Amonkhet Block Post-Rotation

April 27, 2018 Cliff Daigle

I know you’re all hyped about Dominaria being out, and rightfully so, but the truth is that our attention as finance-minded people needs to be on the just-finished Ixalan block and the soon-to-rotate-from-Standard blocks.

A couple of weeks ago I talked about Kaladesh, and now it’s time to go over the best long-term value from Amonkhet and Hour of Devastation.

What I’m looking for is one of three things:

Eternal appeal, meaning that the card sees some play in Modern, Legacy, or other non-rotating formats
Casual appeal, so cards that Commanders, Cubers, or 60-card “Every dragon ever printed” kitchen table players love.
Cards that do something no other card does, or that has a strong similarity to some other card that has gone up over time.

If one of those is met, I’ll think about it. Two is a likely buy, and all 3 means I’m snapping it up.

So let’s talk about some cards!]

Anointed Procession ($7.50)

This is the most available token-doubling card around, considering that it’s a new rare. Stuff like Doubling Season, Primal Vigor, and Parallel Lives all command greater prices on lower supply.

That doesn’t stop this card from being an excellent investment. Yes, there’s an occasional Standard deck that’s using the card, but the tokens lists aren’t amazing yet. (Aryel, Knight of Windgrace would love for you to play Anointed Procession!)

Where this shines, though, is in the casual market. The demand for this card is high enough to push the price up to being the #6 card in Amonkhet, and the most valuable non-mythic.

It’s not going to dip at rotation, but instead start to creep upward. It’s never going to have a huge spike, but if you’re the kind of person who tosses cards in the box and forgets about them for years, this is your card.

Irrigated Farmland (and any cycling land under $3)

I really love the cycling lands in Commander. They are fetchable and so much more reasonably priced than shocks and duals. Being able to cycle it away in the late game is an acceptable tradeoff for it coming into play tapped. Again, this is one for gradual growth and has a real reprint risk. This would be a good set of cards to get in a cycle of Commander decks, unless you have a lot of them. I think it’s worth the risk.

Regal Caracal ($4 for foils)

I’m all for niche decks, and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention how many Cats there are out there. This kitty is best friends with Brimaz, King of Oreskos, but the number of Cats is higher than you think. Get on the foils while they are dirt cheap, and before they print a new Cat Legend and this jumps to $10.

Harsh Mentor (50 cents/$4 foil)

I would be in on the foils a lot heavier than the nonfoils. This has popped up in a few sideboards but a deck placed 68th at a Modern SCG Open with three of the mentors in the maindeck.

My favorite interaction is how this stops the Druid/Vizier combo, as the untap effect on Devoted Druid means two damage, ruling out the infinite mana combo. It’s a niche card, sure, but it’s a cheap niche card. Worth having a few foils around for when they spike to $10, sometime in the next year.

Glorious End (50 cents nonfoil, $2 foil)

Final Fortune has three printings, this only one!

This one is the purest spec pick, but it does something unique, and I’m generally willing to spend a few bucks on one-of-a-kind effects. Yes, Final Fortune does this more cleanly, but that’s not Modern legal. What I’m doing here is picking up a bulk mythic in anticipation of someone breaking the card, and there’s a case to be made in foils or nonfoils. Generally, I like having foils for more of a premium, but if you want to grab 20 nonfoils I’d support that too.

Samut, the Tested ($2.50/$6)

The only thing keeping this version of Samut from being a $15 foil is that she doesn’t fit in Atraxa decks. Having the ability to go find two more ‘walkers with her ultimate is just bonkers. I grabbed a couple foils under $5 off eBay just to sock away and keep handy. I don’t think we will ever get another card that interacts with planeswalkers the way Doubling Season does…but we did get Deepglow Skate…

Solemnity ($1.50/$7)

That’s a big jump in foils, and I’m not really sure why. Is it because of the combo with Decree of Silence? It’s only in a little over a thousand decks on EDHREC, so I don’t think that’s it.

There’s a bump here and even if I don’t know why it is, it’s a cheap enough card with a unique effect. Worth having in stock.

Scavenger Grounds ($4/$12)

Now here’s a target and a half. Here’s the graph:

It’s not bad in Commander either, as long as you can play colorless lands.

Granted, a lot of its recent spike can be chalked up to increased Standard play, but it’s showing up a little in Modern, and that’s where things can get very spicy.

Ramunap Excavator ($3/$8)

This is an amazing card when utilized properly, and I’d be a lot more enthusiastic about the foils if there wasn’t a Buy-a-Box version lurking. It synergizes with a lot of decks, sees some Modern play, and something I want to have a few copies of for the day when it gets broken.

Hollow One ($15 foil)

There are a lot of flavors of Hollow One decks running around, and while I personally despise random discards, I can’t argue with the power or the results. Fifteen for a small-set foil rare that gets played in a top-tier strategy as a four-of says “I ought to be $30” and you should purchase accordingly.

Cliff is an avid Cuber and Commander player, and has a deep love for weird ways to play this amazing game, as well as being guest host on MTGFF when needed. His current project is a light-up sign for attracting Cubers at GPs, so get his attention @wordofcommander on Twitter if you’ve got ideas or designs.

Jason Alt, Unlocked ProTrader

Unlocked Pro Trader: Listen to the Data

April 24, 2018 Jason Alt 2 Comments

You can’t see this very well but it contains a pictographic representation of week one popularity of EDH archetypes based on data scraped by EDHREC. I predicted Muldrotha would be the most popular, Slimefoot would be second or third and Firesong and Sunspeaker would be second or third. I knew Jhoira would be Top 5, I expected Jodah to be Top 5. All of this is basically backed up by the fact that those are the commanders I wrote about. I would have covered Muldrotha but I was having a hard time finding anything actionable. Muldrotha seemed really good for making Lion’s Eye Diamond pretend go up (it was going up anyway) and it made Command Beacon spike right before it got a Judge foil printing but what else? Strip Mine? Believe me, I opened every individual Muldrotha list and dug deep, looking for cards with upside and it was tough. It’s half cards that have been printed into powder and half stuff that’s way expensive. I was going to cover Muldrotha today, finally, now that we have data because I was stumped before we had it. I thought maybe others had found something I hadn’t and I’d see that revealed today. Instead, I got a surprise that I think is more important to write about than Muldrotha. Did you spot it? I’ll zoom in.

Did I overlook Tatyova because it’s uncommon rather than rare or mythic? Was it a lack of hype before the set? I don’t know what it was but while I expected this to be popular initially, I didn’t expect it to be Top 5. I expected Muldrotha, Firesong, Jhoira, Slimefoot, Jodah. A surprise is worth noting because since I wasn’t pre-preparing for this to be this popular and stocking up on goodies for it, it’s possible other people overlooked it and didn’t, either. While stupid cards like Elvish Farmer are popping off because they say Saproling on them (Saproling is the new Kitty-cat) and obvious trumps “We better wait for data, guys,” other people blowing their money on Elvish Farmer (and wisely investing it in Saproling Infestation – enjoy that quadruple up, readers) we’ll be snagging Tatyova staples while everyone else is distracted. This is why we wait for data! Crowd-sourcing our ideas will always give us better outcomes and every collective brain of every Magic player, aggregated and analyzed is always better than one head, even if that one head is mine and EDH finance is all I think about. Some people think about EDH Finance to last longer in bed, I think about EDH Finance to wrap things up so I can get back to thinking about EDH Finance. Here’s what I think about Tatyova, the Russian-princess-sounding Merfolk Monster.

How To Ruin EDH

Sheldon wakes up with a pounding headache and stumbles into his bathroom. He opens his mouth and checks his teeth. Yep. Purple. He was into the red wine again last night. He checks his phone. 90 messages. He opens Twitter. “What did I do last night?” he thinks. Slowly, it dawns on him. Bottle after bottle of red wine. His EDH playgroup. An escalating game of Truth or Dare. “Dare” he remembers saying, then he remembers someone saying “I dare you to issue errata saying Tatyova has partner.” After that it got a little hazy but now every single deck being brewed is Tatyova and Thrasios. Thrasios has spiked to $200 and an angry mob is gathering outside his house. “I’m never mixing Commander and Cabernet again.”

How Do We Make Moneys?

Let’s look at this card again.

We develop our board as we were already going to do in Simic and we get to benefit every time we do? Great googily moogily. What doesn’t go in this deck? Here are the potential movers, as I see it.

Ghost Town

Ghost Town seems like a pretty low-risk low-supply card that should be included in more decks. The EDHRECast podcast discussed this as an inclusion in Angry Omnath, a very popular deck, and they made a great point to what is currently a pretty limited audience. This card needs to get popular to get bought and that will have to happen organically. The simple fact is most people don’t know about Ghost Town and they should, but they don’t. This is an uncommon from Tempest, the ceiling for which is Reanimate’s $17. More likely, it ends up around $5 max if it does anything. We can compare this to something like Squandered Resources which was a rare, hit $15 and settled around $5. This isn’t rare and it’s not as obvious and splashy but this still does some work and in two popular decks now, and counting. Copies of Ghost Town are old enough to drink legally, so that could be a factor as well. I don’t think this goes down, but I don’t know what it would take to make it go up. TCG Player selling out couldn’t hurt, but I wouldn’t advocate that. This could be a 1-year hold but I think Tatyova and Omnath are enough to juice this to at least double.

Burgeoning

Burgeoning has managed to grow by 50% in the last year despite there not being any impetus on it besides just general EDH playablity. I don’t see another reprint coming soon – I think that will likely be reserved for Exploration with the MSRP of the Commander decks getting juiced by $5, hopefully to justify more valuable reprints in the decks. With Burgeoning likely safe to grow, I think the rate continues, probably at a higher slope given how insane Burgeoning is in the Tatyova deck. Dealer confidence is at an all-time high and that’s why I graph price with buylist price, always. See those prices converging? That means dealers think the current retail price is a fine buylist price. I really can’t imagine you can’t double $100 or so in under a year. This isn’t sexy but it does seem likely unless we get a third reprinting in as many years, which I’m betting against. Nothing is guaranteed, but I like my odds.

Patron of the Moon

Patron of the Moon has been on a tear for the better part of 3 years and none of that was due to this new card, at all. That’s encouraging. We’re 3 years farther away from this card having been printed, it’s expensive enough that people are grabbing these out of bulk and redeeming them for store credit or whatever people to do get $3 rares into the market and Tatyova is going to create even more demand for a card that can fart lands onto the battlefield. I like this as a “float mana, play Sunder, laugh” sort of play, and I think the Amulet of Vigor I held onto is on-board with that plan as well.

The foil already popped off but with the retail and buylist prices converging kind of like on the non-foil, this is in play too, it would seem. I’m not advocatin’, just sayin’.

Thrasios, Triton Hero

Absent a judge foil, I can’t figure out how to reprint this. That’s bad news given the somewhat low supply of Commander 2016 out there. It’s drying up and the stores that do have the Yidris deck still want $50 for it if they’re savvy so even copies in the wild are hard to come by. This card is bonkers partnered with just about anyone, it’s bannably-good in whatever nonsense competitive variants are out there and there’s no way current supply can keep up with current demand, let alone more demand with the printing of Tatyova. If we continue to see her be among the top few decks brewed our of Dominaria, which I expect, I think Thrasios will experience a profound price movement and people are going to be upset and they’re going to act like there was no warning. Poppycock. This is your warning. Thrasios is very likely going to jump up pretty hard and there are a lot of factors involved, not the least of which is a new commander which looks insanely fun to play.

Courser of Kruphix

Had things been allowed to progress naturally, after the A25 reprint, Courser probably would have reversed course and added some value eventually. It probably wouldn’t have been done going down and if it ever flirted with like $1.50-$2, I would have snapped. However, the printing of Tatyova comes too soon on the heels of the reprint. I think we’re basically done seeing it go down. Do you like a $3.50 buy-in? I think it’s kind of gross, personally, and copies are everywhere, but this is going to be played in that deck, obviously, and you should at least get a personal copy, now.

Lotus Cobra

There’s a real incongruity that the market can’t figure out how to deal with, and that’s the fact that Lotus Cobra is stupid bonkers, has “Lotus” in the name and makes all of the mana as well as encourages you to play lands, which you will do and it can’t reconcile all that with the fact that we just got a bunch dumped in our laps with the Iconic Masters printing. I think Iconic Masters experienced a very small grace period and hit peak supply very quickly. No one wanted to draft it for $30 a pop. No one wants to pay $10 for a booster pack with Lord of the Pit as the rare. Iconic Masters cards are probably done tanking and I think Cobra recovers nicely, due in no small part to new EDH demand. This card is gettable for like $4 and you had a chance to arbitrage these stupid things a few weeks ago. Buy Inconic Masters stuff sooner rather than later, and get Cobra or I will.

That’s enough picks for you greedy little readers. Tatyova’s page on EDHREC is an interesting read and it doesn’t even incorporate dumb tech that the masses haven’t figure out yet like Scapeshift and Gilt-Leaf Archdruid. Can you imagine casting Urban Burgeoning with Tatoyva in play? Mercy. Anyway, I’m done for now. This was a good article and you’re going to make money if you take the advice from this article and you should share it with your friends who don’t normally read this article. Don’t worry about sharing the link with your Mom, she already reads my articles. Until next time!

Watchtower

The Watchtower 4/23/18 for ProTraders – Plan Your Specs

April 23, 2018 Travis Allen

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.

Dominaria’s prerelease brought players out in droves, and while we’ve got no official numbers on attendance (and I doubt we ever will), anecdotally it was a smashing success. Not only does the set have plenty of juice for the average player who’s joined within the last few years, it’s also a massive dump of nostalgia for the long time player. Not only have you got most of the crew of the Weatherlight in Karn, Jhoira, and Teferi, but there’s mountains of incidental references waiting to be gobbled up. One that struck me was Bloodtallow Candle, which includes the skull from Profane Momento, a forgettable uncommon artifact from Magic 2015. Who the heck needed that throwback? Nobody. But it was cool!

Reality Smasher (Foil)

Price Today: $18
Possible Price: $30

Reality Smasher is the muscle and might of every Eldrazi build out there, whether you’re playing true colorless, blue and red, black and white, etc. Tap five (or realistcally, three) lands, slam this bad boy down, and shove it up the nose of the poor fool unlucky enough to be sitting across from you.

Demand for the Eldrazi is ever present at this point. You can’t check a Modern event standing without expecting to see a few hanging around. There’s no shortage of reality smashing in Legacy either. Eye of Ugin is still legal there, remember.

Prices on foils have begun ticking up since the start of the month, and it may be tough to find many under $20 at this point. I doubt it’s done moving yet either. As more people realize supply has gotten low, they’ll snag up their copies before it gets too high. Before long this is going to be a solidly $30 foil, and possibly even more as time moves on.

Eldrazi Temple

Price Today: $10
Possible Price: $20

As noted above, the Eldrazi are popular basically everywhere they’re able to be popular. Eldrazi Temple even moreso, since everywhere that Reality Smasher exists so too does Temple, but not every Temple comes with a Smasher. Hatebear is consistently a threat, and while it eschews Smasher for Displacer, it’s still packing Temples.

Eldrazi Temple comes with the caveat that supply is deep. Like, way deeper than anything I normally talk about. There’s something like 100 vendors for the MM2 copy. There’s also the original printing from Rise of the Eldrazi, as well as some Duel Deck copies just for good measure.

So why am I talking about Temple if there are so many copies on the market? Put simply, there’s way too much demand for prices to not keep moving. Virtually every person that plays Modern is going to get the itch to play something with Eldrazi at some point, and when they do, they’re going to need Temples. Several Eldrazi strategies exist too, so it’s not as if there’s a single way to build the deck.

Sol ring lands are strong, and there aren’t many legal in Modern. Eldrazi Temple is one of them, and despite a big supply today, I suspect that prices are going to continue moving towards $20.

**Any Invention other than the Gearhulks, and also the Gearhulks**

Price Today: $30
Possible Price: $??

I don’t want to sound like a broken record but it’s hard to ignore. People are going bananas for Inventions, and what’s most wild is that other people are still buying them. I’ve seen several Sol Rings sell at $300 now. Mana Vaults at $260. Crucible of Worlds at $175. Planar Bridge at $100. You can tell me until you’re blue in the face that it’s all speculators and there’s no real demand, but regardless of whether you’re right (you wouldn’t be), people are still paying those prices, so uh, all aboard.

Anything that hasn’t already spiked twice is still a viable target most likely. Even the “bargain bin” options like the gearhulks could double in price and nobody would bat an eye. What difference does it make if Cataclysmic Gearhulk is $25 or $50? Both of those sound like real, not insane numbers.

I’m not telling you to buy everything at every price. Don’t blame me if you’re paying $125 for Grindstone and then can’t find a buyer. But be aware that this is not over, and it’s not limited to Inventions either.

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

Early Movement on Dominaria

April 20, 2018 Cliff Daigle

The week between the full set being previewed and prereleases happening is the time when prices start to move.

The earliest adopters are trying hard to get their cards in hand for the very first events, but one thing to note recently is that now prereleases happen at the same time for both online and in paper.

That means this week, we will start to see what’s in demand. What are people eager to build? Keep an eye on the online world, and be ready.

As for prereleases, I stand by this advice: Trade away everything you open. Most of it’s going down in price, but there’s some that are bucking the trend.

Karn, Scion of Urza (up $5 this week to about $37, give or take)

There’s a lot to like about Karn, as I wrote last week, but there’s also a lot of issues. Maybe he’s more Modern playable than I’d thought? Does Affinity secretly want to churn him into play and start making huge tokens? I doubt it, but Karn has jumped into being the chase mythic of the set.

It’s been a long time since we had a $50 card in Standard booster packs, and while it’s not impossible, it’s very very unlikely. Please don’t buy at this price. If he was $30 I could see him hitting $40, but more growth from here isn’t going to happen.

Jaya Ballard (down to about $6-$7 this week)

Her price was never too high, so it’s not like anyone lost a ton of money on her so far. Nonetheless this is a really low starting price for a planeswalker, and one as nostalgia-stuffed as Jaya should have a higher value just for the collectors.

We’ve gotten pretty jaded about planeswalkers, though. Did you buy Dovin Baan at $30? Maybe $20? $10? He started sliding early and never stopped.

I’d venture that triple-red is as restrictive as WU, and her abilities are underwhelming. Even her ultimate is not a game-winner, just an advantage engine.

At the same time, picking up a set for $20 is super tempting. There’s a lot of time for her to get broken…but not too much time, as she rotates in 18 months, not the max of 2 years.

History of Benalia (doubled this week, now about $16)

This isn’t just about building the new hotness, but I do note that there’s a LOT of Vampire Knights already present. There’s a lot of synergies to be used, and please don’t overlook how good chaining these Sagas can be. Benalish Marshal has stayed steady at nearly $2, and that seems like the best card to pair with the Saga.

This is the foil price and if Knights are about to blow up, an excellent target.

I think this will come back down in price, but in the meantime, it’s good to know that if I opened one at the prerelease, I’d get to win with the card both in the matches I played and then when I traded it away.

Cabal Stronghold (Down to $4 from about $7)

It’s got further to go, too. The most broken thing about Cabal Coffers is how well it works with incidental Swamps and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth. The Stronghold needs only basics, and that’s why this is not the second coming.

In your monoblack Commander deck, it’s still nothing too amazing. Your utility lands are not going to help, even Leechridden Swamp! So to profit, you need four basic swamps, and then you’re ahead one mana.

Normally I’d be all over foils of a card like this, but the advantage is much smaller here and extracting value over time is going to take a very long time indeed.

Helm of the Host (foil, up from about $10 to the $15 range)

This, though, has long-term value written all over it. Every Commander player I talk to is atwitter over this card, and a lot of them are simply nutty over the chance to have more than one copy of their commander in play.

Granted, not every deck wants to have more than one copy in play. Having two Experiment Kraj in play sounds pretty weak, and two Kemba, Kha Regent is also sort of lame. How about two Mairsil, the Pretender though? I have to admit that having two The Ur-Dragon attacking is the sort of thing that makes my head spin around in purest joy.

If you care that the equip and play cost is nine mana, then Commander isn’t the format for you. The name of the game isn’t always winning. It’s about doing broken and busted things, like having three Karona, False God in play and getting one more each turn!

I’m not buying this at $15, let me be clear. I’m not even going to consider it until the end of the format, when the OMGGIMMEGIMMEGIMME rush has worn off and I can get foils in the $6 range.

Just letting you know that it’s jumped and that it’s on my radar.

Darigaaz Reincarnated ($3.50 regular and also a $15 foil)

We’ve got no shortage of awesome Dragons, but the combination of flying, haste, trample, and ‘see you in three turns’ seems especially potent in Commander, and that’s why the foils are above 4x the nonfoil price.

There’s only a handful of Dragons in Standard at the moment, so I don’t think a Brawl deck that’s Dragon tribal is possible…yet. I love these foils long-term, but I’m going to need to watch how well the set is selling. I suspect it’ll move very well indeed, so we will see.

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