Watchtower

The Watchtower 11/19/18 for ProTraders – Plan Your Specs

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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 Grand Prixs hit the books this weekend, with a hometown hero taking one down, but there’s nothing there for us. Down under was sealed, so that’s really dead, and even the Standard one didn’t present anything new in the wake of the Pro Tour. While it appears to be a fun Standard format, I simply don’t think there’s any fertile soil there any longer. With no shakeups on the horizon until the next set in February, there’s no reason to think we’ll see any cards meaningfully change in value.

At the same time, the markets have been awfully quiet lately. We had possibly our fastest @mtgfastfinance ever last week, as there simply wasn’t much going on. Ultimate Masters spoilers are hitting today and tomorrow, with the full list due Wednesday, so we’ll have some brief excitement this week, but after that, it’s going to be all quiet on the western front until January most likely.

The Mirari Conjecture (Foil)

 

Price Today: $1.75
Possible Price: $9

I’m starting this week off with a “feels good” pick. Mirari Conjecture feels good. It’s a cool card. It draws you two cards over two turns, and then sets you up for a bonkers third turn, especially in the mid to late game, where you have a pile of mana.

We haven’t seen it invade EDH yet, though there’s precedent. Take a gander at the top played blue cards on EDHREC and you’ll see that the seventh most popular blue creature is Archaeomancer, a four mana 1/2 that returns an instant or sorcery from the graveyard to your hand. He’s a well known face to anyone that’s been playing awhile. Mirari Conjecture basically does his job twice, then gives you that big payoff on turn three.

I’m not anticipating that Conjecture is going to end up a top ten blue card or anything. It’s a little too narrow, and a little too tough to abuse to get that much out of it. However, it’s certainly able to become a staple. I would imagine someone only has to get this to trigger on the third step once to become a convert. Once we start seeing enough ofo that, those $1.75 foils are going to begin disappearing. Supply is decent, as it’s an in-print Standard rare, but it’s not deep deep. It’s reasonable. Comfortable. Not excessive. Grab a copy of yourself now, and as you hit Black Friday sales this week, keep this one in mind as you’re looking for stuff to throw in the cart at a discount.

Rune-Scarred Demon (Foil)

 

Price Today: $3.75
Possible Price: $12

Occasionally I find a card that makes me do a double take. How is this card so affordable? It’s happened to me many times over the years. A popular card that should have very limited supply is inexplicably bountiful and cheap. I stare at it, wondering if I’m missing something, and don’t bother to buy any, because the supply is too great to bother right now. Sometimes I’ll bump into the same card multiple times over a span of months, each time having the same reaction. Eventually, I find myself looking at it with a price tag several times greater than it has been, and I kick myself for not having bought them. Happens without fail. I’m kind of having that now, with Rune-Scarred Demon.

Rune-Scarred Demon is in 16,000 EDH decks. More than 1 in 10 decks that made black mana play Demon. It’s not hard to imagine why, either. The number one most popular black card in the format is Demonic Tutor. Do you know what Demon does when he enters the battlefield? He Demonic Tutors. And he’s a 6/6. Show up, search for a card, punch people in the face. All good stuff. Especially if you’ve got any blinking going on, then you’re just a jerk.

Still, you can find several foils from both Magic 2012, his original foil printing, and Iconic Masters, his only other foil printing, under $4. And plenty below $6. How? Why? A card this popular should be way harder to find. I could understand if the M12 copies were $17 and the IMA ones were $4, sure. But the M12 ones too? Huh?

There’s nothing deep or clever about this. I look at Demon, and I can’t figure out why it isn’t more expensive. It’s got low supply, it’s quite popular, and it’s flexible. Why aren’t more people buying this card? Whatever. We should buy it, and then wait. Eventually it will catch up. They always do.

Worn Powerstone (Foil)

 

Price Today: $4
Possible Price: $12

There are a lot of mana rocks in EDH, some better than others. Like Sol Ring. Mana Crypt is quite good. Mana Vault is solid too, though more “fair.” You’ve got the colorless ones too, like Chromatic Lantern, which don’t produce in volume, but produce in quality. Really though, once you get past the first two or three, you start making choices. What fits my build the best? If you want raw efficiency, there isn’t much better than Worn Powerstone.

Three on the way in and tapping for two is just about the best it gets after Sol Ring. Sure, the “enters tapped” part sucks, no arguing there. It’s not all that bad though. On turn three you probably weren’t using that two colorless mana anyways, so if you’re playing this on curve, it barely matters. And if you’ve got untap mechanics in your deck – e.g. Paradox Engine – it doesn’t even matter.

I don’t need to sell you on Powerstone though. It’s in 25,000 decks. It’s like, the 50th? Most popular card in EDH overall, depending on what metric you use. People play it. Heck, look at the reprint list. It’s been printed nine times. Nine is a lot of times. Five of the places it was reprinted have the word “Commander” in them. It’s popular in EDH, guys.

And it just so happens that out of all nine prints, only a single one is available in foil. Eternal Masters is the only place you can get a foil Worn Powerstone. It’s a bit surprising, but really, if they’re printing it every single year in the Commander precons, then they’re not going to feel the need to find space for it elsewhere. And then you end up with a very popular card only having one foil printing.

Supply is solid right now for sure. Plenty available around $4. But if this trend continues, with only Commander reprints, there’s going to be a lot fewer of these in the future than there are today, and then prices in the $10 to $15 range are going to start looking quite real.

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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Casual Fridays

Crunching the Box Toppers

Ultimate Masters is the latest attempt by Wizards to find out how much we’ll pay for new cardboard. It’s well established that we’ll pay a lot for old cardboard, and they got a glimpse of our madness with Mythic Edition, but UMA is the logical next step.

What they mean by ‘It’s the last masters set for a while’ could mean any damn thing they want, but the Box Toppers are truly a well-designed attempt to drain our wallets dry.

This week, I want to go over the list of those cards and see where they are starting, and offer my thoughts about where they will go.

I do think there’s going to be more of each Box Topper (which I’m going to call a Boxterpiece from now on) than there was for each Mythic Edition planeswalker, but I also think that the demand for these will be much higher, since Wizards basically took the list of the most expensive cards in Modern, deducted Jace, Mox Opal, and the fetchlands, then reprinted the rest.

For current numbers, I’m looking at completed sales on eBay, as we only have a small trickle into the major card sellers.

So let’s talk cards!

Emrakul, the Aeons Torn – Selling for $150-$300 on eBay – Will eventually make it to $100-$150 range. Can’t be played in Commander, but is a 3-4 of in the Legacy decks that Sneak and Show.

Karn Liberated – Selling for $430-$200 – Going to hold in the $200 range, big mana and fabulous prizes are always going to be a big draw. Not the most popular in Commander but still sees a lot of play (8k decks on EDHREC).

Kozilek, Butcher of Truth – Selling for $100-$200 – This will settle into a $50-$75 range. Two people needed one REAL BAD early on and paid more than $300 on eBay. Others waited and got $100 or so.

Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre – Selling for $90-$200 – The last three sales have all been sub-$100, indicating that there’s farther to fall, likely into Kozilek’s $50-$75 range. Keep in mind there’s FTV versions of this card, and not of the other two big Eldrazi. The trio is getting their third printing together, too.

Snapcaster Mage – Selling for $200 – I can see this keeping its price and even trending upwards. It’s one of the most popular creatures in Constructed Magic, in both Legacy and Modern, and is in 12,000 Commander decks online. I won’t be shocked when this is consistently the highest-value card out of all of them.

Temporal Manipulation – Selling for $80 – There’s only three sales, at $100, $80, and $56. The Judge Promo is at $90, and I’d be interested in knowing which there’s more of. I suspect this will stabilize in the $80 range.

Bitterblossom – Selling for $150 – Six copies have sold, five accepted best offers, and the one auction ended at $150. It’s not terribly popular in any format, so I think it’ll settle down and be $60 by Valentine’s Day. Yes, that’s less than the pack foil or the 2011 judge promo.

Demonic Tutor – Selling for $175-$300 – I’m very torn on this card. It’s super-iconic, but there’s also a Judge version (which was in the Helvault promo, if you were playing back then) that’s already at nearly $300. That’s a much scarcer version, so I think the Boxsterpiece will end up between $150 and $200.

Goryo’s Vengeance – Selling for $115 – $150 – A rare in Betrayers of Kamigawa, the pack foil is currently $70. I don’t think this will exceed that price, and given that demand is relatively small (There’s really only one deck that plays it) a price of $50ish sounds about right.

Liliana of the Veil – Selling for $300+ – Three people listed this card on eBay for $500 and took best offers. Her pack foil is $250, and the MM17 foil is a paltry $170. She’s not as widely played as Snapcaster but she’s never really had a strong supply. Keeping at $200+ sounds reasonable, and I think the Boxterpiece will end up near the pack foil’s price.

Mikaeus, the Unhallowed – Selling for $80 – $150 – I tried to trade for one of these at $150, knowing the price was high, and all I feel is relief that he found a bigger sucker than me. A super-awesome Commander card, this is his first reprinting. He’s got further to fall, though, and will be in the $40 range.

Reanimate – Selling for $60-170 – This is falling quite quickly, and that makes sense, since it’s only playable in Commander and Legacy Reanimate. There are no pack foils, just an FNM version from quite a while ago and the Graveborn Premium Deck. This will end up being one of the lowest-priced Boxterpieces at $30-$40.

I admit, I had no idea he had fallen this far, and now is not the time to buy!

Tasigur, the Golden Fang – Selling for $50-$175 – Oh ouch, to be the one who bought the first one on eBay for $175, and a week later, it’s sold for $50. I am stunned to see that pack foils are back down to the $15 range after hitting $40 as he did in 2015. Gurmag Angler hasn’t stolen that many slots away! With pack foils this low, and he’s about to be a rare in UMA, I’d expect this version to end up near $30.

Balefire Dragon – selling for $60-$70 – This has remarkably been the price for all the completed auctions. I think this is a good price, too, given that it’s a mythic again and the pack foil is about $30. Dragons are super popular right now! It’s going to drop a little, but not below $40.

Also, everyone forgets you can splice it onto Arcane!

Through the Breach – Selling for $200-$300 – My favorite new art, as it shows both a story moment AND a frequent tournament play. The first three auctions ended at or near $300, the more recent three took best offers under $250. It’s not popular enough to hold this price, and frankly, I don’t expect it to go much over $100. The people who need it need a playset, but no one else is going to be interested. The pack foil is $100, and the Invocation is $80.  This is so much more awesome in art than either of those, though.

Eternal Witness – Selling for $120-$150 – I’m pretty shocked at this price, given that the pack foil and the early FNM version are both near $40. This will be the most expensive Witness, that’s a given, but more like $75. It’s the most popular creature in EDHREC’s database, being in 43% of all the decks ever posted there. Fifty-five thousand and change.

Life from the Loam – Selling for $100-$150 – Dredge is ascendant in Modern right now, and Legacy Dredge is a thing of beauty too. Loam is also a delight in the Lands decks, and seeing enough play to spike the nonfoils to the $30 range. Pack foils are $100, MM13 foils are $50, and I’d expect this version to settle in between those.

Noble Hierarch – Selling for $150 – This is one of the most popular cards in Modern, and the most popular creature overall. There’s also a range of foils to choose from: the pack foil in Conflux, the MM15, the Pro Tour foil, and the sweet old-border Judge version. The good news is that if you’re playing this card, you don’t shave to three of them, you’re playing four or none, so demand is real. I think this price will tick downwards a little, but not too far.

Tarmogoyf – selling for $500ish – I believe this is the only card to be in all three Modern Masters sets, but if there’s others, do let me know in the comments or on Twitter. Three of these have been listed on eBay, all asking more than $500, but they all took a best offer. Pack foils are $700 or so, and the cheapest foil is the most recent, the MM17 at $100. Is this a $500 card? Maybe. I genuinely have no idea where this will end up, but it seems a given that it’ll be more than the $200 of the MM13 foil.

Vengevine – Selling for $75-$150 – The pack foil, from way back in Rise of the Eldrazi, is at $80 and the WMCQ foil is about $50. Vengevine has had a real renaissance lately, and this is another one that people tend to play the full set of. I think this will be neck-and-neck with its pack foil, around $75.

Come back next week for the other half!

 

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.

Brainstorm Brewery

Brainstorm Brewery #313 Survivor

Corbin’s (@CHosler88) , DJ (@Rose0fThorns) and Jason (@jasonEalt) explore possible career paths for Corbin, the Pro Tour and the usefulness of number crunching like some kind of nerd.

Make sure to check us out on Youtube for hidden easter eggs and facial reactions  https://www.youtube.com/user/BrainstormBrewery

 

Return info for TeeSpring: You can return the items to the following address:

 

Teespring

1201 Aviation Blvd

Dock Door 9

Hebron, KY 41048

 

Kindly leave a note with your order number/email address, or include the label from your original shipment.

Jason Alt, Unlocked ProTrader

Unlocked Pro Trader: 15 Specs Based On No Evidence

Readers,

I like being involved in EDH finance and usually it’s a fast-paced world that’s constantly evolving but we have just been doing a lot of nothing on the basis of Guilds of Ravnica. There’s nothing doing. The most-built commander is still Niv-Mizzet which would be cool if the deck didn’t already exist in its entirety. Niv-Mizzet isn’t new, Etrata isn’t good and Izoni isn’t exciting. The guild decks nerfed a lot of specs and I wrote three articles’ worth of content about those stupid box-toppers last week. This week I want to think about the next Ravnica set, its 5 guilds and a few cards that are likely to get some play based on which guild mechanics I expect will see a bump. I’m sure most of the commanders are going to suck and a lot of the guild kits will have obvious synergistic cards, but I think if we go foil and obscure, or target cards outside of Ravnica sets which won’t be in those decks, we can be safe. Here’s what I came up with on the basis of writing a very similar article from a builder’s standpoint that will go live on Coolstuff Inc. later this week.

Azorius

I don’t think Forecast is all that likely to be re-used and I think they’ll either do a new mechanic that’s synergistic with Detain or they’ll just re-use Detain, which I’m fine with. Detain is rough against a whole board, but I think bouncing Lavinia has worked in the past and likely will again. I think those flash shenanigans are the best thing we can be doing in those colors and if we’re not building around a new commander, I bet we get some new spells that make that sort of thing profitable, I’m betting there’s a Ghostway in the Guild Kit and I’m betting there is money to be made.

This nicely shrugged off the reprint, one it’s not likely to get again soon. There area lot of these, but 17,105 is a big number, too. There is no real substitute for this card, only cards that do this absurd thing almost as well. This does dumb stuff with creatures like Lavinia and with most Detain abilities being ETB, I think this is a safe bet whether we get anything Detain-esque or not. This was never not a good bet to go up.

This didn’t dip as much at rotation as many would have liked and it’s already starting to go nuts. This was gettable for much cheaper and I feel like I warned us but I didn’t buy as many as I should have, either, so we’re all just going to have to buy a little closer to the $10 I bet this hits soon and chalk it up to being distracted by stuff that doesn’t matter like Ultimate Masters and Arena and every other format.

In the event that I’m right about everything and we not only get good detain or other ETB stuff and Ghostway in the Guild Kit, don’t forget about this card.

Gruul

Gruul’s keyword abilities all tended to relate to making sure you deal them damage and I don’t necessarily expect a good commander to result if we end up getting one of those keywords back or getting one related to them. I’d rather pitch lands at them for more damage than pitch creatures to their Bloodrush ability. I think Gruul is a lands-matter tribe primarily and even if we don’t get a new commander for that, I bet we get cards that enable those strategies and those alone may be an impetus to go back and build something like Angry Omnath or Mina And Denn.

I think this is getting a bit underplayed right now and I think once people realize how good this is, we’ll see it crest a few bucks at least. It’s in the “worst” deck and while most of the copies busted aren’t going in a deck, there aren’t many copies being busted since players aren’t excited and the deck isn’t worth anything. This has a lot of room to grow and I think it’s a great card that will pair well with future Gruul offerings.

I’ve been on this for a while and I don’t feel any less positive about it now than I did then. This is sick in EDH, has cross-format appeal, is at its price floor and likely gets a second look if the new Gruul commanders are any good, and that could be doubly-so if Simic happens to interact with it somehow.

You aren’t likely to see this reprinted and while you’re not going to have any Deserts when this resolves, you’re also not going to see a card that gets two lands of any type and puts them into play anytime soon. This is pretty nuts and its demand will soon catch up with its supply. It may take a minute like it did with Realms Uncharted, but it will happen.

Orzhov

I doubt Haunt is coming back and since Extort was so miserable in Limited, I don’t think we’re getting that precisely, either. I think if we do get a new keyword ability, it’s bound to be related to lifegain or life drain and since Ozhov was great at that already, cards that are devoted to that will have some upside.

At around 12k decks, this card doesn’t mess around. It’s got utility in spellslinger decks as well as lifegain decks and blasting people for 50 appeals to casual players as well as competitive ones. This card has something for everyone and I don’t know how reprintable it is. I was all over these when my LGS blew out bulk rares as buy one get one free dropping the price to 50 cents and I feel pretty good now that they have quintupled. There is a lot of room to go up, still.

Foil Kambal is harder to reprint, gets played in formats like Legacy and Modern where foils have upside as well as the lunatics who foil their EDH decks. All in all, this seems like a no-brainer.

Between Orzhov and Azorious, someone is going to want a 3 mana Jokulhaups.

Rakdos

Rakdos is terrible and I think the Rakdos stuff that has upside will have nothing to do with the Keyword ability, which may be Hellbent but will likely be new and not great in Commander. I had a lot of success in Limited with Rakdos but times around since you curved out and had a lot of finishers that were nasty with Hellbent but I don’t know if EDH cares this time around.

This is half predicated on Grenzo and half just another excuse to talk about a card that should both be played and cost more.

I think a lot of people thought this high price was predicated on scarcity, but the amount of decks running it bely that narrative. Besides, it’s not like Battlebond isn’t pretty scarce in its own right. Battlebond continues to be a slam dunk.

If you buy one card from this block, buy Torment of Hailfire. If you buy two, but Tormet of Hailfire and Neheb. Trust me.

Simic

Simic is likely to have a dumb, +1/+1 counter theme and some support for it but it will mostly just be a goodstuff commander, if there even is a good commander in the set. Simic is my favorite color combination but it’s a bit boring and most of what it will likely do in this set is accidentally give Atraxa decks a good card.

This may not be as hard to reprint as I’m making it out to be, but I’m not banking on this ever getting cheaper. In a Simic deck, this is really solid but good luck wresting a copy away from an Atraxa player.

In my experience, this puts the person who resolves it roughly as far ahead as casting Sylvan Primordial did, but there you have it. This is not bannably good per se but I feel like it can be just as much a blowout. If those cryptocurrency geniuses went as hard after obvious specs like this as they do garbage Reserved List cards, this would be $15 already with no reprint in sight. As it stands, I can’t believe this isn’t $10.

This shrugged off the reprint, it looks like, and since it’s getting played in a popular Modern deck which eats four copies at a time, being a recent rare isn’t going to hold this back. I think whichever Simic commanders are printed in the next set will interact with this a ton and it’s not eligible for the Guild Kit which means this is about to ride a wave of upside to value town. Enjoy!

That does it for me this week. These 15 specs are very very speculative given how little we know about the next set, but a lot of these are due a price increase regardless of what the new commanders do. I’ll have more when I know more. Until then, thanks for reading. Until next time!

MAGIC: THE GATHERING FINANCE ARTICLES AND COMMUNITY