Angels and Giants

March 7, 2017 Jason Alt 5 Comments

Modern Masters 2017 is fully spoiled, and, may I just say, what in the actual @#$%?

Seriously. Seriously. Seriously.

I predicted the set would be crammed with value and that a lot of the cards I predicted would be in it would be in it. In reality, the set was crammed with value and a lot of the cards I predicted would be in it were in it PLUS Tarmogoyf. It’s kind of hard to even right now. What we can do is look at the set, understand that the EV is through the roof, supply is much higher than we’re used to seeing with a Modern Masters set (no one knows exactly how much so it’s going to be tough to predict exactly how much prices will fall and we don’t need to do that to know we should buy at the floor, anyway) and figure out which targets are juicy. For the purposes of this article, I’m going to try and isolate cards that are just predicated on EDH demand and let other people tell you what Modern and Legacy may or may not be able to affect. Modern has an actual metagame and changes to it and bannings affect entire decks. EDH bannings, an infrequent event, don’t invalidate a whole deck, merely a card. We’re looking at a stable, predictable format and we even have some historical data of EDH cards in Modern Masters sets. Let’s see what we see!

The first Modern Masters had a lot of EDH goodies in it, and some of them got smashed, especially at rare.

Adarkar Valkyrie

Valkyrie was about to recover and might well have done an OK job of it if not for a second reprinting in Commander 2014 a year later. Those two combined have made this a bulk rare basically in perpetuity. But not ever card was so unlucky.

Stonehewer Giant

This has gotten back to its pre-reprint price. You can thank a little buoying from the renewed interest in this kind of card with the printing of the Nahiri commander deck as well as it being a nice budget alternative to Stoneforge Mystic. There’s one thing we can check that can help shine some light on the subject.

There you have it. How much a card is played can also be a factor, with Giant justifying some of its price with nearly double the inclusion. While it’s a little disingenuous to directly compare a card reprinted once with a card reprinted twice (much more aggressively the second time) we have a good idea of the factors that can affect the price so we can tell if a card is an Angel or a Giant. In this context, Angel is a bad investment doomed to stagnate for years and make you no money and Giant is a card that promises robust recovery. Giants give us those sexy, U-shaped graphs we like to see.

Modern Masters 2017 is going to give us more copies of a given rare than Modern Masters… 2013? 1? What do we call it? I’m just going to call it “Modern Masters” the way everyone refers to “A New Hope” as “Star Wars” and the other sets I’ll refer to as Modern Masters 2015 and 2017.

Let’s look at a few cards and see if they are an Angel or a Giant.

Craterhoof Behemoth

I have hopes for this card. In a lot of ways, I feel like this is a worst-case scenario sort of card. What if they print so many packs of Modern Masters 2017 that we have as many mythics as we did of Modern Masters rares? Are there cards with similar levels of adoption printed at rare in Modern Masters that could show us that Craterhoof could recover?

Woodfall Primus

I feel like I don’t even need to put the arrow on June 2013 to show where it got reprinted – it’s very obvious. Worst-case scenario, we get so much Modern Masters 2017 that mythic is the new rare, we see Primus (4,939 EDHREC decks, to Craterhoof’s 6,779, both well above the 3,479 we saw with Stonehewer) recovering almost 100%. Craterhoof also has some Legacy implication (very minor) to help it. My hope is that Craterhoof flies under the radar a bit. Everyone will use splashier mythics like Tarmogoyf and Griselbrand and Linvala in their EV calculations and the lack of immediate demand might tank hoofy’s price a bit. I see this being a Giant under even the worst of circumstances and the more this falls, the more money we make. Will it ever be almost $30 again? I’m not sure. I think it could recover a lot more than people think, and given that it’s mythic, it’s hard to imagine there ever being enough supply to fully tank its price. Even the ugliest Modern Masters mythics don’t look that bad.

Vedalken Shackles

1,163 decks on EDHREC and an artificial spike from the Modern Blue Moon decks make this just about the ugliest Modern Masters mythic and there’s still hope of recovery. Craterhoof has much better bona fides than this. I’m very confident. I’d love to be fair and show the price graph of Comet Storm but, shoot, it got another reprinting and can’t tell us anything. Darn.

Zur the Enchanter

Compare Venser to a card that’s almost sure to get ground into powder. Coldsnap didn’t get opened a ton and cards like Arcum Daggson have demonstrated the ability to reach and hold some pretty lofty prices but Zur here is in for a big hit. While EDHREC numbers lie a bit (his 188 inclusions and 539 registrations as a commander [yes, it’s in more decks as a commander than inclusion] belie how popular he is in competitive and French Commander, formats where they rarely register on EDHREC but where their inclusions are even more likely to drive prices) I still think this is set to take a big hit. Being reprinted at non-mythic in a set where we’re nervous about mythics’ ability to regain ground before 2019 when we could see another reprinting is bad news bears for this card. It’s already having a tough time maintaining some of its earlier hype. I’d like to say its EDHREC numbers don’t matter because this would be a good example of counter-intuition if this were going to recover but I fear it can’t. Angel for sure.

Sphinx’s Revelation

This is going to get crushed into absolute powder. It’s going to be on fire for weeks, maybe months. Here’s the thing – I think this could end up getting down to bulk mythic status. Modern doesn’t use it a ton, Legacy at all, people who started playing in the last 4 years don’t even remember how dominant it was and no one seems to be aware that this is a pretty decent EDH card with 3,871 registered decks including it. It’s Oloro gold and Oloro is a top 5 commander of all time. When this gets pulverized, and it will if non-mythic rares like Blood Moon are to maintain any of their value, this is a very good pickup. I like this at its floor, which could end up being bulk. Being able to grab these greedily for cheap is a very attractive proposition. I think its EDH numbers are strong enough to maintain a price increase from oblivion and it’s basically no-risk if this ends up in bulk mythic territory. We have to see how low this goes, first (I don’t like buying these at $2, for example) but this has the ability to rebound from completely cratering and EDH demand is enough to do that. This is an X spell that draws cards and gains life – it’s even better in EDH than it was in Standard and it absolutely warped Standard. Giant here, provided it gets humbled enough before it begins its comeback.

Basilisk Collar

This card has had a very weird month. No sooner did people notice this was pretty keen in conjunction with Walking Ballista (the same way people made the connection with it and Inferno Titan in Standard) in Modern than it was announced as a reprint. Clearly this was a “Wow, and EDH card people love is $10? That’s not cool” reprint and not a “Let’s bring the price down because Walking Ballista spiked it too hard” because while they knew Ballista was coming, it’s unlikely they planned a Modern Masters 2017 inclusion based on a 30% increase from more Modern play. This is in 3,303 EDH decks currently and it’s stupid with commanders like Olivia Voldaren. Can this be $10 again? I think it’s possible that it can. I think this card is a good example of the concept of Hidden Demand that I talked about last week. People who weren’t super aware of this card until its Ballista application materialized will likely underestimate the power of EDH. I think the demand from EDH and its cheap price suddenly making it accessible to people who weren’t inclined to shell out $10 for a Gorgon Flail are going to surprise some people. I see a nice, U-shaped graph in this card’s future. It won’t be $13 and it might not even be $10, but if it ends up $7.50, you’re going to be glad you paid $3 for it.

Venser, Shaper Savant

I said last week that this was something that could show us some hidden EDH demand that could trick people who think its price increases are entirely predicated on use in Modern, and in a deck that no one is really using anymore at that. EDH demand is pretty robust and is in line with the numbers we arbitrarily decided were OK for other cards – 4,434 inclusions and 56 as a commander. That’s a lot of demand that people who see this as a fossil from a Blue Moon deck that’s no longer in vogue (look at how sluggishly Vedalken Shackles is limping along after its reprinting in Modern Masters at Mythic) won’t realize is there. At 4 times the inclusion rate of Shackles, Venser is far more than some mere Blue Moon card that no one needs anymore.

I think it’s done a nice job recovering from it FTV printing. That goofy spike to $50 on the graph throws the scale off and belies the fact that its modest-looking crawl starting in mid 2015 is actually a precipitous $10 increase. That’s a very robust recovery.

Will it recover as well from a Modern Masters non-mythic printing? It’s hard to say. However, I think that while it’s going to have a tough time recovering if we’re getting as much product as people seem to indicate, it’s also going to be overlooked. I think the lack of apparent demand from competitive players will relegate this to a lower “tier” initially and its price will take a bigger hit than something like Blood Moon. That being the case, you may be able to make as much money as you would have buying something more expensive at its floor even if this card doesn’t quite reach its previous price. That is to say it may grow at a rate that’s a smaller percentage of its previous price than something like Craterhoof, but it could fall at a greater rate, also, meaning in terms of real dollars you can make as much money buying in at the floor even if it doesn’t recover to the same percentage of its initial price. Is that sentence gibberish? Tell me in the comments if that sentence is gibberish.

I’m personally pretty jazzed for this set. I really hope everything just takes a pounding and prices end up slashed because we’ve seen that a lot of these cards can recover nicely. There are a few unknowns. Will the FTV printing of Venser combined with its Modern Masters 2017 printing be as detrimental to the price as the Commander 2014 plus Modern Masters printing were to Adarkar Valkyrie? Or will the robust demand and relatively small print run of the FTV be enough to negate it? Is Venser an Angel or Giant? I’m betting he’s a Giant and I am betting money on it. There are some other very attractive targets to invest in. Next-level investors are looking at cards that have upside not having been reprinted and while that’s smart and useful (Check out James’ column tomorrow), EDH demand is strong, predictable and quantifiable. What more could you ask for?

Thanks for reading!

Watchtower

The Watchtower 3/6/17

March 6, 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.

I’d love to tell you about some cool new deck in Standard, I really would. Maybe a Mechanized Production list that took the MOCS by storm, or something showing up repeatedly in the MTGO constructed leagues. That would be great. But I can’t. The MOCS was as boring as can be, with almost everyone in the room playing Copycat or Mardu Vehicles. The most exotic deck there was Temur Marvelworks, which is hardly an unknown quantity. I guess we’re stuck waiting for Amonkhet to shake things up? That or the ban list announcement next Monday. Either way, Aether Revolt’s exploration period was short lived indeed.

Instead, we’ll look over at Modern again. With the Modern Masters 2017 spoiler now completely available, we know exactly what’s coming, and more specifically, what isn’t. The last few weeks I’ve featured several cards that I thought had good outlooks if they weren’t reprinted, and I don’t think any of them were. All of those perspectives still stand. We’ll get into a few more now.

Threads of Disloyalty

Price Today: $4.50
Possible Price: $15

Remember this card? Remember how it used to be $30? Well, it’s $4.50 now. When a card that used to be $30 is now $4.50, and there was no reprint or banning involved in the presence of the card in the metagame, that means we could reasonably return to the old high.

Somewhere between Born of the Gods and Journey to Nyx, Threads spiked hard, and has ridden a slow train downhill to the roughly $4.50 a copy you’ll pay today. It doesn’t show up all too often today, though it was still seeing play for months after the initial price spike. Does that rule it out as unplayable though? No, not at all. More than likely, people just sort of forgot about it after it stopped serving an immediate need in the format.

Imagine this against Death’s Shadow, for instance. Threads can steal their Tarmogoyfs, for one thing. It can also steal the eponymous card. And in the instance where your life is high enough that Death’s Shadow doesn’t stick around, hey, that’s cool. It acts as a pseudo-removal spell in that situation. People aren’t playing three mana removal spells in Modern too often, but a three mana control magic that can kill Death’s Shadow in a pinch is fine. And it’s not like people stopped playing Tarmogoyf, or Snapcaster Mage, or Arcbound Ravager, or Scavenging Ooze, or Dark Confidant, or Grim Flayer, or…

There’s not an immediate impetus to grab copies of Threads of Disloyalty. I don’t expect it to come roaring back into Modern this week. It’s worth keeping an eye on though, all the same. With no additional copies having been added to the market since the last time it was far into double digit territory, there’s no reason whatsoever to think that it couldn’t do it again. If this begins sneaking into 5-0 league lists at some point, it may be time to act.

Eldrazi Temple

Price Today: $7.50
Possible Price: $15

This may have made you money a year or so ago, and it could be time to double dip if so. If you missed the first time around, well, don’t make the same mistake twice.

Browsing Modern events, whether they’re 5-0 league lists, or GP top 32s, or SCG Opens, there always seems to be a few Eldrazi lists floating around. They’re mostly Bant builds these days, with the usual crew: Reshaper, Displacer, Smasher, Seer. In every list there’s four Eldrazi Temple; mini Mishra’s Workshops each. The alien menace hasn’t run over Modern or anything, but it’s definitely carved out a part of the metagame for itself.

There’s also the Eldrazi/Taxes hybrids floating around. Those play cards like Leonin Arbiter, both Thalias, and Chalice of the Void. They’re more about restraining your opponent’s resources while presenting a clock rather than running hasty 5/5s into people’s faces, but they still play at least eight Eldrazi, and as such, four Temples. This isn’t a fringe deck either; like the Eldrazi Aggro builds, this archetype has claimed a slice of the meta.

We’ve now got two different Modern decks each running a full playset of Eldrazi Temple, as well as your typical fringe usage in Legacy, cube, etc. It’s even in a good 1,500 EDH decks over on EDHREC.com. Supply on the Rise of the Eldrazi and Duel Deck printings is sparse, with maybe a couple of playsets between the two editions. MM2 supply is considerably deeper, but there’s still less than a page total on TCGPlayer. This means that while I’m not expecting an explosion in price in the immediate future, there’s few enough copies out there that we could certainly see this start to climb without too much public chatter necessary.

With the Cavern of Souls reprint bringing down the price barrier on the Eldrazi strategies, supply where it is, and Modern’s history of driving mana bases wild, there’s definitely reason to believe that we could be looking at $15+ Eldrazi Temples within 2017.

James Chillcott, Modern Masters, MTG Fast Finance, Travis Allen

MTG Fast Finance Podcast: Episode 57 (Mar 3/17)

March 3, 2017 James Chillcott 8 Comments

MTG Fast Finance is our weekly podcast covering the flurry of weekly financial activity in the world of Magic: The Gathering. MFF provides a fast, fun and useful sixty minute format. Follow along with our seasoned hosts as they walk you through this week’s big price movements, their picks of the week, metagame analysis and a rotating weekly topic.

Show Notes: Mar 3, 2017

Segment 1: Top Card Spikes of the Week

A pretty quiet week in card spikes…that is up until the MM17 reveals wrapped up Thursday and people started moving on cards that weren’t included. (Expect to see those here next week.)

Rite of Passage (Fifth Dawn, Rare)
Start: $0.50
Finish: $6.50
Gain: +$6.00 (+1200%)

Carpet of Flowers (Urza’s Saga, Uncommon)
Start: $3.50
Finish: $15.00
Gain: +$11.50 (+330%)

Tainted Pact (ODY, Rare)
Start: $2.00
Finish: $5.50
Gain: +$3.50 (+175%)

Falling Star (LEG, Rare)
Start: $6.50
Finish: $17.00
Gain: +$10.50 (+161%)

Eidolon of the Great Revel (JOU, Rare)
Start: $6.00
Finish: $12.00
Gain: +$6.00 (+100%)

James’ Picks:

Ancestral Vision (TSP, Rare)

The Call: Confidence Level 8: $35.00 to $60.00 (+25.00/71%) 12+ months)
Note: Source from Europe to snag at mentioned price

2. Karn Liberated (NPH, Mythic)

The Call: Confidence Level 8: $45.00 to $70.00 (+25.00/+55%, 0-6+ months)

3. Horizon Canopy (FS, Rare)

The Call: Confidence Level 8: $35.00 to $60.00 (+25.00/+71%, 0-12+ months)

Travis’ Picks:

Noble Hierarch (MM2, Rare)

The Call: Confidence Level 7: $45.00 to $70.00 (+25.00/+56%, 0-6+ months)

2. Inkmoth Nexus (MB, Rare)

The Call: Confidence Level 6: $20.00 to $40.00 (+20.00/+100%, 0-12+ months)

Disclosure: Travis and James may own speculative copies of the above cards.

Segment 3: Topic of the Week

James & Travis got deep on the exciting new Modern Masters 2017 release.

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.

Casual Fridays

Fetches and the Future

March 3, 2017 Cliff Daigle

Today, the complete list of Modern Masters 2017 goes up, and I’m busy refreshing pages and going crazy just like you.

I’m keenly aware of some truly amazing cards and the higher distribution, and I can’t wait to find out how overpriced my shop is going to hold drafts at, but I want to focus on the fetches in MM17 and what the future holds for them.

We have a baseline for what’s going to happen to the enemy fetches from Zendikar, with their inclusion in MM17: The allied fetches in Khans of Tarkir.

Let’s look at Polluted Delta.

This was at more than $100, just from Legacy and casual demand. Going from Onslaught to Khans is an enormous jump in availability, but there was a new demand as Modern players could now add these to decks. A loss of half was immediate, and it’s halved again.

Notably, the demand hasn’t spiked since the KTK printing, though this is the Onslaught version we are looking at, the original. It’s lost a lot of value and hasn’t recovered, which is a bit of a surprise to me.

Let’s look at what the Khans version has done.

First of all, it’s at half the price of the Onslaught version. It’s much more common, yes, but this is a big gap for a card between its two printings. I think that with such a big difference in art and frame, I’m not surprised that there is a gap, which is consistent across all five of the fetches. People are willing to pay more for the old version.

I am surprised that the gap has held. We’ve got six versions of allied fetches for you to choose from, allowing you to balance your budget with your desire for the shiny or unique.

What this means for the enemy fetches is this: I’m expecting them to lose value immediately, down to the $15-$20 range. I expect them to recover somewhat at the start of Amonkhet, and start an upward creep…but not very far.

Reusing the art is a big deal for the fetchlands. These are going to be the same as the originals, except for the expansion symbol and other small frame tweaks, and that means the originals are going to be dragged down in price significantly.

If I had them, I might try to move extras but buylists might not be honored now, and I can’t imagine eBay sales are going to happen much. It couldn’t hurt trying to sell them now, but I don’t think you’ll get very far.

If you’re holding nonfoils, I think you’re going to simply have to hold onto them and accept that you’re going to have to wait some time to get much of your value back.

Foils, though, that’s a different matter. I doubt that the foils are going to recover effectively, given that there’s a super-chase-mega-rare one to go get, but my guess is that the foils take a hit of about 40% and then stabilize. Having the new foils look almost the same as the old ones is going to mean that the older ones come down toward the newer ones.

Modern Masters 2017 has a truly ridiculous number of chase cards, and I want to address what Wizards is trying to do: make the format cheaper and sell a bunch of packs. I don’t think this is a move of the desperate, but they are trying to goose player interest in the format.

Modern as a format has looked flat, but my goodness, we have a lot of toys to play with in this set, some of which harken back to other amazing formats, e.g. Mystical Teachings.

While I think that the fetches are going to stay stable, I suspect that this is going to lead to growth if the player base grows. Fetches are going to be the canary in the coal mine for Modern: If the players come to the format, the prices of the lands will be the first to show it. This set is gas and it’s going to get a lot of people playing the format because the cards will be cheap.

Make no mistake, this is going to torpedo some prices significantly. Stores have more product. Some stores are selling boxes for less than the MSRP of $240, and that’s a sign for how much product they want to move. There’s going to be a lot of Liliana of the Veil running around, a lot more Damnation and Blood Moon, and people want to play with their awesome new and expensive cards.

I think that Wizards is sending another signal here: Anything not on the Reserved List is fair game. The EV on a MM17 pack is ridiculously high, at least for right now. That won’t last, though, as packs get opened and prices crash. Remember that stores get boxes from distributors for less than retail, and they will open boxes if the price is right on singles. That pressure will keep the price of the non-chase cards super duper low.

In previous sets, they decided to cap the values of boxes, by only reprinting so many valuable cards. This is not the case in 2017, instead they chose both low-print-run cards (Liliana) to cards they have goosed a bunch (Tarmogoyf) and so on. Going forward, nothing’s safe. Please keep that in mind as we go forward into this brave new world.

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