Watchtower

The Watchtower 12/17/18 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 last week’s massive Pro Tour changes are still on the community’s collective lips. How will future qualifications work? What will the ability to get and stay on the train look like? At the same time, the Arena competitive queues have been announced to be best-of-1, which means no sideboarding. Many players, especially those familiar with high level play, are displeased. A great deal of skill comes from clever sideboarding.

On our side of things, it’s all about UMA right now. Supply is high, probably the highest it will ever be, so it’s time to start thinking about what we should be looking at.

Frantic Search (Foil)

Price Today: $1.50
Possible Price: $10

For the first time in a whopping 19 years, Frantic Search has been reprinted. Long a combo staple, and possibly the most busted of the “untap” cycle from Urza’s Legacy, it has many admirers. In 60-card formats it’s used to generate storm, churn through cards for a minimal price, and possibly even untap a land that produces more than one mana. In EDH (where you’ll find it in over 10,000 decks), it’s primarily used for the latter; untapping a Gaea’s Cradle and Cabal Coffers is just about the dumbest ritual you’ll find in Magic.

At this point in Magic’s timeline I’d wager that it’s the use in EDH that most demand comes from. Untapping lands is powerful, and digging for a specific type of card at any given time is always useful. That isn’t to say it doesn’t have purpose elsewhere though, of course. While it’s banned in Legacy and Pauper, it’s useful in Vintage, cube, and perhaps moreso than both, kitchen table. I certainly recall finding allure in the spell back when we only played in our college apartment, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one. That type of demand doesn’t tend to push on foils much, but anything helps.

Perhaps most appealing here is that pack foils are $25 to $30, and the current UMA foils are a whole $1.50. I’m certainly not expecting a recently printed uncommon to hit the same price point as a 19-year-old original foil, there’s certainly room for growth. Supply is on the high side, but remember, we’re in the deepest it’s going to get.

Dark Depths (Box Topper)

Price Today: $125
Possible Price: $200

Now that we have the small ball out of the way, let’s talk about something with some heft.

Dark Depths is a cool card. We can all accept that. “Unfathomably large creature hidden in the mists” is just cool. It’s also popular. While not legal in Modern, it’s a core component of at least two Legacy strategies, shows up in Vintage, cube, and over 3,500 EDH decks. It’s also typically a four-of when played, since if you’re going through the effort of pulling it off, you need to make sure it’s happening.

There are several foil copies of Dark Depths with the release of UMA. We’ve got the pack foils, currently clocking in at around $260. We’ve got the FTV Lore copies, which cost a whopping $20, which everyone hates because the foiling on those sucks and they feel bad. Now we’ve got the two UMA copies too; the pack foil and the box topper. UMA packs will run you $55 or so. That’s not bad for a foil Dark Depths, but let’s be real, it’s just not as cool as the box topper. The box toppers have the same great new art, but borderless, it really explodes off the card. Realistically they’re going to be the most popular, and anyone that takes their Dark Depths seriously, which is exactly the type of person to make use of this card, is going to be looking to pick them up.

$120 is no small buy-in, but given the relative scarcity and overall distribution process, I’m expecting these to behave something like Inventions. Supply is relatively full right now, with seemingly high prices, but a few months from now it may be a bit shocking to see how many fewer there are and how much more they cost. I’d be surprised if Dark Depths doesn’t cruise upwards of $180, $190, or $200, and possibly more. It could be slow with the holidays just a week away, but come February things may start changing.


Demonic Tutor (Foil)

Price Today: $160
Possible Price: $250

Wizards has been surprisingly reluctant to roll out Demonic Tutor. Not counting the early Revised-era pritings (FBB, IE, CE, etc.), they put it in a very early Duel Deck. Then the reprint of that Duel Deck in the anthology series. And…that’s it. For a spell as popular as it is, you’d expect them to make it much more available. They haven’t, though. The release in UMA is the first “new” printing of it since 2009.

With the UMA release, we were also given the box topper. This is a big get. Up until now, the options for Demonic Tutor have been uninspiring. You can have the judge promo, which is dark and not particularly intriguing, for $260. Or the Beta version for well over $500. That’s really it. There’s a reason most copies you see cast are “Revised copy from a shoebox” quality.

UMA adds some much needed depth to the pool of options. Not only do you have the UMA pack foils at an approachable $60, you’ve got the topper at a current price of $160. Now, don’t get me wrong, that’s a steep buy-in. It’s going to be tough for most people to make a move that big. But it’s absolutely the coolest version of this card aside from possibly Beta, which is going to run you at least three times as much for anything that’s sleeve playable. If you want a cool Demonic Tutor, and don’t want to spend over $500, this is your best bet.

For arguably the second-most popular card in EDH, that Wizards has been absurdly stingy with reprinting, in the coolest version that has existed since 1993, $160 is probably going to look like  a good price in three to nine months. Seeing this climb to the current judge levels, or even higher, is certainly possible.

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

Known Information

I have to admit, every time I hear about the MTG Finance ‘cabal’, those ‘shadow manipulators,’ I’ve got to laugh.

I don’t know of another group (granted there might be others, but they charge more, like a bookie’s sports line or a stockbroker’s private group) who does more to be transparent. I’ve been part of this site for more than five years, and I admire the way that we all make it super damn obvious what we’re doing and why.

You’re allowed to be annoyed when a card becomes unaffordable for you, but it’s not our fault if you don’t want to listen. We (James, Jason, Travis, me, plus the long and impressive list of others who’ve written for this site) want you to gain value and avoid losing value in your collection. That’s all we do, and we’re very open about our thought processes.

So this week, I want to go over my information sources, some of these are super obvious and some might not be. None of these are going to cost you much, either.

First of all, the obvious: Be a ProTrader! You get these articles before others, including the indomitable MTG Fast Finance podcast. MTGFF is a lot of fun for me when I fill in, and it feels good to be able to pontificate about the cards I like without worrying about my word count.

MTGFF also combines the ‘what has happened’ with the ‘what will happen’ without throwing too much other data at you, and rarely goes over an hour. I know some of you listen to podcasts all the time, but for those of us who do so sparingly, brevity is a gift.

Also, in all modesty, our track record is pretty impressive.

You should also be following all of us on Twitter. We all have our Twitter names in our articles, and if you don’t want to pollute your main feed with a ton of Magic, use the list function. I like keeping my feeds separate for Magic, and sports, and politics, and faces in things.

We lead the way. Come along, and make some money.

Twitter is an amazing resource, really. It’s an instant source of news, with rapid feedback, and for a lot of us, a fun way to interact with fans and readers. There’s a lot of the site that’s annoying, yes, but use that block and that unfollow liberally.

My personal tip: mute ‘RL’ and ‘Reserved List’ tweets. Saves me such a headache every time someone wants to revisit settled history.

There are several non-Wizards websites that I often consult (aside from this one, naturally). I refer to mtgtop8’s ‘staples’ section when I want to gauge the playability of a spec. It’s super helpful to know how many Modern decks are playing Engineered Explosives (21%!!) and how many copies each. (1.6, so 1-2 in the sideboard of a ton of decks)

If I’d thought about it, I would have known that Noble Hierarch was the most-played creature in Modern, but finding that tidbit just makes pulling the trigger on a playset so much easier.

Another great function here is the lists of what’s won tournaments, including the sideboards. This is useful for a number of reasons, including being able to quickly see that two Arclight Phoenix decks made the top 8 of GP Portland last week. I know I wrote about the Phoenix as part of Standard+ last week, but all signs point to it being a staple that only gets better with each cheap spell printed.

You’ve seen me refer to EDHREC, or heard us mention it on the podcast, but really, spend the time and go explore the site. It’s got a limitation in that you have to want to upload your deck online, but people who do that are more likely to be the ones who buy cards online. My kind of people, frankly.

Being able to see what the hive mind is thinking in Commander is super-useful. Lots of people approach the format as experiential, as some way to be incredibly unique. For instance, a friend of mine had a Stonebrow, Krosan Hero deck that he called ‘The Juicer’ due to every card featuring mega-buff male chests. Think The Brute and you’re there.

Most folks, though, want to optimize a deck or at least find the sweet combos. You’ll see a lot of repeats (Eternal Witness everywhere, lots of decks with Mirari’s Wake, etc.) but you’ll also be able to see what might spike next.

An example: everything with Proliferate went wild when Atraxa, Praetors’ Voice came around, but it took time for The Chain Veil to pop too.

Chilcott with his Atraxa deck (artists’ rendition)

Finally, I want to give some love to a site that I use more than any other, and I have for years: whatsinstandard.com is a godsend for people like me who know things but have trouble with the specific details of what is known.

I want to give credit to the creator by name. I think it’s Ben Carlsson, but if I’m wrong and misread GitHub, forgive me, and correct me so I can correct this.

I found this site back when we were going to have 18 months and rolling rotation in Standard, and I could never keep track of anything. That’s a real liability for me, and messes with my ability to plan. Finding this simple, easy, and clear list of what people could play and for how long…I refer to this site weekly, if not more often. It’s bookmarked on my phone, too, because I can’t always remember which year what sets are rotating.

Everything that’s Standard-legal right now, for instance, rotates out in about 10 months, except for Guilds of Ravnica, which has 22 months to go. Enormously useful and easy to grok. Thank you, What’s In Standard?

Cliff has been writing for MTGPrice for five years now, 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 (next up: Oakland in January!) 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: Ace or Base?

Readers! I am on a bit of a roll lately, writing what are at least my best-received articles if not my best-written and I would like to keep that streak alive and offer some real value this week. Continuing a bit from what we established last week in an article that if you haven’t read yet, you should and then come back and read this one. We established that artifacts and other colorless cards that have the potential to go in any deck tend to go in twice as many decks as similar “tier” staples that are limited to going into only decks of a certain color. The math is a little fuzzy, but we’re coming to a conclusion that “an artifact is basically twice as playable” which isn’t that exact and doesn’t need to be. That rule can be a rule we use every set we evaluate moving forward and as long as you check my math and, you know, agree with me, that factor of 2x can be something that helps you make assessments moving forward.

Armed both with that (vague, but so what?) factor and also the same process we used to come to those conclusions, we can therefore take a look at cards in Ultimate Masters and determine whether they are more or less likely than a card we consider a baseline “likely to recover in price” and make our buys with that knowledge in mind. It needn’t be the only factor we use to determine whether a card is worth buying now (prices have dipped and some are already showing signs of a brief recovery which might not hold, but people are already saying now is a good time to start buying in) but it can inform some of your future buying decisions when weighed against other factors. Or not, just ignore other factors and buy what I say to because you’re not paying for article access to have to think afterward, you’re paying me to think. Well, here’s what I think.

Ace or Base?

The first thing we need to do in order to figure out if something is above or below our “likely/not likely to recover in price” line is to figure out where it is. I am remaining relatively agnostic to cards used outside of EDH unless they’re used in EDH also. I can’t ignore the effects of other formats but I can mainly stick to cards that are largely used in EDH and to that end, I decided to use the handy feature of EDHREC where you can click on a full set and it will list the cards in order of EDH inclusion. The number one EDH card in terms of total EDHREC deck inclusions from Ultimate Masters? You guessed it. Terramorphic Expanse (You thought it was Eternal Witness, didn’t you? Me too.) I lucked out a bit in that prices hadn’t been updated in a few days so I got to look at the price of the cards before people started cracking packs for the most part which helps me figure out how much certain cards tanked which is a factor in determining how much they’re likely to rebound.

I think, personally, the line should be at Gamble. I think Gamble isn’t likely to recover a ton but I think cards used more than Gamble (and reprinted less) are more likely to recover and cards used less are less likely.

At 10k decks, Gamble is 28th on the list of cards in Ultimate Masters ranked by inclusion. Gamble has had a little play outside of EDH but that was basically inclusion in the Lands deck in Legacy and I hate to say it, but Legacy isn’t really driving prices like it used to. Gamble probably stays the same-ish and with the Eternal Masters version of the card down to $12 on Card Kingdom before the reprint and the Ultimate Masters version currently selling for $3.50, I don’t know if Gamble has the chops to make up for lost ground. If it does, that just means we have a higher degree of confidence in the cards we pick above Gamble and could see opportunity in sub-Gamble picks like Balefire Dragon, Phyrexian Altar and Glen Elendra Archamage.

Bubble Cards (Immediately Sub-Gamble)

I think if we don’t expect Gamble to regain more than like 50% of the $6 it lost, these cards are even less likely. Phyrexian Altar’s price was largely predicated on scarcity and as much as I loved to harp on how much it needed a reprint, that wasn’t because I thought it was a good investment post-reprint. I think Altar is used in only one format, is in fewer than 10,000 decks and doesn’t quite have the chops to get there. Phyrexian Tower and Gamble get played in Legacy and Karn and All is Dust get played in Modern to the extent that the EDH play may be an after thought but they’re still in the top 40 cards in the set in terms of play. I think we can safely ignore Modern cards and focus on EDH cards. Balefire Dragon’s price seems largely predicated on scarcity even though it’s relatively recent but I think it’s still less likely than Gamble to recover. These cards could go either way, but since there are much juicier targets, why worry about them? If you want them to play with, you can safely buy in at the current price and not feel too bad about it.

Relatively Certain Gainers (Immediately Super-Gamble)

The 13 cards immediately above Gamble look good. I think we can all agree Life From The Loam is likely to rebound just as a gut feeling so drawing the line above it didn’t make sense and even if we’re wrong about Gamble being our baseline, we can agree Loam probably goes up. Now we’re not sorting by EDH+other formats so the order the cards are in can be misleading when sorted solely by EDH demand, but all this does is tell us which cards we should zoom in on and take a second look at. Let’s look at Loam.

Before the reprinting, the last reprinting of Loam (Izzet Vs Golgari) were $24 on Card Kingdom. Today, the Ultimate Masters version is $14 and could probably go down a bit more – it’s $11 on TCG Player and players are racing each other to the bottom. Either way, it lost about $10. It has recovered exactly that amount before.

The Lord Windgrace deck didn’t suck for Loam and neither did people toying with Dredge in Modern, but between April 2017 and October 2018, the value recovered and then some, and that’s with a duel deck printing and a Masters set printing. Eventually this will stop recovering, but I don’t think this will be the printing that does it.

So what about a card that’s not getting any help from other formats? $23 or so and bafflingly more on TCG Player before the reprinting, today you can grab an Ultimate Masters copy of Mikaeus for $14 on Card Kingdom or $12 on TCG Player. If you’re going to do that, you may as well grab the $35 box-topper, which is significantly less than the set foil price. I think Mikaeus, despite only being an EDH card, could see a rebound. It’s in more than 10k decks which is a bit of an arbitrary cut-off and only really means something relative to the other cards current for the number of decks listed but we do tend to see stronger rebounds for cards above that cut-off so I’m going to use it (with caution).

I think given its EDH-only play, Mikaeus is less likely to regain 100% of what it lost than Loam but it’s a mythic whereas Loam is a rare and that should help tremendously. All in all, I’d say Mikaeus is a good pickup right now.

This is worth mentioning because I have a penchant for blue commons in foil and this is the first and only printing of this art in foil. It’s currently significantly cheaper than the much more rare set foil. Card Kingdom is sold out of Urza’s Legacy foils at $33 and you can currently snag UMA foils for $5 on Card Kingdom or a $3 listed median/$1 market price on TCG Player. $1 is very incorrect for a cube, pauper and EDH card like this. Cheap foils of this seem like a Dramatic Reversal or Arcane Denial waiting to happen.

With solid EDH play, this card seems poised to recover a pretty decent chunk of the $18 or so it just lost. A card losing half of its value can be pretty brutal and while Loam seems poised to recover all of its value, copies of Loam go out 4 at a time in non-EDH formats whereas copies of Kozilek don’t. I think this is less likely than Loam to recover all of the value it lost. The one saving grace is that this was always reprinted at mythic and that’s a huge help.

This is a graph showing the recovery last time which was pretty robust considering the peak of nearly $70 was pretty nutty.  I think the mythic printing can help this pull out of the spin and recover roughly half of what it lost.

Basically the cards above this tier seem fairly certain to recover and I’m not sure they bear much discussion.

If you were to somehow list the cards by EDH+all other formats’ demand, I think some of the cards from this tier would be lower and lower-tier cards would be higher, but for the most part, I think the stuff in this tier will recover well, provided there is something to recover. I think Thespians’ Stage is probably crushed forever except in foil and commons and uncommons are likely going to lose so little value that it won’t be hard to make it back up, but this tier has a lot of strong cards. Eternal Witness is the poster child for shrugging off reprints, Demonic Tutor hasn’t been printed in like 5 years and even then it was Duel Deck Anthologies so it’s basically been out of print since 2008, Kodama’s Reach has new art which should help it out and Urborg is Urborg. I think the cards in this tier with the obvious exceptions of Rogue’s Passage and Terramorphic Expanse which have both been printed into powder, we should see some strong recovery here. My favorites here are foil Eternal Witness, both Demonic Tutor in foil and not, and Mana Vault.

I think just sorting cards in terms of EDH inclusion can help you think about what has a chance of recovering by seeing the cards “ranked” and while there are some cards over- or under-represented in the tiers due to their play outside of EDH and whether they’re a 4-of in those formats, but for the most part, I think the cards are grouped appropriately. Agree? Disagree? Nitpick in the comments. Thanks for reading, readers. Until next time!

Watchtower

The Watchtower 12/10/18 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.

Without a doubt, the story around the proverbial water cooler today are the massive changes to the organized play program. There’s now a $10 million esports circuit each year that splits activity between Arena and paper Magic. Gone are all of the non-Pro Tour/GP events, such as Nationals Worlds, etc. The Pro Tour is now called, uh, the Tabletop Mythic Championship I think? Also there’s events just called Mythic Championships that are played on Arena? Pro Points are being frozen soon, and the Hall of Fame will be renamed and the voting process is going to be overhauled. A bunch of platinum and gold pros had their benefits rescinded but were given $75,000 play and stream contracts. Overall, big changes. Expect a staged roll out here, both on WotC’s side, and the community discussion. Look for analysis on the upcoming @mtgfastfinance this week.

MTGO Cards

Price Today: $?
Possible Price: $??

Noticeably absent from any of the information regarding the changes to the organized play structure is MTGO. Arena is front and center in the spotlight, one half of the ten million dollar prize purse each year, while there’s no indication that any competitive level events will occur on the older platform. At the time of the announcement a few days ago, this generated a considerable amount of anxiety from the enfranchised MTGO community.

Several individuals, spooked by the announcement, started trying to sell out. This was reducing buy prices, which then further spooked more players, and resulted in a downward spiral that pushed ticket values down. Major bot chains started freezing their purchasing of cards and tickets, which generated even more fear (though limited the ability to dump your collection).

Prices have stabilized a bit as people have realized the sky isn’t falling. Buy-ins are low though, for sure. The simple math is that MTGO is profitable for minimal investment from WotC’s perspective. So long as MTGO makes a good amount of money per player, WotC isn’t incentivized to get rid of it. Modern, Legacy, and Pauper are going to continue to be played on MTGO for at least a good while longer. If you’re involved in the MTGO economy — and I stress people that are already involved, not newcomers — now is the time to look for some investment opportunity on staples that shed 10, 20, or 50% in the last several days. I’d recommend against those that are unfamiliar with the MTGO landscape though. Lack of familiarity with the platform may compromise any potential gains.

Counterflux (Foil)

Price Today: $4
Possible Price: $10

Over in the real world, Niv Mizzet, Parun has been quite popular in EDH for a few weeks. He’s even climbed to the top (accessible) slot on EDHREC’s most-built; third. (First and second are indefinitely locked on Muldrotha and Atraxa.) I’ll admit that I’m a touch surprised by his popularity, but there it is. He’s not tribal, he’s not big and splashy, and all he really does is draw some extra cards. I guess it comes from the fact that you’re incentivized to play a boatload of instants and sorceries, which are admittedly the forgotten class of cards in EDH.

Popular within Niv Mizzet, and indeed in EDH overall, is Counterflux. Even as a two-color card it has found its way into over 9,000 listings, making it one of the most popular two-color options in the format. It’s not hard to see the utility; it’s the hardest counter available, and even lets you step in and wipe out an entire stack of spells that may have been built up between an opponent or two. And while less so than EDH, you’ll find Counterflux in Modern lists as well. It pops up in Jeskai sideboards with some amount of regularity, and will increase in popularity as a self-policing force should Jeskai become a larger portion of the metagame.

Return to Ravnica brought us Counterflux, and we’ve seen only a single other printing, Commander 2015, which didn’t come in foil. That leaves only the foils from RTR, which just celebrated its 6th birthday. Supply is as to be expected on a card that old. You’ll find barely over 30 copies on TCG right now, and prices don’t stay at $4 for long. With the continued popularity of Counterflux, and how unlikely we are to see any more foils in the near future, I suspect we’ll see growth on the horizon.

Ashnod’s Altar(Foil)

Price Today: $10
Possible Price: $20

Two altars are exceedingly popular in EDH; one of a Phyrexian nature, and Ashnod’s. Phyrexian Altar climbed up to $50 before finally getting a long-needed reprint in Ultimate Masters. Ashnod’s reprint came a few years prior, in Eternal Masters.

I don’t need to speak much to Ashnod’s Altar’s strength. Over 30,000 decks are registered with this somewhere in the 99. It will never not be useful. Sacrifice outlets are quietly fantastic, allowing you to make use of creatures that are destined to die anyways, and also allow you to eat creatures you end up with that aren’t exactly yours, per se. There are few as efficient as Altar.

The market recognizes that. At the moment, as with Counterflux, there are about 30 foil EMA copies on TCG. What I notice here is the steep ramp up from $10. There are a handful of copies available at that price point, but it’s not long before you hit $15, and then just a few more before $20 and more. This is primed to be cleaned up below $20, and with UMA spoilers finished, it’s not clear when we may see another foil. One can see why paying $10 for the only foil of one of the most popular cards in EDH is a reasonable decision.

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.


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