Jason Alt, Unlocked ProTrader

Unlocked Pro Trader: The Article I Would Have Written Last Week

2 Comments

Nerds,

Look, had I known what the full spoiler was going to look like, I would have written this article last week. I spent all week – Brainstorm Brewery, here, Gathering Magic, talking about how people might be inclined to play more Animar decks if they could get a cheap Imperial Recruiter in Masters 25. It’s not necessary in Animar but since it’s very good, you could see an uptick. It was a correlation without necessarily causation argument which isn’t the strongest but we’re just making associations here, right? More often than not, those correlations lead us to money. This week is no different, except my correlation argument went and strengthened itself.

So this is a thing. I guess I could have predicted this if I had really thought about it, and maybe I kind of did but now we have confirmation that Animar itself is getting a reprint, we don’t have to guess how many Animar decks are going to get built on the strength of an Imperial Recruiter reprint. We can guess how many Animar decks are going to get built on the strength of an Animar reprint and that number is much, much larger. Animar was pretty expensive before and it had some expensive cards from the deck get reprinted. What’s bound to go up as Animar decks get played more? How do we get ahead of the coming wave and make sure we have enough boats to… benefit from the wave…

I’m getting sick of the boats metaphor. I never hear anyone reference it but me and I was honestly just keeping it going to see how long I could do it.

Let’s get on with talking about money and not about boats, shall we?

Money, Soul of Everything Around Me

Animar is a pretty specific deck which can be good and bad. It’s sort of bad in that it’s sort of boring and predictable to play but it’s good for us in that it’s boring and predictable to build. I think people are going to take advantage of the price of Animar plummeting, personally and I see it getting built, especially now that people can get Animar in foil.

For reference, there are 775 Captain Sisay decks currently registered on EDHREC and 2,700 or so Oloro decks, so that puts Animar in roughly the 60th percentile for deck adoption based on current numbers. Again, the absolute numbers matter less than the proportions so try and not look at a number like 1,714 and say “that’s too low to bother with” if you don’t have a reference based on popular commanders. Without a compelling reason to build Oloro coming soon and a bunch of cheaper copies (Cheaper than even the $15 Card Kingdom wants for a preorder) coming and with foils available for the first time, I think Animar is going to approach Oloro’s numbers. That is good news for Animar staples. Staples such as…

Cloudstone Curio

This is basically an EDH staple at this point, you’d think, but if you check the synergy score with Animar, it’s almost 40% meaning there is a high degree of correlation. Cloudstone’s fate is less tied to the fate of the format as a whole than a card like Sol Ring but if we’re predicting Animar is going to get played more, cards that are shoo-ins for decks like that are good cards to discuss. I don’t know if I like the invention at around $45 since the art is sort of meh. However, Curio is a combo enabler in a lot of formats and has been a solid card for many years. I don’t know if it’s reprintable but with core sets coming up, there is real risk. I think if this had a run on it and went from $10 to $20 you get in and out. Curio is just too good in Animar decks and it basically makes any two creatures get Animar huge enough that you can Eldrazi them to death. This is a must-play for idealized versions of the deck making it a must-buy for us. Also, stock online is low making any amount of buying activity immediately noticeable and very impactful.

Birthing Pod

Being banned in Modern is pretty good for mitigating its reprint risk, I’d say. With it being hard to reprint and with people already having dug through online and rooted out all of the event decks it’s in, I think the copies we have are the copies we have which means future demand is all upside. This is good enough in the deck that I think this has upside based on increases in Animar decks being built and with supply not going anywhere, new demand is all the price should need. Don’t expect demand to be back-filled by copies coming out of the woodwork, either. You’re getting these from dealers.

Promo Rattleclaw Mystic

I don’t think the demand from Animar will be great enough to drive regular Rattleclaw up and I think the set foil isn’t splashy enough but  I do think people will target the promo foil and I think we could see an opportunity to make some money. Unfortunately, the card is a bit narrow and basically goes only in Animar decks right now, but if they’re being built, I could see the upside bringing this card for a bit of a ride even if the other printings aren’t touched. This may be wishful thinking but Morph creatures are great in Animar, they’ll probably be good in something else in the next few years and Rattleclaw is one of the best Morph creatures we have. I don’t have the kind of confidence in this I do in Curio just because there are 3 choices under $3 for this one and the foils of Curio are ridiculous and these are a very recent card but I do think people will want these and you should make some money. I mean, before fees, you’ll definitely make money. Before fees.

Foil Ancestral Statue

This is a pretty textbook case of an “Animar only” card but the foil is doing some pretty encouraging things in a world where Animar was like $50. This is a goofy pick and it goes against a lot of the things we normally say when we play it safe, but the graph seems to show some signs of life. I don’t hate this.

Ulamog the Ceaseless Hunger

This is probably the finisher in the Animar deck with the most upside. It’s starting to tick up a bit and while that means we could have gotten it for a buck or two cheaper, realistically, it represents the start of a climb that wasn’t even predicated on the reprinting of Animar. With Animar on the upswing, Eldrazi like this one will be along for the ride and I think this is the one I’m most excited about. You can check the price graphs of the others (cross reference with the list of Eldrazi played in Animar that you can find on EDHREC) and feel free to list any you like in the comments of this article, but I’m fairly certain this is the juiciest.

I am absolutely building Animar once prices tank and I welcome you all to join me. You add some artifact shenanigans, some enchantments like Sunbird’s Invocation and Zendikar Resurgent and you Eldrazi them to death or morph a bunch. It’s going to be pretty rad. Again, let me know if you think any Eldrazi are sexier than Battle for Ulamog or leave other questions and concerns. I read your comments, so leave them. Until next time!

Watchtower

PROTRADER: The Watchtower 3/5/18

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. And if you enjoy playing Magic, make sure to visit https://scry.land to find PPTQs, SCG Opens, and more events on an interactive map with worldwide coverage. Find Magic near you today.

While we got the MOCS this weekend, which is a Modern/Draft format, it’s important to remember that we can’t take too much away from it. It’s a small tournament, maybe 24 people, so the metagame gets wonky. This was evident in Bogles showing up as the second most-played deck in the room. This isn’t the type of strategy that professional players are typically inclined to select for major events, like a GP or a Pro Tour. It doesn’t give them enough space to make full use of their skill as a player, and the variance is likely to catch up with them over the course of sixteen rounds. However, in a room with so few other players, where everyone is an accomplished pro, things are a bit different. You’re playing fewer rounds, so it’s easier to get lucky. Everyone is a talented player, so you don’t necessarily have that edge over most of your opponents. And perhaps most importantly, if you’re able to peg the metagame, showing up with an otherwise odd deck that’s well positioned against the most common deck in the room is a huge advantage.

All of this means that just because there were so many Bogles at the event, it doesn’t mean you should think 20% of the Modern meta is going to turn into Bogles. There is value in the event as an indicator of the format though. Jund was the most popular deck, and that wouldn’t be the case if players didn’t think it was the most powerful strategy there.

Raging Ravine

Price Today: $25
Possible Price: $40

When Bloodbraid Elf and Jace were unbanned, there was a mini run on Celestial Colonnade. Players that wanted to play Jace knew they would need the land that has followed him through most constructed formats. People were hesitant to go too deep though, since Masters 25 was around the corner and a reprint would have sucked.

Once the full spoiler hit and the Worldwake manlands were confirmed absent, prices pushed harder on Colonnade, and non-foils are sitting around $60 today. Most importantly, copies are selling at that price point. Meanwhile, Raging Ravine got some attention as well, with the price having been hanging around at $10 in the middle of last month, and it’s at $25 today.

As wild as this is, I’m here to tell you I think it could keep going. Jund was a big part of the MOCS, and that’s no mistake. Whenever Bloodbraid has been legal, Jund has been a tier one strategy. Add in that it’s got a few new tools that weren’t there before, and it’s looking even better. And rare is the Jund deck without Raging Ravines. You’ll see four occasionally, while three copies is the most common quantity you’ll see show up.

Jund has already begun to show that it’s back in Modern and it’s a real contender. As players who haven’t been in the format since the last time Jund was legal begin to move into the deck, the few Raging Ravines left are going to continue to dry up. Ravine has no more stock out there than Colonnade — in fact, there are fewer copies, since it wasn’t a buy-a-box promo. Is $60 in Ravine’s future? Maybe. That’s a big jump. But $40? That doesn’t seem far fetched to me.

Kolaghan’s Command

Price Today: $20
Possible Price: $30

Remember thirty seconds ago when I said Jund has some new tools available to it? This is one of them. Kolaghan’s Command is on the very short list of best three drops in Modern to cascade into with BBE.

Shock? Well hey, that kills opposing BBEs, Dark Confidants, Oozes that haven’t eaten yet, Flameblade Adepts, Noble Hierarchs, you name it. Return a creature to your hand? Well how about your first BBE that got Bolted? Or a Confidant? Or a Tarmogoyf? Discard a card? I’m putting a 3/2 haste onto the battlefield, killing your guy, and making you discard a card. That’s a three-for-one for all you keeping track at home. And finally, artifact removal. More limited in its application, but when you need it, boy you’ll be glad you have it.

Kolaghan’s Command is always going to be valuable coming out of a Bloodbraid, even if you have to settle for discard and shock them. Since hey, if you’re casting BBE into Command and you haven’t had a creature die yet and they don’t have anything to shoot, the game sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?

We’re not getting any more anytime soon, and nobody is rushing out to crack Dragons of Tarkir at the moment. We could easily see Kommand add on another $10 (or more) as one of the best spells in Jund over the next few months.

Mwonvuli Acid-Moss

Price Today: $4
Possible Price: $10

This one is a bit stranger than the others, but it’s where we find ourselves.

RG Ponza, or for the uninformed, RG Land Destruction, is a strategy as old as time. Blow up some lands, attack with some dudes. A good time was had by all.

In the last few months the strategy has been slowly gaining ground after having been relegated to the tournament practice room on MTGO. It’s getting more and more popular though, and with a rise in Urza Land decks and Celestial Colonnade decks, hampering your opponent’s mana development is looking better than ever.

Most of the deck is familiar ground, or at least, familiar cards. Some Arbor Elves, Birds, Titans, Blood Moons, Stone Rains, etc. Everything here has been printed several times. Except for one particular spell that’s always a four-of — Mwonvuli Acid-Moss.

It’s probably not the first card you’d expect to see a strategy such as this play, as you might expect it to reach for Molten Rain or Fulminator Mage first. Apparently costing one extra isn’t an issue though, and fetching your own land as part of the deal means you get to go slam one of those Titans in your hand into play a little earlier — say, turn four.

Acid-Moss has a single printing from Time Spiral. It was a common, so there’s a fair supply out there, but we’re now 12 — yes, 12 — years past Time Spiral. Without another printing, and an existing casual demand for land destruction as it is, Acid-Moss copies have been draining for awhile. It was $2.5 to $3 a few weeks ago, and has recently started to push up towards $4 and $5. Where you can find them at $4 they’re likely a safe pickup. They’re not showing up in the Commander Anthology. They’re unlikely to show up in other products as well, since Wizards doesn’t care for land destruction much. It’s not to say it won’t, but it’s got to be low on their list of things to reprint, and it’s not something they’re eager to include anyways.

As this deck is going to have a smallish but dedicated fan base and is otherwise fairly inexpensive, Acid-Moss is positioned to keep riding the “hard to find common” train up towards $10. And if it shows up in pauper? Well then hey, the sky’s the limit.

Travis Allen has  been playing Magic: The Gathering since 1994, mostly in upstate New York. Ever since his first FNM he’s been trying to make playing Magic cheaper, and he first brought his perspective to MTGPrice in 2012. You can find his articles there weekly, as well as on the podcast MTG Fast Finance.

 

Casual Fridays

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Variance and Masters 25

Here’s the scenario:

You hear about a run of boxes where every 8th pack, there’s a $50 mythic. You travel to where those boxes have been sent, and you head to the counter, and start counting. Every time someone buys packs, you keep track, you monitor when the money shows up and now you count packs, buying a pack after seven others have been purchased.

You’ll make a lot of money that way but every other person is gonna be pissed. That’s called a fixed-ratio schedule. Every X trials, a desired outcome happens.

Humans figure that out really quickly, and it’s not a formula for success. What we would get is the box mapping scenario, or the peeking at packs: Some people figure out where the money is and then sell the loose boosters at slightly less. In the case of Masters 25, if you opened six good rares/mythics and were about even on value, you could put the rest of the loose packs on eBay or Amazon for $5 or $7 each and clean up.

Gambling (and I’m including opening Magic: the Gathering packs here) works on a variable-ratio schedule. With every trial, there’s a chance of the desired outcome. Because it’s random, you might get two really good packs in a row, you might have 30 bad packs in a row.

Weirdly, the longer the run of negative outcomes, the more likely humans are to keep trying. WE ARE DUE. This works on video games, slot machines, booster packs, etc.

I bring this up because Masters 25 is shaping up to be a really frustrating set to open.
It’s a truism that you should never buy loose boosters. Box mapping, peeking, weighing, there’s a lot of margins that people can exploit. Don’t do it for those reasons, but also don’t do it because it’s just bad value.

For instance, Rest in Peace was just previewed for the set yesterday. Right now, it’s a $10 card. At MSRP, you need to hit that card to break even. You have about a 1 in 3 chance (at current prices/spoilers) to open a pack with a card that has retail value of $10 or more. That’s better than a lot of other sets. Some data:

set Cards worth > $4 or $10 # of rares + mythics in set % chance of winning
RIX 13 65 20%
IXL 16 82 19.5%
IMA 15 68 22%
EMA 16 68 23.5%

These are only the cards that retail for the cost of the pack, so if we are talking about Eternal Masters, something worth exactly $10 (Maze of Ith) is as much as a win something going for $140 (Jace, the Mind Sculptor) and that brings us to how many we need to open.

You’ll have to open about five packs to get one worth $10, on average. You’ll spend $50 to hit one $10 card. At that rate, your numbers get much much worse. There’s only three cards in EMA worth $50, and that rate is so much worse.

Is there the potential for a three-Jace box? Absolutely. You might hit a Jace and a foil Force of Will, and you’ll feel like you hit the lottery, and it’s a great great feeling.

You’ll also open boxes with Balance, Worldgorger Dragon, and Sphinx of the Steel Wind, and which have foils of Nevinyrral’s Disk, Eight-and-a-half Tails, and Malicious Affliction.

That level of variance is a bad investment. It’s bad value. It’s not worth it, and Masters 25 is going to be worse, it seems. You will hear about amazing boxes, but people won’t be trumpeting their godawful mythic pulls the same way.

If there’s cards you want from Masters 25, just go buy them, about three weeks after the release. We haven’t seen the whole spoiler yet, but the early signs are that this set is going to smash a lot of prices.

Masters 25 appears to have a pair of card types getting a reprint: Multi-format staples whose prices will drop and slowly rebound, or cards which had a high price due to low supply, and those prices are going to fall off a cliff.

Sticky: Blood Moon

Blood Moon is a card that has had a lot of printings, including two Modern Masters printings, and it’s managed to remain a $20 card. That level of price retention is testament to its popularity, mainly in Modern as a backbreaking sideboard card in a lot of matchups.

Among the decks that get counted, this is the 12th most popular card in Modern, even though blessed few decks are playing it in the main. A full 1 in 5 decks has at least one copy in their 75, the average is between 2 and 3. That’s some amazing numbers, considering the popularity of Modern.

I wouldn’t be shocked if this trickled down into the $15 range, but it’ll get back to $20 within a few months. It won’t go higher and it won’t go lower.

 

Slider: Rishadan Port

Let’s be clear: Port is a powerful card in denial strategies. In the right deck, and god forbid in multiples, it can severly limit what a deck can do in Legacy matches.

Unfortunately, Legacy and Cubes are the only formats where this gets played. Yes, you can use this in Commander, but the benefit is pretty low, and a colorless only land has to be pretty awesome to be worth the addition.

Port is a 4-of in Legacy Death and Taxes builds, but not being Modern legal is a big knock. The only supply has been the original Mercadian Masques printing, and a recent judge promo. At a presale point of $50 it’s already lost nearly half the value. I don’t think the original will move much, but the new version will struggle to stay above $40, because not that many people need it.

 

Cliff is an avid Cuber and Commander player, and has a deep love for weird ways to play this game. 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.

Brainstorm Brewery

Brainstorm Brewery #279 Masters 25

 

A very sleepy brew crew, Corbin (@Chosler88), Jason (@jasonEalt ) and DJ (@Rose0fThorns), crack open an episode that is guaranteed to have more EV than a Masters 25 pack. Seriously even this cast isn’t as bad as Tree of Redemption. (ugh) The crew discusses all the information that you need to know heading into Masters 25 and what to expect from the reprints.

Also, make sure to check us out on Youtube  https://www.youtube.com/user/BrainstormBrewery

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