Category Archives: ProTrader

Corbin Hosler, ProTrader

PROTRADER: Don’t You Forget About Zendikar

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Oath of the Gatewatch is out, and it’s sweet! The new cards are so much better than the old ones, the new Expeditions are more fun than the old ones, and Battle for Zendikar only had two good cards so go ahead and ignore it!

At least, that’s what it appears to be on the surface, and we’ve had a lot of people fall into this attitude because of how poorly BFZ stood up to Khans of Tarkir and Dragons of Tarkir, not to mention it’s now faded in comparison to Oath of the Gatewatch.

But don’t let that trick you into forgetting about Battle for Zendikar.

Sure, our first return to Zendikar was in many ways a disappointment. The Expeditions were super cool, but the cards as a whole didn’t stack up, the Limited environment was meh (drafting was good but not great, and Sealed sucked), and outside of a format-warping mana base, the cards didn’t do a ton to Standard, much less Modern. All of these factors led to a lot of frustrating with the second go at Zendikar even as players gobbled up Expeditions for cubes and Commander decks everywhere.

But it turns out we forgot something about Battle for Zendikar: it was only the first set in the block. By itself it turned out to be somewhat disappointing, but now that more cards in the same vein have come out the set has actually turned out much better. And remember, no matter how bad Battle for Zendikar is in Standard now, the format won’t look the same forever. That means Battle for Zendikar, despite selling a ton and using Expeditions to suppress prices across the board, has a chance to be financially relevant again before it’s finished with two Rotations and an 18-month run through Standard. And with Oath of the Gatewatch hitting now, we’re going to see BFZ bottom out even further in the coming weeks before starting to climb back up.

That’s what I want to talk about today, and I’ll start at the top.

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ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.

Danny Brown, ProTrader

PROTRADER: What Do You Want to Get from Modern?

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In early 2012, when Modern was still in its infancy, then-Wizards developer Zac Hill wrote this article (cached version linked because—surprise, surprise—the Wizards website is giving me an error code when I try to go to the live article) previewing Cavern of Souls. This section of Hill’s article single-handedly convinced me that I was never going to play Standard again once Scars of Mirrodin rotated:

One of the problems is that Mana Leak is simply a much more powerful card than we would be comfortable printing under modern development rules. Similar to why the Swords are so powerful—their costs were locked in before people really understood how to price Equipment—Mana Leak is a relic of a bygone era.

Now, I get into arguments whenever I make a claim like this, because it’s difficult to see. I can’t tell you how many times I have been in a conversation of the following form:

“You guys are power creeping so hard.”

“Hmm. I don’t think we are. After all, there are all kinds of spells that we would never print nowadays that ran rampant in old environments, such as Compulsive Research, Force Spike, Remand, ‘Signets,’ etc.”

Izzet Signet

This statement bothered me because Mana Leak and Remand are two of my favorite Magic cards, but what really blew my mind is that Hill cited Signets as being too good for Standard. Remember that this was just a few months before Return to Ravnica‘s release, and this was one of the first indications that the set was going to power down the format in a big way compared to the original Ravnica—except for the creatures, of course.

Pack Rat

Seeing the direction that Standard was heading, Modern seemed like the only reasonable choice for competitive Constructed on a relatively small budget.

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ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.

Accumulated Knowledge, ProTrader

PROTRADER: Mindslicers, Preorders, and Promos (Oh My!)

Hey, happy Oath of the Gatewatch release day! We are going to talk about a couple of different topics today, the first of which focuses on activity unique to set release season. While this information is probably too late to be relevant for Oath, it’s worth discussing with other new sets so close on the horizon. Also, rather than doing quick hits at the end, I’ll be peppering them throughout and between the bigger, meatier topics.

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ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.

City of Traders, ProTrader

PROTRADER: A New Beginning

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By: Travis Allen
@wizardbumpin

I was originally going to write about Oath of the Gatewatch as a set, a topic I’ve been wanting to cover for three weeks now, but this banned list change is too juicy. Maybe next week!

By now I’m sure you’ve heard that Splinter Twin and Summer Bloom are banned in Modern. The day this article goes live, Wednesday, is two days after the official announcement was to be made Monday morning.

What you may have missed is how we found out. Friday night, news rapidly began to spread that Twin and Bloom were banned in the MTGO beta. The question was whether Wizards had been pre-empted by its own lack of foresight and planning on a digital product, or if the software was encountering one of it’s uncountable, nonsensical bugs and erroneously indicating the cards illegal. Considering both possibilities were predicated on Wizards mishandling its digital product, Occam’s razor was of no help.

It wasn’t long before Wizards accepted that the jig was up and officially confirmed the news: Twin and Bloom are out. The latter of those was a foregone conclusion; anyone that wasn’t emotionally invested in the deck knew it was coming after watching Justin Cohen trounce people at Pro Tour Fate Reforged a year ago. The deck regularly violated the “turn four rule” while still able to play a long, grindy attrition game. Defenders of the deck will point out that it hasn’t taken over the format the way combo boogeymen have in the past, but this is more a result of the deck’s extremely challenging lines of play more than anything.

I first noticed the deck when Gerry Thompson mentioned it in an article, and after loading it up in Magic Workstation, was struck by just how difficult the deck was to pilot. I mentioned as much to Gerry on Twitter, and he confirmed that it was possibly the toughest deck he had ever played. Success requires a skilled player investing considerable time and effort into learning the intricacies of the various lines, especially in the face of opposition. That any average Joe couldn’t pick up the list and pop over to his nearest SCG Open and wreck house is a major reason Bloom wasn’t dominating the format.

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ProTrader: Magic doesn’t have to be expensive.