Jason Alt

Unlocked Pro Trader: Gone Before You Can Blink

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Last week we talked about Amonkhet cards pushing older commanders to the forefront of builders’ minds and how cards we thought had settled might be shaken up again by the new activity. Sometimes one or two new cards are enough to get people excited about an old deck and people who didn’t have a deck before or are rebuilding it can be just as powerful financially as a new deck materializing. Was Anointed Procession combined with Harsh Mentor and Canyon Slough enough of an impetus for Queen Marchesa and Alesha to jump? It seems that way. Would one new card be enough of an impetus for an older deck to go up. What if it wasn’t from the latest Conspiracy set but from even farther back? Would one card be enough to get people excited about Brago? It depends. What if that card is Ancestral Recall with 0 mana buyback?

With Brago, King Eternal, we take this $0.60 uncommon from an OK card in Limited if you get enough cartouches to Power 9, letting you draw 3 cards a turn if you play your cards right. Brago was good before, was considered Tier 1 or 1.5 in French by many people (which is such a foreign concept to most EDH players that it’s barely worth mentioning) and with people starting to play 1v1 online, he could get even more popular, which could translate into paper demand. Did I say could? I mean “almost has to” because anything that is sufficiently popular will translate into being more popular anywhere no matter how much compartmentalization there is between MODO and paper and 1v1 and multiplayer. People who lose to something will imitate it.

If Brago does get a second look, cards in the Brago deck, especially ones that get better with new Amonkhet cards and are therefore even more likely to make the cut in a new deck, are worth looking at. Here’s what I think matters.

Panharmonicon

I think it’s basically time on this card. It’s recovering from a historic low and while I don’t like to “grab a falling knife” as they say on Wall Street, I don’t want to wait too long to see how high this bounces. I think this is one of the EDHiest cards to ever ED any Hs and that’s good for this card. It made a bit of a splash in Standard for a minute, hence the high price. High price for a minute up first was good because a high buylist meant a lot of them went from packs to dealers’ hands as players traded them in to the LGS for store credit to buy more packs and such. Bulk rares have a tendency to accumulate and get forgotten in boxes but $8 cards are more easily accounted for.

There is some danger surrounding this card vis-a-vis whether or not this eats it at rotation. If you pay $2 and this becomes $0.50, that might feel bad. But even in that situation I think you are OK paying $2 and here’s why.

  1. I don’t think this gets that cheap. This is a card used in a ton of EDH decks already and that number will only grow. Players love triggers and doubling triggers is the best. Look at what EDH has made expensive that used to be a bulk rare – Parallel Lives, Doubling Season, Mana Reflection, Caged Sun. Double is good and Panharmonicon doubles stuff.
  2. I don’t think you care even if it does tank. EDH demand is robust and while it’s not quite a staple, 6200 inclusions and counting is strong and that means the card will go back up. People used to say Parallel Lives wouldn’t hit $2 because it wasn’t half as good as Doubling Season. K. This card is stupid, it’s played in as many decks as Illusionists’ Bracers and that card is $2.50 and counting. If this does dip below a buck at rotation, which I doubt, buy more. Your average cost sinks way below $2 and you profit a ton when this hits $5+.

I think it’s time to buy this card and worry about a potential price decrease later. They change the rotation policy every year so I have no idea what effect this rotation will have on the price of a card like this but I know that it’s about as cheap as it’s going to get for now. If you’re that worried, trade all of your new stuff that you’re sure is going to go down at rotation for these and that way you don’t worry about overpaying for cash. In general, I like to find targets that will retain value and trade all of my standard stuff that I can’t sell into them. If you find yourself waiting too long, you can also ship a bunch of standard jank in to dealers with a high trade-in bonus and cash out. Finally, there’s PucaTrade, which I guess people hate now but which has been useful for trading stacks of jank into Torpor Orbs for me. I haven’t messed with that site in a minute, though.

Parallax Wave

Price correction is due here for certain. I noticed that this was $5.50 on Card Kingdom and is all but sold out elsewhere. A few shops have this at $4 or so (up from the $3 it was last time I wrote about it) but have low stock. TCG Player Market Price concurs with this at around $5.50. We have a coming price correction that needs an impetus, and I think more Brago decks could be it. There isn’t enough of a discrepancy between the new price ($6+) that will be coming and the current, low-hanging fruit price on a few loose copies for there to be an arbitrage opportunities, but I still think buying ahead of an impending correction is wise. This card is played in Atraxa and the number of Atraxa decks keeps growing, not to mention the number of Brago decks that are being built this week. I like this card a ton moving forward.

Eldrazi Displacer

While we’re talking about cards that I don’t think will dip a ton at rotation and which get played enough in EDH to justify paying around $2 for them, there’s this gem. True colorless mana is a little tricky to come by but shouldn’t be too arduous in a 2-color deck. You have Temple of the False God (a card I hate), Ash Barrens, Academy Ruins, Inventor’s Fair, Mystic Gate, Rogue’s Passage and Reliquary Tower all commonly played in Brago decks, though, so you should be good for an activation or two even without your Sol Ring.

Again, I’m not worried about too much of a dip at rotation. I think this is played enough in enough different decks and formats that you’re not going to ever eat it buying in around $2. If this does end up $0.50 by some crazy fluke, don’t you want every copy of it at $0.50? Steel of the Godhead is $2, I’m OK paying $0.50 for Eldrazi Displacer, a card that, by the way, is way harder to reprint than Steel of the Godhead.

Strionic Resonator

Anyone else notice this happening? If you thought these were still cheap, well, they ain’t. They’ve been climbing for a year and while it took two years for it to finally happen, it did. I hope you snatched an armload of these for bulk back in the day. I even had Noah Bradley sign one for me.

Something else to notice is that this peaked around $5 and is down a bit. This means $5 is a safe bet for a future price and as more copies get taken out of the marketplace, it’s even safer. Every dollar you buy below $5 is basically a dollar you’re guaranteed to make in a year or maybe less. Brago decks love this card and so do a lot of other decks, so I think this is a pretty safe pickup the closer you can buy to $3 right now. This card is 2014’s Panharmonicon and look at it grow.

Everything else in Brago is either cheap or Grim Monolith. You can probably scoop up a bunch of Mystic Remora but who knows when that will pay off? (I bought a hundred of them for a nickel each but I’ve been waiting for a long time and still no payoff. At this point I might just buylist them for $0.30) You could try and make money on Restoration Angel or one of the myriad angels in the deck. You could buy every Reality Acid on TCG Player and watch everyone wonder why. The point is, if you notice something that wasn’t really exciting (Brago decks) because suddenly very exciting, see why people are excited. In this case, they’re excited about drawing 3 cards a turn on top of the cards you’ll draw with Cloudblazer and Mulldrifter.

Thanks for reading. Next week, I’m sure there will be something else I notice, if only as a result of building more stupid EDH decks even though I already have too many. Until next time!

Watchtower

UNLOCKED: The Watchtower 5/22/17

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By: Travis Allen
@wizardbumpin

Don’t miss this week’s installment of the MTG Fast Finance podcast, an on-topic, no-nonsense tour through the week’s most important changes in the Magic economy. 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.

This weekend featured two Standard Grand Prix and a team constructed event over in SCG land. Standard is reasonably healthy I suppose, all things considered, although it personally doesn’t feel like that when you consider what it feels like to play with or against Aetherworks Marvel. I’m inclined to say that Wizards is considering banning it, as it’s likely more represented than they’d prefer, and it’s an especially unpleasant play experience, but it’s hard to imagine them pulling that particular trigger again already.

Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger and Aetherworks Marvel are two of the biggest cards in the format, and they’re about $5 and $10 less than they should cost, respectively, for a couple of reasons, the primary two I’d expect that players don’t particularly enjoy this format and we’re headed into summer, a perennial lull for Magic.

Given all of that, I’m inclined to stay away from Standard for a little while longer. With even the best prospects trending downward, there’s better places to turn your attention. I’m looking over at EDH mostly today, especially with some cool new decklists floating around to discuss. Remember, people only have to think it’s good for it to spike!

Grand Architect


Price Today: $3
Possible Price: $20

Within the last two weeks or so, a Grand Architect Aggro strategy has popped up. Corbin recently did some streaming over here with it over here. So far it’s only been appearing online, but it could make the jump to the meatspace any day. This isn’t the first time we’ve been down this road with Grand Architect. Of course, last time they didn’t have Walking Ballista. Is that enough to put the deck into contention? Time will tell.

At the heart of the deck is the mana reduction granted by four Chief Engineer and four Grand Architect. Each turns all your dudes into Birds of Paradise for artifacts. There are 24 artifact creatures in the deck, so the idea is to resolve one or two Engineers or Architects and then vomit your artifact creatures onto the table all at once. It’s Affinity-esque, and makes me wonder if there shouldn’t be Cranial Platings somewhere in there. Meanwhile you’ve also got a set of Lodestone Golems in the main, which let you play a little of the Thalia game. Since both Chief Engineer and Grand Architect apply their reduction to artifacts, not just artifact creatures, it leads me to wonder if Chalice of the Void is supposed to be in here as well.

In any case, this is a fun little package that people have been trying to make work for a long time, and new pieces keep getting added each set. Of the list, Architect is the best positioned to jump in price. He’s the namesake of the deck, and probably the most important cog. Perhaps most importantly, he’s the card with the lowest supply. Chief Engineer, Etched Champion, Lodestone Golem, Blinkmoth Nexus, Cavern of Souls – all have been reprinted. Mausoleum Wanderer, Walking Ballista, and Smuggler’s Copter are all new. Supply really does position Architect well here.

Copies are available in the $3 range on TCG right now with fairly low supply. Copies are available elsewhere in reasonable numbers, both cost and quantity. There’s more out there than “$100 buys every liquid copy,” but not “bulk Kaladesh rare” quantity. If this deck picks up steam – if a few others record videos and post them, for instance – I’d watch Architect for a bump. Make sure you sell immediately into any spike though, since I don’t love the competitive outlook on this strategy.


Chord of Calling

Price Today: $8.50
Possible Price: $25

Amonkhet had all sorts of fun cards for Modern, none moreso than As Foretold. (It was hard not to stick Restore Balance in as something to watch out for this week.) More quietly, Vizier of Remedies slotted directly into the existing strategy of Abzan Company. Vizier is the reason Devoted Druid is like $15 now, because Vizier lets Druid make infinite mana while still doing the Viscera Seer/Murderous Redcap thing. Big get for the deck, Vizier is.

Abzan Company’s creature base isn’t terribly exciting for us, since so many pieces are so important. Viziers and Druids, obviously. Birds of Paradise. Kitchen Finks. Viscera Seer. Once you get all the combo pieces in, there’s not a lot of room to goof around. Two other slots are hard locks as well: Chord of Calling and the eponymous Collected Company.

Chord is getting close to that time frame of ‘spikable,’ and perhaps most compelling is the fact that the new combo with Vizier and Druid generates infinite mana. You can go grab Emrakul. Or Griselbrand. Or Duskwatch Recruiter and activate until you find Walking Ballista. Or Rhonas, and make something giant and smash into their stupid face. Or Spawnsire of Ulamog, which you then use to cast the fifteen Eldrazi in your sideboard. Whatever. They all work. The important thing is that your tutor piece, which can find one half of your infinite mana combo, also works very, very well with just flat out killing them on the spot. This is in contrast to Collected Company, which while extremely efficient and getting guys into play, doesn’t just kill your opponent on the spot.

Copies of Company start at $12 right now, and it wasn’t too long ago they were in Standard. Chord of Calling, on the other hand, is available for around $8, and the last time that guy showed up was just about three years ago in Magic 2015. Between those copies, and Return to Ravnica, there’s a fair supply for sure. Prices have rollercoasted quite a bit since then, with a spike to nearly $15 back when Shadows Over Innistrad released. It dipped through the release of Kaladesh, and is now up $1 since then. It’s not unthinkable that Chord keeps ticking for months to come, and could be strong double digits later this year.


Geralf’s Messenger

Price Today: $5
Possible Price: $15

Amonkhet brought us zombies, and Pro Tour Amonkhet brought us Zombies. The well-worn tribe was out in force, and is currently a pillar of the Standard. But what about…Modern??? New additions in Dread Wanderer and Lord of the Accursed gave the deck even more options for a mono-black build, and perhaps most spicy is Wayward Servant, a powerful two drop that would push the deck into white black.

There’s no shortage of options for a Modern Zombie build for sure. Chapin covered one such possibility this week. If I had to pick a single card to match tribal Zombies with Wayward Servant, it would be Geralf’s Messenger. A turn two Servant followed by a turn three Messenger (that then dies) is six damage on CITP effects alone. That’s one hell of a beating. Perhaps the largest barrier for Zombies to overcome is that it simply wouldn’t be able to race the unfair decks. A healthy mix of discard and maybe some Thought-Knot Seers could feasibly overcome that though…

Messenger is in the $5 range right now, but keep in mind that there’s zero competitive demand driving that. He’s gotten to that price point on casual demand alone. Without a reprint he’s bound for $10 as is, and if even ten people out there decide to build Modern Zombies, we could see the price double easily. A 5-0 performance would absolutely put Messenger on people’s radar long enough for a healthy upwards swing.

Brainstorm Brewery

Brainstorm Brewery #239: The Return of the Pridemage

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Corbin is tired from PT Amonkhet and Jason hijacks the start of the cast.   The evolving standard meta and best moment in player interviews are discussed. Someone gives Doug an excuse to talk about Pokemon.  Breaking bulk covers odd tokens and old core sets.  Jason talks about which EDH decks Amonkhet cards are influencing.

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Casual Fridays, ProTrader

UNLOCKED PROTRADER: Checking in on Amonkhet

It’s been a month and the Pro Tour hype is over, and we are still adjusting and still innovating. I love that mono-black Zombies took it down, but I don’t love that much of the deck is going to rotate in six months. It’s gonna be a good time until then though!

Today I want to go over some of the movements of Amonkhet cards, and how far they might fall.

Gideon of the Trials ($20.69): He didn’t light up anything at the PT, so I’m not expecting much from him right now. We’ve also had hints that the Gatewatch is getting a little overplayed as a set of planeswalkers, so if he’s the only Gideon in the deck, he gets less good.

I do think there’s space for him to be good, we just haven’t seen the control deck that wants him yet. If he lands, and there’s a Fumigate or other wrath waiting to punish the opponent for overcommitting to the board, then I think there’s a whole lot of potential.

I’m not buying now, though, and he’s getting his price cut by a couple of stores. He’s gonna be $15 soon and I think he’ll be $10 by the time we get Hour of Devastation…which is where I’ll be getting in. I’ll be hoping for a double-up when he gets good.

Rhonas the Indomitable ($17.72): Believe it or not, this card is increasing in price even as it sees almost no Standard play. The foil is only 1.5 times more, and the Invocation is about 3x. I think it’s casual demand causing this graph:

I am super impressed that this is rising slightly, when most of the mythics are on a slow decline. Sure, this is good in Commander, but I didn’t think it was this good. I don’t know where this will go, but experience tells me that it should be going down. I definitely am not buying this now, but the rise in price over time is fascinating given how little Standard play it’s getting.

Vizier of the Menagerie ($8.13): It’s lower than when it was released, and the casual demand has been mostly sated. A creature that helps you get more creatures is always going to have a special place in my heart, especially when it’s half the mana cost of Garruk’s Horde. It’s hit $6 and has crept up a little, but I’d expect that to go back down over the next few weeks. I’d prefer to pick this up in the $3 range, but $5 might be the floor. Very few green Commander decks would skip this card.

Glorious End ($1.82): So in case you’re not aware, there are streamers who can cause a card to spike quickly. This was featured the other day and while the deck didn’t light the league up, it’s closing in on bulk-mythic territory…which is always an intriguing pickup, especially considering how much longer this will be in Standard. When it gets to sub-$1, I’ll be looking to grab a couple of playsets, because when these spike, it’ll be glorious.

Dispossess ($.59): You’d think that with all the vehicles and Marvels and Scroungers running around this would at least be a sideboard card. I’m both surprised and not surprised Lost Legacy saw some play when Emrakul, the Promised End was the Marvel target of choice, but the goal there was to take down the monster, not the enabler. I wouldn’t mind having some of these in bulk storage, but that’s the purest of speculative targets.

Special bonus pick: Fumigate ($1.79): It’s a wrath that catches you back up. Yes, it’s bad against planeswalkers and vehicles but it’s seeing more play now than at the beginning, and lots of people are trying very hard to make UW Control good again. I think eventually they will get there, and I want to have some sub-$2 copies of this handy for when it cracks $5.

Cliff is a father, teacher, and casual enthusiast who recently finished a ‘Busted Uncommons’ cube, which Sol Ring is not in because it’s too busted. His Magic career boasts two PTQ top 8s that were 8 years apart. He whispers to his stack of Prophet of Kruphix every night, telling them they are good boys and their time will come.

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