MTG Fast Finance is our weekly podcast covering the flurry of weekly financial activity in the world of Magic: The Gathering. MFF provides a fast, fun and useful sixty minute format. Follow along with our seasoned hosts as they walk you through this week’s big price movements, their picks of the week, metagame analysis and a rotating weekly topic.
Show Notes: Oct 21st, 2016
Segment 1: Top Movers of the Week
Note: Price movements reflect posted NM prices, and may not represent prices players have paid.
Disclosure: Travis and James may own speculative copies of the above cards.
Segment 3: Metagame Week in Review
The guys talked over the Top 8 decks from Pro Tour Kaladesh last week, as well as the U/W decks that went 9-1 in the Standard portion.
Segment 4: Topic of the Week
Travis and James broke down the source and impact of the reversion to an annual Standard rotation cycle each fall.
James Chillcott is the CEO of ShelfLife.net, The Future of Collecting, Senior Partner at Advoca, a designer, adventurer, toy fanatic and an avid Magic player and collector since 1994.
In case you missed it, we got a pretty big announcement from Wizards of the Coast today regarding the Standard rotation pattern. Just a year after being told that Standard would be switching to an twice per annum rotation schedule, Wizards has announced that they are switching us back over to a single fall rotation starting immediately.
Essentially, every fall set will enjoy a full two years in Standard, with the next three sets released after it rotating out as a double block two Octobers later. For example, up until this announcement, we would have seen Battle for Zendikar and Oath of the Gatewatch rotate out with the release of Amonkhet in late April 2017, but now we’re back to the original system, where BFZ, Oath, SOI and EMN all rotate together with the release of the fall 2017 set.
Need a visual?
What’s It Mean?
So what does this mean for us as players and Magic financiers? Well, as a player you get to play with any cards you buy from new sets for a few months longer that you were going to be able to, and it should lead to a reinvigorated Standard scene at your local LGS. On the other hand, the pressure is now on Wizards to make sure that Standard formats are complex and dynamic enough to stay fresh for longer, and individual cards getting banned if things get very stale are slightly more likely now than they were yesterday as a result.
On the finance side, this is great news, as it means that Standard legal cards should revert to the older, predictable model of value appreciation and depreciation that we knew and loved since the mid 2000s. Specifically, look for rares and mythics from say, the fall 2017 block, to spike quickly at release, fall predictably until the fall of 2018 and then spike again based on the play patterns of that new Standard meta, only to collapse again in May/June of 2018 in anticipation of their rotation in fall 2019.
Overall, this gives us more time on average (0 to 6 months depending on the set, since the second block of each year is still rotating on the same schedule, ie SOI/EMN still rotate out in fall 2017) to speculate without worrying about the need to dump cards if they don’t take off in their first year of play. This helps more with the first block of the year, than the second, so take note.
With Masterpiece premium inserts still the norm for the foreseeable future, the expected value of your average rare or mythic in any given set will still be depressed, but they now have more time to take off in Standard and generate a spike.
Why’d It Happen?
There’s only one reason that this change would be reversed before we even got to fully test it out. LGS participation and/or set sales were down, and my guess is both. Hasbro just announced in their investor update earlier this week that Magic: The Gathering revenues were slightly up for the year, so the inference is that supplemental sets were boosting overall sales, but that Standard sets were selling less product as players got gun shy about investing in cards whose rotation horizon always felts just around the corner.
Hasbro/WoTC isn’t interested in letting revenues fall for obvious reasons, so I’d expect this change to stick for several years now that the experiment has failed. Instead, expect Wizards to double down on supplemental products and interesting new ways to increase the average revenue per Magic player over the next couple of years.
So What Now?
From a speculation perspective, now would be a very good time to start looking at heavily played mythics and rares from BFZ/Oath that were depressed more than they should have been based on their looming rotation. Gideon, Ally of Zendikar was one of the most played cards in the top 8 of Pro Tour Kaladesh last week, and as the most important planeswalker in Standard I’d expect him to make a dash for $30 based on this news. The staff will have further notes on this in forthcoming articles. Cheers!
Check out our Top 8 Deck Analysis, Day 2 and Day 1 Coverage to get caught up and then follow along as we track the progress of the march to greatness today at Pro Tour Kaladesh.
Matches are best of five today, but the first two games are played without sideboards.
Our bracket looks like this today, forcing the bottom half of the bracket to battle four times today (a potential twenty total games) if they want to take it all home:
Both Makis (R/W Tokens) and Shota (Grixis Control) are safe until the semi-finals, giving their decks a better than average shot at the title. Notably the bottom half of the bracket forces most of the aggro decks to eliminate each other before facing combo, control or the red/white tokens list.
Quarter-Finals Stage 1: Ben Hull (R/W Vehicles) vs. Lee Shi Tian (Mardu Vehicles)
Game 1 plays out as expected here with Ben Hull managing to stabalize and managing to transition into a Skysovereign, Consult Flagship late game that quickly turns the corner and puts Shi Tian away. Off camera Hull takes the next game as well, but Lee takes Game 3 quickly to fight back, but falls in the next game to put the fledgling Canadian in the Top 6.
Quarter-Finals Stage 1: Carlos Romao (Jeskai Control) vs. Joey Manner (UW Flash Spirits)
Carlos takes Game 1 off camera. In Game 2 Manner gets Carlos down to 1 life, but a Dovin Baan is able to stabilize the game for a few turns, and Romao starts to drown Joey in card advantage until Torrential Gearhulks are able to close things out. Joey loses the third game as well, but Romao’s roll is not to be stopped this weekend, and a series of kill spells sees Manner knocked off the podium for the weekend, putting the Brazilian one step closer to his third big tournament win in as many months.
Quarter-Finals Stage 2: Carlos Romao (Jeskai Control) vs Matt Nass (Temur Aetherworks)
Game 1 finds Nass predictably running multiple copies of Marvel Aetherworks into counterspell after counterspell, and eventually Romao gets his Torrential Gearhulks down to close the game. Game 2 goes much the same and Carlos is up by two.
Quarter-Finals Stage 2: Ben Hull (R/W Vehicles) vs Pierre Dagen (UR Control)
Ben Hull is able to quickly dispatch Dagen, who never really manages to establish his control of the board over the course of a quick three games. Hull moves on to the semi-finals vs. Shota Yasooka and his Grixis Control deck.
Semi-Finals: Makis Matsoukas (R/W Tokens) vs Carlos Romao (Jeskai Control)
LSV points out Torrential Gearhulk as the key card for Romao.
Had to take a quick break, but upon my return I find Romao up 2-1 on Makis. The final game is a grind and Makis nearly gets his aggro amped up high enough to win a few times only to be met by stiff control opposition in the form of Torrential Gearhulk and multiple kill spells, including a key Radiant Flames. Romao is on to the finals!
Semi-Finals: Shota Yasooka (Grixis Control) vs Ben Hull (R/W Vehicles)
The players trade the first two games, with Thing in the Ice and Smuggler’s Copter featuring prominently. Yasooka in Games 3 and 4 however is a lesson in tight control play and when Hull stumbles on land in Game 4, the writing is on the wall. Yasooka is going to a Pro Tour final yet again.
Finals: Shota Yasooka (Grixis Control) & Carlos Romao (Jeskai Control)
All control finals featuring multiple copies of Torrential Gearhulk on both sides of the table. Definitely the card of the tournament, despite the heavy presence of Gideon, Ally of Zendikar in the Top 8, and most copies are now in the $30-35 range online.
Game 1 lasts nearly forty minutes, with both players trading resources left and right in typical control fashion. Shota had even chosen to draw rather than play, a hallmark of control mirrors. Late in the game Carlos has Dovin Baan in play and seems to be setting up shop, only to have Shota squeak through the exact amount of damage necessary with a pair of Wandering Fumeroles and an Unlicensed Disintegration.
Game 2 puts the spotlight on Dovin Baan once again, with Carlos managing to ultimate the control-centric Planeswalker to prevent his opponent from untapping more than two permanents per turn. Unfortunately for the Brazilian, Shota is able, through masterful play, answer only the threats that he absolutely had to, and the Japanese Hall of Famer manages to run Romao out of every threat in his deck, with more gas in the tank. The players move to sideboarding, removing a lot of their dead cards against each other.
In Game 3, Romao starts a bit behind on land drops, but manages to steady the ship by dropping a Torrential Gearhulk in against a Transgress the Mind from Shota, forcing the Japanese master off a Summary Dismissal in hand. A few turns later a large scale counter war over Shota’s Torrential Gearhulk, ends in Carlos favor and he’s able to glide Avacyn home to take his first game of the match.
In Game 4 however, Shota gets a Gearhulk and an awakened Thing in the Ice into the red zone, and Shota is able to clear away both a knight token and Dovin Baan with a Delirium enabled To the Slaughter, putting Carlos on the back foot. A turn later, Carlos attempts an Immolating Glare on the incoming attackers, only to be met with a final Negate and Shota Yasooka with Grixis Control is your Pro Tour Kaladesh champion!
After sixteen rounds of excellent draft and Standard play full of fantastic strategic matches and a plethora of viable decks, the Top 8 of Pro Tour Kaladesh is shaping up to be one of the most varied and interesting in years.
Here are what has made it to the final stage of the tournament and the relevant cards:
Note: There are 22 Harnessed Lightning, and 18 Ceremonious Rejection in the Top 8 but I removed these from list as lower rarities. Ceremonious Rejection was as popular in the Top 8 as the $4 Aether Hub (also an uncommon) so it might be good for some minor gains.
The biggest under the radar story here is that Gideon, Ally of Zendikar is by far the most important mythic in the Top 8, with a tremendous seventeen copies across four of the top decks, including two different archetypes (RWx Vehicles & UW Flash). With copies still available under $20, it makes little sense if this card doesn’t swap prices with Chandra and head for $30 soon.
Smuggler’s Copter may not be dominating to the extent many feared, but is certainly included in nearly every major aggro strategy as a four-of and the folks that were counting this card out based on camera coverage Friday were dead wrong. Looking at the bigger picture, this is a great sign that the format is healthy and likely to feature many options for players at the local level. The Copter that could shows up in every aggro deck in the Top 8, including four decks and three archetypes (RW Tokens, RWx Vehicles and UW Flash). I suspect it will continue on as an acceptable monster in lower level tournaments through the rest of the fall. Holding $12-15 seems likely for now, pending further SCG Open level results in the next few weeks. Toolcraft Exemplar is also a persistent four-of in the RWx Vehicle/Token strategies and could be a rare with room for growth at $2.50 or so.
Despite the dominance of the Temur Aetherworks decks on both Day 1 and Day 2 of the metagame at 18% of the field, our Top 8 is full of unique decks that made up relatively small percentages of the field throughout the weekend. And while Aetherworks Marvel lead to both amazing and terrible turns all weekend as it’s pilots embraced the combo deck variance, Torrential Gearhulk looked fantastic every time it was on screen and in several different decklists, including Jeskai Control, Grixis Control and UR Control. The blue behemoth was definitely one of the breakout cards of the tournament (alongside Marvel) and is now carrying a $20 price tag as a result. Keep in mind that control cards tend to sell worse than aggro cards in Standard, and most of the decks running this card aren’t running the full complement.
Chandra, Torch of Defiance seems doomed to failure this season, and I’d expect the card to fall towards $15 in a hurry now. Panharmonicon, which spiked earlier this week on speculation that it could be at the Pro Tour, was nowhere to be found, and is quite likely to fade back toward $5.
Metalwork Colossusdecks didn’t make the Top 8, but seem like a potentially more reliable combo strategy vs. Aetherworks Marvel, especially when combined with Sanctum of Ugin to chain the Colossi. The card is up to $4 from $2 this weekend, but may have trouble holding that price point pending further results at a high level. Likewise, Dynavolt Tower has made the Top 8, and has proven effective in both UR and Jeskai control builds throughout the weekend. This Kaladesh rare is available under $3 so far (up from just $.50), but could spike toward $5 if Degan makes the finals.
If we include lands in the mix, here are the non-basics that dominate the Top 8 field and may indicated demand heading into next week:
Aether Hub: 17
Inspiring Vantage: 15
Spirebluff Canal: 12
Wandering Fumerole: 10
Join us at 3pm Sunday EST (5pm PST) for Top 8 Coverage!
James Chillcott is the CEO of ShelfLife.net, The Future of Collecting, Senior Partner at Advoca, a designer, adventurer, toy fanatic and an avid Magic player and collector since 1994.
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