Jason Alt, Unlocked ProTrader

Unlocked Pro Trader: Anti-Tech

Readers! As you all probably know, War of the Spark is going to feature Planeswalkers. Not just that, it’s going to feature ALL of the Planeswalkers. One in every pack, 36 in all. “One in every pack “sets like Dominaria with its Historic card in every pack, Ravnica sets with their Guildgate in every pack or Unhinged with their premium card in every pack sell well. That’s why Unhinged sold well. Every pack had a contraption.

With a glut of new Planeswalkers, we’re bound to get some good ones, right? 36 is a lot and while there are bad to be same bad ones at uncommon, there are bound to be some good ones at rare. People are planning on them impacting every format and should they impact EDH, there are some cards we can use to stop the other players. A lot of them are good against Atraxa, also, which is nice. Here’s some anti-walker tech. If the card is usable in formats outside of EDH, I’ll be sure to mention that, also.

HATE

These are sort of weak metrics for what I consider to be a pretty decent card. Its “rarity” means it was in 2 decks and is therefore twice as common as a rare in the set like the $10 Meren, and it was in a Commander Anthology as well, so it will take some doing for this to move. It’s also not going down and the buylist price as showing signs of life for a minute. This is actually a terrific beating if you’ve ever resolved it but at 6 mana for a creature, people aren’t super thrilled about it. I’m not sure why. It’s not a 1/1, it’s frequently a 25/25 for 6 mana and you kill a bunch of walkers. If you’re buying In Garruk’s Wake but not this, get your act together. Also, if you’re running in Garruk’s Wake but not this, well you’re 6 times as likely to exist. This card’s good but I can’t make people discover it unless the Command Zone ever has me come back on the cast, and if they do, I’m talking about Acquire, not this.

Another bit of anti-walker tech has the benefit of being a card I saw people talking about. I don’t think any of this stuff is good but I do think people will try it and I think if you buy now, you can sell to the greater fools who notice the cards selling out. That’s not the best strat, but neither is using Thran Temporal Gateway to construct a 2-card combo where you play a Planeswalker that costs 2UW for 4 colorless.

This has the added benefit of being legal in Modern, unlike Thief of Blood. I don’t think that’s all that relevant, but Modern players are optimistic enough to think Stoneforge was getting unbanned and Faithless Looting was getting banned, so it’s possible they’re optimistic enough to buy into something like this. Realistically, a deck in Modern playing Walkers is playing Jace, Karn, Terferri or other Karn and odds are they aren’t letting you resolve a damn Aether Snap, but tech is tech. This also nukes tokens, which can really matter in a game of Magic, especially since it gets non-creature tokens, which matters in EDH. A little.

It’s not just black cards getting caught up in the fun, though.

Tragic Arrogance usually gets the nod because you can pick an artifact creature or artifact land as two of the modes and really hose them, but Cataclysm nukes Walkers entirely and leaves you with an angel with an aura and a sword, usually. People don’t like MLD much, but I don’t like Planeswalkers much, even the ones I do like.

Hex Parasite got a bump when Solemnity hit but it’s always been a pretty solid way to deal with Planeswalkers. It’s mana-intensive, but you get a power boost that could knock out a now-defenseless player and it’s reusable. I like it to keep counters off of my Decree of Silence, but I always liked that.

The EDHREC metrics on Anti-Walker cards are weak, and probably for a good reason. The ones that don’t do extra duty, like also wiping out tokens, or killing all creatures or wiping the whole board aren’t worth a spot in a deck. You won’t necessarily play against a walker, and a lot of spot removal just gets it. You should be playing Merciless Eviction regardless of whether Walkers see more play. But with terrible cards like Thran Temporal Gateway poised to go up in price, it doesn’t hurt to think about how to counter the incipient Walker uprising. Until next time!

Watchtower

The Watchtower 3/11/19 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.

Two pieces of information are currently the catalysts of heavy market activity right now; the knowledge that War of the Spark is going to be heavily planeswalker focused, to the point that each pack is guaranteed a walker, and the existence of Modern Horizons, coupled with the point that no currently-Modern-legal card will appear in the set. Between them, every card that A. has to do with planeswalkers or B. exists in Modern is coming under intense scrutiny. We could talk awhile about the timing of the announcement — in fact, I did, on the latest episode of @mtgfastfinance — but that’s neither here nor there at the moment. We’ll keep our attention on the cards themselves this week. I’d also recommend revisiting last week’s article, specifically Mox Opal. I managed to find that card all over again this week, and it wasn’t until I pulled up my notes that I realized I wrote about it as recently as seven days ago. If it caught my attention twice in a row, I can at least say that my methodology is consistent, and I like the card.

Doubling Season

Price Today: $38
Possible Price: $60

This isn’t a particularly clever pick, and there’s no doubt you’ve encountered other people talking about it as well. That alone makes it worth turning my attention to it, since we’re sort of one level above that here. Most content of this nature is “here’s what’s going to be good,” while I try to make this column more “here’s where the attention is going to be focused.” I’m not sure if I succeed at making that clear, or in doing it period, but at least I think about it while I’m writing.

Anyways, Doubling Season. It’s hard to find a more well-known synergy than planeswalkers and Doubling Season. Season is the ur-EDH staple to begin with, and that particular interaction only intensifies the demand for the effect. You know this, I know this, every schmoe at your FNM knows this. It’s still true, and for that reason, worthy of our attention. 16,000 EDH decks can’t be wrong. With a deluge of planeswalkers a month away, expect there to be even more demand. What I especially like about non-foils is that Doubling Season is the type of card that speaks to the kitchen table. In fact, I myself bought a playset (for the hard decision of $20) back when I was playing living room table Magic. Those types of casual players don’t bother with foils at all. They’re also the type of player to be enamored with having “a planeswalker deck,” so the overlap is real.

You’ll find copies in the $38 to $40 range. There’s maybe fiftyish copies under $45, and then they’re up into $50, $55, and $60. That’s about what we’re shooting for I think; $60. This isn’t a glamorous shot by any stretch. It’s safe though, as we know it’s not coming in Modern Horizons and is too expensive to end up in a Commander product.

Oath of Gideon (Foil)

Price Today: $1.50
Possible Price: $6

In keeping with our planeswalker focus, as that’s hitting shelves before Modern Horizons, we turn next to Oath of Gideon. Two other Oaths are likely to be more directly impacted — Teferi’s and Nissa’s — as they’re, I guess, more “obvious.” Gideons is certainly useful though, as the two tokens run interference for a turn, and while a single extra loyalty isn’t as immediately impactful as doubling them, it comes down sooner, and is much less likely to be a target for enchantment hate while still shaving a solid turn off most ultimates.

It will be hard to build any planeswalker-centric deck without Oath of Gideon, I suspect. The two tokens are valuable whether we’re talking a casual sixty card build or a full-sized EDH list. Given that it’s not the most popular card in EDH yet, and the relatively low supply, I’m wondering if this was already targeted. There’s a whopping 22 pack foil copies on TCG right now, and for a card that’s semi-new and not in 40,000 EDH decks, I’d expect much more than that. There’s no price changes in the card’s history, so if someone did go after it, they didn’t manage to impact pricing yet. Still, keep that in mind.

What few copies remain are floating in the <$1 to $2 range. These should be an easy cruise up towards $5 or $6 once the spoilers are rolling in hard. I’d be looking for a quick exit on these, with the intention to buylist whatever you end up with.

Heritage Druid

Price Today: $7
Possible Price: $15

Rather than spend all week talking about WAR and the attention being paid to planeswalkers, I figure we should at least cover a little Modern. Remember, we want to look at cards that are currently legal in Modern that may see increased application or attention after having 250 new cards dumped into the set. My first choice for this slot this week was going to be Goryo’s Vengeance, until I remembered that it was in Ultimate Masters and that there were something like 400 copies of those on TCG right now. RIP Goryo’s Vengeance I guess.

Elves is a tribe that’s always hung at the edges of Modern, trying valiantly to elbow it’s way into the crowd, even succeeding, rarely, at relevance, only to be tripped and trampled on by the larger decks wielding Anger of the Gods the following weekend. There’s never been the necessary component to give them full stability by means of enough power that it can overcome the minimal sideboard hate that typically wipes it back out. As a fan favorite tribe that’s on the cusp of playability, it’s not unbelievable that Wizards would toss “elf” on a key card or two in the interest of giving them a bit more depth and range. Birchlore Ranger has long been a card I’ve wondered about, as it would give the deck access to any color of mana it needed, opening up all sorts of slots, whether being able to side in Rest in Peace as a GB deck, or run Beck in the main without needing to ruin their manabase.

Heritage Druid is a key engine in elves builds, to the point that any elves deck that didn’t utilize it would be a functionally different deck. At $7 a copy today with medium supply, there’s a definite possibility this moves into the $15 to $20 bracket with the announcement of new, powerful elves. Keep an eye on the spoilers, and have a purchase plan in place if something pops up. [/hide]

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.

Brainstorm Brewery

Brainstorm Brewery #329 Plateau is a Dual Land

http://traffic.libsyn.com/brainstormbrewery/Brainstorm_Brewery_329_Plateau_is_a_Dual_Land.mp3

Corbin (@CHosler88) is back in town with DJ (@Rose0fThorns) and Jason (@jasonEalt) to welcome back one of the originals, Marcel (@MarcelMTG), to talk about coverage, modern horizons, and much more!

Make sure to check us out on Youtube because everything is better with video. https://www.youtube.com/user/BrainstormBrewery

Jason Alt, Unlocked ProTrader

Unlocked Pro Trader: Number Crunch

Normally I have a few weeks’ worth of article ideas written out ahead of time but this time of year when there is a stretch between sets and nothing really has impacted EDH or other formats I pay attention to, the well starts to dry up. I’m not going to NOT write an article, so today we’re going to do a bit of housekeeping and get to a few smaller ideas that don’t warrant an entire article but will be nonetheless valuable to you. “Damn.” you’ll say as you finish reading this article. “That was mad valuable.” That’s the kind of thing you say. When you read an article such as this. A valuable one. Let’s get down to it, shall we? First of all, let’s do some pure number crunching with no analysis so I can look smarter than I am.

It’s The Remix To Ignition, Ravnica Mythic Edition

I have heard a lot of people say qualitative things about the planeswalkers from Mythic Edition but I haven’t seen much quantification. With that in mind, I am going to rank the 8 Mythic Edition Planeswalkers, first by the number of decks they are in on EDHREC and then by MTG Top 8. It’s too late to get a set of Mythic Edition but it’s not too late to buy single planeswalkers and you likely haven’t though about the amount of EDH play they get or you guessed at that amount. Here’s some fact action.

EDHREC Rankings

  1. Tamiyo, the Moon Sage (8,350)
  2. Sorin Markov (7,923)
  3. Dack Fayden (6,696)
  4. Ajani, Mentor of Heroes (5,519)
  5. Karn, Scion of Urza (1,238)
  6. Jaya Ballard (971)
  7. Domri, Chaos Bringer (123)
  8. Kaya, Orzhov Usurper (62)

MTG Top 8 Rankings

  1. Dack Fayden (2,647)
  2. Karn, Scion of Urza (1,302)
  3. Tamiyo, the Moon Sage (797)
  4. Ajani, Mentor of Heroes (471)
  5. Sorin Markov (96)
  6. Kaya, Orzhov Usurper (21)
  7. Jaya Ballard (15)
  8. Domri, Chaos Bringer (literally 3)

Average Ranking

  1. Tamiyo, the Moon Sage (2) (tie)
  2. Dack Fayden (2) (tie)
  3. Karn, Scion of Urza (3.5) (tie)
  4. Sorin Markov (3.5) (tie)
  5. Ajani, Mentor of Heroes (4)
  6. Kaya, Orzhov Usurper (7) (tie)
  7. Jaya Ballard (7) (tie)
  8. Domri, Chaos Bringer (7.5)

There are some very clear winners and losers here. It makes sense that two of the bottom-dwellers are the newest walkers – not only have they had the least amount of time to get used in EDHREC decks, Standard players haven’t even had that many events recorded by Top 8. Jaya Ballard is a very clear stinker here with much more time to get her act together.

The clear winners are probably surprising to everyone who assumed Karn would be a clear favorite. He’s used a lot in 60 card formats but his EDH appeal lags behind Sorin Markov, a planeswalker who tied him in the (unweighted, because how even would I begin to figure out how?) average ranking. Tamiyo and Dack are pretty clear favorites across formats and it seems like the 8 cards arranged themselves into tiers of sorts. Strong overall (Tamiyo and Dack), format-specific but quite strong (Karn, Sorin), average af (Ajani), not that useful (Kaya, Domri, Jaya). With 2 great walkers and 2 good ones, I would say it wasn’t a great buy although even with them flooding out copies, people got as many as they wanted people managed to resell later for more and boosters are still a thing. Next year, Hasbro will be avoiding the fustercluck that is their online store and using a special portal for stuff like this so expect it to be smoother. I don’t know if the Mythic Edition will be a buy next set but I do know that I like Dack Fayden’s metrics but not his art and I like Tamiyo’s both. One last thing – here they are ranked by TCG Player price.

  1. Tamiyo ($63.64)
  2. Karn ($56.16)
  3. Dack ($43.43)
  4. Kaya ($39.38)
  5. Sorin ($36.32)
  6. Domri ($31.60)
  7. Ajani ($25.60)
  8. Jaya ($15.39)

Jaya seems correct, Tamiyo seems correct, Karn seems OK, Sorin seems very wrong, Ajani seems pretty wrong, Dack seems pretty wrong, Kaya seems pretty wrong. Those prices are bound to shift some more so do with that info what you will. Tamiyo is also the best-looking card, don’t @ me.

Picks, Kinda

A twitter user who follows me (that helps me feel like answering a finance question) inquired today about Mana Maze – a card that’s in fewer than 500 decks on EDHREC. Don’t know what it does? You probably don’t.

So hey, that’s a pretty punishing card. It likely gets slotted into multicolored decks since you can’t play two Blue spells if you play this so that makes Blue angry, but this has uses. Zedruu, Blind Seer and Zur decks are the primary users of this card. The metrics aren’t great, but this is a hell of a hoser. It made me want to look at a few other cards that I think are underutilized and are in a set where a rare card used in EDH goes for upwards of $5 the way EDH cards from Invasion do if they haven’t been reprinted. These are one appearance on Game Knights away from popping off.

This is a pet card of mine but I think it’s solid. It’s a Bribery half the time and can deprive them of combo pieces or just snag a big mana rock. There are lots of uses for this card and 2,892 is respectable.

Also, this is a thing. The card is like $6 on Card Kingdom and for a promo version, that’s reasonable. The art is better, it’s more rare and it’s a good premium version for people who don’t like foils. It also features Dack Fayden, which people like.

Compare the inclusion numbers on those last two cards to this one. This isn’t played in 60 card formats at all, unless it gets play I haven’t seen in casual Magic but this isn’t a very casual card. For whatever reason, this card is “known” price-wise but cards with similar metrics haven’t popped price-wise yet. It’s a puzzle.

Another card I hadn’t check in on in a few years is Painful Quandary, which is a really brutal card. Since it’s possible to sort by set and inclusion numbers in EDHREC, why not look at the cards next to Mana Maze, Acquire, Overburden and Painful Quandary in their respective sets and see if anything looks “off.”

These are both used less than Mana Maze but are worth more. Also, Tectonic Instability is DIRTY and no one uses it. People don’t like when people mess with mana but the people who mess with mana aren’t really using the tools available to them, which is odd. Anyway, that seemed noteworthy.

Used less than Acquire, has inflated inclusion numbers due to the precon effect and has a reprint. Funny what the Travis Woo effect can do to stupid cards.

The only non-Mythic rare used less than Painful Quandary but worth more in Semblance Anvil and that’s because of Modern. Also, no non-reprinted card used more is worth less. Nothing seems confusing in Scars.

This set sucks, lol. No surprises here, although if you didn’t know Keldon Firebombers was real money and Citadel of Pain is in bulk that gets shipped to you, that’s worth knowing.

You should go through sets on EDHREC yourself and see how many surprises you run across.

That does it for me this week. Join me next week for a complete topic. Until next time!

MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY