Jason Alt, Unlocked ProTrader

Unlocked Pro Trader: One For One

Readers!

What do we do when there’s no EDHREC data yet? Whatever I want, this is my column. Today I am going to look at a bunch of new cards and try to find a card that could be poised to move on the basis of the new card. Sound good? This will be a fun one.


Second spikes are usually pretty hard and this one is poised. Already on the upswing following a crash when people didn’t quite build as many Hapatra decks as people thought they might, Skitter is a perfect target. I think Yawgmoth is likely to spike 10-20 cards on his own but this is the most obvious so it’s going to go first. We’ll talk about him in depth in his own article when it’s warranted.

You could find 20 targets on just this one commander’s page but I think one I want to highlight today is this one.

If you have Flourishing out, this is Boundless Realms for cards like Gaea’s Cradle and Nykthos. You may not get the exact lands you want and putting 7 mana into it doesn’t guarantee you as many lands and Realms does, but this also puts non-basics into play untapped and I think that makes this a very different card. When X=6 you look at 12 cards and statistically get 4 lands, untapped. That’s a 2-card combo with Flourishing, but so is Realms and Amulet of Vigor. I dunno, this is on an upswing and it’s going in every Flourishing deck if people are smart.

I have seen people talk about cards ranging from Tibalt to Witch Hunt to Leyline of Punishment, but here’s a funny one.

This puts you in black but it’s also pretty hilarious to dome everyone for 10 and then burn them out with spells. This also gives you access to spells like Exsanguinate which get better when you have a ton of verse counters. Of all the cards to pair with Aria, which may or may not be a thing, this is the most hilarious and is already trending up, albeit minimally.

Kidding.

Check out which decks run Stony Silence, I guess. I’m not sure what this does, besides make Lattice more desirable than it already is, which is lots. A Karn, Ouphe, Silence, Null Rod deck could be nasty.

This has already spiked a few cards, including Deranged Hermit, but if people are going deep on Squirrels, there are things they have missed.

People aren’t going super deep on Squirrel stuff, but they should. Pretend they’re nuts and collect them.

A lot of these effects are good paired with Wrenn which isn’t going to be a new EDH deck, but could be in Modern and also could get people to dust off Mina and Denn or Angry Omnath. 2 mana ‘walkers are historically bad but this doesn’t appear to be in that camp. I also like Strip Mine and Wasteland right now.

This peaked hard and high on the basis of the Commander deck and now that all the copies are concentrated in the hands of dealers, this could have some real growth potential. We aren’t done talking about this sicko card, though, it’s going to be great!

Sorry this week felt like a bit of a hodgepodge but I didn’t want to go too deep on anything in particular. Feel free to do that yourself! If there are cards like it that exist, see which decks play them on EDHREC and which cards have high synergy scores from getting played alongside them. I’ll be back next week to go way in depth on a commander and scoop up all the picks people forgot when they bought out all the obvious cards. Until next time!

Watchtower

The Watchtower 5/28/19 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.

Modern Horizons spoilers have been going bananas. This set is not disappointing. Wizards has managed to include cards for both Urza and Yawgmoth, two new allied color swords, the return of snow, squirrels, and ninjas, forty-something keywords, an insane new Sliver legend, and plenty more. Specs have been going bananas too, and we’re going to have way too many cards to discuss while recording @mtgfastfinance tonight. And this is just the beginning. Once the set is fully spoiled, there will be months of people finding and exploring deck designs that unlock even more cards.

Second Chance

Price Today: $8
Possible Price: $25

Disclosure: I’ve got a chunk of these laying around.

Many of the new cards have caught my attention. Some are intriguing, but I’m not sure what to make of them. Some I can plainly tell are quite powerful, but I haven’t found the other half of the equation. And some I find the answer on social media almost immediately, and just say “yep.”

Hall of Heliod’s Generosity is a great utility land that’s going to find homes in EDH right off the bat. For two mana you get to put an enchantment card back on top of your library. People are going to be flipping Ghostly Prisons and Doubling Seasons and Omnisciences left and right. Why wouldn’t they be? You always have the choice to, instead of drawing a random card, draw the best enchantment in your graveyard each turn. That’s going to come up often.

The juice comes from Second Chance, an enchantment that sacrifices itself. To what end? Why, to get you an extra turn. And what do you do on that extra turn? Why, put Second Chance back on top of your library! Once you’re fateful hour’d, you can recur Second Chance every turn for a hard lock. From there, you can win at your leisure.

Second Chance’s biggest barrier is that it’s not legal in Modern. Our applications are limited to EDH, Legacy, and the kitchen table. And at 127 current decks in EDH, there isn’t exactly seething demand for it there. In this case, I see that as a silver lining though. There’s virtually no EDH demand for Second Chance right now. What about after a land has been printed that a huge percent of white decks will want to include anyways, that happens to set up an infinite-turn combo under specific circumstances? People that would have passed on it before may swing back around and toss it in, since while it wasn’t good enough on its own, it’s definitely above the cut once you can accidentally walk backwards into a combo.

With supply low and prices in the $7 to $8 range, there’s already some latent demand. Adding this land may fuel the fires in a few spots, and it doesn’t take much to kick Reserve List cards off.

Academy Rector

Price Today: $55
Possible Price: $100

I stumbled upon Rector while looking for cards related to Heliod’s land, and while it’s not exactly going to pop in response, our old buddy the rector is still well positioned. Heliod’s Hall will make its way into plenty of decks where its marginal, and in response, pilots may be inclined to shore up the enchantment theme. It won’t take much either; if you’ve got three decent enchantments in your deck and you want to play Hall, but don’t want it to feel like a waste most of the time, what can you do without adding nine more enchantments? How about you toss in Rector? It’s a single card, but now all your tools for searching for and recurring creatures apply to one that then goes on to find one of your three great enchantments. You’ll go from playing roughly one a game to playing your three enchantments six times a game, just by adding Hall and Rector.

Rector rates at about half the popularity of Grim Monolith, a card of similar age. Grim Monolith is colorless, so of course is viable in every EDH deck that exists, relative to Rector, which can only land in white decks. They both end up at roughly 3% usage, which I’m a bit surprised by. That tells me a two things. Despite costing nearly $200, Grim Monolith sees just as much play as a card that costs less than $60. And Monolith, a generic mana rock, currently costs nearly three times as much as Rector. Both of these point to Rector being underpriced at $60, especially with a new tool for enchantment decks coming shortly.

Also good luck with foils, they’re nearly a grand. If that upsets you, consider how I feel, having found a TCG email stating that I sold four foil Rectors for $80 each three years ago.

Worm Harvest (Foil)

Price Today: $1
Possible Price: $8

One card that’s wrinkling my brain today is Ruination Rioter. His on-death trigger targets anyone with damage, and if you do some work, a LOT of damage. Imagine you’ve got five, nine, or even fifteen lands in your graveyard. You put Rioter on the stack. Without a counterspell in hand, what’s your opponent’s choice? Once it resolves it’s a ticking time bomb, and their only outs are exiling your graveyard and pathing it. Threatening a bolt the whole time reminds me of playing with Shrine of Burning Rage, a card that constantly gave me conniptions during Scars of Mirrodin Standard.

Anyways, I like Rioter, and went looking for ways to make it work. Along the way I stopped on Lord Windgrace’s EDH page, and felt compelled to check out Worm Harvest. The numbers on this guy are tempting. Eventide foils are completely out of stock on TCGPlayer, with the last sold copy at $10. Modern Masters, the only other foil reprint, has less than 20 copies available, most around $1 to $2. It’s going to take one person doing a pass on this to empty inventory and set prices on MMA foils at $6 or more.

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 2012. You can find his articles there weekly, as well as on the podcast MTG Fast Finance.

Casual Fridays

Value in Guilds

One of my guiding principles in buying, trading, and selling cards has been the belief that attention and new things can really distract us from potential profit.

For instance, right now we’re all loving the new Standard format and Modern Horizons is making things go absolutely bananas. This is wonderful, because there’s a lot to look at and some profit to be made.

I want to look at the last two sets especially, because they have more than a year remaining in Standard. There’s two characteristics that have to be true for me to want to buy a card at this point:

First of all, I have to be content with the card as a long-term hold. It’s entirely possible that none of these hit and I’m stuck with copies for a long while. This is tricky for me, because generally, I like foils a lot more for long-term holds, but being able to put them in the long term box and move on with my life is important.

Second, I have to believe that the card does something relatively unique in Standard. This can mean good removal, or a planeswalker that’s being held down by the current environment. To put it another way: What might be better when Ixalan/Rivals/Dominaria/Magic 2019 rotate out in four months?

One pitfall I want to avoid: A great selection of cards was added to the Challenger decks this year, so I want to stay away from stuff like Conclave Tribunal (easy $2 uncommon) or Experimental Frenzy (buy the foils!) so that’s ruling out a few cards right away.

March of the Multitudes ($4 nonfoil/$9 foil)

A banner mythic and the quintessential ‘win more in Commander’ card, I love a relatively low buy-in point. The foil multiplier is lower than I would have expected, but I have a big sticking point: Finale of Glory. Being an instant is a very good thing, and Convoke basically means you’ll double the number of creatures in play, but Finale is just better when you get to it. The creatures are bigger, and should 12 mana be hit, it’s hard to imagine the game’s not over.

If March falls to a dollar or so I’ll get in but the price is a bit too high for me right now.

Risk Factor ($5/$8)

That’s a really low foil price compared to the original price, and I have to admit that I’m surprised to see that this isn’t seeing any Modern play at this point. This is not a good Commander card, so what I’m asking myself is “What deck wants this at rotation?” Mono-Red is basically gone when rotation hits, but losing the low-curve threats might open up a little more midrange in red, and that’s when this can shine.

I’m in for a couple of playsets, hoping for the spike to $10 by Christmas.

Expansion // Explosion ($5/$9)

There’s an infinite combo in Standard, and it’s convoluted as heck. You need Ral, Storm Conduit in play, and two of these, or Ral used his -2, and you’ve got an instant on the stack plus one Expansion in hand. Basically you’re copying the copy spell infinitely, and dealing that damage with Ral.

I also like picking up Ral in the $2 range, because any deck that wants to combo off will want four of each of these. Explosion will always be Standard-legal with Wilderness Reclamation, which is a nice fallback position. Someone’s going to spike a big tournament with this wacky combo deck, and I want to be ready to sell the pieces of that deck.

Deafening Clarion ($1.50/$3)

Fiery Cannonade is good, but this is better and right now, we’ve got nearly-perfect mana for any color combination. We have all ten shocks and all ten checklands, which makes some decks run no basics at all. Jeskai Superfriends did very well the last two weeks, and this is one of the cheapest cards.

Even a minor bump will pay off quite nicely.

Thousand-Year Storm ($3/$8)

We’ve seen some decks trying very very hard with this card, and I always appreciate those willing to go the extra mile to get ten Shocks on the stack.

It looks like the red and white aggro decks will lose most of their good cards at rotation, so a janky combo card like this might be exactly what’s ordered. Plus, lots of decks have some random enchantment hate due to Search for Azcanta, and if TYS stays in play it’s going to be quite difficult to lose.

This is also great long-term, as being able to get 5+ Time Warp on the stack is exactly what Commander decks are looking for.

Trostani Discordant ($2.50/$5)

The good news is that this is a mythic card that is pretty cheap. The bad news is that as a legend, very rarely will the full four copies make it into a deck. Even the Selesnya Tokens lists would only run three.

However, picking up the foils at $5 is a pretty easy grab. Long-term, this has too many abilities not to be Commander-relevant and the foils will offer a much higher rate of return when they hit.

Ionize ($1.50/$4) and Absorb ($1.50/$5)

Right now, we have the mana to make three-color decks pretty easy. When Dominaria and Ixalan rotate in October, we lose the checklands, and I don’t know if we’ll get replacements in Magic 2020.

Control decks are also going to have Dovin’s Veto (an $8 promo right now, trade for them as soon as someone wins it at your FNM) and Sinister Sabotage as possibilities. What these decks want most, though, is a way to have the counterspell do something to help them win while keeping card parity.

I like Ionize best, because there’s a lot more copies of Absorb out there. Losing Teferi, Hero of Dominaria is a huge blow, though, and I wish I knew which flavor of control deck will be the go-to after rotation.

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 Time to Panic

4 Comments

Readers!
Typically I don’t like to talk about cards that are in the middle of spiking because that is very stressful. I think a lot of people who pass themselves off as finance minds call stuff while it’s spiking and get a lot of credit because, wow, they nailed that “prediction” and I want in one some of that sweet action. You mean to tell me I can make a prediction that’s not going to be wrong and be heralded as a genius? Yes, I’m all about that. Also, you may be able to snag a cheap copy and avoid overpaying later. Check downstream – TCG Player and Channel are bought out first, but other stores are still HODLing. Check page 3 of your google search results. TCG Player says Wayfarer’s Bauble is $4 but Card Kingdom’s 20+ copies (the max they list is 20, they have more) in all of its 5 printings for $0.99 says otherwise. Let’s do the panic thing and talk about the slow movers next week. This will be a short one but it will be dense with value. Now is the part where non-Pro Traders get cut off and I’m sorry about that. Pro Trader is like $60 a year and I’m about to make people way more than that.

Morophon is doing thangs and that’s good. He’s the variable commander people have been waiting for and he’s already caused some cards to pop, which I’ll mention in case your LGS has copies, and more cards are about to pop. Basically anything that says “choose a tribe” is going to go off, even if Morophon isn’t good (he probably isn’t).

Fist is sold out everywhere for like $15. Despite just getting a reprint in the Dragon deck, it’s getting paired with Morophon. Fist makes your spells cost WUBRG and Morophon makes them cost WUBRG less if they’re of the chosen tribe. Do you dump a bunch of Eldrazi? Slivers? Humans? Is this combo good? Maybe. It’s popular, though, and Fist is sold OUT. If you have these, sell into hype. If your LGS has these for $3, buy them for $3.

Ditto on Jodah. CK has $0.50 non-foils, but foils are to the moon, probably forever. I don’t know if this combo is good but it’s happening. The thing about Morophon is that decks that already have a good commander like Dragons and Slivers won’t want him in the 99 and decks that don’t have a good commander will have fewer creatures than they think. Getting free creatures is cool but I think this is mostly hype. Feather maintained its hype for a few weeks, we’ll see how Morophon does.

Same deal here. You can check the Reaper King page on EDHREC to see if stuff like Scarecrone is where you want to park money, but Morophon makes you able to blow up a ton of stuff for every changeling you play for free. Is that good? Maybe. But everything is good in EDH.

Stuff that hasn’t popped yet is more interesting.

This was touted when first printed but never really went anywhere. I think it could have upside if you have to play creatures like Beast Whisperer in the deck to get a combo off. This is a low-risk bulk rare and since a bunch of tribal decks that never had a commander before are about to be 5 color decks if they want to be, go nuts.

Ditto for this guy. Gettable for like $4 most places, this is going to get slammed in a lot of decks with no lords and with no reprint in site, this second spike is bound to be heavy.

This is expensive but it’s also down from its historical high. If you’re playing creatures for free, you need to replace them in your hand. This is a no-brainer.

I left in the vendor bar to show that sites that had this cheap are selling out already.

Honestly, all of Commander 2017 is in play if you ask me.

That’s Morophon. Let’s talk about the other card.

Urza is pretty nuts. A mana generator AND a mana sink? I must be dreaming. Why they would make a commander that perfectly lines up with Paradox Engine like this, I’ll never understand, but let’s look at Engine.

Neat. Remember when I said to buy these for $5 if they didn’t get banned 6 months after it was printed? Well, I bought like 3 total, so even I don’t listen to me. This was already expensive before they printed a Tolarian Academy on a body that can play all of your spells for 5 colorless, so RIP this card’s price. Can they print this again to lower the price? It will be hard, I don’t see how. Try to find these on obscure sites and at the LGS. This was a $40 foil like 2 weeks ago. RIP.

This is recovering from a reprint, very good in the deck and still in play. Go get you some.

Hi. I tap for mana, now.

Hi. I tap for mana, now, and you only need 4.

Hi, I make Moxen, now. I’m also a $5 foil.

I think the Urza deck will make a lot of utility artifacts go up more slowly, but this article was meant to go out quickly while there is still time to buy some of this, so, go buy stuff. Later.

MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY