UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Shadows over Innistrad at Rotation

August 25, 2017 Cliff Daigle

Ixalan previews should be starting next week, to match with the pre-previews that are being officially released due to geotagging and if you want to ignore the unofficial leaks, I respect that.

Today, though, I’m continuing to look at cards that are about to rotate, and what I want to pick up now that they are super cheap. A couple of weeks ago I looked at some great targets from Battle for Zendikar and Oath of the Gatewatch, and it’s time to look at the other big set that’s rotating out. (Eldritch Moon will be soon!)

We are looking for any of the following factors, or a combination thereof: Modern use, Legacy use, Commander use, Cubes, and other casual play. The more of those groups that want these cards, the better a bet they are.

The caveat, as always: We don’t know what will and won’t be reprinted. FTV: Zendikar could happen. We’ve got several Commander 2017 cards that should have been reprinted but weren’t, and a lot more that it’s a relief that they did get reprinted.

Foils are not a totally safe bet either, with Masters sets and Conspiracy and special releases, but foils can go up if the nonfoil is reprinted in a set like Commander 2017.

On to the cards!

Nahiri, the Harbinger ($10 regular/$35 foil): The foil is at the upper end of where I’d expect a card to be, and that’s because she’s really good at what she does. Exiling permanents is quite powerful in Commander, but you have to tap the creature or artifact first. It’s unlikely that she’ll nail a Darksteel Forge, for instance.

She pops up in Modern from time to time but never with frequency and isn’t the focus of a deck. I want to wait and see if she falls a bit further, as $10 is too high for my taste. I’m more comfortable getting in at $7 and playing a long game.

Relentless Dead ($7.50/$15 foil): I’ll be honest: I had a stack of these that I picked up when this was around $5 and moved out at the spike. This is an amazing tribal card in one of the most resilient tribes, and it can do some truly disgusting things in Commander. I’m surprised that the foil is so low, and this is one of my top targets at rotation for long-term growth from the casual market.

I would prefer the card to get cheaper, but the $15 foil is incredibly tempting. Zombies would seem to be a lock for the next time the Commander decks get tribal, and the foil will be much more resilient than the nonfoil in such a case.

Archangel Avacyn ($6/$15): She’s got one hurdle to clear: FTV Transform in November. I’m hoping she’s trickled down to $5, and if she dodges reprinting in that set, the difficulty in printing double-faced cards means she’s probably safe.

Startled Awake ($5/$8): Now this…this is a foil I want to have, but I can’t shake the FTV idea for this either. It’s a powerhouse mill card, and it’s reusable, and casual players are why Fraying Sanity isn’t a bulk rare. There’s only about 50 foils on TCG, the multiplier is low, but I’m not moving till that FTV list is out.

Arlinn Kord ($4/$8): We are now in an era where there’s enough planeswalkers to fill out a Commander deck easily. That means mediocre ones like her aren’t guaranteed to grow. She’s cheap, sure, and pops right into your Werewolf tribal deck, but it’ll take so long to grow that I don’t think she’s worth it.

Tireless Tracker ($4/$11): I’m picking up foils of this as fast as my budget can stand. There’s less than a hundred on TCG right now, and that includes prerelease foils. What you need to know is that this is popping up in several Modern decks as a value engine, and even in the sideboard of Lands decks in Legacy. This will be going up, and it’ll spike into the $20-$30 range when it settles.

Traverse the Ulvenwald ($4/$13): Another card with a relatively low number of foils on TCG (less than 80 total as of this writing) everything depends on which build of Death’s Shadow you like in Modern. If you like the Grixis better, this is worthless. If you play a version with Tarmogoyf, then you want four Traverse. These are not going to go down much, but I like the foils more for a spike in the next year, with nonfoils coming along for the ride. The Delirium mechanic makes it a little less likely to be reprinted soon but nothing is for sure.

Thalia’s Lieutenant ($1.50/$3): I dearly love this foil at $3, for two reasons: First, it’s an automatic four-of in any competitive Humans build that might pop up in Modern. A couple decks have tried, but no traction yet. Second, as a tribal enabler in foil, it will go up, even if the card is reprinted in a future tribal set.

For an example of this effect, here’s the graph of Dragon Tempest in foil:

The nonfoil has taken a small hit, but it’s in the Dragon deck, so the foil is where you want to be. Grab your foil Lieutenants now.

The Gitrog Monster ($1.50/$10): It doesn’t seem like that long ago, when all kinds of stuff was spiking madly due to his use in Commander. The enormous foil multiplier remains a strong sign of his appeal there, so picking him up now is an investment in slow growth over a very long term.

Seasons Past ($1/$3): I’m pretty bullish on this, especially for such a cheap foil mythic. We’ve already seen that with a tutor, it’s viable in Standard, so imagine the work it’ll do in Commander. This is probably not going to spike, so you’ll be on the ‘stick in a box and be patient plan’ that has served well for a number of EDH cards.

Prized Amalgam ($1/$5): It’s been pointed out as an easy target, and it has a surprising foil multiplier for a card that’s hard to use in casual formats easily, but this is easy mode. It’s a four-of in a Modern deck that comes and goes in waves, $5 for the foil is too cheap. It’ll spike to at least $10 after it does well on camera in some event, and with Modern being back on the PT, it might spike a lot harder.

Duskwatch Recruiter ($1/$4): Not only is this difficult to reprint, it’s one of the ways the Counters Company deck can instantly win, finding Walking Ballista at instant speed. It’s also a fantastic place to dump mana in Commander, and as an uncommon, there aren’t even any prerelease foils to mess with. TCG currently has 23 foils in assorted conditions.

I would love this a whole lot more if it didn’t feel like a very strong contender to be in the FTV this November, so as you can tell, I’m hesitating until we know what’s in that set.

James Chillcott, MTG Growth Stocks

Reserved & Reliable: The Rational MTG Reserved List

August 24, 2017 James Chillcott 5 Comments

Over the last few years, Reserved List cards have been increasingly targeted by speculators and vendors as inventory worth stocking in pursuit of theoretically easy future gains. The narrative is simple: if they never print these cards again, they have to go up right? Over the last couple of months this process has been increasing in frequency as speculators dig deep and target even the worst of the Reserved List cards. As a result dozens of unplayable RL cards have been spiked, with the ability to hold the new plateaus highly dependent on whether collectors looking to finish sets of Antiquities, Arabian Nights, Legends and The Dark will step in out of fear and attempt to grab cards they needon an accelerated schedule.

Now while it is certainly true that Wizards of the Coast’s commitment to maintaining the Reserved List makes almost anything on the list a safe bet long term, I have been pretty vocal on Twitter with suggestions that there are better targets in abundance for the short and mid term.

Many of the best of the Reserved List targets under $100 have already seen spikes in the last five years, only to experience retraces back towards lower levels within months of popping that have made it difficult for anyone to claim profits on deeper inventory levels. Lion’s Eye Diamond, a 4-of in a relevant Legacy deck, had trouble holding an ambitious new plateau, with the $80 card popping to $180 in the summer of 2016 before falling back to $120 or so since. That’s still a solid gain, but it’s also a best case scenario that the trash RL cards are unlikely to approach.

A safer bet then is to focus on Reserved List cards that enjoy significant demand from Commander, Casual or Eternal formats. These cards may represent lesser % gains vs. $1 North Stars suddenly being posted for $10, but their demand profiles are likely to be much stronger, and their gains in terms of real $ and ability to support deeper inventory are likely to be significantly superior. Overall, I see these targets as good for 10-30% per annum gains over the next eighteen months or so, with further upside if a wave of buyouts happens to target them anew. This still wouldn’t touch the gains on my top specs, but if you just can’t stay away from the Reserved List, at least target something worth playing.

Here are just a few of the top tier Reserved List targets that could still ostensibly sustain another spike:

Yavimaya Hollow

Most of the demand for this card comes from it’s usefulness in Commander as an auto-include utility land for any creature based deck that can support it’s single green cost to regenerate a creature. The card provides a unique effect in Commander, especially for a land, and can keep a key creature alive in the face of a destruction based board sweeper or similar point removal. This card shows up in just over 4000 decks on EDH.Rec, but that number should likely be higher.

When I first looked at this card in Feb of 2016, there were nearly 100 copies lying around online, with an average price of $10 or so. I bought about twenty copies at the time, but have been going deeper lately at twice the price, as inventory levels are now below 50-60 NM/SP copies across all major platforms. This winter I bought both English and Japanese foils close to $100 USD in Europe and flipped all of them for $200+ and though I was happy with the extent and speed of the returns, I suspect that the buyers may get a similarly attractive exit if they are more patient than I was. There are still small piles of SP copies on SCG and TCG at the time of this write up, and those seem like a good place to go deep. NM copies are already over $33 on TCG, but can be found elsewhere closer to $20 for now. If you want to speculate or need a copy for a deck, there’s just no reason to wait any longer.

Current Price: $20-25
Future Price (12-18 months): $35-40+

Treachery

In the mid-game at your kitchen table or Commander session, Treachery isn’t just a reasonably priced Control Magic effect, but the setup for broken combo sequences that leverage the incidental untapping of the lands that you tapped to cast it. Whether you have a powered up Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx or a twice-enchanted Forest to untap, Treachery lets you grab the best creature at the table, often with a positive mana advantage. The card only shows up in 2500 EDH decks at present, but the number should likely be higher, and the land untap effect is unique and provides open ended synergies with future cards that will be printed without considering it’s presence in casual metas. Copies are currently available in the $20-25 range, but inventory levels are less than 20% of what they were when I first tallied them 18 months ago. The are about 35 non-foils available on TCGPlayer.com alone, so you can easily go deep at $25 or less if you are ok to sit on them for a while. Foils are almost certainly a hold if you have any as RL foils are that much more rare and will not cycle back into the market as often as the non-foil versions due to their collectibility. Ultimately, overall demand here is mild compare to some of the other picks, but it’s still miles above most of the RL trash that has popped as of late.

Current Price: $20-25
Future Price (12-18 months): $35-40+

Volrath’s Stronghold

This EDH utility land boast one of the highest usage patterns of the cards on this list, with over 6000 decks registered using it on EDH.rec. The ability to recursively abuse your best creatures is both unique and unlikely to be bettered in the modern era of Magic design. This card has never had a foil version, so unlike some of the other RL cards, we need only worry about the original copies.

I bought my first pile of these at the same time as Yavimaya Hollow back in the winter of 2016, when the card was commonly available near $20. After a spike that took place through the first half of that year, the card posted up closer to $40, before falling back to the current average price of about $35. It’s worth noting that some MTGPrice vendors have the card under $30 and in Europe your contacts may be able to scavenge some closer to $25. Interestingly, inventory actually seems stronger now than it did 18 months ago, which suggests that the most recent spike pulled copies out of binders as folks who had them laying around sought to take advantage. Given the inventory levels, it would be tough to go deep on this and expect immediate gains. If you were to snag all the copies under $35, that still might set you back $1500-2000, and it could still be months or years before you can yield $10+ (25%+) on your resales. As such, this is more interesting as a card that you snag a copy of for personal use, or keep on your radar as something to pick up whenever you see it underpriced for long term gains. I snagged a NM copy on Ebay for $25 while I was writing this article, and looking for a small pile during the frequent $15 off $75 in purchases sales that are common on that site might be a solid action.

Current Price: $30-35
Future Price (12-18 months): $50+

Sliver Queen

Sliver Queen was actually one of the earliest EDH based spikes for the Reserved List, initially popping from $30 to $45 in the summer of 2013. Since then it has been on a slight downill trend with copies commonly available around $40. The card isn’t legal in Modern, so demand is largely dependent on EDH sliver players and casuals. The thing is, Slivers aren’t actually all that popular in Commander circles, with just 800 decks or so registering the card. StarCityGames is currently out of stock on NM copies, but they’ve got just under 30 SP copies priced near $28. MTGDeals has a NM copy posted at $28, so that is a solid option if you’d like to ensure you’ve got one for the future. I don’t think you need to make a move on this card otherwise, but it would be something I would monitor inventory levels on if Slivers showed up in a new Magic set and gave someone the idea to try and corner the market.

Current Price: $30-35
Future Price (12-18 months): $50+

Metalworker

This is another card where age and lack of exposure may be limiting usage in EDH. EDH.rec shows 2800 decks or so registering this powerful ramp creature which should likely be an auto-include in decks such as Breya, Daretti and Arcum. In the spring of 2014 you could snag this card for $12 or so, but by fall of that year it had popped to $30, and then again to $40 in the winter of 2016 during that wave of Reserved List targeting. Since then the card has fallen back closer to $30, with a few copies available on TCG under $25 shipped. There are about 50 copies total on that site, including 20 or so held by ChannelFireball, but the curve from $25 to $40 is relatively steep past the first 10 copies, and the rest of the web is carrying another 50-60 copies with a similar price curve. MTGDeals has a copy posted at $20.49 which looks tasty. I like stashing away copies here and there at those lower price points, awaiting a greedy buyout down the road once speculators tire of targeting the trashier RL cards.

Current Price: $25
Future Price (12-18 months): $35+

Lotus Vale

With just 1200 or so decks on EDH.rec, this card flies a bit under the radar, but it’s inventory level is actually fairly low at present, and could be ripe to pop. For years, there weren’t a lot of ways to abuse this land, but with the printing of The Gitrog Monster and Titania, Protector of Argoth and the additional redundancy that Ramnunap Excavator adds to Crucible of Worlds style land recursion, it’s relatively easy for a focused Commander list to negate the downside on Lotus Vale and turn it into a permanent Black Lotus level ramp spell that can’t easily be dealt with.

There are about 20 NM copies available on TCG, mostly clustered around $10-12. Ebay has a similar number on display, and SCG has 12 copies around $12. Demand might be shallow here at present, but I like the unique power potential of the card and the low inventory makes a buyout attractive so I’m good to stash away a handful for the long term.

Current Price: $11
Future Price (12-18 months): $20+

Gaea’s Cradle

Let’s finish off with a bang shall we? Gaea’s Cradle is one of the most powerful lands available in both Legacy and Commander, and yet there were still fools who would rather spread $250 over dozens of small time Reserved List specs instead of consolidating under the banner of steady & predictable growth? Lunacy.

Cradle has been on a solid uphill trajectory for years, moving from an $80 card in early 2013, to a $250 card with serious upside today. Just a few months ago a major speculator called me crazy for targeting copies of this in Europe for $160, but personally I think it’s crazy to not be targeting your first copy of this card before nearly anything else on the Reserved List. Given enough time I think Gaea’s Cradle hits $500, and the Judge Promo is likely to end up a $1000+ card. The land is amazing in any green deck with creatures, and the fact that shows up in 5800 EDH lists despite it’s price tag reflects just how aware of that the Commander community is.

Inventory is low, with just a handful of NM copies on TCGPlayer posted between $250 and $350. On Ebay, copies can be had for closer to $200, especially if you are willing to risk international shipping options. SCG has no NM or SP copies listed, and wants $180 for their MP copies. Stop messing around and get yourself a Gaea’s Cradle before it’s too late.

Current Price: $220
Future Price (12-18 months): $400+

James Chillcott is the CEO of ShelfLife.net, The Future of Collecting, Senior Partner at Advoca, a designer, adventurer, toy fanatic and an avid Magic player and collector since 1994. He is also co-host of MTGFastFinance, our weekly MTGFinance podcast.

Jason Alt

Unlocked Pro Trader: Mirriad Pickups

August 22, 2017 Jason Alt 11 Comments

I decided to switch it up and not talk as much about the Wizard commanders as much. I might just take it week by week, I might right about emerging trends as they emerge, I might just do what I want each week without trying to be accountable to some sort of arbitrary I set up in advance because that would stifle my creativity and limit me as both a financier and as a person. Next week I might talk about Dragons, I might not. All you need to know this week is that I’m going to talk about Mirri, Weatherlight Duelist and what I think we’re going to end up spiking as we build with her.

It may be a tad premature to say I think Mirri is one of the more popular commanders right now because no one has the cards yet, but that doesn’t really stop people from brewing. People have had decks on TappedOut since the Dragon cards were leaked even without knowing what was in the rest of the decks. THAT was premature. But when people do things prematurely, they’re signalling that they’re the most fanatical of the bunch and that means a few things I think we need to think about.

Fanatics follow through

The people who are so jazzed about building their Taigam, Ojutai Master extra turns rebound deck that they didn’t even wait to see what else was in the Dragon deck (Fractured Identity, a card that’s way better than I think most people are aware of) are going to buy the Dragon deck to get the cards and they’re also likely ordering or have ordered the rest of the stuff from the deck. They put it up on TappedOut weeks early with a fake placeholder like Lavinia so you can only find it by googling Taigam’s name and they will buy the cards the second they can. Is it ridiculous that they made a fake deck super early? Sure, but it’s equally ridiculous to assume they aren’t champing at the bit and won’t be the first in line to buy the cards.

They thought this through

A person fanatical enough about the new commander to go out and register their decklist on a deckbuilding site before they’re really even supposed to has scoured gatherer, similar decks, discussion groups and even reddit. They have tweeted about the cards and interactions and gotten feedback from other lunatics like them. Granted, cards slip through the cracks, but the general thrust of these new commanders are identified and explored by people weeks before the cards are for sale. It didn’t occur to me to use Buyback spells with Taigam or Beacons because I didn’t think about it as much as these nuts. Luckily for me, they put their findings online because they’re proud of them and I get to come by, look at what they figured out, and figure out how to buy the cards before they do. They’re too busy writing a 3,000 word screed on MTG Salvation that no one else will ever read to take a second to order a few copies of Beacon of Tomorrows wherever a person like that orders cards (SCG) and when they try to buy them, they’ll see they’re all gone because my readers thought about that. Still, it’s good that they are doing so much thinking and posting about the new cards because…

They set trends

Like it or not, two things have more influence over what ends up on EDHREC. The first is inclusion in the precon. There is going to be a huge degree of correlation between Arahbo decks and Hammer of Nazahn. If you were building an Arahbo deck from scratch, you’d never include the hammer. It doesn’t really interact with the way you want to build the deck that much and it doesn’t make your Top 100, ever. However, people simply aren’t going to build the deck like that. They’re going to buy the kitty precon, take out the bad cards and replace them with better cards. They are going to leave in a lot of marginal, “too good to take out therefore good enough to play” cards, at least initially. They may cut them later, but people are way better about getting their crazy lists up than editing them. We call this the “precon effect” over at EDHREC. Cards from the precon that shouldn’t be in the deck end up in EDHREC lists just because people don’t take them out regardless of whether or not they’re really impactful enough to always play.

The second thing that influences what ends up on EDHREC is what people put in TappedOut early. The people who use EDHREC to build their decks or check around TappedOut subsequently will see what the first people to register their decks used, and EDHREC will generate an “average list” when people request it, meaning the people who register their decks early will have their picks seen by everyone who builds subsequently and any of those suggestions that subsequent people follow will be seen by even more people. That’s not a limitation of EDHREC as a metric, though. I think it’s quite the opposite, really. I think it means that the people who build first have a lot of impact so there isn’t much point in waiting for more data. The heavy influence of early adopters makes early analysis just as fruitful as later analysis and we’ll come to a lot of the same conclusions. Right now, there are roughly the same amount of decks registered for the “good” commanders and a handful for the “bad” ones. We have enough data to look at what early adopters are using so let’s see what they’re doing with Mirri decks. That’s me telling, not asking. This is happening.

Actually

Before I do that, real fast, I wanted to remind everyone that although you read my article here, you may not be aware that I do other stuff. I can’t take for granted anyone knowing my whole life so I want to point out that I am always giving out good finance info on the Brainstorm Brewery podcast and I am writing something that sometimes really approaches this article on Gathering Magic every week. I don’t evaluate cards with respect to finance in that series, but I do talk about cards that I think are good and other people read it and buy cards when they agree with me and it’s worthwhile to know what people who have followings think about things. I try to keep my picks from the two places separate, so I’d read both if I cared about my opinion.

So what do we think Mirri is going to do to stuff based on what early adopters, whom I’ve already (hopefully) established are going to correctly predict and also influence what subsequent builders buy are using? I’m glad I pretended you asked.

For quick reference, here is the Mirri page.

Nacatl War-Pride

Something is going to happen to push this card over the cliff and it may be a lot of new usage from kittycat decks, especially Mirri decks. Mirri benefits from going wide around their solitary defender and if they want to block War-Pride, they can’t block Mirri, letting Mirri continue to lock them down and also survive to be a Crawlspace. War-Pride will fart out a ton of tokens to make it miserable for them to have a lot of creatures they can’t block with. War-Pride was one of EDH’s best-kept secrets despite it having some vocal cheerleaders and that was before Mirri made it even more miserable to have this swing at you. With Parallel Lives, Anointed Procession, Cathar’s Crusade and other cards you’ll already play in a Mirri deck, this card is busted.

Now, can this card get above a buck being an uncommon? Sword of the Meek is like $8, Dryad Arbor is $10, Aven Mindcenser was real money, etc. War-Pride will never be as important, ubiquitous or nutty as those cards, but it also establishes that Future Sight uncommons can have an upside as high as $10 or so even after reprinting. War-Pride is already in 500 decks on EDHREC and that was when it was way more fair a card. It’s super unfair now and buying these under a buck makes sense if this ends up $3 or $4, which I think is doable.

This is also a $10 or so foil so while I think the ship sailed when every lunatic bought every kittycat card and in true broken clock fashion, got one right, I think the non-foil has a lot of upside. I also think financiers who claim people are lining up to buy a stupid kittycat precon deck and then foil out the deck they build should save some drugs for the rest of us. If you find some of these in foil bulk, hooray, but I’m not a buyer in foil above like $4, which isn’t really possible anymore.

Dragonlord Dromoka

I’m sure we all wish we had been paying better attention to this card. I noticed it dipped but I didn’t remember to tell anyone it would go back up or buy any copies for myself which seems like a silly thing to have done. This was always secretly the best Dragonlord but since it wasn’t good in Standard, no one cared. Well now we’re all about Teeging them and this Teegs better than any other Dargon ever and also Baneslayers pretty good. Mirri decks want unfair creatures like this, they don’t want terrible Cats. You’re not going to be Cat tribal with Mirri so make sure you don’t forget to include good token creators and savage Dargons like this one.

I think this image says a lot about how quickly these prices shifted recently.

The prerelease foil sold out very close to where the non-foil is right now and the set foil is barely more than the non-foil. For all of this talk about how EDH players are so willing to foil their decks out this seems to indicate the real truth is that 99% of EDH players would play an alternate art Dromoka with a picture of Guy Fieri’s frosted pubes as the image if it were 50 cents cheaper. The 1% of EDH players are buying foils. Sure, you’ll probably sell the foil if you buy it for $19 bucks, but don’t let that trick you into thinking you should buy every foil of every spec because it can’t be reprinted. Most EDH players want the cheapest possible version, and if you want to make money, you need to be able to buy a lot of copies inconspicuously and have outs for all of them. I stay away from foils for the most part for this reason – lower stock means it’s very hard to buy inconspicuously. Still, there is a price correction incoming on the foil copies and it probably has nothing to do with demand for the foil copies and everything to do with the foil being $4 more than the non-foil seeming “wrong” to people.

Linvala, Keeper of Silence

As long as we’re Teeging people, take a look at this Angel at her floor. The copies from Modern Masters 2017 are even cheaper and due to rebound. Modern Masters 2017 was a pretty under-distributed set and this is a sick, iconic angel that is killer in EDH and straight shuts down a lot of annoying cards. I think you buy iconic Angel cards at their floor and that time is now, especially if Mirri decks take off and people jam these as often as they are now (percentage-wise, which isn’t inconceivable). You’ll sell a lot more of these at $20 than you will at $40 and I think you will be fine selling at $20 if you get in at $10. Wizards may reprint her again so I think a nimble in and out is the play.

That does it for me this week. I think you may find other cards you like if you keep checking the Mirri page for updates, but I think this is where I would park my money. I think there are a lot of cheap, inconspicuous copies of Nacatl War-Pride online and I think you find those. Go to local stores and yank these out of bulk. Let TCG Player get bought out a month from now when you have all of your copies, otherwise your orders will get cancelled and you just told a bunch of dealers to reprice their cards for free. Let’s be smart about this, as unpopular an opinion as that is these days. Until next week!

Watchtower

PROTRADER: The Watchtower 8/21/17

August 21, 2017 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. 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.

GP Denver brought with it an interesting narrative; three players made top 8 (and took home the trophy) with the exact same 75. I’m not certain that’s ever happened before, and it was nifty to see. What’s more interesting is that they did it with what’s virtually a block deck. A scant two cards in the main weren’t from Kaladesh or Aether Revolt. That’s some nice parasitic design Wizards. Good job guys! Who would have imagined adding a new resourced that could only be obtained and spent by a small subset of cards would have that effect.

That means it’s worth turning our attention to the deck a little more closely this week, as it’s still going to be functioning at full capacity after the October rotation. That allows players to buy in today and still have a solid deck in three months, which will help shore up card prices there.

We’ve also got the on-going buyouts of cards from the reserved list and otherwise ancient sets, and EDH remains fertile as ever. Inventory levels indicate dragons to be the most popular tribe, which makes sense I suppose. It’s the least interesting to tenured players, but there’s no shortage of appeal among the casual crowd.

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