Category Archives: Jason Alt

Jason Alt, ProTrader

PROTRADER: Boats Run Aground

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Landfall is coming.

We’re all already very aware of how much fun landfall can be. Who doesn’t like to smash people in EDH with Avenger of Zendikar? That’s such a cliche at this point that a reader of mine called its inclusion in a deck where I was doing crazy landfall shenanigans questionable, as if Avenger of Zendikar had jumped the shark. Screw that, landfall is awesome and landfalling feels good and I’m going to keep doing it. We’re going to want to landfall a lot more in the future, and there are a lot of cards people are going to look back at coming up here pretty soon, and I think it’s worth buying ahead of them. Battle for Zendikar is about to make it cool to landfall again, so let’s be ready.

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ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.

Jason Alt, ProTrader, Uncategorized

PROTRADER: Boating Expedition – A Course Correction

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I had hoped Battle for Zendikar spoilers would give me a clear signal this week. We got a lot of cool cards spoiled, but nothing really sticks out, and I think we need to avoid a repeat of last week. I used a card I’m not excited about reanimating to frame a discussion about reanimation cards, which felt forced to me and resulted in an article a lot of you weren’t super happy with the entire way through. I mean, granted, there were good points about cards like Debtors’ Knell, but in general, you’re not reanimating fatties in EDH as much as you are cycling value creatures. You don’t want a full yard, begging to get Bojuka Bogged or Tormod’s Crypted. You want to keep bringing back Karmic Guide and Eternal Witness like a cheater. I didn’t like writing or reading the comments on my last article.

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expensive cards

ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.

Jason Alt, ProTrader

PROTRADER: Battleship Graveyard

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I assumed there was some sort of official battleship graveyard where the Navy scuttles old, decommissioned ships that aren’t big enough to have their own gift shop. I Googled it and the first four pages were all related to this song by a band called The Fall of Troy which… well, just listen. I’m possibly overcritical of bands like this because this song is so close to something I might actually listen to. If this song were 25 percent more The Used and 25 percent less Coheed and Cambria I could possibly get on board. There may be some sort of battleship graveyard after all, but I stopped going through Google results while this song was playing. If it helps you like it helped me, I used an old standby to cleanse my palate after that song. Kidding, I listened to this instead.  Okay, real talk: this song actually helped rinse the taste of The Fall of Troy out of my mouth so I could concentrate on writing an article.

And if we’re talking about scuttled battleships then we’re probably talking about a card that makes graveyard shenanigans fun and doable and which could buoy some graveyard-related cards, right? When you’re right, you’re right. However, what changed recently that has me thinking about the graveyard? The answer might surprise you.

ulamogtheceaselesshunger

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ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.

Jason Alt, ProTrader

PROTRADER: Naval Academy

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I recently got to thinking about tutors. Academies are all about tuition. There are a lot of useful tutors in EDH, and they’re absolutely worth talking about at some point, so I decided to make that point today. There are broad tutors, narrow tutors, and very, very narrow tutors, and I want to talk about all of them.

Does this seem out-of-flavor with this series? This series was predicated on identifying emerging cards from newly spoiled sets and seeing how their inclusions in the metagame would shake things up. As their stocks increased due to increased adoption, the surging tide would lift all boats, and buying into those other boats (cards) at their lowest price by anticipating their increased use based on spoiled cards was the name of the game. I’m talking about a broad category of cards as opposed to talking about how one particular printed card would affect prices of other cards.

They’re simple rules. I made the rules. And now I want to break them? What the hell?

What if I told you that this article was predicated not on a card that was going to get printed but rather on a card that was not going to get printed? How do we know? Well, I look at what little we know about Commander 2015 so far.

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expensive cards

ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.