Watchtower

The Watchtower 10/28/19 for ProTraders – Plan Your Specs

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 week on and there’s no question, everybody loves Pioneer. In a display of the beauty that’s possible within Magic, a week went by with a brand new format, it’s been wildly popular, there’s a lot of fun and excitement around brewing, nothing looks bannable or miserable yet, and in general, nobody is particularly upset about anything. It’s all upside. How often does that happen in Magic (or life)? Players are flocking to the format, with new decks and strategies and revisions on a daily basis. As far as I’m concerned, the most impressive thing about all of this is that nothing looks like it’s on the ban list yet. On day zero we definitely figured something would look busted by now, whether it was Smuggler’s Copter, or Aetherworks Marvel, or Emrakul, or something. But no, nothing has appeared overpowered. If anything is pushing a boundary at this point it’s probably Oko, amusingly enough. 

Arclight Phoenix

Price Today: $11
Possible Price: $25

A week in and if there’s anything that’s clear, it’s that there’s a tremendous amount of space available to explore in Pioneer. Decks that were on the tips of players’ tongues on day one have already evolved considerably, and strategies that didn’t show up at all early in the week are gaining steam as days progress. There’s plenty of strategies receiving this treatment – Mono-G Abundance ramp has been, well, ramping up – and one in particular is the Izzetish Bird decks. The bird, of course, being Arclight Phoenix.

If you’ve followed Standard and Modern at all for the last year, you’ll remember that Phoenix was the hot card for awhile. Before Modern Horizons Phoenix was likely the top deck in the format, with blistering starts enabled by the not-yet-banned Faithless Looting. It really wasn’t until Hogaak came along that Phoenix was subdued, and had Looting not been banned along with Hogaak, it absolutely would have returned from the graveyard to continue it’s reign. Now that Pioneer is here players are right back at it, and while the spell mix isn’t quite as strong as it was in Modern, the competition is lower octane. Plus, you get to play Treasure Cruise with your Phoenix, and if that doesn’t sound absolutely filthy, you’ve never played Magic.

Phoenix had a high water mark of $30 or so during its previous heyday. Prices have come down to $10 to $11 since, though have begun gaining traction in the last few days as Kanister and a few others have posted strong results with various Phoenix builds. It’s entirely possible that this will end up by the wayside in Pioneer, once the Pro Tour gets its hands on the format and finds the truly busted stuff. Still, Phoenix did have a great time in Modern, and Treasure Cruise was banned in both Modern and Legacy, so the chance that the power level isn’t high enough for Pioneer is basically zero. Should a Phoenix deck post up as a tier 1 or tier 2 strategy in the new format, I’d expect prices to land between $20 and $30.

Rogue Refiner (Foil)

Price Today: $2
Possible Price: $8

Most of the conversation in Pioneer is around the banner, deck-defining cards, several of which I outlined in the intro paragraph. Level zero is going after the staples around which various decks are built. Level one is probably the lands that those decks need (Blooming Marsh and Botanical Sanctum). Level two, or three, I don’t know exactly, is finding the popular uncommons that sit across various strategies, and going after non-foil copies (this worked better in Modern where supplies on some of that stuff was almost nonexistent), or in the case of Pioneer, foils.

Rogue Refiner is cropping up all over the place. First of all, he’s Simic, and with Oko running around, everyone has a playset of Botanical Sanctum anyways, which means that his cost isn’t much of a factor. He’s a reasonable body that draws you a card on the way in, which gives him purpose in most strategies as simple raw advantage. On top of that, he provides two energy, which at first might seem useless, since if you’re not an Aetherworks Marvel deck, you wonder where the payoff is. In fact, the payoff is Aether Hub, a painless City of Brass so long as you have energy counters. Refiner ends a 1UG 3/2 that draws a card and makes one of your colorless lands tap for any color twice. That’s a lot of distributed utility.

Given that he’s showing up in a variety of strategies, I’m a fan of foils here. You’ll pay maybe $2 each, so long as you aren’t paying the shipping, which is a solid price for an already-obvious high-demand uncommon. I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see these climb into the $6 to $10 range after a few months (or hell, weeks) without any reprints. 

Aether Hub (FNM)

Price Today: $.75
Possible Price: $5

Speaking of Aether Hub, how about Aether Hub? FNM copies specifically. The mana in Pioneer is rough at the moment. We’ve only got half the fastlands, with the others currently locked in Modern by way of a single printing in Scars of Mirrodin. Obviously there are no fetches, and while we’ve got the full complement of shocks, they’re far less appealing without the ability to go get them as needed. Fabled Passage is making an effort, but it can’t tap for green on turn one and black on turn two. Three color decks have a genuine disadvantage in the mana bases that basically doesn’t exist in Modern.

Given that, Aether Hub is fairly appealing. At worst it’s colorless, which can be rough in certain circumstances, but at least it always comes into play untapped and produces something. Then, you toss in some Attune with Aethers and Rogue Refiners, both cards you’re more or less fine playing anyways, and now you’re set for mostly the entire game. In a format where making three colors is genuinely painful, Aether Hub is a good bandaid.

You can find copies around a dollar or less, especially if you can get free shipping, which is a solid buy-in for an FNM treatment of a popular card. Past examples have been quite profitable, such as in the case of Ancient Ziggurat. Getting out of Hub FNM promos at $5 shouldn’t be difficult at all in 2020, and should be a nice little bump given your buy-in.

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.

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Pioneering for profit

Pioneer is here! We’ve been expecting a new nonrotating format for a while, and having the fetches be banned is going to determine the outline of the format. The preliminary look of the thing is wild, with Modern’s bans not shaping the new format…yet.

I get it, I do, that Wizards wants to give people a chance. There’s not going to be an Eldrazi winter, since Temple, Eye, and the Tron lands aren’t legal. Heck, there’s not even bouncelands!

What we do have are some strong opportunities for gaining value, and while you’ve heard some of them, others are yet unpicked…

First of all, two caveats:

  1. Stuff is going to get banned. Sure, there’s no fetchlands, and that makes Deathrite Shaman a lot less busted, but does that mean Treasure Cruise is bad? Dig Through Time, Energy decks, Saheeli Rai plus Felidar Guardian…all of these are too good for a format like Modern, and Pioneer has a lot less answers.
  2. Stuff is going to get reprinted. Aaron Forsythe went on Twitch and said that Mystery this November isn’t Pioneer Masters, but it seems silly that they’d premier a new format without giving availability a boost. The reprints might not be soon, but they will happen. Masters sets sell far too well for this to not happen.

Keep both of these factors in mind. When a card spikes, sell and sell hard.

Heart of Kiran ($2.50 nonfoil/$14 foil)

Travis picked this to hit $5 on Monday, and I think he’s being super pessimistic. This is going to be $10 again, until Abrade becomes a maindeck card. We have two three-drop planeswalkers that have two plus abilities. Heart into The Royal Scions is SIX first strike, flying, trample damage coming in on turn three and that Heart will be available for defense too!

Smuggler’s Copter is the Vehicle getting all the attention, because it’s amazing and pushed, but Heart is the one that’s got a lot less of a chance to get eventually banned. 

Prized Amalgam ($2.50/$5)

There is a Dredge deck in Pioneer, but more accurately it’ll be a self-mill deck. Satyr Wayfinder, Glowspore Shaman, and Grisly Salvage are going to fuel a deck that just keeps coming back again and again. I’m not sure what form it will take, but the payoffs are going to be Amalgam, Narcomeba, and likely Haunted Dead. Amalgam is the only rare I’m interested in from this deck.

Pack Rat ($2/$7)

Amazingly, this has dodged a reprint all these years. People are going to start Pioneer off by rediscovering the hits of the past, and Pack Rat is one of the most resilient cards ever printed. I’m not sure if Mono-Black Devotion is going to be a thing (Or if Devotion returns when we go back to Theros in January) but the Rat was an integral piece to that deck. Thoughtseize is back up to $20, Collective Brutality is $13 (very tempting) but the discard suite is real in Pioneer, with Duress and Lay Bare the Heart likely the best options left.

Elder Deep-Fiend ($1/$2)

Wow did I hate this card in Standard, tapping my lands on my upkeep or tapping down blockers I was going to need. There’s a lot of lists floating around but the good news is that people want to chain these together, turn after turn, which means you’re playing the full four. As a small-set rare, there’s a lot less of these out there than you might expect, and it’s going to have a time where it spikes to $5 or more. Get your copies now, and feel free to hit up foils since they aren’t that much more expensive.

Kozilek’s Return ($2/$7)

The higher price on this is because it’s absurd in Commander, with the number of giant Eldrazi and the need to clean up the little ones. Yes, in case you forgot, this plays VERY well with the Deep-Fiend, and nonfoils should make it back up to $10 when people see this wreak havoc all over the place. 

Master of Waves ($2/$5/$2 Duel Deck foil)

Allow me to introduce you to a little combo I like to call “Oh no…oh yes”: 

Yes, this is a combo. There’s a lot of Elemental goodness to be had in Pioneer, such as Voice of Resurgence, but this is the build-around I’m fascinated with. The presence of a Duel Deck foil doesn’t faze me at all, because I know how well the Master does when you manage to draw more than one. People are going to play a lot of copies, and that’s to the good. Get your now before the camera shines and the spike hits.

Part the Waterveil ($1/$7)

What’s lovely about this card is that it’s going to give you an extra turn and hit your opponent like a truck, all at once. Yes, it exiles itself, but Nexus of Fate is legal in this format too. Waterveil is the best of the rest of the options for extra turns, unless you feel like going deep on Magistrate’s Scepter somehow. If you’ve never cast one of these with Awaken, you’re in for a good time, and dollar mythics almost never go lower. Grab a few now for when they hit big.

The Pioneer Creaturelands (fifty cents to $1.50 for nonfoils, $3-$7 foil)

There’s a lot of talk about what the manabases are for Pioneer, and so far, not enough people are addressing the creaturelands. Mutavault and Mobilized District are options too, but colorless lands need to be a bit better in this format, and all of these have seen some play when they were in Standard. 

I think the default ranking is going to be shocks-buddylands-fastlands, but please don’t sleep on these. All of them are still cheap, haven’t moved much, and haven’t been printed in several years. The good times are going to roll when all of these make it back up to $5+, and my guess would be for the BG and BW ones to be first.

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: The Vold and The Beautiful

9 Comments

Readers,

We’re talking about Korvold this week because Alela won’t cede the top spot and we’ve talked about Alela specs just about to death. That said, is the #2 spot worth discussing? Is the #1 spot even worth discussing? Hard to say. It takes a lot of adoption to move the needle given it’s a 1-of format and Magic is more popular than ever. Korvold is very popular this month. Does that matter?

How Popular is Popular?

Alela is the #1 commander this week and has been for 3 weeks, since the Brawl decks came out. It’s tough to say whether that matters enough. Atraxa was the #1 deck for weeks and moved quite a lot of cards by virtue of the demand created when people built Atraxa decks. Was Atraxa being the #1 deck of the week for a few weeks the main indicator that this card was something special? No, I think this is.

Atraxa is the #1 card of the last 2 years.

How do we know if Alela, let alone Korvold is going to juice us enough to get us into Atraxa territory? Well, I don’t think it matters – I think what matters is total amount the cards are played. Is Korvold enough to make Grave Pact go up in price? Probably not, there are a lot of decks playing it and a few hundred more a month isn’t enough to push the needle per se. Is it enough to make Pitiless Plunderer go up in price? There are a lot of copies of an uncommon from a recent set. So what has upside in a world where Korvold made people realize they want to play these cards?

Is Korvold responsible for the price rebound for Revel in Riches? It’s in 40% of Korvold decks – is that enough? Is perception more important than reality? Real demand hardly matters if someone like me (or you) buys every copy speculatively and tries to sell the copies themselves, so is it a matter of a card being mentioned on a podcast or YouTube video sometimes? Hard to say, but we can drill down into Revel a bit.

Revel has been called a Black “staple” of EDH by many people but if you look at inclusions, it’s mostly a Teysa card, Teysa being a very popular commander. It’s still OK – it is a Top 20 Commander (20th) this month despite lots of commanders being printed since. EDHREC moved to sorting by percentage so while fewer Massacre Girl and and Grismold decks are being built, a huge percentage of them are using Revel. How meaningful is it, then, that Korvold is already 7th in terms of percentage inclusion? Well, availability is an issue and I think inclusion will go up with availability as more decks are released in November or when I come off the dozens of copies of each deck I’m too lazy to list on eBay (tweet and me and remind me to list those, time is running out). Even if only a third of Korvold decks run the card, 1/3 of 3,000 decks is still more than 75% of 811 decks like in the case of Admiral Beckett Brass. I think Revel in Riches is a card that belongs in most Black decks and even though the stats don’t currently agree, it’s Top 10 in a popular set so SOMEONE is playing it.

Revel is a $5 card in the near term and could crest $10 if it doesn’t catch a reprint. Sure, there are a lot of copies of it floating around, but there are a lot of copies of Aetherflux Reservoir, too.

Korvold Doin Thangs

Card Kingdom charges more than TCG Player does by virtue of Card Kingdom having a generous buiylist policy and getting a ton of sales irrespective of whether they’re the cheapest. TCG Player is a market where multiple people undercut each other. That said, I’m immediately suspicious when Card Kingdom is charging twice what TCG player is charging. If Card Kingdom is 50% more than TCG Player, Card Kingdom is charging too much. If Card Kingdom is 100% more than TCG Player, TCG Player is charging too little.

I liked this at $2 but considering Card Kingdom is getting $4+, those $3 copies on TCG Player are looking pretty good. This is a $5 card, and your LGS might have this priced wrong – some that I visited this month sure did.

This is a future “Wait, when did that become $10?” candidate. It gets some play in Legacy, could impact Pioneer and I am using it at FNM. It’s also a beast in EDH. It’s not quite a staple since it does something Green already does well but in certain decks, this is a monster. It goes and finds Nykthos and Cabal Coffers and for that reason alone this deserves a look. I think the fact that it’s beginning to sell out makes those $2.35 TCG Player copies super juicy-looking.

This keeps flirting with $2 and can’t maintain it. Does Korvold finally give it the push it needs? Maybe, maybe not. Those $4 foils sure look inviting, though.

This card seems to be underperforming, but is it?

12th in a strong set, but Woodland Bellower is only like $3 and it’s a mythic and Pyromancer’s Goggles is $5 on the basis of price memory. It’s hard to know if $1ish for Leap is correct, I suspect it’s not but who knows if enough people are buying to bear that out. It’s certainly the best in a Mazirek or Korvold deck.

This now costs less than Black Market and has significantly fewer copies out there. Is that correct?

It’s very correct. Never be afraid to put the cards up side-by-side like this to compare prices. There are more copies of Black Market but it’s played way more. Is Attrition underpriced? Probably. But Black Market is not the best comparison.

Compared with Painful Quandary, an Enchantment in roughly the same number of decks but with way fewer copies out there, Attrition appears to be overperforming. Still looking at the graph, the buy price and sell price are converging and the lower the spread gets, the better it looks. I think Attrition is in play.

That does it for me this week. I think Korvold is going to do things. Is it Atraxa? Nope, but it’s also going to get a second wave, soon and it’s easily the best Mazirek variant ever, giving us access to Red in a way that Shattergang Brothers only dreamed of. Drawing cards is good and this does that, so don’t sleep on Korvold. Until next time!

Watchtower

The Watchtower 10/21/19 for ProTraders – Plan Your Specs

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.

You may have woken up today thinking we’d talk about the Standard banning. With Field of the Dead banned, what’s that mean for the format? Will Oko and Gilded Goose take over? Does Gruul have legs after winning the event? Well, here’s your answer: nothing has mattered less in the history of Magic.

Because alongside the B&R announcement, Wizards has rolled out a new format: Pioneer. Pioneer is meant to be nu-Modern, as it begins at Return to Ravnica, and extends through Throne of Eldraine. The five fetches that would be legal are banned, and we can assume the fetches won’t be legal ever. Other than that, that’s it: everything else is on the table, with the caveat from Aaron that they’ll be watching the MTGO results closely and making off-schedule ban announcements to keep the format from getting too degenerate. With all that said, let’s dive in!

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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.

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