Be Not Afraid

December 6, 2019 Cliff Daigle

It needs to be said: 2020 is going to be a rough year for some of our collections.

Wizards is planning on releasing a swarm of Commander-oriented products, and there’s going to be no caveats like “Well, I’ll get a foil, Commander decks don’t print foils” or “This mechanic is really niche, they won’t reprint this for a while” or my favorite “If they put this expensive card in a deck people will only buy this deck like True-Name Nemesis all over again!”

This came up when we were recording MTG Fast Finance the other night, and it’s true: The Mystery Boosters in stores will have some number of foils, and that’s in addition to the product already being opened in GP events.

We’re going to experience 2020 as a minefield of reprints, and some of us are going to get caught. Fear not, though. There’s some principles to apply here and some condolences to fan ourselves with.

Principle #1: Diversify!

I don’t imagine there are many of you who buy lots and lots of copies of a card. I’ve gone crazy three times, all for cheap cards, and it’s all bitten me on the ass: 50x Prophet of Kruphix at a buck each, 80x foil Avacyn’s Judgment at 75 cents, and 100x Yawgmoth’s Vile Offering at a quarter each.

None of those have worked out for me, though I take some comfort in being able to buylist the Prophets and even my money out if I needed to. My rationale for each of these was sound, and since they were all quite cheap, I went a little overboard.

Please don’t do this. Buying hordes of a card and pinning your hopes on it is an easy way to loathe yourself and your bulk rare box. Instead, limit yourself to a certain number of copies or a certain dollar amount. They aren’t going to reprint everything you buy.

Principle #2: They Can’t Reprint Everything! (aka the Oracle of Mul Daya Problem)

I do think Oracle will get reprinted, and for right now, I wouldn’t be buying copies. The problem is that Commander is such a wide format, with so many things at prices which indicate a need for reprints, Wizards would need several years straight to catch up with everything. Plenty of cards are going to fall through the cracks, and we’ll be shaking our heads at how they messed this up yet again.

Principle #3: Even if Reprinted, Staples Remain Staples

Let’s look at the price graph for a card that really exemplifies Commander: Doubling Season.

I can’t chart all of the follies on this card’s price, as we can only go back in time ~8 years and this was released in 2010, a Judge Promo in 2011, a *rare* in Modern Masters 2013, and then a mythic in Battlebond for the summer of 2018.

And still, the cheapest version of the card is nearly $50. Every time it’s printed, it takes a slight dip and then starts climbing again. Commander players open this card, trade for this card, buy this card, put it in one deck after another, and the overall effect is to remove copies from circulation, increasing the price.

Almost exactly a year ago, in December 2013, the TCG price on this was $35. That was after a summer of the incredibly fun Battlebond experience, and the price slid for a few months as a result of the new copies coming into the market. Then those prices started climbing again. We can’t help it. The card is just too much fun, and sits at the intersection of three overarching themes: planeswalkers, +1/+1 counters, and tokens.

Doubling Season will get printed again this coming year, and when it does, buy some spare copies. This idea holds with any Commander ‘staple’ that gets reprinted in the coming year. Want another example? How about Mana Crypt:

The new printing made it under $50 when it was being opened. This is played in Commander and Cube. That’s it. It’s getting printed in the new Mystery Boosters and if you like value, wait a while and buy yourself an extra copy or two of this, and then be patient. You’ll get there again.

Principle #4: If Not Reprinted, Price Spikes

We saw this every year with Modern Masters, and frankly we see echoes of it with every set that has reprints, whether it’s a Masters or a Horizons. A great example here is Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx.

Nykthos has jumped in price recently because of Pioneer, but the next set is crying out to reprint the card. Cards like the Cavalier cycle and the hybrid uncommon cycle in Eldraine are pointing up towards a reprint…but if it’s not there, this immediately becomes a $30 card and will stay that way until its time in a Commander product.

Principle #5: There’s always Standard

With Eldraine having two years to make a splash in Standard, that set is fully ripe for the picking once we start opening Theros Beyond boosters. Buy your Murderous Riders and Fabled Passages now, because those are format staples and will have 20 months to make an impact. Traditionally, the time to sell will be about a year after opening, or eight months before rotation. That’s usually when the price is highest.

Focusing on Standard might make you long for the profits of obscure foils but if you really hate the risk associated with Commander for all of 2020, maybe you’d be more comfortable staying away entirely.

Cliff (@WordOfCommander) has been writing for MTGPrice since 2013, and is an eager Commander player, Draft enthusiast, and Cube fanatic. A high school science teacher by day, he’s also the official substitute teacher of the MTG Fast Finance podcast. If you’re ever at a GP and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.

Jason Alt, Unlocked ProTrader

Unlocked Pro Trader: It’s Happening

December 3, 2019 Jason Alt 2 Comments

Readers,

We guessed last week that with the printing of the Secret Lair sets, we’d see an uptick in the popularity of some tribal cards and decks on the basis of people who didn’t have the decks built building them and people who had them built updating them. This week, we expect to see some of that conjecture borne out by data. Behold!

Ur-Dragon got 59 new decks last week and Arahbo got 47, vaulting both of the decks into the top 20 of the week. While it was cool to look at cards in common between the two decks, drilling down into the decks individually couldn’t hurt, either. Let’s do that, then.

Ur-Dragon

The new cards in this deck aren’t that surprising, and with the exception of the Henge and the Dragon, they’re “you’re playing 5 colors, you need this.”

Henge is basically a card you should really be trading for now. I don’t think a lot needs to be said about it other than that it’s quite good and there may never be a good time to buy it so you’re better off trading away cards that are very good in Standard and won’t quite impact anything beyond Standard. Trading $10 worth of Standard-only cards for $9 worth of Henges is worth it to me and the trade will look super lopsided in a half a year.

The Dragon makes even less sense. Look at the Instants and Sorceries in a typical Dargon deck using EDHREC’s Average Deck feature.

1 Crux of Fate
1 Cultivate
1 Earthquake
1 Explosive Vegetation
1 Farseek
1 Kodama’s Reach
1 Primevals’ Glorious Rebirth
1 Rampant Growth

1 Anguished Unmaking
1 Cyclonic Rift
1 Sarkhan’s Triumph
1 Swords to Plowshares

Is there anything worth rebuying here that makes you want to play a really basic dragon? I don’t think I’m cutting gas out of my list to make room for this. So far we’re striking out on interesting stuff, but people who didn’t have a deck and are now building one are going to move the needle more than people updating the decks to maybe put in a durdle dargon, so let’s move into the meat of the deck.

I really didn’t expect a card with multiple printings like this one to basically double in the years since it was last reprinted, but that’s a thing. It’s rebounded a lot better than some rares in the deck and while it’s too late to do anything, it’s worth noting.

Here’s another interesting thing to note.

This was touted in 2017 when the rest of the cycle seemed very strong in light of tribal decks being announced and it seemed like it would hit $10. It did, though it didn’t stay there. However, with this card being good in Dragons and Kittycats and Reaper King decks and any subsequent tribal sets, I think Steely Resolve is a pretty safe bet. While this was spiking off, I said in my 2017 article that I thought Cover of Darkness could get there. Was I right?

This turned out to be a MUCH better bet and it feels good to have called it. So you all know for later, how did I know? Well, that’s a secret.

OK, fine, I’ll tell you. Teach a man to fish an all that. EDHREC doesn’t just give you raw, context-less numbers, it gives you context if you know where to look, and I know where to look, and now so do you.

The bar at the top of EDHREC has dropdown menus and one of them says “sets” which takes you to a menu with every set. Find Onslaught.

Cover of Darkness is the 55th-most-played card from Onslaught and Steely Resolve is 63rd. It’s a very good set. Still, Cover gets played more despite there being seemingly more opportunities for Green cards and Steely Resolve granting Shroud seeming better. You can look at what players will do based on what you think or you can go by what the numbers are telling you and the numbers told me Cover was the way to go, but they also tell me Steely Resolve isn’t done. I rather like it at its current price.

Arahbo

Not much to say here other than that I like its growth plot and while it has plateaued a bit, that’s not accounting for any additional copies being needed for new Arahbo decks. Those new decks can get most of the stuff they need outside of the precon, but need this. This is tough to reprint and it’s associated with the cat deck because that’s the deck it came in, but it’s good in all of them.

Got a European hookup? These are less than a Euro on Magic Card Market. Don’t have a European hookup? Become a Pro Trader and make a friend in our Discord. Remember, Modern cards are doing very well in Europe and EDH cards do much better over here. Get out of tanking Modern staples and get a huge bonus flipping into good EDH stuff before everyone realizes how easy it is.

That does it for me. Thanks for reading, everyone. Until next time!

Watchtower

The Watchtower 12/2/19 for ProTraders – Plan Your Specs

December 2, 2019 Travis Allen

By: Travis Allen
@wizardbumpin

Don’t miss this week’s installment of the MTG Fast Finance podcast, an on-topic, no-nonsense tour through the week’s most important changes in the Magic economy.

A few hours after this article releases we’ll be getting an update to the Pioneer Banned and Restricted list. I’ve no more information than anyone else, but I’d wager that Smuggler’s Copter and Field of the dead are at the tippy top of the list, and while I can’t be certain they’re both going, smart money is on their exit today. That will unlock a lot of new movement in the format since, at the moment, it’s gated fairly hard by Mono-Black Aggro and the few flavors of Field. Be sure to keep a close eye on the 5-0 results after today, since that will give you an early indicator of what my have gained ground in the vacuum. We’ll check in next week to see what’s blossoming.

Lotus Field (Foil)

Price Today: $8
Possible Price: $20

I did a double take when a retweet crossed my feed a day or two ago regarding a Lotus Field combo in the Pioneer PTQ taking place. The build uses Lotus Field, Vizier of Tumbling Sands, and Hidden Strings. It’s not a full loop, as encoding Hidden Strings on the Vizier doesn’t do much, since it requires dealing combat damage. Rather, it’s sort of like playing with a fast mana engine. Field isn’t “fast” of course, but once you pair it with Vizier, you’re now getting six mana a turn from one land and one creature. A single Hidden Strings allows you to double dip on both, and now you can make twelve mana. That’s the gimmick, since at that point you cast Omniscience.

It’s no surprise that a land that casts a Black Lotus every turn is going to show up in some Pioneer combo decks. Playing it fairly is mediocre, but once you’ve got any sort of effect to take advantage of it, it’s going to get silly quickly. While the package described above is one way to approach it, I saw some other builds in the 5-0 collection using combinations of Kiora’s Follower and various Kiora planeswalkers to add additional untap mechanics.

Flip over to EDHREC and you’ll find Field in just over 2,000 lists too, which isn’t insignificant at all. It’s quite a new card to the scene, as Magic 2020 has only been on shelves for a few months. Looking at M20 further, you’ll see that Field is the fourth or fifth most-played card from the set. Not all builds are going to be interested in Field for sure, but there’s no color restrictions on it, and anyone trying to capitalize on untapping lands is certainly going to make sure to toss a copy in.

Non-foils are still far too deep in supply to think about today, although I do suspect they’re going to be worth revisiting in the future. As for foils, the supply isn’t low by any means, sitting at around 90 vendors. Prices have been coming down, with the market over $11 and the cheapest copies at $8 or so. We could see these bottoming out in the very near future, with non-foils sitting at $4 or more. That will put foil Fields on an upwards trajectory, feeding both Pioneer combo players and the EDH crowd.

Cascading Cataracts (Foil)

Price Today: $5
Possible Price: $12

Had I written this article tomorrow, I’d be calling it Two Lands Tuesday. But I didn’t, so it’s still called The Watchtower. Sorry to disappoint.

Cataracts, aside from a problem with your eyeball that old people get, is a useful tool in any EDH deck looking to cast five color cards. Five colorless in, any five colors back out. You pay a mana for the privilege, but generally, the color fixing is going to be worth the cost. Being able to hit those WUBRG cards early and reliably can mean a great deal to those decks, especially ones that can’t come to the party with a $3,000 mana base to ensure they’re always getting there. Tossing a Cataracts in is much more cost effective than scrounging up ten fetches and ten duals.

While I’m sure it’s not terribly common, I imagine that 4c and even 3c decks may occasionally want to run Cataracts. It’s been my experience with 3c decks that I was more likely to be hamstrung on type of mana than volume of mana. Being able to convert some of your Gaea’s Cradle mana into black mana, for instance, could be quite useful.

At $5, foils are tempting. The issue here is the two big walls of about 50 copies each. Those two vendors alone seem to have more inventory than the entire rest of TCG combined. I’d consider this to be superior to those copies being distributed across the seller market, since as $5 copies begin getting bitten from one of the two vendors with deep supply, they’ll begin raising the price, effectively increasing the price on 30 or 40 copies at once. Were those copies distributed, there’d be more copies racing to the bottom. Anyways, $5 foils of a 7,000 EDHREC land are worth keeping on your radar into 2020.

Masterwork of Ingenuity

Price Today: $4
Possible Price: $9

I worked hard to find you guys a non-foil this week. While Korvold has been holding steady as the most popular Throne of Eldraine commander, Syr Gwyn has been quietly putting up numbers back in third or fourth place. As a knight and equipment themed deck, she’s adding demand to two subsets of cards that don’t always see a lot of love. Digging into the equipment theme we find Masterwork of Ingenuity, a once very hyped card that’s been quieter since the initial release, but has seen its stock drain over the years.

Masterwork is, of course, an equipment clone for one mana. Oftentimes that’s going to be a solid mana savings. Pair it with the swath of abilities that allow you to equip for free or at a discounted rate, and you can get some real cheap equipment going. To that end virtually every equipment-based commander finds copies in their lists. The reason Masterwork is still only at 2,200 lists despite having been released some five or six years ago is that there simply aren’t that many appropriately themed commanders released regularly. Syr Gwyn is the latest, and prior to that it might have been 2017? With 2020 the year of Commander, I suspect we may see a new leader pick up the mantle, which would put a great deal of strain on a now-depleted supply.

We’re down to 25 vendors on TCG, and nobody has a deep well of copies. Without any changes a few copies will sell each month, eventually pushing this up towards $10. As soon as another equipment commander is printed, the last of the liquid copies will go, and you’ll be happy you had yours prior to that.

Travis Allen has been playing Magic: The Gathering since 1994, mostly in upstate New York. Ever since his first FNM he’s been trying to make playing Magic cheaper, and he first brought his perspective to MTGPrice in 2013. You can find his articles there weekly, as well as on the podcast MTG Fast Finance.

Jason Alt, Unlocked ProTrader

Unlocked Pro Trader: Synergy 2, Synergy Harder

November 27, 2019 Jason Alt 3 Comments

Readers,

Everyone loves a sequel, except Martin Scorsese but he just released a movie that’s basically exactly The Departed only it’s 3 and a half hours long and it’s on Netflix because that’s how you save cinema, so we can safely ignore anything he has to say.

We’re back with the next edition of the article I wrote last week that I think was a great resource for new and old financiers alike. I’m always tweaking my process so thanks for coming along for the ride with me. Anyway, here’s some homework for you – if you didn’t read that article, go read it bow because I’m not going to go back and do that now because I’m not going to explain anything I explained there, I’m just going to give you some information and you can do with that information whatever you’d like.

The Next Impetus

We found out what was in the Secret Lair set and… look, as a finance person I think they’re great for now because I think they’re going to sell well and retain value but I think it’s also pretty jacked that a “set” that consists of a Bitterblossom and Bitterblossom tokens is being released by a company that won’t acknowledge the secondary market.

I don’t know if that signals their willingness to sell single cards directly to consumers (at the expense of the LGS, you know, that place where people congregate to play the game) but I do know the CONTENTS of the set and that’s a thing we can talk about with some certainty.

There are more sets like “Secret Lair part of a Dredge deck” and “I can’t believe we’re getting away with selling just a Bitterblossom” and “Ooops, All Serum Visions” but the ones I care about are these – 4 tribal commanders all with new art.

Are new people going to build decks around these commanders on the basis of this re-issue? Absolutely. Are people with those decks built going to update them? Also yes. They won’t buy all of the staples, but they’re more likely to buy the new ones. Playing your Reaper King deck down at the LGS once every 12 months doesn’t motivate you to go through and find a few cuts for Smothering Tithe and Revel in Riches but I bet a new art for your 7th favorite commander will.

Maybe the individual effect of people updating old decks and a few people building for the first time is enough to move the needle, maybe it isn’t. What I DO know is that if there are cards that are in all 4 decks, they’re 4 times as likely to move the needle. I mean, maybe not 4 exactly, but the actual number is both incalculable and probably pretty close to 4. Let’s use the technique I used last time to figure out which cards are in all 4 decks and could be in play. It might not be just Tribal staples.

Here is everything in all 4 decks before I clean it up. If you have an issue or a question with something I omit from my next list, leave it in the comments section.

Arcane Signet	4	List A, List B, List C, List D
Command Tower	4	List A, List B, List C, List D
Cultivate	4	List A, List B, List C, List D
Door of Destinies	4	List A, List B, List C, List D
Evolving Wilds	4	List A, List B, List C, List D
Explosive Vegetation	4	List A, List B, List C, List D
Farseek	4	List A, List B, List C, List D
Flooded Strand	4	List A, List B, List C, List D
Guardian Project	4	List A, List B, List C, List D
Helm of the Host	4	List A, List B, List C, List D
Herald’s Horn	4	List A, List B, List C, List D
Icon of Ancestry	4	List A, List B, List C, List D
Kodama’s Reach	4	List A, List B, List C, List D
Lightning Greaves	4	List A, List B, List C, List D
Mirari’s Wake	4	List A, List B, List C, List D
Path of Ancestry	4	List A, List B, List C, List D
Rampant Growth	4	List A, List B, List C, List D
Reliquary Tower	4	List A, List B, List C, List D
Smothering Tithe	4	List A, List B, List C, List D
Sol Ring	4	List A, List B, List C, List D
Swords to Plowshares	4	List A, List B, List C, List D
Temple Garden	4	List A, List B, List C, List D
Terramorphic Expanse	4	List A, List B, List C, List D
Unclaimed Territory	4	List A, List B, List C, List D
Vanquisher’s Banner	4	List A, List B, List C, List D
Vivid Grove	4	List A, List B, List C, List D
Vivid Meadow	4	List A, List B, List C, List D
Windswept Heath	4	List A, List B, List C, List D
Wooded Foothills	4	List A, List B, List C, List D

Here’s the stuff I think is interesting and not just “Multi-color manabase card.”

Before I do that, I just want to point out that every one of these decks will have Arcane Signet and anytime someone builds a new deck, they’ll need a Signet from a finite current supply, so anything that makes people build a new deck between now and a Signet reprint is significant with respect to that card.

Door of Destinies 4 List A, List B, List C, List D
Guardian Project 4 List A, List B, List C, List D
Helm of the Host 4 List A, List B, List C, List D
Herald’s Horn 4 List A, List B, List C, List D
Icon of Ancestry 4 List A, List B, List C, List D
Mirari’s Wake 4 List A, List B, List C, List D
Path of Ancestry 4 List A, List B, List C, List D
Smothering Tithe 4 List A, List B, List C, List D
Unclaimed Territory 4 List A, List B, List C, List D
Vanquisher’s Banner 4 List A, List B, List C, List D

A lot of tribal stuff here, but Mirari’s Wake is a card that is in a lot of “older” decks but has gone under the radar a bit lately. The rest of these cards are great in tribal decks, but Guardian Project and Smothering Tithe are especially curious since they’re newer cards in older decks. Enough people updated their lists on EDHREC when those cards came out to have those cards end up in a high percentage of decks on the database, so that backs up my assertion that people are going to build new copies of the deck.

The most interesting card here is clearly Helm of the Host. Let’s talk a lot about why I like it so much.

It’s trending upwards, it’s sold out of Card Kingdom, it’s underpriced on TCG Player, it’s an artifact, it’s the 7th-most-played equipment on EDHREC (Greaves, Boots, Clamp, Sunforger, Whispersilk Cloak, Sword of the Animist), it’s tricky to reprint, it’s the 11th-most-played card in Dominaria and, most importantly in my opinion, it’s in all 4 of these decks because people are figuring out that it’s a better Conjurer’s Closet in most decks and anything that scales off of the number of creatures you have or number of creatures in a tribe wants this. Helm of the Host is underpriced under $5 and it’s a card I’ve always liked, now more than ever since it’s going up from where I said to get it initially when I told people to buy them too early.

The ability of this card to shrug off reprints is commendable. It looks as though we should have bought in heavy when this price tanked as a result of a Commander 2017 reprinting, but the good news is it’s going up precipitously. If you buy some of these and get caught by a reprinting, buy new copies until your average price paid is satisfactory to you than watch all of them grow. It doesn’t change the fact that you overpaid a bit but it does change how good you feel about the price starting at $4 and reaching for the stars.

There are a few more interesting cards if you drop down to cards that show up in just 3 lists. A lot of the cards that weren’t in the 4 lists are because Arahbo is only 2 colors and the other cards are 5 colors. There is more signal but also more noise, if that makes sense.

I try not to do this that often but this card is in 3 of those decks, it’s played in tribal a lot, it’s got a sub-2x multiplier and the stock is super low. This is a card that’s going to organically reprice itself if none of us buy copies for speculation purposes. Players will snap up the last few copies, the price will go up, people will blame speculators and you won’t have any more money than you did last week. I’m not sure if I sound like a supervillain rationalizing his plan to drop a nuke into a volcano to make a third of Bolivia’s palm oil more expensive of make people buy kindles or whatever lame plan Bond villains have these days or if I just sound like a guy with like 10 years of MtG finance experience who has pretty much resigned myself to the fact that we get blamed for stuff we don’t do and not wanting to get blamed for things is no longer a reason not to do them. Just make some money on these cards, one of you. Seems easy.

Hey, look, it’s a tribal card in Green that has demonstrated the ability to hit $8 in the past that currently costs less than $8, is about to be in more decks and is relatively low stock.

I guess my point is that if you find the right lists to compare, you can do in 30 seconds of copying and pasting and a few minutes of paring lists down what used to take me much longer. If you don’t trust yourself to remember what was going on between multiple decks and you don’t think you know too much about EDH Finance to get actual data to back up your gut feelings, use a list comparison tool and see what’s really going on. You could have guessed Herald’s Horn, I bet, but who saw Helm of the Host coming? Not me, that’s why I do this now. You should, too.

That does it for me this week. There are some low-stock picks here that were going to hit a natural tipping point when people start building these new tribal decks anyway, so be in a position to sell to them rather than being in competition with them for copies. Your orders don’t get cancelled that way, in fact, you’re the one receiving the order, not placing it, and that’s how we make money rather than risking it. Until next time!

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