.50, the risk is just so low and the profit potential so high.

Another victim of the metagame. He’s powerful for sure, but Pack Rats and Frostburn Weirds just stonewalled him entirely. I do trade for them were available though, so at least I’m following my own advice here. Like Ashiok, this doesn’t quite feel like a either a miss or a success.

Fleecemane Lion

This could end up being the most overpriced card in the set. We already have something better than Watchwolf at the moment (Call of the Conclave) and nobody is playing it. The monstrosity clause is almost surely better than the state of being a token, but is it by any meaningful amount? Decks that play Watchwolf want to put guys into play and attack with creatures like Stormbreath Dragon, not spend their turn five mana to do one extra damage in a format full of good edict effects. There will be games where the monstrosity wins the game, but plenty more where you’ll wish you had just played Scavenging Ooze instead. I sold mine at the prerelease; I recommend you do the same.

Fleecemane has done better than I thought it would, but the price has still been pretty lousy. Remember that during prerelease season this was around $10, so my call to ship them at the prerelease was golden. I admit that the monstrosity clause has been better than expected in a format full of spot removal. All in all I’m pleased with how I called this, although I recognize that it could be better than I originally anticipated six months from now.

Medomai the Ageless

Nifty card that is almost surely unplayable in Standard. Foils will be worth a bunch for EDH.

Bulk, yes. Foils are maybe $5-$6, so is that “a bunch?” Relatively I suppose it is.

Polis Crusher

Potentially great card but he’s in an intro deck. It’s possible someone will manage to make money on him, but it won’t be me.

Likely to be a much more relevant card in September given what we’ve seen of Block, I’m taking this opportunity to revise my previous dismissal. There is a LOT of enchantments floating around now, and it looks like the density of enchantment creatures has gone up in BOG and JOU. Given how good he’s been in Block decks, he may overperform at rotation. The intro deck thing is still very real, but I’m seeing copies under a quarter. I don’t like him at more than $.50, but if you can get them below that, I think you’re probably safe.

Reaper of the Wilds

This card seems to have a great deal of financial potential. There were only two other creatures in RtR that had three activated abilities: Deathrite Shaman and Lotleth Troll…I don’t think this card will necessarily be a major player in Standard for two years, but I do think it will see enough play to warrant a several dollar price tag at some point. Like Daxos, if this slips under $.50, consider me a buyer.

My evaluation of Reaper was strong, so I’m pleased with that. I identified the fact that it wouldn’t be a major player in Standard for a long stretch of time, but that it may be good enough for a period to be worth a few bucks. MTGPrice is telling me it hung around $2 for awhile, which is on track. The printing of JvV has completely derailed any opportunity for profit this fall though, so my long-term prospects have fallen off. No way to predict that though, so overall I think this was a good one.

Underworld Cerberus

Cerberus is one of those cards that has a lot of disconnected moving parts that makes him tremendously difficult to properly evaluate. Cards like this are notorious for being misunderstood early on because of their complexity, only to shoot up in playability (and price) once people realize just how powerful they are.

Woofy is the only mythic rare in the set that has a real chance of seeing a considerable and sustained rise from his prerelease price, and the only mythic I’ll be trading for at FNM this week. I’m not sure exactly if he’s good enough, but I know his ceiling is higher than his floor is low.

I was cautiously optimistic here, and “cautiously” was a wise decision. Despite my reserved expectations, Cerberus has done exactly nothing. There’s still another whole year, but at this point it’s completely fallen flat. I don’t think I’m wrong when I say his ceiling is higher than his floor is low, but I suppose that doesn’t matter if we’re sitting there on the kitchen tile wondering where it all went wrong.

Xenagos, the Reveler

My initial reaction to this card was quite poor. He read like a four mana satyr generator. As spoiler season marched on though, I began to see potential…Xenagos won’t even be the best GR Planeswalker in Standard, but he’s not as bad as I expected early on. His success will hinge largely on the playability of monstrous and monstrous-esque creatures. Expect Xenagos, Polukranos and Stormbreath Dragon to be best buds this fall. A safe price to trade in at will be $12 or so. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him follow Chandra’s price curve.

I’d like to think this was reasonable. He has seen play alongside Polukranos and Stormbreath, but perhaps not as much as I thought he would. That again comes back to green being the worst color in the meta. It looks as if he’s $10-$11 right now, which seems to be about what I anticipated. I’ve been trading for them, and I’m confident he’ll at least make $15 before fall of 2015. All in all I’d like to call this a win.

Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx

You need at least three devotion to break even on tapping this land, which is not a trivial hurdle. I can’t imagine this having much of an impact in standard. Even if it does make it into Standard, what are the odds it shows up in more than one list? Due to EDH, I see this as a $1-2/$10 nonfoil/foil split. Even if EDH drives up the nonfoil price, it will take years to happen. Get rid of all yours, pick up a foil one for EDH, and don’t look back.

Hah, well, this is certainly wrong. The pile of Nykthos next to me tells me I changed my mind awhile back. I don’t remember how many weeks it was after I wrote this that I came around, but it was probably after the Pro Tour when I saw Mihara’s GR list using Nykthos to great effect. I’m a big fan of Nykthos now, and I’ve been stockpiling them for some time. I was completely and absolutely wrong here though; sorry about that. I don’t know why I didn’t look at this and realize that it’s a land that taps for more than one mana. Lands that do that are really worth paying attention to, especially in Standard, and especially when there’s a card that says “untap target land.” Lesson learned!

This was my first real set review. It wasn’t perfect by a long shot, but I’d like to think that except for a just a few, most of my misses weren’t too far off the mark. Nykthos and Master of Waves were obviously real bad, but for the most part I just didn’t commit enough to a price or was a bit too prudent. I don’t feel too bad about that because advising caution is never going to be catastrophic. You won’t make buckets of money being cautious, but you won’t lose hundreds of dollars on failed specs either. At the end of the day, I’d like to consider this a reasonably successful first set review. I’ll be looking back at this as I write up my Journey review in short order and try to learn from my mistakes here, for my benefit and yours.

By: Travis Allen

Consuming Aberration is a $4 card. Consuming. Aberration. Is a $4 card. Are you really reading these words? Do you understand what they mean? Read them again. Think about them. Consuming Aberration is a $4 card. Huh. What does that mean?

Well, it means we should take it out of our bulk boxes.

I’m not sure how I stumbled upon this. I remember plugging it into MTGPrice for some reason and seeing a price of $4.10. I assumed it was a mistake. The site is great, but there are always algorithmic problems and such. I flipped over to my magiccards.info tab. I plugged it in. $3.72 mid.

Huh.

I flipped back to MTGPrice. The buylist was $2.32. ABU Will give you $2.32 for copies of Consuming Aberration. ABU Games will give you more than two American dollars for a copy of Consuming Aberration.

Huh.

Where is the demand for this card coming from? Who is driving the price up to $4? It’s not an old, out-of-print diamond-in-the-rough gem. It isn’t on the reserved list. It’s a Standard legal rare that sees absolutely zero play in any constructed format.

Think about your local store. Have you ever, since Gatecrash released, heard someone unironically ask if you had any Consuming Aberration for trade? 

Nobody wants this trash. It’s complete and utter garbage. It is the absolute worst kind of rare. 100% bulk. (Or so we thought.) The next time you’re at your LGS, yell out “does anyone want a free Consuming Aberration?” It is entirely possible that not a single person will want the free card. Think about that. In a room full of Magic players, you literally could not give this card away. This will not be true of every store, but it will certainly be true of some.

What else in Standard costs $4 right now? Supreme Verdict, sweeper du jour and playable in the four largest constructed formats, is $6. A bit more, yes, but it’s still in the same ballpark. It’s a lot closer than most of us would have guessed without looking. Desecration Demon, scourge of the skies and bane of green decks everywhere is $5. This is a card that has a good 70% chance to win any given Standard GP and it’s only $1 more than Consuming Aberration. Puzzled yet?

Most of the Scrylands are around $4 to $5 as well. Temple of Enlightenment isn’t, but the rest are hanging around there. The most important lands in the largest sanctioned format are about the same price as Consuming Aberration. That tells us something curious.

Price is a factor of supply and demand. For the most part we can assume that Consuming Aberration and any given Scryland should have the same supply. (Really, the Scrylands should be lower supply right now if anything. Gatecrash has come and gone, and there are virtually no new packs being opened. Theros and BOG are still being drafted, so there is still some flow of Scrylands.)

If you assume that the supply is equal between the two cards, and their prices are still just about equal, what does that mean for the rest of our equation? It means that the demand for the Scrylands is equivalent to the demand for Consuming Aberration. Consuming Aberration is just as desirable as the Scrylands. If everyone at your LGS is looking for Scrylands but nobody wants Aberration, just where is this demand coming from?

Welcome to the invisible majority. All of us – the tournament grinder and speculators, the heavy traders and constructed players – are the minority of Magic players. Of course, we FEEL like we’re the majority. We’re all loud, we talk on every form of social media, and we’re the ones represented on official coverage. Wizards isn’t broadcasting kitchen table “anything goes” four-Sol-Ring four-Tolarian-Academy Magic on their Twitch channel. But the reality of the situation is that you and I and everyone like us comprises a far smaller portion of the Magic world at large. 

Obviously the price swings on tournament staples is nobody’s fault but our own. Casual players aren’t making Sphinx’s Revelation and Voice of Resurgence $30. But they are capable of making Consuming Aberration a $4 card, with absolutely no help from any of us. It requires some serious demand to move a Standard rare to $4, and by golly they did it. When the the casual market can push a bulk Standard card that hard, we need to be paying attention. The market force is bigger than any of us, but if we hop on the wave we maybe be able to ride it.

Price behavior is going to be quite different than we’re used to. Most of us have come to be familiar with the wild nature of constructed staples. Cards rise and fall by factors of ten semi-regularly. We understand rotation, we understand “constructed playable,” and we understand ban lists. This is all irrelevant when dealing with casual cards though. There are no rotations. There aren’t “staples” or fear of reprints or ban lists. There’s a large, quiet group of players and there are cool cards. Column A wants Column B. It doesn’t matter whether its March or September or whether the card is legal in Modern. Players want cards and they order them online or purchase at their LGS from the total finite pool available. Slowly the supply dwindles, and as it does, prices rise. Occasionally copies make it back into rotation if a player sells their collection to a friend, but for the most part the supply is evaporating. The result is a plodding, semi-smooth rise in price.

With the recent influx of players in the last few years, there’s going to be growing demand on old casual staples. This is why Vigor is $20. Yet there is stilll profit to be made. There’s plenty of other old casual cards that haven’t adjusted their price. While they may not spike as often, and they aren’t sexy, they’re going to be practically guaranteed profit. Buying quiet casual allstars means you can’t brag about looking like a genius because you bought ninety Heralds of Torment at $.40 before they jumped to $7. But you can fill your collection with $1-$5 casual cards that are virtual locks to double or triple (or more?) in price within a year or two.

By: Travis Allen

Speculation is the sexiest of all Magic money-making endeavors. It is the perfect mix of the American dream and the allure of making a quick buck. Get a great idea or an inside lead on a card, dump a ton of cash into it, and make a 600% profit in two weeks that most stock portfolio managers would quite literally end the life of another human being to make. Not only does this require little effort to achieve, with the total sum of your hard work being putting cards into envelopes and taking them to the post office, it makes you look like a genius. Every time the topic of speccing comes up there’s that one guy that never fails to mention how he bought out Snapcasters at $6 during preorder or some such.

Of course, the reality of the situation is nowhere near that easy or glamorous, as few things are. Finding an angle on a card that nobody else has seen yet is tough when there are thousands of other people staring at the same finite card pool you are. Selling the cards is sometimes easy, but not always. If you don’t mind taking a smaller profit and just buylisting them it isn’t bad, but if you want to squeeze out every penny or the lists haven’t caught up yet you’re left spending time listing on eBay and dealing with overhead costs. None of that is too bad if you bought a few copies, but the times you make real profit is when you have hundreds of a given card. 

Knowing all this, how do we succeed in picking good specs? What is the magic formula for identifying the next hot thing that is going to go from $.80 to $7.99?

You already know the answer to this. There isn’t a magic formula. It requires constant awareness of the market, a pulse on multiple information sources, and no small dash of luck. After all, even if you get ahead of the market and buy 300 Krark’s Thumb, there’s no guarantee they’re all getting shipped to you if the price rises before the cards leave the warehouse.

Today we’ll look at a few factors to consider when trying to decide if you should go deep on a card. The important thing to remember is that all of these headings are factors, but not necessarily deciding factors. Sometimes cards rise in spite of particular circumstances. If you have an eye on a card that looks great in most of these categories but not all, don’t immediately toss it out the window. Just be sure that you’re making the decision for the right reason.

Power

In a vacuum, how powerful is your card? Does it do something inherently broken, such as Birthing Pod? Is it just an excellent rate for its effectiveness, ala Tarmogoyf? Does it tutor as well as Infernal Tutor does? This is always one of the most crucial questions when evaluating a card, and also one of the most difficult. This is the one where you really get to say “I saw things different from the rest of you, and I made money because of it,” and it’s also the one that gets egos involved the most.

A lot of money can be made when you see things differently from others. Chapin saw the power of Jace and bought something like forty copies at $25 apiece when it was spoiled. More recently, there were people out there that realized Desecration Demon was a dangerous threat only being held back by the presence of Lingering Souls. They were rewarded after rotation for recognizing the card as being very powerful, even if the meta hadn’t borne it out yet.

Powerful cards aren’t always expensive and expensive cards aren’t always powerful, but in general the better the card the more likely it is to be expensive. If you spot a powerful card that isn’t already expensive, ask yourself why not. You may look at Isochron Scepter and think about all the dirty things you can do with it in Modern, but remember that artifact hate is all over the format, as is Abrupt Decay. Without even considering the quantity of copies available we already see why an inherently powerful card is basically metagamed right out of Modern.

Meanwhile, there are definitely very powerful cards that exist in that format that just haven’t been figured out yet, or whose crucial combo piece has yet to appear. If you can look at Vampire Hexmage in the spoiler and immediately realize Dark Depths is sitting out there at $2, you’ve got a leg up on the rest of us.

Quantity Printed

What’s the major difference between Precinct Captain and Auriok Champion? Thousands and thousands and thousands of copies. The price of a card, of any good, is a factor of supply and demand. Demand is an incredibly complex component but at least supply is easy to figure out. There are so many more Precinct Captains than Auriok Champions it’s no wonder they are separated in price by a decimal place. If demand for the two cards is equal and there are ten times more Precinct Captains out there, then it isn’t surprising that Captain is about 1/10th the cost of Auriok Champion. The more copies of a card that exist the harder it is for the price to rise astronomically. This is why very old cards rise much easier than new cards. 

When judging how many copies of a card are in the wild the first thing to consider is what set(s) it is from. Assume for now it is a single printing in an expert expansion. The further back you go, the richer the vein. My three mental bookmarks are Mirrodin, Future Sight, and Innistrad. Mirrodin is a point of reference because then the card is legal in Modern. If we’re looking at a card from Onslaught or earlier, it is limited to Legacy and Casual formats. That isn’t a death sentence or anything, but it’s important to consider. Anything printed between Future Sight and Mirrodin is excellent territory, between Future Sight and Innistrad is solid, and after Innistrad the card has an uphill battle. There were just so fewer cards printed in sets prior to Future Sight relative to today. That is a major reason why many Modern staples have gone nuts; there are just so few copies available in the market compared to how many players are now in the game. Every set from Zendikar on has seen a growth in the player base, but between Innistrad and Return to Ravnica specifically we’ve added a tremendous amount of players.

Second and third printings complicate things a bit. Again, the older the additional printing, the better. If a card was printed in Mirrodin and then again in Kamigawa, we aren’t too worried. The price has had plenty of time to settle into where it is today. If it was in Mirrodin and then Gatecrash, that’s another story. Auxiliary product, such as Planechase or Commander decks, has some impact as well. These are much smaller runs than full expansion sets, so they aren’t exactly flooding the market. Special product printings will typically slow the growth of something, but not suppress it entirely.

When considering specs for Standard play, pay close attention to which set they’re printed in. The Return to Ravnica block had a unique structure in that the card pool was split pretty evenly amongst RTR and Gatecrash, while Dragon’s Maze was opened far less. This opened the door for DGM cards to spike harder than their RTR/GTC counterparts because there were so many less available on the market.

Theros’ distribution will have a similar impact on viability of speculation targets. Theros will be heavily opened, while Born of the Gods and Journey Into Nyx will be less so. A good example is the two black Bestow cards Nighthowler and Herald of Torment. Nighthowler is from Theros, making it a much worse Standard target than Herald. There will be about three times more Nighthowlers on the market than Heralds without even counting the Gameday promo. The full ratio of packs opened across the block will be 6:2:1. Seeing that type of ratio should really help you understand why Born, and to a greater extent Journey cards will be such better spec targets than Theros.

The takeaway from all of this is that the less copies of a card in the market, the better your spec looks. That isn’t the only thing you need to consider, but it’s an important one.

Vendor Availability

This is directly related to the above topic. How many copies of your card are available at vendors? This is a good sign for your spec:

This is not:

Don’t just check a single storefront either. I’ve been burned before by seeing only a few copies on TCGPlayer, buying several playsets, then realizing there are huge stocks still available at SCG or ABU. You need to do your homework and see just how much is out there before deciding if your pick is a good one. And don’t forget about eBay either.

Quantity Needed

When considering a card, ask yourself how many the prospective player needs. Is it central to a deck’s strategy, as Living End is to its eponymous deck? Is it a one-of silver bullet? Or an occasional sideboard card?

The amount of copies players need of a given card figures into the ‘demand’ side of the equation. If I want to play Scapeshift, I may want a few Obstinate Baloth. Probably not all four though, and I can get by without them if I have to. I can’t play without owning four Scapeshift, though.

The general rule of thumb is that sideboard-only cards make poor specs. That isn’t to say it can’t happen, but the card typically has to be ubiquitous in sideboards to make a solid run. Spellskite is the most well-known sideboard card that has done well for itself, and even in that case it only went from $6 or $7 to $16 or $17. A $10 increase is nothing to sneeze at, but if it was somehow central to a strategy the card would be $30+.

Cards that need to be in the maindeck as a full set are a good choice. Cards that appear as a one or two-of in sideboards are not as appealing. Artifacts that every single EDH deck will want are universally desirable. Cards that are only useful to an unpopular general are less so.

Snowflake

How many other cards do what your card does? Restore Balance and Living End are the only things that accomplish their particular goals. Nobody is building a Living End deck that doesn’t run Living End. On the other end of the spectrum, Obstinate Baloth isn’t exactly unique. Sure, it’s very useful against Blightning and smaller aggressive decks. But so are Kitchen Finks and Loxodon Smiter. If the card you’re considering could be pretty easily replaced by a much cheaper option, you may want to look elsewhere.

Company

Part of what made Living End such a juicy pick was how cheap the rest of the deck was. Aside from the manabase, most of the deck is commons and uncommons. If a player can pick up fifty-six cards of a sixty-card deck for $100 then they’re going to be far more willing to spend ten or twenty or even thirty dollars on the lynchpin of the engine. However, if the deck is packed with Goyfs and Cliques and Snapcasters the list is already going to be atrociously expensive to buy into. Player’s willingness to fork over serious cash for some novel new tech is going to be far lower.

Siblings

I don’t recall exactly what the first card to spike because of Nekusar was, but I know it has happened to several by now. Cards that force your opponents to draw extra cards are all prime candidates at this point, especially ones that attach penalties to them. When Seizan popped up on my MTGPrice insider email, I knew the card would be rising soon. It makes other players draw extra cards and gets them for a few damage at the same time. It hasn’t fully taken off yet, probably because the effect is smaller when compared to things like Wheel of Fortune, but I expect it to eventually make a full jump to $8+.

Price History

Price history is an excellent way to spot cards that are moving up and possibly poised for big jumps. A card may seem underpriced, but is its price graph flat for the last year? Or has it in fact been slowly rising for awhile? A flat price history doesn’t doom the card, but it does mean that there hasn’t been much interest in it for awhile. However, price graphs that have been trending up indicate growing demand for the card, a big indicator for price spikes. Keep in mind the old legal disclaimer of “past results do not guarantee future returns” though.

Spikes are for Spikes, Climbs are for Casuals

What is the market for your card? Is it a Sphinx’s Revelation type of effect that is pure raw efficiency but otherwise an entirely boring card? Or is it a Vigor, something that your average PTQ grinder will scoff at but your younger cousin will be in awe over? 

Tournament staples tend to spike harder. The players with their fingers to the competitive scene will get whiff of a major contender on the rise, buy in early, and soon after the rest of the market will realize what is happening and finish off what’s available. The card will relist at ten times what it was, and eventually settle to its real price point, whether its actually ten times the old price, or only $.50 more than it used to be. Demand comes quickly, and it leaves quickly too. Rotations crush cards like Sphinx’s Revelation because once it’s off the radar of the grinder there’s no market left for the card. These are the types of specs that you immediately sell into the hype because there’s no way to tell where the card is going to land and you want to make sure you capitalize on the frenzy.

Casual cards, on the other hand, are guaranteed slow burners. There are less severe spikes on these types of cards because there are no tournament results or rotations to worry about. There are simply millions of players in their kitchens, collectively buying a playset of Consuming Aberration at a time, never trading or selling them, slowly but surely driving the price up. These cards do still spike on occasion when the MTGF community gets ahold of them and speeds the process along, but for the most part they get there on their own.

Knowing which market wants your card and what to expect out of its projected growth pattern is important for identifying short-term and long-term holds. Even if you know for a fact a given card is going to triple in price, if it’s going to take a few years, you may rather operate in a faster market.

Reprintability

I could (and did?) write an entire article about how easy or difficult it is for a card to be reprinted. The long and short of it is that the easier a card is to reprint, the less secure your purchase is. A card like Spellskite was juicy pickings because Phyrexian mana is unprintable outside of a Phyrexian block or smaller-run auxiliary product. Vendilion Clique is a tough reprint because it’s a named legendary creature with a specific creature type. Linvala, on the other hand, is not tied to any specific plane or keywords. She’s a generic angel which show up in nearly every single set. That isn’t to say that Linvala is getting printed in Journey Into Nyx, but it’s far more likely we’ll see her there rather than another printing of Birthing Pod.

Check Out That Gap

Take a look at the gap between the lowest retail price and the buylist. MTGPrice shows you this automatically on every page. The narrower the gap, the better your odds are. If the highest buylist is 30% of the lowest price, it means there isn’t demand from vendors to get copies into stock. They’re selling so few copies of the card that they aren’t in a rush to get more. A narrow gap means vendors are eager to have any copies they can in stock, and a rise on the purchase price is probably close behind. You’ll see a lot of MTGF types on twitter always talking about the gap on a card, and this is usually what they’re referring to.

Always Have an Escape Plan

Assume your spec bombs terribly. What is your out? How badly do you lose, and what can you do to mitigate it? If you’re buying your spec at $3 each and the best buylist is $.50, you’ve got a long way to fall. You’d basically be committed to holding onto the card indefinitely, until either it does actually spike or the buylist rises. If the buylist on those $3 cards is $2.25 though, you’re in good shape. Even if the card fails to do anything, you can get out having lost only 25% of your purchase. Obviously nobody wants to be in that boat, but it’s nice to know that you have an out that isn’t going to be soul-crushing.

 

*The author personally owns some number of Seizan, Vendilion Clique, and Herald of Torment