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.

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: We Don’t Have to Guess

April 17, 2018 Jason Alt 2 Comments

There are so many cards in this set that I think have the power to move prices based on brand new archetypes being built but I think we can take a week off of trying to get that far ahead of the crowd. I’m gambling that Reddit is wrong when it says that speculators have figured out EDH and now we don’t have the luxury of waiting for data from EDHREC, Yeah, sure, speculators bought a lot of copies of Raksha, Golden Cub, so congrats on being ahead of the curve. You even bought foils so you wouldn’t get blown out by the reprint. Did they predict that 40% of decks running Mirri as the commander would run Leonin Abunas? Did they forsee a 33% spike in the price of Reconnaissance? Or did they just buy a bunch of kitty cats and I made money on cards like Hateflayer, Shakuu, Endbringer and Tree of Perdition because I waited to see what people were actually going to play?

The downside to this approach is we need to kill some time waiting for people to brew, build and register and since the set isn’t out until this weekend, they haven’t done any of that, yet. Do we twiddle out thumbs in the mean time? I maintain that we do not actually do that, because we have some data to look at already. It’s not even based on the printing of a new commander either, but rather a lowly common, non-Legendary creature that happens to be special because it’s only the third card like it ever. We don’t have to guess what’s going to happen because it’s already happened twice. Let’s drill down.

The Card in Question

Bewm.

This is a card that in a lot of situations seems better than Relentless Rats. Its toughness doesn’t get a buff, but that’s secondary to the fact that this scales off of all rats meaning its lower casting cost is more important than the toughness boost. Accordingly, this is good in both a Ripple Rats build but also a more general Rats build and the cards for both likely have upside given the new interest. Making a ton of Pack Rats boosts Rat Colony as well, something you can’t say for Relentless Rats opening up potential hybrid builds. I think there is a lot that could have upside, here.

First but not least –

Thrumming Stone

Reluctant to go up much, this card is snagged as a 4-of by 60-card casual players and is unlikely to see a reprinting anytime soon given how narrow and specialized it is. It’s got a bad ability in EDH except for in this very rare instance. Could you print this in an EDH precon? I’m not paying $40 MSRP for a precon with 30 Relentless Rats in it, personally, though some might. This also has spillover into Shadowborn Apostle decks which get a new Demon every once in a while, most recently (A year ago? Wow. That was the last time I got a preview card, last year in Vegas.) Razaketh. Really, though, there are a finite number of these and Arcum Dagsson shows how quickly Coldsnap cards can disappear when there is renewed interest. I think this can’t stay below $10 much longer.

Coat of Arms

I shudder to think how much this card would need to be printed for it to go under $5 and stay there. I don’t think that’s ever going to happen, fortunately, and while this card has been quiet for a while, recent interested in tribal decks should give it some upside. Tribal is always going to be a thing and it’s hard to imagine this getting printed hard enough to completely tank it or becoming obsolete. Every Coat variant that comes along tries to give you some additional value but nothing really comes close to being good enough that you won’t run this in your deck. It’s going some printings but it’s also got some upside regardless of whether a single Rats deck gets built.

Patriarch’s Bidding

This is a card that is going to cycle until it’s reprinted. Is there any hurry to reprint it? There doesn’t seem to be, and that’s an issue. This is going to go up again next time there is a juicy chance to reprint it, maybe even as soon as Commander 2018 and it’s not reprinted. I don’t like paying $18 hoping to get out at $25 especially with a non-zero amount of reprint risk, but much like the people who buy Stoneforge Mystic every year before B&R and sell into the B&R hype for free money, you can probably get these at their floor and make money on them one more time when this is inevitably not in Commander 2018. I don’t expect a tribal theme in Commander 2018 per se, but this card will go back up next time there’s a whiff of tribal stuff happening and if you think it won’t get reprinted at the same time, that’s free money. This is risky but so is all MTG Finance speculation and I just felt I would be remiss if I didn’t remind us all that this is a thing that happens.

Soul Foundry

My favorite use for this is putting Biovisionary into play, but you can make rats in a pinch. Combine with untap effects for more hilarity. Not much to say other than that the graph for this looks awful and I’m not sure why. It could be renewed interest in Ripple Rats that kicks this in the ass because it sure needs it.

The Relentless Rats EDHREC Page yielded these interesting cards. I could spend next week checking out the Shadowborn Apostle page but I think next week I want to get into a deck like Jodah with some data. In the mean time, feel free to find some interesting cards I missed and ask me about them in the comments. That does it for me this week – it feels like we’re in a bit of a holding pattern but that doesn’t mean we can’t use our time wisely and think to the future a bit. That does it for me this week. Until next time!

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