Jason Alt, Unlocked ProTrader

Unlocked Pro Trader: Commander 2018 First Impressions

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Readers,

I wrote… too much, frankly, last week. I’m going to take it easy on you this week, which probably means I’ll do 2,000 words instead of 4,000. I’m not going to go too in-depth on any cards yet but I do have some impressions based on preliminary EDHREC data. Let’s rank every commander by popularity based on the first little bits of data that are trickling in and then see if there’s anything in the most popular deck that everyone else missed, although people have been pretty thorough (they spiked Enchanted Evening to $35 today, for example, and who knows where it ends up? Could stabilize north of $30 – that’s what happens when things don’t get reprinted.) and the decks are sort of obvious, at least some of them. Estrid is probably a bit more obvious than Tawnos, for example.

Let’s see how many of each deck has been registered on EDHREC and see if that tells us anything.

Lord Windgrace – 64 decks (4 as part of 99) JUND
Aminatou, the Fateshifter – 63 decks (16 as part of 99) ESPER
Estrid, the Masked – 60 decks (16 as part of 99) BANT
Yuriko, the Tiger’s Shadow – 49 decks (27 as part of 99) ESPER
Saheeli, the Gifted – 35 decks (25 as part of 99) IZZET
Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer – 33 decks (28 as part of 99) IZZET
Tuvasa, the Sunlit – 29 decks (50 as part of 99)* BANT
Arixmethes, Slumbering Isle – 16 decks (31 as part of 99)* BANT
Xantcha, Sleeper Agent – 16 decks (22 as part of 99)* JUND
Varina, the Lich Queen – 16 decks (10 as part of 99) ESPER
Yennett, Cryptic Sovereign – 13 decks (33 as part of 99)* ESPER
Kestia, the Cultivator – 10 decks (36 as part of 99)* BANT
Thantis, The Warweaver – 8 decks (15 as part of 99)* JUND
Gyrus, Walker of Corpses – 5 decks (10 as part of 99)* JUND
Tawnos, Urza’s Assistant – 3 decks (21 as part of 99)* IZZET
Varchild, Betrayer of Kjeldor – 1 deck (23 as part of 99)* IZZET

This tells us quite a few things, I think. I am going to do a little bit of analysis and there will be supposition involved, but if you all didn’t trust my expertise in the field of EDH finance using this data, I’m not sure why you’re reading a whole article about it so I’m just going to state my opinion as fact and if I’m wrong, that’s because I’m bound to be some of the time.

Conclusions

The “Precon Effect” Is Alive And Well

A while back in an article on EDHREC, Sam Alpert talked about what he called “Precon Syndrome” and we later changed to “The Precon Effect” because it was pithier. What he was describing was a tendency for deckbuilders who start with the precon to include stuff that shouldn’t be in the deck. WotC put it in there for beginners and when you start with 100 cards, you cut everything obviously bad and keep the rest and replace the bad cards you cut. That means stuff that is just good enough to include stays in even though they are cards you would never consider jamming if you started from scratch. I would never think to put Ninja of Deep Hours in an Aminatou deck in a million years if you locked me in a room and made me generate list after list and wouldn’t let me out until I included it. 22% of the people who registered an Aminatou list on EDHREC included Ninja, though, because it’s in the precon. Early on people over-include bad precon cards which reduces the number of good cards they run, and they’ll add more good cards later as they jam games.

I put an asterisk by the cards that were in more decks as inclusions than they were as commanders and the list is nearly divided in half. With the exception of Varina toward the bottom of the list, every deck that’s popular out of the gate is in more command zones than 99s and the reverse is true for unpopular commanders. I would venture a guess that a lot of Tawnos’ current play is people thinking he’s too good to take out of their Saheeli deck. Also, the fact that the bottom 2 decks are Izzet but both have much higher inclusion ranks than build ranks, I think there is more synergy in the Izzet deck. Loose copies of Tawnos and Varchild will be hard to come by because people are inclined to leave them in rather than sell them when they build Saheeli and Brudiclad whereas no one is keeping their copies of Lord Windgrace if they build Thantis.

Lord Windgrace Is Most Popular?

I was pretty surprised. I thought it would go Estrid, Aminatou, Saheeli, Windgrace. In fact, Saheeli was below Yuriko, a ninja commander with 9 ninjas to build with. OK? Saheeli has competition from other artifact builds whereas Windgrace (likely with 99 new cards) is the first “lands matter” Jund Commanderand will unite The Gitrog Monster and Angry Omnath, both obvious possible inclusions that spiked hard after they weren’t in the deck.

Also, if you look at the total number between the precons, the numbers may tell us more.

Jund – 93 decks

Esper – 141 decks

Bant – 115 decks

Izzet – 72 decks

Jund was the 2nd least popular deck and Windgrace represents 69% of all Jund decks registered whereas Saheeli is 49%, Estrid is 52% and Aminatou is 45%. Windgrace seems like the most popular but he just has the lion’s (or… panther’s? I’m not Vorthos, someone tell me what he is) share of the second least popular deck whereas the other Planeswalkers had to compete more with interesting commanders in the decks that Jund forgot to include.

Varina Is An Outlier

I suspect that Varina is not included in the rest of the decks because she has 0 synergy with them and seems like a very glaring inclusion whereas the Precon Effect kept stuff like Xantcha and Tawnos in the decks. A 0 synergy inclusion is useful to look at because they tend to spawn disparate archetypes because they need 99 cards that aren’t in the precon. I think Varina is a lot like UW Taigam from last year – practically no synergy with the deck it’s in and basically included because it was a cool design and they needed somewhere to throw it.

Given Varina’s outlier status, I will select Varina to discuss this week because it’s likely the cards for this deck won’t have spiked yet because, like Tawnos, it’s not obvious how to build the deck to people who don’t play EDH the way Serra’s Sanctum was so obvious my 2 year old bought a copy of it on the iPad half by mistake when I mentioned in a conversation to someone else that Enchantress was the new archetype.

Varina The Queena’ Mean…a

I think Varina is secretly very good and could create some really unbeatable card advantage once left unchecked for a minute. The problem is, attacking with creatures is for casual EDH players and drawing cards and knowing that discarding isn’t a disadvantage is for more competitive players. Varina may be a card that exists in a very small Venn diagram overlap area. The mere 16 decks generated so far (though that’s more than 6 other commanders) make me think people just haven’t figured her out yet. The problem is, a lot of people will be turned on by seeing Varina demonstrated and if the card is taken out of every Aminatou deck due to lack of synergy and discarded, how will that happen?

Varina is currently like $3-$4 which isn’t bulk and is a bit more than a lot of the other new commanders, even ones in decks that aren’t worth as much. The Esper deck is easily the most expensive and it’s the most-built currently. It’s the “good” deck this year and while the “bad” deck is almost always the one to buy for finance reasons in two years, it’s still interesting that a deck with $4 Magus, $17 Yuriko, $3 Golemn, $8 Aminatou, $4 Entreat the Dead and $3 Entreat the Angels can maintain $4ish for Varina, which isn’t getting built that much compared to the other cards. UW Taigam started at $4, too and quickly plummeted to $2 and belowish and it’s currently doing nothing.

Taigam currently helms 227 decks compared to 896 Ur-Dragon decks, so it’s in a third as many decks as the precon-suggested commander (and 297 of the 755 decks it’s in as a card are Ur-Dragon, which seems weird given its lack of synergy – Precon Effect indeed). Meanwhile, Varina is in 16 compared to the 63 for Aminatou. If that proportion holds, I don’t like Varina as a pickup but I think it will spawn 1/4 as many decks as Aminatou but with all new cards which means older cards that didn’t get reprinted have a chance to go up. Anecdotally, Varina is performing better for people than Taigam did and I think enough casuals will get onboard with having access to White Zombies (the cards, not that godawful band) and cards like Swords to Plowshares and Teferi’s Protection. One thing Varina has going for it that Taigam didn’t – there are decks ready to upgrade to it.

Varina is a better Scarab God than The Scarab God (I think) and you can jam The Scarab God in the 99 of Varina, which is cool. You’re going to draw a ton more cards and have access to white cards which makes Varina a great choice. I think people who don’t port over The Scarab God decks will make Varina decks from scratch. All of these factors make me think that things are going to go up because all of this info isn’t that trivial or obvious – you saw we had to dig to find it. Leave Replenish for the kitty cat collectors, let’s delve into what makes Varina tick.

This card is showing up in 1/3 of the Varina decks and I think that number may increase the more it’s built. I don’t know if this is a spec, but I think you can pull these out of bulk, people don’t know this is $0.50 and people REALLY don’t know foils are over $10. This does so much work but has a decent reprint risk. It’s easier to reprint out of core set than into it. If you see these in draft chaff, $0.10 card boxes at the LGS or in bulk, stash these. I think this is a $2 card in a year with no reprint and everyone is going to act surprised.

Unfortunately, I think this card has hit its floor or is just about to. Market Price is like $3.50 on these, and as briskly as Card Kingdom is outing them at $6, I think TCG Player is the ripe for a correction. Death Baron is a zombie staple and it’s demonstrated an ability to hit $20 if left unchecked. I don’t think it hits $20 again but I don’t think it goes below $3.50 ever. You can’t lose here. Would they jam this right back in M20? I doubt it.

I don’t get this card’s deal but it’s got to go up sometime. It’s a mythic in a set with a bunch of stupid dragons and no one is opening the boxes. Sure, there is no pressure on this card to take up more of the box price but as the box price goes up, why doesn’t this? Its reprint risk is low given how amenable WotC seems to be to printing new Zombie lord and while the glut of Zombie lords means some don’t make the cut, this should.

Then again, it’s in fewer decks than a worthless card like Zombie Master, so who knows?

With moderate reprint risk, I don’t advise paying cash, here. However, with rotation approaching, I would advise taking everything that is propped up by Standard play and won’t see play outside of it and trying to trade for cards like this. Even with reprint risk, this stands a better chance of holding value than something like Glorybringer.  This is an absolute shoo-in for the deck and it’s one of the reasons you switch to a version that can run white, honestly.

I think if you check out the page for Varina,  you can find other cards that maybe aren’t as sexy but which will for sure get jammed. Zombie decks never got to run Necromancer’s Covenant, Anointed Procession, Wayward Servant or Tidehollow Sculler in the past. Is this an improvement? I hope so! If not, at least we know the reasons for looking at Varina in the first place was sound.

As an aside, anecdotally, people are more excited about Varina than they were about Taigam. I think that Yuriko is going to tank soon and when it does, something needs to step up and take some value. Could it be Varina? The parallels to Taigam right now prevent me from saying yes, but if the cards begin to diverge, I think we could have a good buy under $4. We’ll talk more next week. Until next time!

Watchtower

The Watchtower 8/13/18 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.

One week out from Pro Tour: Nexus of Fate, and things are mostly ok. One Turbo Fog deck made the top 8 of Brussels, but none cracked the ceiling of Orlando. There were three and four lurking in the top 25 and 32 of each event though, so it’s certainly clear that despite what I imagine is every single player showing up to those events with clear knowledge that it would be the deck to beat, Nexus of Fate is still powerful enough to (reasonably) overcome. Prices aren’t too absurd at the moment at $25 a copy, which makes it one of the most expensive cards in Standard, but not the most, and not a seemingly unacceptable rate for for the format in general. We’ll see how October goes.

If anything, the real problem is Teferi. I’ve seen several pros on Twitter lately remark that every single line of text on that card is poorly designed. His +1 is deceptively protective, since while it doesn’t give you a direct blocker, it provides resources to thwart attacks, and his ultimate (which is your plan A with Teferi, as I understand it) is one of the most miserable ways to lose a game possible.

I was curious to see if I could include him this week as a card to watch despite an already-high price tag, but that just wasn’t going to fly. You’ll pay $35 on TCGPlayer to take home the cheapest copy on the market. For comparison, Gideon, Ally of Zendikar was only more expensive than that for a week or two immediately after release. He was south of $30 for like, 95% of the time he was legal in Standard. Interesting.

Brago, King Eternal (Foil)

Price Today: $6.50
Possible Price: $15

EDHREC has got the new Commanders up, and we’re getting an idea of relative popularity, and what people are planning on including. For the first time in awhile Atraxa fell out of first place, and Aminatou took the top slot. (Let’s be clear though, this is temporary. I fully expect Atraxa to reclaim that throne (of Geth) soon.)

Initial builds of Aminatou are going hard on the flicker line, as evidenced by Cloudblazer as the top creature of the aggregate decks. And of course, if you’re on that plan, then you certainly want the king of flickering, Brago the Braggart. He’s not a tough include. There’s no single card that can repeatedly generate as much flicker action as Brago can. He’s made even sillier when you can use a permanent — perhaps a Gilded Lotus — flicker it with Aminatou, use it again, attack with Brago, and then flicker Aminatou to reset her loyalty and +1 her. That type of thing is a lot of fun, let me tell you.

If there’s any interest in flickering permanents in an Aminatou deck, Brago is going to be there. Originally from Conspiracy, his first run of product is particularly shallow. We saw him return (heh) in Eternal Masters last year, which added a fair bit of product to the market. Yet the foil supply isn’t particularly deep. Conspiracy copies start at $10 or so, and you’ll find maybe 25 copies all said and done. (You’ll also find a few foil Japanese copies for sale by yours truly.) EMA copies start cheaper; around $6. For less than $150 you could buy every single NM Foil EMA copy of Brago. Somehow, EMA supply is even lower than Conspiracy. I don’t exactly get that, but it is what it is I guess.

Brago is in a respectable number of decks as a single card, and as a commander, he’s a top 10 all time. Aminatou is going to add a new batch of players looking to reign eternal, and there’s no better option. Barring any more reprints, foils are not going to be much under $15 by next year.


Gonti, Lord of Luxury (Foil)

Price Today: $3.50
Possible Price: $10

Continuing down the Aminatou page you’ll find Gonti. I’ve mostly been disinterested in Gonti, both as a player and financier; he just doesn’t do it for me in either capacity. I’m not blind though, and I’ve noticed his popularity with others. This was further confirmed when I popped over to his own page and found that he’s in nearly 6,000 decks. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but Kaladesh is still relatively recent, and it’s not easy to push into that many lists in that time frame.

Supply is sort of middle of the pack right now. Three people buying a playset each isn’t going to empty the market, but then again, ten people will. You aren’t going to sell these as sets very often, of course. It shouldn’t be hard to push a sale or two a week once they climb though, and they’ll make great binder fodder for your local store.

What appeals to me here is the price tag. Cards around $2 to $4 are in the sweet spot of cheap enough to actually buy a chunk of copies, and not miss a mortgage payment because of it, and yet still have enough weight that if they quadruple up you’re making more than $1 a copy. At $3.50 or so, these can hit $10 for a solid $5 to $6 profit on each card if you’re selling through an online vendor. They’re also still going to remain fairly liquid, unlike $300 reserve list cards, which can take awhile to find a buyer.


Vanishment (Foil)

Price Today: $.50
Possible Price: $5

On the bottom end of the scale this week is Vanishment, which is about a magnitude cheaper than Brago. It’s not often that I like cards at this price point, since it’s so tough to realize the gains, but I’ll make an exception this week.

Miracles in EDH have been “ehhh” for awhile. Sure you can do the work to set them up, but even if you did, they weren’t even a major payout. Other than Temporal Mastery and Entreat the Angels, they’re…fine. Then Aminatou came along and is all about manipulating the top card of  your library, including a feature important to miracles: an easy way to put cards from your hand back on top of your library. If you’ve ever tried to brew with miracles in Modern, you’ll know it’s annoyingly difficult to find reasonable ways to put the excess miracles back onto your library. Not a problem any longer!

Most every Aminatou player is going to try and put in as many miracles as they can, because uh, it’s cool and why not. It’s never really worked before, so it’s fun to finally have that as a semi-reasonable option. Which means that while demand for foil Vanishment basically hasn’t existed up until now, it’s going to get a bump.

If you’ve got a pile of these you scored in the sub-$1 range, you’re not going to want to sell them individually if they hit $5. That’s going to be miserable. You’ll either only have four, in which case the effort wasn’t worth it, or you’ll have forty, and you’ll not want to stick every single one of the damn things in an envelope. No, your plan here is buylists. Grab a good chunk of them, wait for them to hit $2 or $3 on buylist, then send them in for store credit with a 30% trade-in bonus. An investment of $25 could turn into nearly $200, if things go your way.

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 #299.3 Sentient Memes

 

Corbin (@Chosler88), Jason (@jasonEalt) and DJ (@Rose0fThorns), discuss what happened at the pro tour, it’s impact on standard and then crack open the dusty and long forgotten vault of emails.

Design a new theme for part of the cast http://bit.ly/FTVemails

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

Casual Fridays

Myths of the Past

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Vengevine hit $80 for a brief moment over the weekend, in the midst of hype.

I wish that sentence was a typo, but there it is.

It’s settled down in the $50-$60 range, but that’s a ton for a card that could have been bought for $20 two weeks ago.

I feel like there’s a few specific rules that should cover future specs of mine. I’m not going to go deep, but walk with me while we look at what makes this worth all the money, and see what cards also match the criteria.

#1: Supply is low due to age, not popularity.

Vengevine had more than jump to get to the $20 price it was at, sometimes appearing in Dredge lists. It was a WMCQ promo, but that number is probably pretty small. A mythic in a big set, one of the most fun draft environments ever, with a lot of other big-money mythics and rares.

Just a happy list!

There’s a couple of clunkers at mythic in the set (Hellcarver Demon!) but it’s solid and it’s a blast to play. Removal was bad, creatures were huge, and incredibly, drafting Walls was a viable plan. Unsurprisingly, the packs and boxes are super expensive, so cracking those for value isn’t really a solid plan.

The point here is that the set is old and highly opened at the time, and Vengevine wasn’t in a lot of casual hands in the first place. We didn’t have all that many copies as a mythic from this era of Magic anyway.

#2: Multiple copies are good, so no legends.

This isn’t a hard-and-fast rule, as Thalia, Guardian of Thraben is a four-of in the most popular Modern deck right now, because she’s that good and costs that little and has that much impact. However, it’s pretty rare for a legendary creature to have a breakout weekend, and so I won’t be considering those in this trip through time.

#3: It does something uniquely powerful, or difficult to replicate.

Vengevine does something no other card in Magic does, even if you have to jump through hoops to do it. We have no shortage of cards that come back from the graveyard, but this pays you off right away. Bloodghast only has haste later and is easily blocked. Prized Amalgam comes in tapped. Narcomeba has to be milled, is small and slow to boot.

So what I’m looking for is older cards with a small supply, are non-legendary, and do something really well. Preferably, they are cheap in mana and not yet expensive to purchase. Let’s get to it!

Mindbreak Trap ($10 regular/$35 foil): I don’t think that someone would have four of these, but there are Goblins decks in Legacy playing three in the sideboard. It makes a lot of sense, but in that format, Force of Will is an easy answer in game 1, but in game 2, when the storm deck thinks it’s goldfishing? GOTCHA! Who expects counterspells from the little red guys? (Note: Warren Instigator is intriguing and fits all the rules, if you want to soak up the DD copies at $3.)

Hero of Oxid Ridge ($1/$3): We don’t have a red aggro deck per se in Modern right now, Burn mostly fills that up, but I’d forgotten how backbreaking this card is. Plus, it’s super-mega cheap at the moment. It’s a small-set mythic, you’d play four, price is low. A prime target to buy eight foils and put away patiently.

Mirror-Mad Phantasm (50¢/$1.50): I’m including this because it’s a way to mill your whole deck if you can get it into play. It’s cheap and unique and just because I don’t see how it gets broken isn’t the point–we’re speculating on cards that do stuff no other card does.

Misthollow Griffin ($1/$6): We’ve got a third creature now that can be cast from exile, and all of them are good specs in foil. There’s only 40 foils of Eternal Scourge on TCG right now, for that matter. This one is the oldest of the three, and the only mythic, and in my favorite bit of tech, you can exile this to pitch Force of Will and cast it when you’re ready. A solid spec in foil.

Epic Experiment (25¢/$2): I’m including this because it’s super-mega-cheap. I am in no way saying it’s good, but it fits all the criteria of some other card coming along and suddenly this is the most broken-ass card in existence.

Enter the Infinite ($2/$9): There was one brave player, Matteo Moure, who showed up at PT25 with an Omniscience/Show and Tell deck which included four Burning Wish and among the spicy targets in the sideboard was a super-tasty twelve-mana gem of a card. Not many play this in Commander, but being part of a fringe strategy can really pay off. This would be waiting for some spell or effect that enables foolishness, but that’s what these specs are. Imagine a four-drop that says “Exile a card from your hand: Cast another spell in your hand with the same name without paying its mana cost.” Will it happen? Possibly. That’s why these are pure speculation.

Aurelia’s Fury ($1/$4): They tried so hard to make this good in so many ways. You assign X as you want. Tap them if they didn’t die. Hit players, and then those players can’t cast noncreature spells this turn! This fits all the criteria I’d want for this sort of spec, though, so just because it’s not currently blowing things up, I’m not worrying about that. I’m just being patient until someone casts this on camera during someone’s upkeep to tap the team, and then attack for the win.

 

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 and you see a giant flashing ‘CUBE DRAFT’ sign, go over, say hi, and be ready to draft.

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